Welcome to Watchdog's regular podcast where we look at the key factchecks produced by the Watchdog team in Sri Lanka and give you a breakdown of our lengthier analyses and upcoming projects.
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This is the podcast for HealthNewsReview.org, a website that helps people become smarter health care consumers by helping them sharpen their critical analysis of claims about health care interventions. The 1st 25 episodes were hosted by our Publisher, veteran health care journalist Gary Schwitzer. Now multimedia producer Michael Joyce brings you the stories. The aim is to improve the public dialogue about health care. You'll hear stories and interviews with people who are passionate about he ...
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Building virtual Colombo - A "Cities: Skylines" experiment, Part 2
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Why build Colombo in Cities: Skylines? Yudhanjaya and Nadim discuss the use cases for Colombo's digital twin; from road design and the placement of bus stops to ideas surrounding basic urban planning. Download the virtual city and access the wiki on GitHub Music and sound effects from u_5wgfa0ekjt and GoldenSound Labs on Pixabay…
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Building virtual Colombo - A "Cities: Skylines" experiment, Part 1
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Why have two of the brightest minds at Team Watchdog spent the better part of the last 6 months playing a city-builder? Welcome to Colombo in Cities: Skylines, our solution to the problems of ideation, visualization, and communication in urban planning for the city of Colombo! Download the virtual city and access the wiki on GitHub Music and sound …
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Restructure, Reset, Recover - Is Sri Lanka failing at New Year resolutions?
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34:22
Sri Lanka's economic crisis has caught the attention of international media outlets over the past couple of weeks. Two separate narratives are at play here. One is that China is the biggest obstacle to debt restructuring. The other is that private lenders who own our International Sovereign Bonds (ISB) are to blame. Our resident economist Umesh Mor…
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Too Slow Too Furious - Understanding Sri Lanka's transport system with Prof. Amal Kumarage
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All roads lead to doom; that's what seems to best describe transport policymaking in Sri Lanka since independence. On this episode of the Doghouse Nadim Majeed speaks to Prof. Amal Kumarage, head of the Moratuwa University's Department of Transport & Logistics, on his decades of research on the subject. We're covering everything from colonial histo…
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Cherry-picking & Narrative Spin - Co-opting Sri Lanka's economic crisis
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33:21
Sri Lanka's economic crisis has become a favourite case study/guinea pig for parties seeking to push a certain narrative or to cherry-pick issues to discount others. From currency boards and the myth of the Chinese debt trap to the "ESG" spellbinding of the Green elites, it appears that every blue tick has their own narrative spin on what caused Sr…
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The Power to Remain in Power: Sri Lanka's 37 steps backwards
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50:25
Despite promises of lean and frugal government, Sri Lanka's President Ranil Wickremesinghe last week appointed 37 state ministers to the executive branch. The list of appointees reads like a who's who of some of the most controversial figures in the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, the party of the Rajapaksa's. Former PM and SLPP Leader Mahinda Rajapak…
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Sri Lanka has finally reached a long-awaited staff level agreement with the IMF to enter into a 2.9 billion dollar Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program. What does this mean and what happens next? This week on The Doghouse, Watchdog's resident economist Umesh Moramudali, takes us through the next steps vis a vis debt restructuring and economic refor…
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Powerless: Sri Lanka's energy dependency problem
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47:00
Sri Lanka's main coal power plant has suffered yet another breakdown which means power cuts have been extended again. Add to this the fact that electricity tariffs have nearly doubled and it's fair for consumers to wonder if they are being treated fairly by the state-owned Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB). we're discussing the CEB's generation costs,…
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Forced Cremations - The intersection of racism and tragedy in Sri Lanka's COVID-19 policies
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TRIGGER WARNING - In this episode of the Doghouse we are talking about the grief inflicted upon thousands of victims of COVID-19 and their families by the administration of ex-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Beginning with retro-active changes to public health guidelines on the handling of the bodies of COVID-19 victims, disinformation regarding the …
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"Ranilsplaining" 101 - Policy statement without any policies
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43:01
On August 3, President Ranil Wickremesinghe opened the 3rd session of the 9th Parliament of Sri Lanka, delivering his policy statement. The problem though is that while the President acknowledged facts in terms of the economic crisis and set out some lofty goals, he failed to tell us how he plans to reach those goals. In a nutshell - we got the wha…
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Crisis of legitimacy - Sri Lanka needs elections. But when? And how?
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39:22
This week Nadim and Yudhanjaya discuss the crisis of legitimacy facing the Sri Lankan government. What happens when a parliament that has seemingly lost its mandate from the people, elects from among themselves a President who has no mandate? Sri Lanka needs elections for democracy to prevail, but there are a number of hurdles we need to jump. We'r…
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#GotaGoHome - Presidential Flight & International "Punditry"
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40:27
History has been made in Sri Lanka, where the world witnessed one of the most farcical departures from power of a Head of State in global political history. What happens next?In this episode we take a look at the events leading up to mass protests on 9 July, the storming of President's House, the Presidential Secretariat, and Temple Trees. We're ta…
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Surviving the food crisis - A data driven approach
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31:22
Dystopia beckons... How can Sri Lanka get through the worsening food crisis? Continuing our coverage of the aftermath of the catastrophic decision to ban the use of synthetic fertilisers, we look at potential solutions to mitigate the disaster, and the knock on effects of the ban. Follow our reporting on food and agriculture at www.longform.watchdo…
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White Elephant Software: State Pharma Corp's "Masterclass"
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7 Billion Rupee Software??? What does the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation want, exactly? Well if you want to combine the functionality of Google, Uber, Adobe, Canva, and a myriad of other existing tech solutions, you could consider 7 billion rupees to be cheap. We wouldn't touch this beast even if the amount was ten times higher. We read the docu…
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Our 1600km journey across the agricultural belt
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This week on the Doghouse Amalini De Sayrah and Nadim Majeed take us through their journey across some of the major agricultural districts in the country, investigating the impact of the sudden ban on synthetic fertilisers. From Hambantota to Jaffna we met a diverse cross section of farmers who spoke to us about their shattered hopes and despair at…
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"Experts" & Experts - The food crisis as explained by Prof. Buddhi Marambe
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Sri Lanka could be facing one of the severest food shortages in recent history in the coming months. How has it come to this pass? What was the science behind Sri Lanka's ill-fated organic only policy? Why should we be worried about massive losses in the maize harvest? We posed these questions and more to Prof. Buddhi Marambe, Senior Professor at t…
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Starvation Caused by Policy? - kicking off Watchdog's deep dive into Sri Lanka's agriculture sector
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Why is Sri Lanka on the brink of a major food crisis? What role did Gotabaya Rajapaksa's overnight 'organic' farming policy have in exacerbating this crisis? Food is finally on the menu at The Doghouse. With this episode we're kicking off our deep dive into Sri Lanka's agriculture sector and discussing the tragic impact of policies fuelled by myths…
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A Question of Survival - Sri Lanka's future with the IMF
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Ignore the 'Forwarded many times' messages from your 'politically savvy' uncle claiming that there's pots of billions of dollars coming into Sri Lanka now that we have a new Prime Minister. What is actually happening with securing bridge financing, debt restructuring, and the negotiations with the IMF? This week on The Doghouse, Umesh Moramudali, o…
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Cry Havoc & Let Loose the Dogs - The Attack on GotaGoGama & the Aftermath
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What a week it's been! Peaceful protestors attacked, violent reprisals against the attackers and those perceived to have supported them, curfews and patrols by armoured vehicles, and the return of the inimitable Ranil Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister for a record 6th time. In this episode of The Doghouse we are dealing with false claims made by Nam…
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No Confidence Motions & Constitutional Amendments - Resolving Sri Lanka's Political Crisis
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This week we're joined by Dr. Dinesha Samararatne of the University of Colombo's Faculty of Law and Ms. Ermiza Tegal, Attorney-at-Law, to discuss the proposed No Confidence Motions against the Prime Minister and President, and the 21st Amendment to the Constitution. What will these political manoeuvres in the legislature accomplish? Is there reason…
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Sri Lanka's Worsening Healthcare Crisis: How You Can Help
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The public rollout of Elixir is done; we're giving you some context on the worsening health crisis and introducing you to our #OSINT tool to track medicine shortages. Over the next six months, we’ll need millions of units of medicine and equipment. Here’s introducing Elixir, and how you can help out. We're also "briefly" looking at the proposed con…
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Sniffing out Medicine Shortages and Tracking Protests in Sri Lanka - All in a Week's Work
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This week on the Doghouse we discuss the denial of the healthcare crisis by the Department of Government Information. We're introducing you to Elixir - A Watchdog tool that enables healthcare professionals to submit lists of medicine shortages at hospitals around the country and provides a platform for donors to identify suppliers and ensure that t…
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No Medicine for the Economy, No Medicine in the Hospitals
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44:55
We're putting international and Indian media in the doghouse this week. The crisis in Ukraine and Chinese debt are not the primary causes of Sri Lanka's ailments. Stop trying to take away Sri Lanka's agency. Also on the doghouse this week - Ask Watchdog! - "brief' explainers on some interesting questions posed on our socials. We're also in conversa…
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Power Cuts and Foreign Debt - A Marriage of Hubris and Stupidity
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46:35
We realise that a lot has happened since we sat down to record on Wednesday (30/3/2022), but in this episode of the Doghouse, we're taking you through the minutiae of the key issues that have forced people onto the streets. We're looking at one of our first longform analyses from January this year when we broke down the power cut saga and its cause…
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What's happening with the Sri Lankan economy?
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33:30
Power cuts, queues for everything from food to fuel; why is the Sri Lankan economy in this sorry state? On the first episode of the doghouse we give you an overview of the current situation and the 'policies' that have brought about this mess. Read the companion piece for this episode here. Music - Cantina Rag by Jackson F. Smith is licensed under …
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Coming soon to your favourite podcast platforms! Music: Cantina Rag by Jackson F. Smith is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.
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This podcast was published by HealthNewsReview.org on December 4th, 2018. For more information and related links visit:https://www.healthnewsreview.org/podcastmedia/podcast-the-top-ten-quotes-of-2018/~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~This 50th podcast is most likely our last.In it we take a look back at some of the more m…
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Our team reflects on what we've learned
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This track was originally published by HealthNewsReview.org on November 20, 2018. For links to more resources visit:https://www.healthnewsreview.org/podcastmedia/podcast-our-team-reflects-on-what-weve-learned/~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*After over 12 years of scrutinizing medical news to help improve the public dialo…
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The polluted stream of health care information
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This podcast was published by HealthNewsReview.org on October 31st, 2018. For more resources and related links visit:https://www.healthnewsreview.org/podcastmedia/podcast-the-polluted-stream-of-health-care-information/~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*As health care information flows from its source to the general public t…
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The problematic promise of a ‘cure’ for Alzheimer’s disease
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This podcast was originally published on September 4th, 2018. For more background information and helpful links visit:https://www.healthnewsreview.org/podcastmedia/podcast-the-problematic-promise-of-a-cure-for-alzheimers-disease/~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Alzheimer's is a disease in which the cause is unknown, and a…
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ER docs highlight toxic health care myths
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22:08
This podcast was originally published on August 13, 2018. For more background information and helpful links visit:https://www.healthnewsreview.org/podcastmedia/podcast-emergency-docs-highlight-toxic-health-care-myths/~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*A trip to the emergency department is never a welcome experience, but…
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The clear and present danger of too much healthcare
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This podcast was originally published on August 1, 2018.For related links and resources visit:https://www.healthnewsreview.org/podcastmedia/roy-moynihan-overdiagnosis/~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*Do we have too much health care that's supported by too little evidence? Roy Moynihan, PhD, thinks so.In this podcast, the erud…
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This podcast was originally published by HealthNewsReview.org on Friday, June 29th, 2018. For related links and more information visit:https://www.healthnewsreview.org/podcastmedia/podcast-the-language-of-cancer/~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*The words we use to talk about cancer - they matter. They not only reveal our …
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The New & (Un)Improved Doctor-Patient Relationship
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10:18
This podcast was originally published on May 31st, 2018.For more background information and links to related resources visit:https://www.healthnewsreview.org/podcastmedia/podcast-doctor-patient-relationship/~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~The doctor-patient relationship is a key determinant of the quality of our health …
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Gut Punch: Marketing Microbiome Hype
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11:44
This podcast was originally published on April 27th, 2018.For more background information and links to related resources visit: goo.gl/3UyMT5~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~In poop we trust?It appears so.At least judging from a glut of highly clickable news stories telling us that the trillions of microbes that live in ou…
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This podcast was published on March 19th, 2018. For additional resources and related links visit:https://www.healthnewsreview.org/podcastmedia/podcast-doctors-who-blog/~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*This podcast is about physicians who blog ... Why do they do it, what they’ve taken away from the experience, and what they se…
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