During the last episode, my good friend Kanchan Gautam and I discussed our experiences as Third Culture Kids and cultural appropriation. Today, we explore the deep roots of colorism in our South Asian and Latin American communities, along with dating and making friends while brown in predominantly white spaces.

Kanchan Gautam is a novice birdwatcher, myco-enthusiast, and amateur naturalist. She is proud of her Nepali heritage and s...

Before the pandemic lockdown, my good friend Kanchan Gautam and I would meet at different San Francisco cafes and parks to discuss our experiences as brown immigrants in the United States. She’s one of my favorite people to speak with, and today Kanchan and I allow you to listen in on a couple of our conversations. We first discuss our experiences as Third Culture Kids, which then evolves into a conversation about cultural appropri...

According to the Blended Future Project, even though multiracial and multiethnic identity can absolutely be a fluid and difficult road to understand, Blended Future Project would like to create a platform to initiate that understanding. To start this process, the Blended Future Project is creating a new cultural identity where multiracial and multiethnic people are understood and free to develop and collaborate their own unique cul...

How can we reimagine school systems to fit the concerns of students in the 21st century? On our last episode, I spoke with Dr. Kimberly Douglass and Dr. Robin Harwick to identify the pain points of our education system, and to explore how we can deconstruct and rebuild it anew. They are the co-authors of the book YOU are the Revolution! Education that Empowers your Black Child and Strengthens your Family, and also are at the center...

On today’s episode, I speak with Dr. Kimberly Douglass and Dr. Robin Harwick to identify the pain points of our education system, and to explore how we can deconstruct and rebuild it anew. They are the co-authors of the book YOU are the Revolution! Education that Empowers your Black Child and Strengthens your Family, and also are at the center of the innovative The Pearl Remote Democratic High School.

I had the honor of speaking wi...

On today’s episode, we re-enter the Afro-Latino Actors Studio with Carlos Carrasco: actor, filmmaker, and director of the Panamanian International Film Festival. Last week, in part 1 of our conversation, Mr. Carrasco took the lead on stage, then gave us the VIP tour backstage, behind the curtains, where we glimpsed into what it is like to be an immigrant Afro-Latino in acting in the United States, and how this experience impacted h...

Last week, I published an episode entitled “Colombia’s Historical Lack of Hegemony and Institutionalized Violence,” where I provided a thorough historical recap so you can better grasp the current Great Colombian Uprising and the predictable violent government response to it. (Listen to the episode here.) Though I covered two centuries of history, I stopped in the early 1990s because I lost my voice. Today, I want to fill some impo...

Today we take you inside the Afro-Latino Actors Studio with Carlos Carrasco: actor, filmmaker, and director of the Panamanian International Film Festival in Los Angeles. Mr. Carrasco will take the lead on stage, then give us the VIP tour backstage, behind the curtains, where we glimpse into what it is like to be an immigrant Afro-Latino in acting in the United States, and how this experience has impacted his identity and drove him ...

Colombia’s history is marked with many of its people treated merely as a mean to an end. Laura Yusem and Herbert Braun, respectively, were right in recognizing that “In Latin America, we learn early that our lives are worth little” and that “[i]n the struggle for land, human life in Colombia has been devalued.” Human rights activist Manuel Rozental was correct to paint Colombia’s history with the following pattern: people are massa...

Today we play for you the entirety of our first musical compilation album, entitled Volume 1: Petrichor, from our BIPOC Music Series. The collection encapsulates all the glorious highs and the searing lows of navigating the world as an empathetic, curious individual. The works contained in this volume — from mournful piano compositions, dazzling spoken word, spellbinding vocal layered-songs, to beautiful instrumentals — express the...

Julián Esteban Torres López lays out The Nasiona's Earth Day Manifesto: "We are standing on a fault line. We’re at what can become a historic crossroad and turning point, or simply a return to the status quo … a status quo that will only continue to degrade our planet and the vast majority of its inhabitants. Our soil is ready for a new harvest. Our seeds need to be watered."

The Nasiona Podcast amplifies the voices a...

During last week’s episode, I spoke with Dr. Parisa Mehran, founder of Women of Color in English Language Teaching (also known as WOC in ELT), to explore how white supremacy is at the heart of ELT and how the industry functions as a racist propaganda machine. We finished the first part of our conversation discussing passport privilege and the barriers for international students. Today, we continue where we left off, and also speak ...

Today we discuss the intricate relationship between racism and English Language Teaching (ELT). We explore how white supremacy is at the heart of ELT and how the industry functions as a racist propaganda machine. We discuss how native-speakerism and passport privilege can be forms of racism. We also dissect how native-speakerism damages the profession of ELT, and what steps we can take to tackle, dismantle, and reconstruct. We also...

In our previous episode, I spoke with Vanessa Weathers, Founder and Principal Consultant at Conscious Employee Experiences, to explore design thinking and its relationship to diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

Today, she joins me again. This time we talk about how people best positioned for leadership roles may be those who have been marginalized.  We also discuss how leadership is a title you earn, like you earn trust, and where p...

Most environments are not designed to include and value everyone, and as a result such designs fail to center the concerns of those in the bottom rungs of our class and caste systems. So, if we really want to value and include everyone in our teams, in our communities, in our societies, in our politics, then we have to be intentional in the way we design our worlds. We must be intentional in the way we invent environments and oppor...

Given the centering of Euro and Anglo authors, thinkers, artists, etc., and the deliberate attempt to conceal unpleasant and incriminating facts about history and other content taught K-12 and beyond, our education systems in the United States and Canada are still forms of forced colonial assimilation and propaganda.

In the spirit of decolonizing our education, we introduce to Fernando González, who has been regarded at one time or...

Today, I introduce you to one of my oldest friends, Joe Sparkman, one half of The Nasiona Podcast’s music production team, The Heavyweights. We’ve got Joe and Marcus Allen to thank for our new musical vibe. Later in February, Aïcha Martine Thiam and I are going live with our new The Nasiona music series, where we will center, elevate, and amplify Black, Indigenous, and People of Color musical artists, and shed light on their experi...

In the United States, we’ve been radicalized to assume ourselves as great, at the detriment of ourselves, our country, and the world. Our collective arrogance, self-absorption, and superiority complex will be our downfall if we do not course-correct immediately. A turbulent future is here and on the horizon. The intensity of that turbulence will depend on how we prepare and act today. 

On today’s episode, I share an editorial I wro...

A citizen of the Quechan (Yuma Indian) Nation, Deborah Taffa’s writing can be found at dozens of outlets including PBS, Salon, The Huff Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, Brevity, A Public Space, The Boston Review, and the Best American Nonrequired Reading. Her memoir manuscript won the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Award in December, 2019. She teaches creative writing at Webster and Washington University in Saint Louis, MO, an...