Six episodes.
One billion lives.

1. Ep · 05May 18, 2026

   Youth on Climate x Health in India

   Welcome to The Forgotten Billion, a podcast by Studio Poka, where we explore the lives, challenges, and realities of the global majority through deep analysis, sharp insight, and powerful storytelling.In this episode, we explore how young people across India are living through the collision of climate and health, and ask: what happens to a generation coming of age when the physical ground beneath them is shifting? We unpack how heatwaves, pollution, water stress, school closures, and extreme weather are disrupting education and everyday life, while also fueling eco-anxiety and deep uncertainty about the future. The episode also examines a critical knowledge gap: young people feel the impacts of climate change intimately, but often lack a systemic understanding of the role of energy, agriculture, corporations, infrastructure, and policy in driving the crisis. At its core, this is a story about youth agency. It looks at why many young people internalize climate responsibility as personal guilt, and what it would take to shift them from individual action to systemic advocacy — with the knowledge, networks, and protections needed to act without burning out. The lesson is clear: building a future for the global majority means equipping youth with systemic understanding and safe channels to shape the institutions around them.

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2. Ep · 04May 11, 2026

   Insurance in India

   Welcome to The Forgotten Billion, a podcast by Studio Poka, where we explore the lives, challenges, and realities of the global majority through deep analysis, sharp insight, and powerful storytelling.In this episode, we explore the paradox at the heart of insurance in India: how can a market be so large and so sophisticated, yet still leave so many families one hospital bill away from financial ruin? India is home to the world’s 10th largest insurance market, moving nearly 12 trillion rupees a year. And yet, for hundreds of millions of people, real protection remains painfully out of reach. We unpack why most insurance value is concentrated in life products sold as tax-saving and forced-savings instruments, while the everyday risks that actually push families into poverty, such as illness, wage loss, accidents, crop shocks, and property damage, remain underinsured. From the missing middle in health insurance to MSMEs, gig workers, and newly banked households, this episode looks at the vast groups still standing outside meaningful protection, and the trust deficits that keep them there. This is also a story about systems design: broken distribution economics, low-trust financial environments, informal coping networks, digital public infrastructure, and the new generation of insurers trying to rebuild the market from the ground up. At its core, the episode asks what it would mean to design insurance not around legacy channels and actuarial habit, but around the actual lives, cash flows, and behaviors of the global majority.

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3. Ep · 03May 4, 2026

   Childhood immunization in India

   Welcome to The Forgotten Billion, a podcast by Studio Poka, where we explore the lives, challenges, and realities of the global majority through deep analysis, sharp insight, and powerful storytelling.What does it take to get a vaccine from a laboratory into a child’s arm, and what happens when the system breaks down in the final inch of delivery? In this episode, we explore the hidden architecture of childhood immunization in India, asking a deeper question beneath the public-health machinery: when we engineer friction out of healthcare, do we also engineer out the trust that makes it work? Through the lived realities of frontline workers, caregivers, and overstretched local systems, this episode examines the real barriers to vaccine uptake: overburdened ANMs (auxiliary nurse midwives) and ASHAs (accredited social health workers), endless paperwork, broken equipment, multi-dose vial wastage, delayed responses to adverse events, and the rumors that take root when trust collapses. It is a story about logistics, but also about dignity, gendered mobility, care work, and the fragile human relationships that hold public health together. At its core, this is not just an episode about immunization. It is about the last mile of healthcare delivery for the global majority, and why time, ritual, reassurance, and human connection are not inefficiencies to eliminate, but essential parts of making systems work.

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4. Ep · 02April 27, 2026

   Jobs in India

   Welcome to The Forgotten Billion, a podcast by Studio Poka, where we explore the lives, challenges, and realities of the global majority through deep analysis, sharp insight, and powerful storytelling.In this episode, we explore what happens when an economy produces more workers than it can absorb. We deep-dive into India’s looming jobs crisis and the possibility of a 110 million job shortfall by 2040. We examine whether the gig economy and mass entrepreneurship can truly offer dignified work, or whether they are simply sophisticated survival mechanisms in the absence of enough formal jobs. From delivery riders and platform workers to small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs, this episode unpacks the real mechanics of work, dignity, and economic mobility. We explore the “eight pillars of dignity” in labor, the hidden unemployed, the missing middle in India’s enterprise landscape, and why the future of work may depend less on unicorn startups and more on building resilient, medium-sized businesses that can actually create jobs. This is a conversation about demographics, behavior, aspiration, and what it will take to turn a potential demographic time bomb into a dividend.

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5. Ep · 01April 21, 2026

   Telehealth in India

   Welcome to The Forgotten Billion, a podcast by Studio Poka, where we explore the lives, challenges, and realities of the global majority through deep analysis, sharp insight, and powerful storytelling.In this episode, we turn to telehealth adoption in India, and ask a simple but urgent question: what does it really take for digital healthcare to work for rural communities? Drawing on human-centered design research from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, we look at how people experience e-Sanjeevani telemedicine services within Health and Wellness Centers. Through interviews and group discussions with patients, community health officers, and frontline workers, this story reveals both the promise and the friction of telehealth at the last mile.From trust and awareness to waiting times, medicine shortages, and platform glitches, this is a closer look at why adoption is never just about technology. It is about people, systems, and whether care actually works when it matters most.

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6. Ep · 06Coming soon

   To be revealed.

   A new dispatch is on its way.

By season.