Bollywood, our parents' marriages, Disney movies, Hollywood - all of it would have been enough to throw us into a doozy. How did you think about love and dating growing up? What has changed for you, and what do you hope for now? In this episode, Shabnum sits down with fellow podcasters Lahari Rao (of Down to Brown podcast) and Mitali Dargani (of Brown Game Strong podcast) and the three compare their childhoods, influence of their parents' relationships, what they saw in the media, and the imp...
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Bollywood, our parents' marriages, Disney movies, Hollywood - all of it would have been enough to throw us into a doozy. How did you think about love and dating growing up? What has changed for you, and what do you hope for now? In this episode, Shabnum sits down with fellow podcasters Lahari Rao (of Down to Brown podcast) and Mitali Dargani (of Brown Game Strong podcast) and the three compare their childhoods, influence of their parents' relationships, what they saw in the media, and the imp...
Bollywood, our parents' marriages, Disney movies, Hollywood - all of it would have been enough to throw us into a doozy. How did you think about love and dating growing up? What has changed for you, and what do you hope for now? In this episode, Shabnum sits down with fellow podcasters Lahari Rao (of Down to Brown podcast) and Mitali Dargani (of Brown Game Strong podcast) and the three compare their childhoods, influence of their parents' relationships, what they saw in the media, and the imp...
Do you ever feel like our collectivist cultures and all the models we grew up with of what a fulfilling life could be make it seem like not having kids is a strange, or even selfish choice? How do we talk about not wanting kids and still being able to live fulfilling lives without feeling like we're missing out on something or feeling guilty? Listen to this episode where Shabnum and her friend Avani Patel speak candidly about when they started to feel they may not want kids and how they think...
In this episode, Shabnum compares two books: The Doctor and the Saint - Caste, Race, and the Annihilation of Caste (the Debate Between B.R. Ambedkar and M.K. Gandhi) by Arundhati Roy, and The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander to get a deeper understanding of the way in which we can define caste. Shabnum is no expert in caste, nor someone who has personal experience with any of the issues highlighted, and wants to call that out upfront. This episode is Shabnum's journey through reading the tw...
Today we're joined by Payal Shah - Founder & Designer of L'Dezen and Psylish Jewelry, fashion influencer, and Web3/NFT enthusiast! Payal talks through the basics like what even are NFTs? She then proceeds to explain how she has been looking into and experimenting with Web3 and the blockchain to future proof her own business, and why she enjoys the world of NFTs so much. Payal will talk us through an endless world of possibilities when it comes to this space, and even highlight some South ...
What do you think when you hear the term "mom"? What do you picture when you picture a desi mom? Taking the previously uncool to cool, we're seeing a new generation of women claiming all aspects of their identity - motherhood, South Asianness, their hobbies, their kids, and everything in between. Today we have on Jyoti Chand (@mamajotes on Instagram) and we talk about how and why the image of what a South Asian mom is has changed. Jyoti talks about her journey as a creator and how she juggles...
Does your comedy always have to stem from your race / religion / culture? Join us as we talk to Meghana Indurti and Daman Bamrah about how they got started in comedy and what drives them. Meg and Damn will get into the good, the bad, the ugly of comedy and how they think about the content of their sets as they think about talking to different kinds of audiences.
Publishing a book is no joke - especially one that seeks to tell the stories of South Asian women across the world in all different phases of life - young, old, married, single, divorced, taking care of their mothers or mother-in-laws, maintaining friendships or struggling with the loss of them. Untold did what few other books have been able to do before - collect a series of varied experiences and bring them together to representatively try to present a point of view on the experience of gro...
Join us as we talk to 3 writers from Brown Girl Magazine's Untold anthology who speak about unique experiences such as the expectations between a daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, caretaking duties as a children of desi parents, and relationships with grandparents abroad. In this episode we'll dive into the relationships that define so much of our lives, and the way the expectations of those relationships are distinctly unique to being South Asian - often serving as extreme counter-types to ...
Ever been confused by how your parents can hate Trump but support Modi? How do we have difficult and honest conversations on social media given very real potential threats from the governments of South Asian countries, as well as the comment trolls? What started as a conversation about how these two accounts, Urban Asian and South Asian Nation, are working to amplify South Asian voices and building a brand blossomed into a much more important conversation on the importance of being able to am...
How did this happen? What allowed this to happen? And what are the legal arguments that underpin such a momentous decision in American history? Back with a bang, Shabnum comes back for Season 4 with Seema Iyer, a lawyer and journalist with Queens City News as they explore what the legal arguments were that allowed Roe v. Wade to get overturned. Seems explains the fractious history behind America's abortion laws (or lack thereof) and how we are in the situation we're in, as well as what we nee...
In this episode Shabnum is joined by Juanita Dudhnath of Brown Girl Magazine as both of them talk through the dark history of indentured servitude that led to Indian migration to the Caribbean, and how four to five generations onward the culture of Indo-Caribbean people has evolved. Juanita explains the term "Coolie," and how it can have both familiar and negative connotations, and she explains the hyphenated identity that Indo-Caribbeans have uniquely lived with for generations when the worl...
In this episode, Shabnum interviews Jennifer Williams, Senior Foreign Editor of Vox Media on her journey with religious conversion to Islam. Jennifer grew up Southern Baptist, but through the course of her own work and research, found herself drawn to Islam. The best way to summarize Jen's journey is in her own words: "If you were to pass me on the street, you would never suspect I’m a Muslim: I don’t wear hijab. I have platinum blonde hair and blue eyes. And I am heavily tattooed. I grew up ...
Is the American dream for everyone? Does the color you are on the spectrum affect your place in society? In this episode Shabnum talks to Madison Natarajan and Alex Karjeker about their experiences growing up part South Asian. Madison is half white and half Indian, Alex is mixed race with multiple South Asian and part South Asian family members. Both of them talk to us about their experiences growing up and how they came to terms with the many different fragments of their identities. Madison ...
A lot of us are first generation citizens of western countries where our parents were immigrants. Some of us have been parents for a few years while others are just now embarking on this journey; still others are a few years away. Gen X and Millennial diaspora South Asians are now having to grapple with questions of how we raise our own children: our second generation and sometimes biracial children in today's world where in many ways we have far more opportunities to provide them than ever b...
In this episode Shabnum sits down with Unitarian Minister Barbara Merritt, who is working on a collection of poetry from Rumi's Masnavi. She explains the persistence of Sufi poetry in our world and how and why it has survived the test of time. Sufi poetry has transcended organized religions and is widely read and used - the imagery being relatable and the lessons being easy to remember. Rumi is the most widely read poet in America, and Barbara explains why Sufi poetry which originated in the ...
In this episode, Shabnum interviews British standup comedian and now book author Tez Ilyas about his book "The Secret Diary of a British Muslim Aged 13 3/4." Cycling through a variety of topics, Tez and Shabnum exchange childhood stories of growing up South Asian (Tez still can't believe Shabnum would use the word "rice" to describe what she's eating for dinner instead of "chawal"). Tez talks about racism in a post-Thatcher Britain, the after effects of 9/11 and the 7/7 attacks, and the effec...
Originally recorded for the South Asian Film Festival of America by Product of Culture, in this episode Shabnum & Rajiv take a magnifying glass to Bollywood films throughout time. With an almost academic fervor, they explore the relationship between the Hindi film industry and the Indian government while applying that lens to the tropes we've seen in Bollywood through the 70's - 2010s. They'll talk through the way India's relationship with the USSR impacted the type of Bollywood her...
In this episode Shabnum talks to Sabrina Lakhani and Malini Ramakumar Bartels. Sabrina is a behavioral scientist who specializes in helping people learn how best to navigate their own attachment styles in relationships. Having gone through a divorce herself, Sabrina shares the common pitfalls that South Asians may fall into due to cultural expectations and the marriages they would have observed of their own parents growing up. Malini is a 46 year old mother of two who shares more about her ow...
In this episode Shabnum talks to Supraja Seshadri and Darshi Shah in more of an anecdotal episode on their experiences going through the Arranged Marriage process. Supraja is Tamil and Darshi is Gujarati. They both talk through how the process works generally as well as some spicy, hilarious, and sometimes sad tales of the various dates they've been on and how the process has gone for them. This is a long episode, so feel free to skip to parts you'd find most interesting: 0:00-0:30 - Int...
In this episode, Shabnum sits down with her friend Khalil currently joining us from Ramallah, Palestine and they both explore the similarities between the Israeli/Palestinian and Indian/Pakistani conflict. Taking the stance that dividing countries up on religious grounds has not turned out to be the "clean" solution it may appear to be on paper, Khalil and Shabnum talk through family stories of the respective partitions and how the conflicts have a few features in common: colonization by the ...
Bollywood, our parents' marriages, Disney movies, Hollywood - all of it would have been enough to throw us into a doozy. How did you think about love and dating growing up? What has changed for you, and what do you hope for now? In this episode, Shabnum sits down with fellow podcasters Lahari Rao (of Down to Brown podcast) and Mitali Dargani (of Brown Game Strong podcast) and the three compare their childhoods, influence of their parents' relationships, what they saw in the media, and the imp...
