In this episode of Identified with Nabil Ayers, Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast explores family, Korean identity, mixed-race identity, grief, language, heritage, and belonging. The conversation traces her family’s history, her upbringing in Oregon, and the experiences that shaped her understanding of herself and her place between cultures.  

Michelle recounts discovering a diary written by her mother in 1978, learning Korean as an adult, moving to Korea, and reconnecting with family history through language and memory. She also reflects on growing up mixed-race, finding identity through music, and the journey that led from an unpublished essay about Korean food and grief to the bestselling memoir Crying in H Mart.  

Guest: Michelle Zauner
Host: Nabil Ayers
Executive Producer: Kieron Banerji
Produced by: Palm Tree Island

00:00 Discovering her mother’s diary
01:45 Growing up without a musical family
03:00 The hidden family history of performers
05:15 Finding identity through music
07:00 Growing up mixed-race in Oregon
09:10 Wanting to be a “neutral body”
11:00 Learning Korean later in life
13:10 Moving to Korea and reconnecting with family
15:00 Meeting her 21-year-old mother through a diary
18:00 The origins of Crying in H Mart
21:00 Rejection, success, and changing careers
23:30 Building a family through music
25:00 What family means now

Identified is a podcast series that explores identity, race, culture, and family through personal conversations. Hosted by author and music executive Nabil Ayers, each episode dives into lived experiences that reveal how our backgrounds shape who we are—and how we find belonging.

Nabil is the author of My Life in the Sunshine (Viking, 2022), and has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, and GQ on themes of race, music, and personal history. He’s also the President of Beggars Group US, co-founder of Sonic Boom Records, and founder of the record label The Control Group / Valley of Search.

Identified brings together notable voices for reflective, vulnerable conversations about where we come from—and where we’re going.

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“Family to me is the feeling of safety without even understanding the concept.”

In this episode of Identified, Nabil Ayers sits down with Bedouine for a conversation about family, heritage, migration, and belonging. As they begin tracing her family’s history, Bedouine uncovers new details about her Armenian roots, including stories she had only learned days before the interview.

They discuss generations of displacement, from the Armenian genocide and the death marches through Syria to the communities her family rebuilt in Aleppo, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and eventually the United States. 

Along the way, she reflects on growing up between cultures, speaking English at school and Armenian at home, and navigating the complexities of identity within the Armenian diaspora. She discusses the challenge of preserving family stories when previous generations prefer not to revisit the past, and the importance of documenting those histories before they disappear. 

Bedouine's latest record, Neon Summer Skin, is out now.

Guest: Bedouine

Host: Nabil Ayers

Executive Producer: Kieron Banerji

Produced by: Palm Tree Island

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In this episode of Identified, Nabil Ayers sits down with Show Me the Body's Julian Pratt to explore the people, communities, and experiences that shaped his identity. Growing up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Julian was surrounded by family. With twin mothers, a sprawling network of cousins, and a household full of music, conversation, and chaos, belonging was never in short supply. But despite that foundation, he often felt different. Struggling in school, dealing with behavioural challenges, and feeling increasingly isolated as a child, he began searching for connection elsewhere. 

That search led him into New York’s punk, graffiti, and DIY communities, where he found what would become a second family. Through friendship, creativity, and collective care, Julian helped build the community that would eventually become Corpus and Show Me The Body. 

Nabil and Julian explores Jewish identity, immigration, generational history, and the stories passed down through family. Julian reflects on his grandfather’s journey from Eastern Europe to New York, what it means to be a “wandering Jew,” and how those ideas continue to shape his worldview today. 

At the center of the episode is fatherhood. Julian shares how becoming a parent transformed his understanding of strength, shifting him away from fear, aggression, and anger toward something rooted in love, care, and responsibility.

 

Guest: Julian Pratt (Show Me The Body)

Host: Nabil Ayers

Executive Producer: Kieron Banerji

Produced by Palm Tree Island

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In this episode of Identified, Nabil Ayers sits down with bestselling author and literary agent Betsy Lerner to explore identity, family history, and the complicated path to becoming a writer. Betsy reflects on her upbringing, the influence of her family, and how personal experiences eventually shaped both her writing and her career in publishing.

Known for her work as a literary agent as well as her acclaimed memoirs and books on writing, Betsy has spent decades helping writers uncover the stories only they can tell. The conversation explores how identity, family dynamics, and cultural background can influence the stories we carry and the stories we are willing to share. Betsy also reflects on the emotional challenge of writing personal material, the tension between honesty and vulnerability, and why the most powerful writing often comes from confronting the truths we try hardest to avoid.

This is a thoughtful discussion about storytelling, memory, and the role writing plays in helping us understand where we come from.

Guest: Betsy Lerner

Host: Nabil Ayers

Executive Producer: Kieron Banerji

Produced by Palm Tree Island

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Have you ever found community through your art?

In this episode of Identified, Nabil Ayers sits down with musician Ryan Kattner to talk about growing up in an Air Force family, moving every three years, and never quite feeling rooted in one place. Ryan reflects on being mixed race, with a Filipino mother and a white father, and how navigating different cultural spaces shaped his sense of identity.

He shares what it was like to feel caught between worlds, passing in some environments while feeling out of place in others. The conversation explores how constant movement shaped his understanding of family, where friends often became family, and how music eventually became a space where he felt understood and connected.

Ryan also talks about the realities of life on the road, the bond that forms between musicians, and how creativity can help process loss and major life moments.

 

Guest: Ryan Kattner

Host: Nabil Ayers

Executive Producer: Kieron Banerji

Produced and Distributed by: Palm Tree Island

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How much of who we are is shaped before we ever have a say? In this episode of Identified, Nabil Ayers sits down with musician Damon McMahon, formally Amen Dunes, to explore how family history, inherited trauma, and cultural identity shape who we become.

Damon reflects on growing up between two very different worlds: his mother’s side of European Jewish Holocaust survival and his father’s working-class Irish American roots. He shares stories of how these legacies lived quietly in his family — sometimes spoken, often unspoken — and how they influenced his sense of self from an early age.

The conversation moves through complicated family dynamics, childhood instability, and the ways creativity can act as a private space for processing what’s difficult to articulate. Damon talks candidly about how his music has long been a way of exploring identity, releasing emotion, and trying to understand the forces that shaped him. They also discuss how becoming a parent reshaped his understanding of family — not as something inherited, but something actively created.

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What does it mean to raise yourself across cultures—and carry tradition forward through food? In this episode of Identified, chef and author Camille Becerra sits down with host Nabil Ayers for a heartfelt conversation about family, identity, and the life-shaping power of memory. Born in Puerto Rico to a Puerto Rican mother and Cuban father, Camille moved to New Jersey at just one year old and grew up between cultures, languages, and generations.

She reflects on growing up with a single mother, navigating a distant relationship with her father, and finding connection through her Puerto Rican family’s rituals—like traveling alone as a child to visit cousins, or waking early to buy bread from the local bakery. Food became her anchor and a bridge to memory and belonging. Camille opens up about defining family on her own terms, the blurred lines between relatives and chosen loved ones, and what it means to pass down tradition through flavor.

Guest: Camille Becerra

Host: Nabil Ayers

Executive Producer: Kieron Banerji

Production by Palm Tree Island 

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Is Blood Really Family? In this episode of Identified, host Nabil Ayers sits down with Traci Thomas, creator and host of The Stacks Podcast, to explore the deeply personal terrain of identity, family, and legacy. Traci opens up about growing up mixed-race with older parents, navigating loss at a young age, and the impact of her Black and Jewish heritage on how she views belonging.

Their conversation weaves through themes of grief, motherhood, and emotional inheritance, as Traci reflects on what it meant to lose her father in her twenties—and how that absence continues to shape her relationship to parenting and selfhood. She shares insights on the expansive nature of chosen family, the cultural roots of inclusion in Black and Jewish communities, and the quiet power of forging your own path in the absence of clear models.

Traci’s honesty about not feeling naturally inclined to motherhood—while fully embracing the role—offers a fresh and nuanced view of modern parenting. This episode challenges traditional definitions of family, makes space for contradiction, and honors the complexity of claiming one’s story.

Guest: Traci Thomas

Host: Nabil Ayers

Executive Producer: Kieron Banerji

Production by: Palm Tree Island

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In this episode of Identified, Nabil Ayers is joined by acclaimed comedian, actor, and musician Tim Heidecker for an unexpectedly candid conversation about ancestry, grief, and identity. Tim traces the impact of family tragedy across generations—from the death of his grandfather’s mother in childbirth, to the sudden loss of a sibling in his father’s childhood, and how that cascade of trauma subtly shaped his own upbringing in suburban Pennsylvania.

He reflects on the weight of generational loss, the evolution from a tight-knit extended family to one defined by chosen bonds, and how becoming a father redefined his understanding of connection, vulnerability, and care. With humor and heart, Tim shares how he's created a nurturing and playful environment for his own children—while still reckoning with the echoes of the past. This episode explores themes of grief, resilience, chosen family, and the quiet strength it takes to raise a family differently.

Guest: Tim Heidecker

Host: Nabil Ayers

Executive Producer: Kieron Banerji

Production by Palm Tree Island

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What if your most formative identity traits come from people you didn’t grow up with?

In this powerful episode of Identified, rapper and queer icon Cakes Da Killa reflects on growing up in Teaneck, New Jersey, raised by his teenage mother and grandmother. He shares openly about the complexities of reconciling with an absent father, discovering inherited traits in unexpected family members, and why — as a queer person — chosen family has always played a central role in his life.

This episode touches on:

• Intergenerational strength from women in his family

• The slow repair of fractured paternal relationships

• The trauma of losing family homes and generational wealth

• The nuance of chosen vs. biological family

• And why his mother’s strength remains his biggest inspiration

With clarity, wit, and raw honesty, Cakes shows that family — like identity — is something you get to define on your own terms.

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