Podcasts Exploring Cultural Identity and Legacy

Meklit Hadero shares podcasts celebrating the richness and complexity of cultural legacy and identity

Author

Arielle Nissenblatt at EarBuds
September 02, 2024

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Podcast artwork for Movement with Meklit Hadero, Code Switch, The Allusionist, Broken Boxes, and Immigrantly

Curator:

👉🏽Meklit Hadero (she/her)

Why this theme?

👉🏽Cultural legacy, identity, our ability to define ourselves for ourselves… These are gold inside us, building blocks to our very core that share where we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re going. When we shine that core out into the world, it invites connection and community, which can nourish us through difficult times. As we approach another election, predictably, immigration is in our daily zeitgeist, often framed by the word “crisis.”

For someone whose life is deeply connected to both migration and music, I can tell you that we need more than the news to get the whole picture. We need to look closer, listen more carefully, and understand that nuance is a necessity. And cultural power is a force that offers generative possibilities.

This list of podcasts celebrates the richness of cultural legacy and identity, giving a window into the experiences and voices that shape our world. Through music, storytelling, or conversations about migration — consider this an invitation to explore the many layers of who we are.

Podcast Picks

Movement with Meklit Hadero podcast cover art

Movement with Meklit Hadero

Movement is a meditation on the large-scale forces at play in individual lives. We honor themes of joy, curiosity, pleasure, epiphany, and wisdom, even as we make space for the very real presence of trauma, difficulty, and pain. Explorations of citizenship, gender identity, race, and border walls are communicated through intimate stories.

This season features guests such as Indian Carnatic musician and singer Sid Sriram, an experimental indie-pop electro-Puerto Rican band Buscabulla, and genius Cuban composer-vocalist Dayme Arocena.

Code Switch podcast cover art

Code Switch

Code Switch from NPR is a must-listen for anyone interested in how race, ethnicity, and culture shape our identities. This episode explores the significance of names and identity, tracing a story that begins over a decade before Lori, the central figure, was even born.

It’s a deeply personal yet relatable story of how something as simple as a name can carry the weight of history and identity.

The Allusionist podcast cover art

The Allusionist

Host Helen Zaltzman explores the history of the Timucua language, which died out along with the Timucua people after the arrival of Spanish missionaries in what is now Florida.

This episode is a poignant reminder of how language is tied to cultural legacy — how the words of a people carry their history, their struggles, and their identity.

Broken Boxes podcast cover art

Broken Boxes

Broken Boxes is a powerful platform for the Indigenous arts community. Cannupa Hanska Luger sits down with composer and artist Raven Chacon. Their conversation spans over a decade of Raven's work, including his Pulitzer Prize-winning composition "Voiceless Mass" and his involvement in the resistance at Standing Rock.

This episode is both a preservation and a challenge to cultural narratives — how art can serve as both a reflection and a catalyst for cultural legacy.

Immigrantly podcast cover art

Immigrantly

Immigrantly is a podcast that shares the stories of immigrant communities, exploring the multifaceted experiences of identity, culture, and belonging.

Journalist and storyteller Emily Kwong takes us on an intimate journey through the lives of Asian American and Pacific Islander families. She explores how historical events echo through generations, shaping the identities of those who come after. The episode feels like sitting down in a cozy living room, sharing deep personal tales.

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Community

✨This week in Podcast The Newsletter: Lauren Passell asked 64 industry friends at Podcast Movement in Washington, DC for their podcast recommendation.

🎧Humanity has a mission right now: to keep global heating to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. How could something that sounds so small matter so much? In Season 4 of Threshold, episode Time to 1.5 grapples with what's at stake for every human on the planet.

🇨🇦Love a good poutine with your murder mystery? Sorry About The Murder is a very Canadian murder mystery show with small town chills and big time laughs. When the body of Scott 'Scotty' McDonald is found outside the hockey rink, Frenchie the Zamboni driver must solve Scotty's murder to clear his Québecois name...then ready the ice for the nightly hockey game.

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On the EarBuds Blog:

From Informed to Involved: 5 Great Social Activism Podcasts, curated by Sami Reed of Pod People

Podcast news from Podnews

  • Good Tape has launched a new website, and unveiled a creative studio. You can pre-order the second issue of the magazine on the website.

  • Joe Rogan has three times the number of followers than the next biggest show on Spotify, according to new figures from Rephonic.

  • True-crime podcast Serial is almost ten years old, and Sarah Koenig is interviewed for The Guardian in the UK. She had never listened to a podcast before making it; she didn’t pay any attention to social media while making it; she also says that very few people noticed season four; and that the current podcast industry is in “a very worrisome cycle.”

  • Both Spotify and Apple Podcasts saw increase in download share for Buzzsprout shows last month. (Pocket Casts has almost doubled year-on-year).

Spotlight

COMMONS podcast cover art

INSIDE KABUL is a multi-award winning series that follows the daily life of two young Afghan women, Marwa and Raha. Both have been recording their daily lives since the arrival of the Taliban in August 2021. Should they stay? Leave? And when they leave, what does exile look like?

As they contemplate their futures, Raha and Marwa exchange and record hundreds of voice notes with French journalist Caroline Gillet. What emerges is a raw and incredibly intimate chronicle of two young women coming of age amidst the collapse of the world they had known.

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