Kerning Cultures | Middle East: Recent Episodes
Hebah Fisher
His whole life, Walid Waked had been told that his great grandfather invented the Arabic typewriter. And then, one day, he learned that another family – the Haddads – believed they invented it. This week on Kerning Cultures, the contested history of the Arabic typewriter.
This episode originally aired in September 2019.
Thank you to everybody we spoke to for this story: Ahmed Ellaithy – for taking us down the rabbit hole with you – Walid Waked, Anis Waked, Alexandre Cordahi, Nagla Badran, Pascal Zoghbi and Titus Nemeth.
This episode was produced by Ahmed Ellaithy, Hebah Fisher, Nadeen Shaker, and Alex Atack, with editorial support from Dana Ballout, Tamara Rasamny, and Zeina Dowidar. Sound design by Mohamad Khreizat. Fact-checking by Zeina Dowidar. Kerning Cultures is a Kerning Cultures Network production.
This episode is brought to you by GoSell by Tap Payments: https://www.tap.company/sa/ar/sell
Kerning Cultures is a Kerning Cultures Network production. Support this podcast on Patreon for as little as $1 a month.
Faysal Bibi and his team of palaeontologists have been captivated by this one particular moment that took place in the Abu Dhabi desert seven million years ago. This week, a journey back to a time before the desert was the desert… when elephants, crocodiles and monkeys reigned supreme in the UAE.
This episode was produced by Alex Atack, with editorial support from Dana Ballout, Nadeen Shaker, Tamara Rasamny and Zeina Dowidar. Fact-checking by Zeina Dowidar and Dina Salem. Sound design by Alex Atack and mixing by Mohamed Khreizat. Kerning Cultures is a Kerning Cultures Network production.
This episode originally aired in September 2020.
Support this podcast on patreon.com/kerningcultures for as little as $1 a month.
In 2015, our producer Nadeen Shaker visited the Cairo Genizah in one of Egypt’s oldest synagogues. It was the place where, thousands of years ago, the Jews of Egypt literally stored any papers with God’s name on them instead of throwing them away.
After a prominent Egyptian Jew, Jacques Mosseri, discovered the Genizah manuscripts almost a century ago, and his untimely death afterwards, the manuscripts disappeared from view for decades.
When they were finally rediscovered, the question of where the collection of manuscripts would eventually go – Egypt, Israel, or the UK – became a thorny and still unanswered debate.
Today on Kerning Cultures, the story of the Genizah manuscripts and the question of where Egyptian Jewish history should be kept.
Support this podcast on patreon.com/kerningcultures for as little as $1 a month.
This episode was produced by Nadeen Shaker and edited by Dana Ballout, with additional support from Alex Atack, Zeina Dowidar, Shraddha Joshi, and Abde Amr. Fact checking by Alex Atack and sound design and mixing by Mohamad Khreizat.
On August 2nd 1990, the Iraqi military invaded Kuwait City overnight, and its residents woke up to a city under occupation. The only airport was put on lockdown, and the Iraqi military set up checkpoints on the city’s streets. The US, UK and Russia condemned the invasion, and some British and American citizens were taken as hostages. But the Indian government had no stake in the conflict, and around 165,000 Indian citizens living in Kuwait were caught up in a situation that didn’t involve their country.
Which left the Indian government with a question they'd never had to face before: how do we evacuate tens of thousands of our citizens from a foreign country, all at once?
Today on Kerning Cultures, the story of one family’s escape from Kuwait during one of the largest government evacuations in history.
This episode was written and produced by Alex Atack and Shraddha Joshi, and edited by Dana Ballout with support from Nadeen Shaker, Zeina Dowidar and Abde Amr. Fact checking by Shraddha Joshi, sound design by Alex Atack and mixing by Mohamed Khreizat. Bella Ibrahim is our marketing manager, and Kerning Cultures is a Kerning Cultures Network production.
Support this podcast on patreon.com/kerningcultures for as little as $1 a month.
Ahmed Twaij explores an often-overlooked issue in the Arab world; racism towards Black Arabs. In this episode, he looks at racism in his own community, taking us from his Iraqi roots, through to modern day slurs still commonly used in many Arab communities around the world.
This episode was produced by Ahmed Twaij, with editorial support from Dana Ballout, Nadeen Shaker, Zeina Dowidar and Alex Atack. Fact checking by Shraddha Joshi, sound design by Alex Atack, and mixing by Mohamad Khreizat. Music in this episode was by Ahmed Moneka and Blue Dot Sessions. Special thanks to Noon Salih and Sara Elhassan. Our marketing director is Bella Ibrahim, and Kerning Cultures is a Kerning Cultures Network production.
Support this podcast on patreon.com/kerningcultures for as little as $1 a month.
As 2020 brought us countless examples of injustice and pain, it brought remembrances that we live in a world in need of more - well, work. And that means scrutinising the cities we live in, the homes we rest in, and… the streets we live on.
Today on Kerning Cultures, we’re bringing you two stories about two streets - and the justices and injustices hidden in their names. Follow us to Tehran and Khartoum as we uncover two histories brought together by one common denominator.
This episode was produced by Zeina Dowidar, with editorial support from Alex Atack, Nadeen Shaker, Dana Ballout, Shraddha Joshi and Abde Amr. Editing by Dana Ballout, and fact checking by Shraddha Joshi. Sound design by Zeina Dowidar and Alex Atack, and mixing by Mohamed Khreizat. The article Zeina reads throughout this episode is ‘How to Rename a Street’ by Malia Wollan from the New York Times.
Support this podcast on patreon.com/kerningcultures for as little as $1 a month.
After the Armenian Genocide, in which over 1.5 million Christians from the Ottoman Empire were killed by the Ottoman government, the group of Ottoman leaders were never made to face justice. They escaped Constantinople in the middle of the night and began new lives undercover in Europe. So, a small group of Armenian businessmen decided to take justice into their own hands.
This week on Kerning Cultures, the secretive operation to avenge the Armenian Genocide, and how it changed our relationship with the idea of justice in the modern world.
Support this podcast on patreon.com/kerningcultures for as little as $1 a month.
Since 2012, Korean pop culture has captured the imagination of people across the Middle East: from K-pop and K-dramas to Korean language classes and even to Korean fried chicken. It’s everywhere!
But how did we become so obsessed with a culture so different from our own? And how much do we actually know about how it spread to our region?
This week on Kerning Cultures, we dive into the highly calculated forces behind the K-pop craze.
Support this podcast on patreon.com/kerningcultures for as little as $1 a month.
We're excited to announce that season 2 of Kerning Cultures starts next week. Each Thursday, we'll be bringing you new stories from around the Middle East and North Africa. Here's a taste of what's to come...
Episode 1 drops on January 28th. Be sure to subscribe to this feed so that you never miss an episode.
Support this podcast on patreon.com/kerningcultures for as little as $1 a month.
Our winter season is coming very soon, but while you’re waiting just a little bit longer we wanted to share an interview with Kerning Cultures’ CEO and Co-Founder Hebah Fisher on the Da Miri Podcast. Tariq Elmiri, who hosts the show, spoke to Hebah about her personal journey in building Kerning Cultures from from one show to the podcast network it is today.
The Da Miri Podcast releases episodes in Arabic and English, and you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Support the show: https://patreon.com/kerningcultures