Flipping The Narrative

It’s been a year… and it’s only May. We did a live and ended up talking about popes, professors and politicians with an old friend of the pod. We didn’t quite make sense of the rollercoaster 2025 has been so far, but we’ve buckled up for the ride and are trying hard not to keep our eyes closed as we scream into the void. Still, we remain determined to flip it for GOOD.

Who Run The World? To be a woman these days… it’s a minefield out there! Women are urged to empower themselves in a society that still expects them to conform to outdated notions of traditional - and reductive - gender roles. Palibhasa babae kasi! But the times they are a-changing, thanks to Gen z and Gen Alpha’s more open sexual attitudes, rekindled activism, and embrace of community. Myrza Sison...

Man oh man, we live in unusual times. Bye bye binaries, hello multi-hyphenates. But what does that all mean when it comes to defining masculinity in today’s world? What, indeed, maketh a man these days? And how do we detoxify the particularly toxic strain of masculinity that persists in the Philippines? We take a deep dive into all this with the artist Kristoffer Ardeña, who explores the meanings...

And just like that, we’re back! We know, we know, it’s been ages. But one of us got married and opened a restaurant, one of us completed a dissertation, and one of us had to haul a business out of pandemic hangover. Life, what can we say? And that’s just us! The world got (even more!) volatile so there’s lots to talk about. We’re here for the long haul - at least we intend to be - and we’re ready...

When we think of the ties that bind us, a nation of disparate people separated by seas and straits, spread out among 7,107 islands and speaking over 70 different languages and dialects, we tend to home in on food, religion and kinship. But perhaps the one thing we really all can relate to is good old Pinoy humor. Sometimes mababaw, often a clever play of words, our humor is side-splittingly punny...

Hospitals, airports, cruise ships ... Filipinos are EVERYWHERE. So why are we nowhere? Or why has it taken this long for us to appear, as us, as Filipinos on TV shows and in movies? We chat with two industry experts — one running the show and another facing the audience — about why we need to create our own stories and support our storytellers. Flipping all the narratives with us are director, Div...

Girl can’t help it, she needs to tell stories. Ramona Diaz, the award-winning documentary filmmaker, has brought to the screen some of the most disturbing, heart-rending, inspiring and ultimately illuminating tales of the Filipino experience - the fearless journalist facing a lying and vindictive president (A Thousand Cuts), an unknown cover singer with incredible vocals who fronts a legendary roc...

We took a break. It was unplanned. Like many Filipinos, we needed a moment. The last elections were ... something. There are certain things — like the party line, hours of zero electricity, mullets, "salvaging" (the martial law euphemism for extrajudicial killing), and martial law itself — that just shouldn't make a comeback. Yet here we are: back with not one, not two, but three of ou...

Children in the Philippines are often raised to be obedient and respectful; independence of thought and purpose is unfortunately not as vigorously encouraged. But times they are a-changing. As a demographic, Gen Zs and Millennials have an outsize significance in this election: they comprise 56% of the electorate. It’s no wonder candidates have been assiduously courting their vote. But how else can...

The noontime variety show is a staple of Philippine mass culture. A celebration of the kitsch and the banal, it is often a formulaic whirl of trite skits and musical entertainment marked by toilet humour and even lewd asides with anti-intellectual bent. To be fair, it has at times been a platform from which unexpected singing superstars have emerged. But how have decades of this Eat Bulaga sort of...

It was the revolution that stunned the world. Millions of Filipinos managing to oust — without a single drop of blood shed — a brutal dictator who ruled for 20 years that included glory days, torture, and killings? For a brief, shining moment, the Philippines was the inspiration of the world. Almost 40 years later, what does EDSA mean? In this episode, we flip with veteran journalist and author of...

It’s not every day that we have a Nobel Prize winner as a guest flipper. Award-winning journalist, icon of press freedom and all-around badass Maria Ressa talks about fighting for truth, navigating a sea of trolls on a raft of facts, fending off death by a thousand cuts, not to mention finishing a new book, launching #factsfirstph - all while never losing hope for the country we all love. A little...

Let’s be honest. We’re a halo halo nation in large part because of the interracial relationships that have been taking place since precolonial times. Yes, love is love is love, but people consciously or subconsciously still make assumptions about class, race and the power dynamics in a relationship when they see a white man with a Filipina, especially if she conforms to a stereotype that some have...

Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all, sang the late vocal powerhouse and gay icon Whitney Houston. For the month of love, we talk self love and inclusive love. Drag is a form of self-expression; being a drag artist is already an act of activism, say our guest flippers, Precious Paula Nicole and Maria Cristina, founders of Drag Academy PH, who perform at Obar. We flip over Filipino...

What a Flipping Year! 2021, that’s a wrap! Seven months and 14 episodes later, Laura Verallo de Bertotto, Luis de Terry and Bambina Olivares reflect on the year that was, the issues that were flipped in unexpected ways, and the guests who flipped with them, and how their own understanding of what it means to be Filipino remains constantly evolving and ever more multidimensional. We’re everywhere,...

As a people, Filipinos love to dance and sing, get up and do their thing. There’s no doubt that ours is a country whose cup runneth over with the sheer amount of musical - and performing arts - talent. And yet the road to even a modicum of recognition, not to mention decent pay, for our artistes is a long, arduous and often thankless one. Is it any wonder that they end up performing overseas in fr...

If anyone thought Filipinos had seen the last of the Marcoses when they fled to exile in Hawaii in 1986, they were sorely mistaken, as events have clearly born out. “Enough!” we said, “Never Again!”. Yet years later they were welcomed back into the country, and now the late dictator’s son is eyeing the highest office in the land. So what is it about Filipinos and their short memories? Or their for...

Let the games begin! With the presidential elections looming, election fever is starting to heat up. A bevy of candidates have thrown their proverbial hats into the ring of what are probably the most consequential elections in the history of the Philippines, with the future of the country literally hanging in the balance. Do we choose democracy, decency and competence, or do we restore a dynasty -...

The love language of the Filipinos is food. “Kain tayo” - let’s eat - is almost always the follow up to hello. Food for us is kinship, and is always meant to be shared. After decades of being under the radar, Filipino cuisine - sweet, sour, saucy, spicy, tart, crunchy, slurpy and for some foreigners, perhaps mystifyingly exotic - is finally getting international recognition. Food historians and cu...

Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the American occupation of the Philippines is the dominance of the English language. It is one of the country’s official languages, and most Filipinos claim to speak it, albeit with varying degrees of fluency, which automatically makes it a socio-economic marker. And then there’s the accent, which snobs like to pounce on as a further indicator of class and regio...

Filipinos have a strange relationship with sex, specifically their sexual organs. Blame our strict religious upbringing and sociocultural sense of shame that valued virginity above all for warping our views towards sex. If noted obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Theresa Henson had her way, she would urge every woman to have a happy vagina, and that starts with sincere curiosity and an open mind when i...

A particularly Philippine claim to fame is that our country is the bastion of Christianity in Asia. Indeed, over 86% of the population is Roman Catholic, and evangelical Christianity is on the rise. So is, for better or worse, atheism, and its close cousins, humanism and agnosticism. Which begs the question: how fundamental to Filipino identity is the belief in God the Father, the Son and the Holy...

To live and die in the so social class you're born into is a godsend if you happen to be at the top of the pecking order in the Philippines. For the lower classes, however, the lack of social mobility can be a curse. Sometimes you have to win a beauty contest, become a movie star, or create an app that becomes indispensable. For our flipper Xyza Cruz Bacani, seeing the world with unflinching y...

Once upon the 16th century, say the history books, we were a collection of chiefdoms that most likely would have been absorbed into the Muslim sultanates of neighboring Borneo. But then came the conquistadores, bringing Christianity with them and changing the course of Philippine history forever. Catholicism remains Spain's most enduring legacy, but did we imbibe enough of Spanish culture to b...

The Philippines, it’s been said, is where Asia wears a smile. Filipinos may be warm, but they’re also capable of being prejudiced - and unfiltered. Our favorite academics Vince Rafael, professor of History at the University of Washington, Seattle, and Lila Shahani, former UNESCO Philippines Secretary-General, flip with us and discuss how race and class are deeply intertwined in Philippine society,...