No shame: the podcast taking on the Arab world’s sex and gender taboos

Eib is now in its seventh season, fearlessly tackling subjects from Beirut's drag queen scene to Jordanian widows' rights

Rude, fault or blemish; flaw, disgrace or shame. The word has many shades, but nearly every woman who grows up in Arabic-speaking households knows its singular weight. Anything related to women is eib," says Tala El-Issa, from her home in Cairo. If they want to talk about their bodies, it's eib, their problems - eib. Just being a woman is almost eib."

When the team at Sowt, an Arabic podcasting network based across the Middle East, wanted to create a show that charged fearlessly into the region's taboos around sex and gender, the title was obvious. Eib" is now in its seventh season, the company's longest-lasting podcast and its most popular.