How to Help Beirut
We're heartbroken by what happened in Beirut on Tuesday, August 4. Many of us at the Kerning Cultures team are Lebanese, or have close ties to Beirut. So we're taking a break from publishing our episode this week. Instea…
Kerning Cultures
Dive into the rich, complex, and often surprising narratives that define a region through the lens of Kerning Cultures. This documentary-style series moves beyond headlines to deliver intimate, human-centered stories from across the Middle East and North Africa, and from the nuanced spaces in between. Each episode is a crafted audio journey, blending personal testimony with immersive sound design to explore themes of identity, history, innovation, and everyday life. You’ll hear from voices seldom amplified elsewhere-artists grappling with tradition, scientists tackling local challenges, families navigating change, and communities preserving memory. Produced by the Kerning Cultures Network, the podcast is built on deep reporting and a commitment to nuanced storytelling that challenges monolithic perspectives. It’s for anyone curious about the forces shaping cultures and societies, presented not as a lecture but as an experience. The result is a listening session that feels both expansive and personal, connecting global audiences to specific lives and places. Tune in for stories that are meticulously researched, emotionally resonant, and fundamentally human, reminding us that the most compelling tales are often found in the details we haven’t yet heard. This is a podcast dedicated to the art of narrative, offering a fresh and essential auditory window into a dynamic part of the world.
Episodes
Rocket Man
In the 1960s, a college professor and his group of students were determined to build and launch rockets into space. And so, they did. This week, on Kerning Cultures, a story about the first-ever rocket launched from the…
Zabelle
In 1917, a musical prodigy called Zabelle Panosian recorded a song that captured the heartbreak of a generation of Armenian Americans in the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide. She toured the world, selling thousands of…
Trancing with the Zars
For centuries in Egypt, Zar was a music and dance ritual believed to heal women from unwanted spirits that possessed their bodies. But as time went on and ideologies changed, the practice became controversial and deeply…
Ugly Truth
This is the ugly truth: racism and anti-Blackness in the Arab world is a common practice and a subject so taboo that many have convinced themselves that it doesn't even exist. But for those of us who live in these societ…
Outcast
Our producer Nadeen Shaker takes us on her own personal journey in trying to discover why she felt excluded because of her hijab. In Egypt, things are more complex than they seem; history, politics, class, and money all…
Unity High: Part 2
Last year, our producer Darah Ghanem stumbled upon an obscure blog on a nearly forgotten corner of the internet. On it were hundreds of historic photographs of a Christian missionary school in Khartoum called Unity High…
Unity High: Part 1
Last year, our producer Darah Ghanem stumbled upon an obscure blog on a nearly forgotten corner of the internet. On it were hundreds of historic photographs of a Christian missionary school in Khartoum called Unity High…
Summer Season Trailer
We're back! We'll be here with a new episode of Kerning Cultures every Friday this summer. Here's a quick taste of what's to come.Kerning Cultures is a Kerning Cultures Network production. Support this podcast on patreon…
Lockdown Diaries
All of our lives have changed. In this unprecedented time, we wanted to make something to reflect this moment. So today, our Kerning Cultures quarantine special: stories of staying at home, lockdowns from history, creati…
