Episode: 44 — "You Have to Fight for Joy" · Full Episode #44
Date: Season 5
Language: Arabic and English
Farah Al-Nahoum (فرح النهوم) is a Libyan-Irish musician. She opened the episode by singing "Raj3een" (راجعين, "We're Coming Back"). Her album is titled Captivating. She was raised between Libya and Ireland, and her music draws on both traditions — Arabic melodic structures layered with Western production.
The episode's title — "You have to fight for joy" — comes directly from Farah. She framed happiness not as a state that arrives but as a discipline that must be practised, particularly for people carrying inherited trauma. Her mother survived three assassination attempts during the 2011 Libyan revolution. Farah grew up in the shadow of that violence. Her argument was that joy, in such a context, is not naive — it is an act of resistance. Choosing to be joyful when the conditions of your life argue against it is, in her framing, a political and personal act.
See: Fighting for Joy
One song on Captivating ends with audible crying. Farah broke down during the recording. The producer chose to keep the take. Farah described being initially uncomfortable with the decision — the crying was not performed, not artistic, not deliberate. It was a loss of composure. But the producer argued that the rawness was the point, that the break in the voice carried more than any polished take could. The final version of the song includes the crying as it happened, unedited.
See: The Raw Take
Farah said this directly, without preamble. The statement sat alongside her advocacy for joy — not in contradiction but in coexistence. She did not frame the sadness as something to be overcome or cured. It was present, it was hers, and it existed alongside her capacity for music, laughter, and performance. The juxtaposition — a musician who fights for joy while carrying deep sadness — is the central tension of the episode.
During the 2011 revolution, Farah's mother faced three separate assassination attempts. Farah did not describe the attempts in detail but referenced them as the backdrop against which her entire emotional architecture was built. The trauma was not hers directly — she was not the target — but it shaped her understanding of safety, permanence, and the fragility of the people she loves.
Farah mentioned wanting to try stand-up comedy later in life, around age forty or fifty. The ambition was stated casually, almost as an aside, but it connects to the episode's larger argument: that creative expression should not be confined to a single form. A musician who wants to do stand-up is someone who understands that the impulse to communicate — to reach an audience, to make something felt — is not medium-specific.
"I have a great sadness within me." (EP 44)
"You have to fight for joy." (EP 44)