Kerning Cultures

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…

While we're gearing up for our next season, we wanted to share a behind the scenes look at what goes into making our episodes.Hear Trancing with the Zars here, and Zabelle here.Thi…

For his entire life, Maysam has lived in Dubai. His parents are from Syria, a place he hasn't visited since he was a young child. If you ask him, the UAE is his home. But on paper…

The Palestine Broadcasting Service started airing in 1936, from a brand new transmitter tower in Ramallah. It was a British station in three languages, aimed at promoting the messa…

In our day-to-day lives, it's a drink. But for some people, it is not as simple as that. It's a Sufi's spiritual companion, an Emirati's keeper of tradition, and a Yemeni's connect…

The lower west side of Manhattan used to be home to the biggest population of Arab immigrants in the US. In the early 20th century, streets were full of people speaking Arabic, wit…

In 1979, Iftah Ya Simsim - the Arabic version of Sesame Street - aired for the first time. Over the next ten years, the show was loved by children across the Arab world, until 1990…

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 journe…

In 1968, a trio of Palestinian filmmakers began making films about life under Israeli occupation. Almost 15 years and over 90 films later, their film unit became a dominant force i…

This week, a special collaboration with one of our all time favourite podcasts: Radiolab. We produced the episode - Lebanon USA - last year, and Radiolab have taken that original s…

We're heartbroken by what happened in Beirut on Tuesday, August 4. Many of us at the Kerning Cultures team are Lebanese, or have close ties to Beirut. So we're taking a break from…

In the 1960s, a college professor and his group of students were determined to build and launch rockets into space. And so, they did. This week, on Kerning Cultures, a story about…

In 1917, a musical prodigy called Zabelle Panosian recorded a song that captured the heartbreak of a generation of Armenian Americans in the aftermath of the Armenian Genocide. She…

For centuries in Egypt, Zar was a music and dance ritual believed to heal women from unwanted spirits that possessed their bodies. But as time went on and ideologies changed, the…

This is the ugly truth: racism and anti-Blackness in the Arab world is a common practice and a subject so taboo that many have convinced themselves that it doesn't even exist. But…

Our producer Nadeen Shaker takes us on her own personal journey in trying to discover why she felt excluded because of her hijab. In Egypt, things are more complex than they seem;…

Last year, our producer Darah Ghanem stumbled upon an obscure blog on a nearly forgotten corner of the internet. On it were hundreds of historic photographs of a Christian missiona…

Last year, our producer Darah Ghanem stumbled upon an obscure blog on a nearly forgotten corner of the internet. On it were hundreds of historic photographs of a Christian missiona…

We're back! We'll be here with a new episode of Kerning Cultures every Friday this summer. Here's a quick taste of what's to come.Kerning Cultures is a Kerning Cultures Network pro…

All of our lives have changed. In this unprecedented time, we wanted to make something to reflect this moment. So today, our Kerning Cultures quarantine special: stories of staying…