Shoga Speaks

Dr. Robert Philipson reflects on the emotional limbo of post-college life in 1970s Pasadena, where returning home sparks a spiral of depression, existential doubt, and a search for meaning. Amid the decay of suburban sprawl and family disconnection, a psychedelic night with friends offers a vision of communal living rooted in shared purpose and simplicity. Philipson explores internal disillusionment with the external collapse of American ideals, crafting a powerful meditation on adulthood, authenticity, and the yearning to build a life beyond inherited expectations.

Host Info
Hosted by Dr. Robert Philipson
Robert is a former professor of African-American studies with a passion for jazz and art. A published author and Harlem Renaissance historian, he has produced multiple films about the intersectionality of race, music, and sexuality.

Music

“Yesterday Once More” - The Carpenter

“Time (Darkside)” - Pink Floyd & Tom Stoppard

“I’m Fixing a Hole” - The London Starlight Orchestra

“Sunshine Superman” - Donovan

“Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95, B.178: III Scherzo” - London Symphony Orchestra

“Aubrey” - Bread

“Big Yellow Taxi” - Joni Mitchell

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Host Dr. Robert Philipson reflects on the life of his maternal grandmother, Jeanette, tracing a family legacy shaped by mismatched love, unspoken expectations, and the emotional weight of generational silence. From her immigrant roots and ill-fated marriage to her slow decline into senility, Jeanette’s story becomes a lens through which Dr. Philipson explores maternal power, cultural identity, social aspiration, and the personal cost of dreams deferred. With wit, sorrow, and deep insight, he unpacks how the stories we inherit shape who we become.

Host Info
Hosted by Dr. Robert Philipson
Robert is a former professor of African-American studies with a passion for jazz and art. A published author and Harlem Renaissance historian, he has produced multiple films about the intersectionality of race, music, and sexuality.
shogafilms.org/podcasts

Music:

"21 Hungarian Dances, WoO 1: No. 11 in D Minor" – Johannes Brahms / Budapest Symphony Orchestra

"Symphony No. 7" – Ludwig van Beethoven / Bernard Haitink, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

"Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 66" – Frédéric Chopin / Nikita Magaloff

"I'm Always Chasing Rainbows (Instrumental Version)" –Ivy Ravenwood

"I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" – Karrin Allyson

"Old Folks" – John Denver

"I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" – Judy Garland

"Les Vieux" – Karaoké Playback Français

"When You Are In Love" – Mario Lanza

"Stouthearted Men" - Mila Magno

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Dr. Robert Philipson reflects on the layered history and personal meaning of his childhood home in Southern California, weaving together Indigenous displacement, colonial conquest, and postwar suburban life. As he moves room by room through The Old House, Philipson unpacks memories of joy, loneliness, family ritual, and quiet grief, transforming the house into a central character in a story about belonging, loss, and the passage of time. A meditation on memory and change, this episode speaks to anyone who has tried to hold on to the past while facing the inevitability of letting go.

Host Info
Hosted by Dr. Robert Philipson
Robert is a former professor of African-American studies with a passion for jazz and art. A published author and Harlem Renaissance historian, he has produced multiple films about the intersectionality of race, music, and sexuality.
shogafilms.org/podcasts

Music:

"A House is Not A Home" - Luther Vandross

"Home in Pasadena" - Tony Martin

"The Folks Who Live on the Hill" - Peggy Lee

"This Ole House" - Bette Midler

"El Rey" - Vicente Fernández

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In this episode, Dr. Robert Philipson interviews Mona Smith, Canada Lee's biographer,  about the rise, political assassination, and virtual erasure of this African American hero. From 1934 to 1951, Canada Lee was the most famous and revered Black actor of his day, associated -- and frequently starring -- with every landmark African American Broadway production. He broke barriers again and again by being cast in non-Black productions. Despite this, Canada Lee is virtually unknown. They discuss how his early death at the age of 45 is tied to the blacklist of the postwar Red Scare which also buried his achievements.

Host Info
Hosted by Dr. Robert Philipson
Robert is a former professor of African-American studies with a passion for jazz and art. A published author and Harlem Renaissance historian, he has produced multiple films about the intersectionality of race, music, and sexuality.

Guest Info
Mona Smith
Mona Smith is the author of Becoming Something: The Story of Canada Lee. She is a playwright, screenwriter, and former newspaper reporter. She is also a consultant to nonprofits and teaches theater and writing.

Music

“I Can’t Breathe” - H.E.R

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In this episode of Shoga Speaks, Dr. Robert Philipson interviews author Doug Century about his biography Barney Ross: The Life of a Jewish Fighter, exploring the extraordinary life of Barney Ross—a Jewish boxing champion, World War II hero, and outspoken recovering addict. Born Dov-Ber Rosofsky in an Orthodox household, Ross rose from Chicago’s Jewish ghetto to become a national sports icon in the 1930s, defeating opponents in matches that symbolized resistance amid the rise of Nazi Germany. Century traces Ross’s evolution from the ring to the battlefield at Guadalcanal, where he became a decorated Marine, and later to his public struggle with heroin addiction and advocacy for drug policy reform. The episode also touches on Ross’s Hollywood ties, failed biopic, covert support for Israel’s founding, and his fading place in Jewish American memory—offering a rich portrait of resilience, identity, and legacy.

Host Info
Hosted by Dr. Robert Philipson
Robert is a former professor of African-American studies with a passion for jazz and art. A published author and Harlem Renaissance historian, he has produced multiple films about the intersectionality of race, music, and sexuality.

Guest Info
Doug Century
Doug Century is a journalist and the author of Barney Ross: The Life of a Jewish Fighter. douglascentury.com

Music

“Echoes of Sinai” - WAYA & Cafe De Anatolia

“There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” - Bessie Smith

“Boogie Boogie Bugle Boy” - The Andrews Sisters

“You’se a Viper” - Stuff Smith & His Onyx Club Boys

“Hooray for Hollywood” - Johnny Mercer, Dick Powell, Frances Langford, Johnny Davis, Gene Krupa

“Kaddish” - Rachel Hyman

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Host Dr. Robert Philipson guides listeners through a lyrical meditation on memory, identity, and the lasting imprint of Paris. Framed by a moment of reflection on the banks of the Oubangui River in the Central African Republic, Philipson recalls the two years of his childhood spent in Paris—an experience that profoundly shaped both him and his mother, despite their outward return to American life. The episode captures the sometimes bittersweet reality of living with beauty, displacement, and the “Baudelairean longing for ailleurs” (elsewhere). As Paris fades into the past, it emerges again—through memory, art, and the riverbank reverie—as a defining and indelible presence.

Host Info:
Dr. Robert Philipson
Former professor of African-American studies and Harlem Renaissance scholar. Filmmaker and founder of Shoga Films, with a focus on the intersection of race, sexuality, and culture.
Website: shogafilms.org

Music

"J'ai Deux Amours" - Josephine Baker

"Easter" - Francis Bebey

"À la claire fontaine" - Baby Petons

"À La Tour Eiffel" - Melody Gardot & Philippe Powell

"Les rues de Paris" - Nicolas Godin

"Les Champs-Elysées" - Joe Dassin

"Sous Le Ciel De Paris" - Karrin Allyson

"Camille" - George Delerue

"Flower Duet from Lakmé" - Leo Delibes

"J'ai Deux Amours" - Dario Muller

"Les Champs-Elysée" - Igor Baranovskiy

"Sous le Ciel de Paris" - Rustem Mustafin

"Sous le Ciel de Paris" - Yves Montand

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Sam and Daniel are in Israel, circa 1969. They are on a kibbutz, learning Hebrew in the morning and working for their room and board in the afternoon. Sam follows Daniel in his effort to deepen his Jewish identity. They go to Mount Tabor, site of a battle between the Israelites and the Canaanites, spend a weekend at a Chassidic yeshiva where Daniel is ardently proselytized by a recent convert. Finally they make pilgrimage to the Western Wall, the holiest shrine in Judaism, where Sam confronts his Jewish destiny. And still the revelations are not over because the first-person narrator -- me -- discovers the real motivation behind the writing. 

It may not be what you think. It certainly wasn't what I thought at the time. "Even the outpouring of my story had been an act of cowardice. I had written what green authors so often write about, a territory so worn and worked over that it could serve only as an apprenticeship." 

Host Info
Hosted by Dr. Robert Philipson
Robert is a former professor of African-American studies with a passion for jazz and art. A published author and Harlem Renaissance historian, he has produced multiple films about the intersectionality of race, music, and sexuality.

Music

“Theme of Exodus” Ernest Gold

“He AIn’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” - The Hollies

“Jerusalem of Gold” - Ofra Haza

“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” - U2

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America 1968. Everything was up for grabs. All passion and creativity seemed to gush from the counterculture. "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive/But to be young was very heaven." I was young, 18, and enrolled as an undergraduate in the fourth year of the great experimental campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz. The spirit of the 60s was everywhere, in our music and our politics. and our firm belief that the Establishment promoting the war in Vietnam and threatening us with the coercion of the draft was so wrongheaded that it would have to collapse in its own excrement.

Out of this oppositional stew of radical politics, how did I, a thoroughly assimilated Jew with an identity I could barely point to, end up in a slide towards Israel? In this first part of "A Salvage Job," you will meet the barefooted young man dancing the hora in the picture above. It's his fault. 

Host Info
Hosted by Dr. Robert Philipson
Robert is a former professor of African-American studies with a passion for jazz and art. A published author and Harlem Renaissance historian, he has produced multiple films about the intersectionality of race, music, and sexuality.

Music

"Am Yisrael Chai" - Eyal Golan

"Hinei Ma Tov" - Canto Hebraico

“For What It’s Worth” - Buffalo Springfield 

"Hatikvah(התקווה) Across the Globe - Acapella Israeli Anthem for Hope" - Various Artists

"Am Yisrael Chai" - Shlomo Carlebach

“Mama Told Me (Not To Come)” - Three Dog Night

“The End” - The Beatles

"Where is Love" - Acapella Arrangement from Oliver!

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What's in a bedtime story? More than you might imagine. As we were growing up, my father introduced his version of imaginary creatures, the goops, into our household and family life. Created as negative role models to teach manners to Victorian children, the goops first saw life in books of moralistic doggerel published in 1900 and after. "But it was their bad behavior that led my father to adopt them for his own." In this episode you will also be treated to one of my father's Prince Bagel stories, a world he invented whole cloth for his children as we piled on our parents' beds to listen in wonderment.

"This was the mystery of the goops, and, in fact, the mystery that I never had understood about storytelling before.  The goops did not spring ex nihilo from my father's head.  They were an expression of his love.  The stories were told to somebody."

Best to listen to this episode in your jammies. 

Host Info
Hosted by Dr. Robert Philipson
Robert is a former professor of African-American studies with a passion for jazz and art. A published author and Harlem Renaissance historian, he has produced multiple films about the intersectionality of race, music, and sexuality.

Music

“Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)” - Billy Joel

“Gymnopédie No. 3” - Martin Hederos

"My Blue Heaven" - Artie Shaw

"Spiegel im Spiegel" - Arvo Pärt

Connect With Us:
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This episode of Shoga Speaks dives into the life and legacy of legendary blues singer Alberta Hunter through a rich conversation with playwright and activist Jewelle Gomez, whose play Leaving the Blues reimagines Hunter’s journey as a closeted Black lesbian performer in early 20th-century America. Host Dr. Robert Philipson and Gomez explore Hunter’s fierce independence, prolific songwriting, civil rights activism, and hidden queer identity, contrasting her with peers like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. Drawing from personal memory, historical research, and dramatic invention, Gomez reveals how Hunter’s public poise masked deep private struggles, ultimately portraying her as both musical icon and cultural trailblazer.

Guest Information:
Jewelle Gomez
Playwright, novelist, and activist
Author of Leaving the Blues, part of a trilogy on unsung Black queer figures
Website: jewellegomez.com

Music 

 My Handy Man - Alberta Hunter

Darktown Strutters' Ball - Alberta Hunter

Down Hearted Blues - Alberta Hunter

Give Me All The Love You Got - Alberta Hunter

Take That Thing Away - Alberta Hunter

Host Info:
Dr. Robert Philipson
Dr. Philipson is a former professor of African-American studies and Harlem Renaissance scholar. He is also a filmmaker with a focus on the intersection of race, sexuality, and music.
Website: Shogafilms.org

Connect With Us
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Instagram: @shogafilms
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Twitter: twitter.com/shogafilms

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