Podcast

Hosted and produced by Julián Esteban Torres López, The Nasiona Podcast centers, elevates, and amplifies the personal stories of those Othered by systems of oppression and dominant cultures.

You can also find the podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Several episodes have also been co-produced by Aïcha Martine Thiam and Nicole Zelniker.

Original music for episodes 28 through the present was produced by the Grammy Award-winning team of Joe Sparkman and Marcus Allen, aka The Heavyweights. Theme song for episodes 23-27 is “Lat Dior” by Abdoulaye Mboup — a beautiful song by a classic Senegalese artist, lamenting all of the beautiful culture that has been lost through colonization. The theme song for episodes 1-22 is “Into the West,” courtesy of Tan Vampires.

Episode 7: Motherhood

June 2, 2019 Julián Esteban Torres López

Motherhood has often been considered a pinnacle of wisdom and serenity, a sort of joining together of all those parts of ourselves in lesser focus. But in truth, motherhood opens more doors than it closes. It is an endless series of complications and ambiguities that are put into sharper relief by the arrival of a daughter. What emerges from the following four stories is this precise push and pull, pondered through the lens of devotion and loss, of privilege and resentment, of injustice and forgiveness. […]

Episode 6: The Imperfect Art of Medicine

May 21, 2019 Julián Esteban Torres López

Why is it so hard to change people’s minds and behaviors with new facts? We explore this question through pediatrics. In 2015, after a landmark medical study proved that the early inclusion of peanut in the diet of infants prevents peanut allergy, Ron Sunog, MD, set out to develop a great first peanut food for infants. When most physicians and parents did not embrace this important new information, Dr. Sunog was determined to understand why. Dr. Sunog joins me to discuss his new book, Eat The Eight. […]

Salvator Rosa, "Three Figures Around a Globe," 1615–73.

Episode 5: Transracial Adoption

April 25, 2019 Julián Esteban Torres López

We continue our episode 3 discussion on mixed-race families by digging into transracial adoption. Nicole Zelniker—whose book, Mixed, was the focus of that episode—joins me to interview Leah Whetten-Goldstein about her experience being adopted from China into a white, Jewish family in North Carolina. We discuss side-effects, critiques, misunderstandings, and assumptions surrounding transracial adoption, as well as the beauty of being in a mixed-race family. We get a glimpse into Whetten-Goldstein’s struggle to find an identity growing up in a predominantly white community as an adoptee, and she shares the wisdom she’s gathered along the way. […]

Episode 4: Systemic Abuse of Women

April 12, 2019 Julián Esteban Torres López

We share four essays included in Mireya S. Vela’s forthcoming book, Vestiges of Courage, Collected Essays—a collection of personal essays that explores inequities and injustice. Ms. Vela discusses how the systems in her family and in society worked to create an abusive environment that felt crushing, confusing, and hopeless. In her book, Ms. Vela delineates her experience of living through sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. Ms. Vela wants to know how and why abuse thrived in her family. […]

Episode 3: Mixed-Race Families

April 10, 2019 Julián Esteban Torres López

Journalist Nicole Zelniker, author of Mixed, takes us on personal journeys to help us glimpse into overlooked worlds so we can more fully grasp what it means to be mixed. Zelniker spoke to dozens of mixed-race families and individuals, as well as experts in the field, about their own experiences, with the hope to fill a gap in the very important conversation about race in the US today. […]

Ep. 2: Mireya S. Vela's Vestiges of Courage

Episode 2: Mireya S. Vela’s Vestiges of Courage

March 25, 2019 Julián Esteban Torres López

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? Mireya S. Vela is that woman. In this long-form interview, we discuss her art, creative nonfiction, social justice, motherhood, womanhood, being marginalized in the United States, and her new book, Vestiges of Courage: Collected Essays, which we, The Nasiona, are happy to be publishing in April of 2019.Vestiges of Courage is a collection of personal essays that explores inequities and injustice. Raised between two cultures and two languages, Vela discusses how the systems in her family and in society worked to create an abusive environment that felt crushing, confusing, and hopeless. She delineates her experience of living through sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. This book is much more than a collection of experiences, though. Ms. Vela wants to know how and why abuse thrived in her family. She digs deep to understand why these things happened and how she survived. […]

Episode 1: IM John Donaldson’s Chess World

February 28, 2019 Julián Esteban Torres López

Do the stereotypes about chess and chess players have any validity at all? Through the eyes of John Donaldson (International Master and chess writer, journalist, coach, and historian) we get a behind-the-scenes look at the most popular game of all time to see if chess really does transcend language, age, race, religion, politics, gender, and socioeconomic background. We also get some interesting anecdotes about Bobby Fischer from his biographer, as well as try to answer the following questions: Is chess a sport, art, or a science? What is the role of computers in the game? How much do privilege and belief play into improvement? How has who plays chess today changed over the decades? […]