Jad Abumrad: The Family Stories That Changed Everything

In this episode of Identified, host Nabil Ayers is joined by Jad Abumrad—artist, musician, journalist, and creator of Radiolab, Dolly Parton’s America, More Perfect, and Fela Kuti: Fear No Man—for a conversation about grief, family history, and what it means to belong to a culture you weren’t fully given.Jad shares stories from his Lebanese family: a great-grandmother whose ring he lost in the sea, a grandfather who buried his mother on the side of the road at age 10, and a father who narrowly survived a civil war and brought his entire extended family to Tennessee. But it’s only in recent years that Jad began to ask the deeper questions: What actually happened in Lebanon? Why did his family never talk about it? And what does it mean to claim a cultural identity that was never fully passed down?We also talk about:

• Growing up Arab in the U.S. during the Iran hostage crisis and 9/11
• His early reporting in Lebanon and how it helped shape his voice
• The grief that shaped his family, and the one loss that reshuffled everything
• Choosing to raise kids with a sense of inherited identity—even when you didn’t grow up with one yourself

Jad’s story is a moving reminder that family is built not just on what we’re given—but also on what we ask, uncover, and pass forward.

Guest: Jad Abumrad
Host: Nabil Ayers
Executive Producer: Kieron Banerji
Produced by: Palm Tree Island
Music by: Noella & Patricia Brennan

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