Produced this segment as a solo camera operator & editor, driving around New England for a week to 20+ Stop & Shop locations. Viewed widely and shared by the AFL-CIO and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Currently in production on full-length documentary.

We follow the leftist comedy podcast Chapo Trap House for one very long night, as everyone's plans suddenly change. Starring Matt Christman, Will Menaker, Felix Biederman, Virgil Texas, Brendan James, Shuja Haider, and James Adomian. Cinematography by Alex Megaro, Matt Honor, & Donald Borenstein. Chapo Trap House's live election night show Directed by Brendan James.

Worriers performing "Glutton For Distance" live at the 2016 Funeral Sounds / Broken World Media SXSW Showcase at the Eden House Co-Op in Austin, TX. Filmed and edited by Donald Borenstein (http://www.donaldborenstein.com/)

Sexual assault remains distressingly common throughout the world, and too often it’s the victim who gets the blame, says Nancy Schwartzman, filmmaker and executive director of Tech 4 Good , in this week’s podcast. “A lot of services for young women tell them how to dress and to watch their drink,” she says.

In sub-Saharan Africa, women collectively spend an estimated 40 billion hours a year gathering water, often walking miles to the nearest source, which may not be clean, and braving exhaustion, harassment, and worse along the way. Water availability and quality at health clinics is often not much better, creating a crisis for women, especially pregnant women, throughout the continent.

CTPH’s initial goal was preventing cross-species cases of scabies and tuberculosis, which at the time were affecting both human and mountain gorilla populations. Gorillas, whose historical ranges stretch beyond the confines of the parks, were entering the land of farmers living on the edges and eating their crops, resulting in cross-infection from shared contact and sometimes-violent responses from villagers. CTPH formed “village health and conservation teams” (VHCT) to promote improved sanitation and treat disease in the human communities to help prevent these cross-species vectors. They also created response teams trained to peacefully deal with gorilla incursions. But the community health teams in particular opened up a new world for CTPH. Kalema-Zikusoka notes that a USAID officer at the time said, “We have money for family planning, but we don’t have money for zoonosis.” She says her initial thought was, “No, family planning that’s not what we’re doing, how could we be distributing condoms to people around the national park?” But after taking note of how many impoverished families in the region were stretched thin by having more children than they could handle, Kalema-Zikusoka says they saw how meeting existing demand for family planning could advance their conservation goals by creating healthier families.

Rather than addressing societal structures and attitudes that entrench gender inequality, Basu, who is contributing to a new white paper from the UN Foundation on women’s economic empowerment and reproductive health, sees many efforts to empower the most marginalized women around the world as too focused on the idea of creating marketplace options. “I’m trying to think beyond that way of looking at empowerment and ask, ‘What is meaningful empowerment?’” While NGOs and governments have begun to incorporate women’s empowerment in many development programs, including the post-Millennium Development Goals agenda, popular metrics have struggled to adequately convey whether or not progress is really being made.