Bangladesh’s pro-democracy leader and Nobel laureate on Inside Ideas

To celebrate the 10^th anniversary of Innovators Magazine in 2025, every month this year we will publish some of our milestone moments: the stories, podcasts, initiatives, projects and partners that have shaped our journey so far. Here’s my Inside Ideas podcast from 2021, the 100th episode, with Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, revered worldwide for his groundbreaking work in providing microfinancing to the poor. Yunus hit the headlines again last year when, following the July 2024 revolution in Bangladesh the students who led the uprising asked him to become the pro-democracy interim leader of the country. The 84-year-old Nobel Laureate responded to the call and is now stabilising the country through its transition to a new democratic government.

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(this podcast dropped in 2021)

“You alone can change the world – don’t wait for anybody else. You alone can change the world. Not because you will actually be alone but because you will be such a power, like a magnet you will bring everybody to your ideas. Ideas are the power, demonstration is the power: then you make it happen,” the inspirational Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Muhammad Yunus told me on an episode of the Inside Ideas podcast.

Nicknamed the banker to the poor, Professor Yunus founded the Grameen Bank in 1983 to give poorer people access to ‘small loans on easy terms’ – and its success in catalysing ‘economic and social development from below’ led to his 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. In his book, A World of Three Zeros: The New Economics of Zero Poverty, Zero Unemployment, and Zero Net Carbon Emissions, he explains the economics of this.

Watch again my interview with Professor Yunus, episode 100 of Inside Ideas, for more on what will deliver a world of three zeros.

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2025

Following the July 2024 revolution in Bangladesh that brought to an end the brutal rule of Sheikh Hasina, whose actions the UN say may constitute ‘crimes against humanity’, the students that led the uprising invited Yunus to become the pro-democracy interim leader of the country. Since then Yunus has helped restore law and order, plus a degree of economic stability. And after democratic elections are held later this year, or early 2026, he will step down.

Meanwhile, episode 1 of the new Season 6 of Inside Ideas has just dropped – check it out.

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