No Country For Young Women

We look back on our favourite episodes including some of our biggest and best guests and what they taught us. Plus we say thanks to you, our amazing listeners, for the things you’ve taught us along the way! No, we’re not crying, you’re crying.

We’re hilarious, we’re resilient and we’re a force to be reckoned with, according to actor, dance studio boss and podcaster Kelechi Okafor. We talk about how pre-colonial Yoruba spirituality inspires how she sees herself, the misconceptions of black women in dance and twerk and why we get angry about people calling us angry when we aren’t. In my final solo episode, I wanted to celebrate all things black women!

I’ve never dated outside of my race and I wanted to hear stories from people who are. We chat about why interracial and interethnic dating isn’t the same thing, model and TV presenter Ayesha says that being British in LA actually makes more of a difference than her race and comedian Athena explains why colourism affects what we see on Instagram and the issues her parents faced in their own relationship.

Conversations about money should be really simple, so why don’t we talk more about it? Monty asks Bola Sol and Franklin Asante (aka The Urban Financier) what the receipts really are for drip culture, to share hacks for your bank balance and about their own journeys to getting better with money.

Life for people of colour varies hugely across Europe. We hear what growing up in the Netherlands was like for Dutch-Sudanese artist Gaidaa compared to living in the UK. We talk about outdated Christmas traditions, the Dutch response to Black Lives Matter, the creative scene in Sudan and how she uses her music and performances to highlight what’s happening in Sudan.

We rarely hear from strippers who are women of colour, so I wanted to find out how they feel about being eroticised for their race, what their families think of their jobs and why my preconceptions of their job are wrong. And I learned we have something surprising in common… with Samantha Sun and April Fiasco.

This Bank Holiday weekend in the UK marks the first in 61 years that we haven’t celebrated Notting Hill Carnival. Originally set up to ease race tensions between black and white Britons and to celebrate Caribbean culture, I wanted to take a deeper look at its roots and the impact its cancellation this year will have on the black British community’s economy, spirit and psyche. I speak to three guests, Lil’ C a queer dancehall DJ, Maxine Marshall a mas and Samba dancer and Portia Clarke a Music Marketing Consultant, to hear their views.

Sasha and Kadeen Corbin are more than just sisters, they play Netball for England. I wanted to speak to this very talented duo to discuss the importance of sport and exercise for our mental wellbeing and to see what their experience has been like being Black and British and professional sportswomen.

Lockdown has had us all dreaming about holidays and wanting to get away. I wanted to speak to travel guru, journalist and the first black woman to travel to 195 countries, Jessica Nabongo, along with award-winning podcaster Tolani Shoneye (aka ‘Tolly T’ from the Receipts Podcast) to talk about what their experience is like travelling as a black female.

I wanted to speak to Nadine Batchelor-Hunt, a podcaster and journalist and black Jewish female who recently got caught up in Wiley’s latest Twitter rant in which he made some anti-Semitic comments. Nadine joins me to speak about what it’s like being both black and Jewish in the U.K.