What if we told you there's an entire book dedicated to the things Black folk say?  Historically Black Phrases by jarett hill and Tre'vell Anderson introduces and explains sayings like "I AIN'T ONE OF YOUR LIL' FRIENDS"  to  "WHO ALL GON' BE THERE?".  The book is a blend of the many things you grew up hearing and their definitions and usage all in one place. We sit down with the authors to talk about what makes a phrase "Black" and ask, 'are some phrases reserved for only some Black people?'Join us! 

We should all be free to be, free to love, and be celebrated in that process - if not by others, then definitely by ourselves. In this episode, Hana and Leila explore three stories that center queerness and spirituality, Black drag culture, and shifting relationship structures through polyamory. Through it all, the episode guests had to wrestle with disapproval from their communities - and sift through feelings of being outcasts - to eventually accept themselves. Bob the Drag Queen, Darnell Moore, Bishop Yvette Flunder, and The Verts make an appearance.  

This season we're leaning into love in all its forms — starting with the city of love, Paris. Leila meets with Sutanya Dacres, an American in France, who transformed her life after heartbreak through the joy of cooking. She also lets us in on the secret ingredient that makes French life feel so romantic.

Many immigrants imagine the US to be heaven. A moneymaking, perfect paradise but when they get here, it's a different story. We meet African immigrants who tell their stories of Coming to America, and what the wish they knew before they came.

When you're from an immigrant community, becoming a successful musician isn't an easy journey. We meet 3 dope diaspora musicians: Meklit Hadero, Oddisee, and AlSarah - each with their own struggle that comes with belonging to two identities- African, and American.

For more about the featured artists check them out!

Alsarah and the Nubatones

Odissee

Meklit Hadero

Episode art by: @neemascribbles

"You're black, but you ain't BLACK black."

Like many African kids in the US, Stoop host Hana Baba was ridiculed for being from Africa. She was called names like "African booty scratcher." And the name calling came only from the black kids. What's behind this black disconnect and where did it come from? The Stoop explores this with a young Sudanese American and her African American friends.

What's it mean when someone says you "sound white"? In this episode we explore voice, and unpack what it means linguistically, socially, and professionally when you're black but supposedly "sound white."

As always, we love you for loving The Stoop. Drop some stars on our podcast and put down a review - we appreciate every new set of ears!

Contributors: @1A @jejihnson322 Chinaka Hodge (@chinakahodge)

Editor:  Sound Design: Seth Samuel Illustration: Neema Iyer (@Neemascribbles) Digital Production/PodOps: Megan Jones

Let's hit pause and take a breath.

Hosts Leila Day and Hana Baba break from the chatter of stoop talk to send out a special double episode that allows for a moment of grace, a place where one can catch a breath and regroup in order to move forward.

What revives and sustains your soul? For Leila, it's dance. For Hana, it's music.

Like what you hear? Drop some stars on The Stoop and put down a review in iTunes or Stitcher - we thank you as always for listening.

Credits

Contributors: Leila Day & Hana Baba Sound Design: Leila Day  Stoop logo: Jef Cunningham Digital Production/PodOps: Megan Jones

"It's not hard for a black man of my caliber to say I love you."

But is it? 

Many black people say they never heard I love you much growing up, including both Leila and Hana, hosts of The Stoop. In Episodes 2, we examine the reasons why we don't hear I love you, and what that means. We talk to inmates at San Quentin state prison, a professor who studies black male emotional expression, and Stooptalk with Al Letson about I love you in his home.

Did you hear I love you growing up? #blacklove #blackfamilies

Want more Stoop? Go to our website www.thestoop.org. There you will find videos, audio shorts, behind-the-scenes peeks, and more. We drop preview audio clips, photos, and all kinds of interesting etcetera on social - so follow us on Twitter, and Instagram (@thestooppodcast) and on Facebook (stooppodcast) to get the latest and to see the conversations around our shows. Have an idea or question? hangout(at)thestoop.org. 

Like what you hear? Drop some stars on The Stoop and put down a review - we thank you for listening.

Credits:

Thanks to Al Letson (@Al_Letson) and Serie McDougal (@SerieMcdougal) for contibuting to this episode.

Sound Design: Chris Hoff

Illustration:  Neema Iyer

Digital Production/PodOps: Megan Jones

Episode 1: An exploration into the controversy over appropriation of African cultures by African Americans. Are African Americans appropriating when they wear a dashiki, tribal markings, or a head wrap? Hosts Leila Day and Hana Baba stoop this out in the debut episode of The Stoop podcast, their first stop, Afropunk.

For more info, videos, photos, illustrations and audio shorts, go to our website www.thestoop.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Preview Season 1 of The Stoop to hear the funk and flavor of the stories to come in Season 1, starting Summer 2017.  Subscribe now to make sure you don't miss an episode. We'll be dialoging about the diaspora all season long.

The Stoop podcast digs into stories that are not always shared out in the open. Hosts Leila Day and Hana Baba start conversations and provide sound-rich stories about what it means to be black, and how we talk about blackness.

Find out more and see The Stoop extras like videos, animations, and blog posts on www.thestoop.org. And follow us on social media, too - we'd love to hear from you.

Facebook - facebook.com/stooppodcast/

Twitter/Instagram - @theStoopPodcast

The Stoop is back with season 10! This season, Leila and Hana are exploring love in its many forms.

Sometimes it’s easier to hold back than be completely honest, especially when talking about some of the themes that are brought up on The Stoop. Today Hana and Leila share some moments that made them uncomfortable but also made them realize the importance of sharing the discomfort.  As we approach our 100th episode, let’s be 100% real. 

Hana spends a day in Nairobi with Kenyan Instagram comedian, Hope Hajir. Hope made it to the U.S. and was living her life when a tragic event gave her pause.

While many people who reach the U.S. find ways to stay, Hope decided to return to Nairobi and talks about the experience of not wanting to live the American Dream.

This summer, The Moth and The Stoop are getting cozy and sharing stories. Today, we invite special guest, Suzanne Rust, the host of The Moth storytelling series, to share a tale she loves. This story is by Ivan McClellan, a photographer who lives in Portland, Oregon. Ivan found something very unexpected in his hometown of Kansas City, Kansas when he learns about the black rodeo. In this double feature, we also stoop it out with Suzanne about The Stoop’s episode —episode 75 —“Black don’t crack?” and how we really feel about aging.

What’s it like when everyone at home speaks a language you don’t understand? That’s the story of Claudia, a Ghanaian American who grew up not speaking her home language —her ‘Mother Tongue’. But everybody else did, including her own siblings. The effects were real: disconnect, frustration, shame, and at some point a full on identity crisis. We also ask other people in the diaspora if they speak their home languages, and Hana contends with her own kids’ lack of fluency, and what it means.

Leila travels back to Cuba —and to her 20s —in this special episode about Havana, dance, hair, proud negras, and finding your voice. This story is told in collaboration with Meditative Story, hosted by Rohan Gunatillake.

It’s a term of endearment but not everybody wants to be your “Auntie.” Today, Leila and Hana unravel some of the emotions and stereotypes tied to being an “Auntie.” They did into the deeper connections to ageism, the evolving meaning of the term, and discuss the weight of “respectability handles” within Black culture.

Interest in psychedelics is ramping up. People are even claiming that psychedelics can help heal racial trauma. But should we believe the hype? Can psychedelics bring us pleasure and joy? Or is the new psychedelic gold rush perpetuating the same old harm? Producer Natalie, takes hosts, Leila and Hana, on a sonic trip to talk to a few new and seasoned psychonauts: Tonya Mosley, host of Truth Be Told and Fresh Air, decolonized psychedelic educator and practitioner, Buki Fadipe, and psychiatric nurse practitioner and organizer, Kwasi Adusei.

Today, The Stoop has a special episode. The war in Hana’s home country, Sudan, continues. Hana has been feeling the conflict here at home in the States. Today we pause and take a moment to reflect on the music that has been holding people together, and we highlight the voices of Sudanese Americans who are living through a reality that their homes may never be the same.

Many thanks to the kids of SANC School in California, musician Mazin Jamal and legendary songstress Salma Elassal for her songs of longing that carry us through these hard times.

It's our 100th episode!

We're celebrating by going back to some special episode moments over 10 seasons of the show. Some made us laugh, others made us cry, some moments made us question whether we should really go there, and others made us even question ourselves.

It's a look back, behind the scenes, of what makes The Stoop, The Stoop.

Thank you for Stoopin' with us for 100 episodes!

Hana has a dilemma. As a diasporan, is she basically a diluted African? This question arises when Hana and Leila travel to conduct workshops at a conference in Kenya. Hana finds that she’s questioning her place —she’s African, but she’s a diaspora African —and she wonders how she’s seen, and what her role is, as someone who flies in from the West. In Nairobi, Hana gets some advice on diaspora privilege from Africa Podfest’s Melissa Mbugua, then in California she chats with fellow diasporans who are also asking, how should we conduct ourselves in Africa?

How do you talk about death without talking about death? Discussions about succession planning, and what the future looks like when your loved one is gone, are tough. Leila explores legacy through a conversation with her mom, Vicki, who is planning to have her work as a gallerist live on for the next 100 years. We also meet Lauren Rosa Miller, who tells her personal story about taking over her family business and explains why she’s teaching others to have hard conversations.

Whether it's the way we talk,  the music we hear, or the clothes we wear- many Black people at some point were made to feel 'not Black enough’, including Leila and Hana.

In this special episode, Leila explores with broadcast journalist Joshua Johnson what it means to be told she ‘talks white’, Hana talks to a psychologist as she wonders if she has to like everything Black to avoid getting called out, and we go deep with comedian W. Kamau Bell who's felt awkward in Black circles and in front of Black audiences.

What does it mean to be ‘Black enough’?

Hana’s writing a book of Sudanese folktales that have been handed down through generations in her family, but some questions have been haunting her. Should they be translated? Does she even own the right to retell these stories? And the biggest question of them all- a secret within the stories that she must confront.
To guide her, she talks it out with African American storyteller Diane Ferlatte, and Rwandan folklore scholar Brenda Umutoniwase- plus Hana gets honest with her Aunt Sohair..

One of the hardest practices is self-love, especially when it feels like the world is against you. Today we hear the story of Regina Louise, an author and personal growth coach, who learned how to define love on her own terms after growing up in and out of foster care.  Regina finds her voice in a story that shows us that true love doesn’t always come from the outside.

Did someone say, Afro-futuristic audio space drama? We got you.

What is the problem with Duran Durag? Find out in this intergalactic Blackity-Blacktic space comedy, His Saturn Return. From Pineapple Street Studios’ production The 11th, creator, writer, and performer Sai Sion stars in a cosmic audio drama as he plays the cocky and charming, smooth and clumsy and always getting into trouble Duran Durag.

It’s high time for Duran to learn some important life lessons. The all-knowing DJ Saturn is not playing when he sends this young Black space alien on a series of challenges that reveal what it is to live in a universe that doesn’t orbit around ego. Will the missions he’s sent on ground him, or will his swagger get in the way of growing up?

We don’t often hear stories about Black men struggling with infertility.
Today, we meet Jared Wright and his wife Erica, who share their story about their road to parenthood.

Today, it’s personal. Leila takes a walk through a town close to her heart- Charleston, South Carolina- to discover the Black presence in the architecture, and buildings that hold countless stories and secrets from history about Blackness. As she learns about the hands that built Charleston, she also questions her role in the changes…

When we have feet in two worlds, how do we choose to live in one place, and not the other?
Today we’re handing over the mic to our friends at NPR’s Rough Translation, hosted by Gregory Warner. In this episode, ‘Home is where the hustle is’, Nigerian author Chibundu Onuzo is thinking about moving from the UK to Lagos, and she’s getting advice from her big brother, filmmaker Chinaza Onuzo, about having enough “hustle” to succeed back home in Nigeria. 

‘Black don’t crack’ is said like it’s a badge of honor, but is this phrase making us more insecure about aging? Hana and Leila explore the phrase with writer Patia Braithwaite who writes, ‘Black don’t crack is stressing me out.’  We also Stoop it with Dr. Michelle Henry, a dermatologist and cosmetic surgeon who explains what really happens to our skin as we age, and what she’s seeing when it comes to her Black patients. Is ‘Black don’t crack’ causing more harm than good?

Welcome to our Mother's Day special!

There are many unexpected ways that people step into parenting. In this special from The Stoop, we hear stories about redefining family on your own terms. 

We explore the term ‘Auntie’ and how some women find it problematic, we hear about the challenges of IVF for Black women, and we meet a family that shows us how co-parenting can evolve. 

We’re Stoopin it in Australia and meet Indigenous journalist Rhianna Patrick as she navigates this question- why do I call myself ‘Black’?
Rhianna takes us along as she unpacks what Blackness means Down Under. It’s complicated, and we meet people along the way who help her navigate this question. Dr. Jackie Huggins digs into the history of Indigenous peoples’ relation to Blackness, artist/journalist Daniel Browning explains why some young Indigenous people are identifying as ’Blak’- without the ‘C’, and Aurora Liddle Christie ponders her Jamaican-Indigenous Australian roots. Will Rhianna get any closer to understanding her use of the term ‘Black’?

Angelica Lindsey-Ali is known to tens of thousands of Muslims worldwide as The Village Auntie. She’s a Black American Muslim therapist, wellness educator, public health professional and- sexpert. Through her platforms, she advises Muslim women on how to tap in to their femininity. She teaches them about arousal and erotic dance, and says female sexual pleasure is a neglected part of Muslim teachings, and a sacred act of worship that’s rooted in ancestral African ritual and practice.
We meet Angelica, we hear how she came to this work, what she learned along the way- and the trauma, trolling, and anti-Blackness that almost led her to abandon it all.
*A note to our listeners: this episode contains explicit sexual language, and a story of assault.

Why do some of us feel shame about the foods we eat? We ask people how they feel about eating foods that are used to stereotype Black people, and unpack the history behind some of this food shaming. From choosing what to drink on a flight, to a watermelon eating contest- we’re trying to get to the root of this with American Studies professor, Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson, Anthropologist Dr. Gail Myers, and award-winning chef Bryant Terry.

Hana and Leila have been doing some dreaming. What do their dreams mean? In this season finale, they talk to someone who can help - Dr. Loma Flowers, a psychiatrist and dream interviewer. Plus, they dig into the world of dreaming and the significance of dreams in Black cultures.

It’s June- and with  summer, comes Pride!  RuPaul’s Drag Race veterans Bob the Drag Queen, Shangela, and BeBe Zahara Benet join Leila and Hana to talk about appropriation, forgiveness, drag names, and culture. Y’all better sashay on over here!

Imagine you were gifted a home, in Ghana. It’s your motherland, but not the place you grew up in. Would you move? That decision proved to be one of the most challenging ones that Afia had to make. She documented some of the most difficult conversations, honest observations and some self reflection that has us asking- should Afia be telling us all of this? Yes she should, she did- and you should hear it.
Today we share with you an episode of the Peabody nominated S***hole Country.

Hana's immigrant generation is called the 'one and a half'- those who came to the U.S. with their families as young children. Not 1st gen like her mom- they're more attached to their home countries. Not 2nd gen like her kids- they're settled in their Americanness. She's caught in the middle- and it's weighing on her. Where is home? We hear the stories of two women and their mothers- Khadega from Sudan, and Melly from Haiti- plus Hana ponders with her own mom and daughter.

Imagine a space where everyone’s invited to cuddle up. We’re going to a Brooklyn cuddle party, where strangers and familiar faces negotiate being close, but it’s not all about touch. Producer Natalie Peart wanted to explore closeness- and ended up learning the importance of consent. Featuring Malika Cumbie of NYC Love house- plus, we get to meet some cuddle party guests.

U.S. media companies are producing new glitzy reality TV shows in Africa. It’s a different kind of portrayal of Africa - something Hana has always wanted: a change in the narrative of poverty, war and famine. But something doesn’t feel quite right. She’s trying to just get her popcorn and enjoy the drama and messiness, but she’s conflicted and she’s wondering why. She talks it out with Nigerian writer Damilola Oyedele - someone else who is watching, and thinking at the same time. Plus, we go to Lagos, Nigeria- to hear how people there are reacting there.

You see each other from across the room. You lock eyes, slowly walk towards each other and the dance begins. We're reminiscing about slow dancing - the rhythm, the beat, the Blackness of it all- and we’re wondering- is it still alive? We talk to Chicago Steppers who break down the power of the slow jam. Let’s slow it down and snap to the beat..

Hana loves perfume, and there’s a long heritage of traditional perfume making in Sudan. But sometimes, sweet smells come with some controversy. As she explores the history of racism and colonialism in the global perfume industry with perfume enthusiast and historian Razan Idris, she discovers an intriguing story about an iconic Sudanese scent that has her bothered.

You walk into a restaurant all ready for a lovely evening, and you get this feeling - an expectation - that you’ll be treated a certain way. Whether it’s being seated near the bathroom, getting asked for another glass of water, or being totally ignored- sometimes we react, sometimes not, but are we reading too much into this? Why do we sometimes go into restaurants with our guard up? From Europe to the U.S., we talk to three people about their experiences dining out. This is definitely something we need to chew on..

Jameela means beautiful in Arabic- a description Black girls seldom would hear about themselves growing up in Arab countries. Beauty standards in the Middle East have been based on white Arabness- light skin, and long silky hair. So what is it like to navigate industries where what you look like matters? We meet three Black Arab women - models and influencers - who are part of a movement to push back on racist beauty standards, and redefine what it means to be beautiful.

It’s Season 7! And it’s the annual fundraising time for Radiotopia, they’ve asked artists across the platform to weigh in on the theme “Making Trouble” and here’s our take!  We’re wondering, is it fair to charge kinkier textures more when it comes to hair braiding? We asks stylists and each other, what’s the deal with the tax on our naps? We talk with natural hair stylist Marilyn Burks in Mississippi, as well as other stylists and get their take on some of the strict requirements for 4C hair.  And we talk with writer Kovie Biakolo who has been asking many women why they’re going back to relaxers?

Welcome to the Stoop Comedy Club! It's our last episode of the season and we are laughin’ it up with three African comedians - Nigerian-American Beverly Adaeze, Kenyan-American Dubai Denis, and Sudanese-American Ahmed Abdelrahman. Each has their unique style, and each has to deal with a complicating question that has to do with their Blackness in America. Plus, Leila tries to break into the comedy scene!

We explore what it’s like to be a Black autistic adult with the story of artist, author, and illustrator Ayanna Davis, AKA ‘Phenomenally Autistic.’ We also hear from advocate and autism media consultant Diane Wright, plus special education professor Dr. Jamie Pearson breaks down why Black autistic people are diagnosed so late in life.

Black women have lower success rates when it comes to IVF (in-vitro fertilization) But why? We hear from Charissa Jackson who shares her journey about going through IVF. We also look into some of the reasons why Black women tend to have higher infertility rates, something that's explained by Dr. Michael Thomas, a reproductive endocrinologist who says one of the reasons why this is happening, is a reason many of us have heard before. 

As reparations for African Americans come closer to being a reality, the conversation has led to a question - who should get paid? We’ll explore that question of eligibility and hear different perspectives from people pondering it, and people who have clear ideas of what the answer should be. Plus- Hana, Leila and producer Natalie have an honest chat about what this all means for them.