Race Matters

Poet, musician and cultural visionary  Saul Williams  joins Yorta Yorta artist, writer and activist  Neil Morris  for a conversation that traces the colonial logics hidden in plain sight. From Wall Street to Boundary Street, they unpack how empire is built through naming, branding, borders and memory, and how these structures continue to shape the worlds we inherit. Together, t...

“Intelligence is relatively new to life on Earth, but your hierarchical tendencies are ancient.”  - Octavia Butler, Lilith’s Brood. The dawn of generative AI may seem like a whole new age - but in reality, it is part of an ancient history. Today on the show, Sara El Youghun, Joannie Lee, Janey Li and Samantha Haran come together to map this new genAI tech within the longer h...

'There are two issues of our time really, that I think amount to a litmus test for morality as far as I'm concerned. One is what you're prepared to do on behalf of the Palestinian people and the other is what are you prepared to do on behalf of gay and lesbian people?" - Black, queer poet and activist June Jordan in an interview for 'A Place of Rage' (1991) by Prabhita Parmar What are people willi...

Sehej, Leya and Yvonne hop into the studio today to chat about the history of looksmaxxing as an inherited tradition for all oppressed people. Inspired by texts on the 'Politics of Being Ugly', digressions include Jia Tolentino's  'The Age of Instagram Face' , the distinctions between gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia, and looksmaxxing as self-surveillance for brown Women of Colour. This e...

This episode is a love letter to everyone mothering on stolen land, in displaced bodies, in the precarity of modernity. It is a reminder that queer and Indigenous ways of childrearing and matrilineal care are often similar practices. One and a half years into raising a child and a lifetime into raising themselves in community, executive producer Prinita Thevarajah collages conversations with Vanes...

For this special episode of Race Matters, we are joined by Boe Spearim from Frontier War Stories, Gamilaraay and Kooma activisit and Dad who has been archiving so called Australiaʼs first wars since 2020. Frontier War Stories is a podcast that details across the continent, the wars waged by the colonising British, the massacres and horific dehumanisation that was used as a strategy of genocide by...

We are bound by the same chains, therefore we must forge the same key. Two stories of interconnected struggles and how we can forge the tools towards freedom.  Day Soriano chats to Sunday of Philippines liberation movement Anakbayan on yearning itself can be a weapon, and that until the diaspora can return, they must continue to fight the struggle of the people no matter where they are....

From the rivers of Chile, the mountains of Gyeonggi-do, to the Cumberland Highway, exploring what it means to be and live and remember in relation to place. Our first episode in collaboration with abolitionist youth organisation  Yung Prodigy , after a mentorship exploring radical radio from the roots up. Two debut works by Lucy Norton and a newfound colalbroation between Leya and Sehej Kaur...

Extreme music for people with extreme experiences. Noise is a genre that can be misunderstood as anti-social and harsh, but for our guest producer artist Carmen Mercedes Gago Schieb aka  Society of Cutting Up Men (S.C.U.M) ; it’s been a vital source of place-making and connection. Alongside artists Rosa /  Making Out  and  Yvette Ofa Agapow , she brings us an interstate p...

A bittersweet send off to Executive Producer Shareeka Helaluddin who has metamorphed Race Matters into the ever abundant, ever expansive program that it is. Previous producers Darren Lesaguis and Tanya Ali bear witness to Shareeka's shepherding of the show, bringing to mic the unheard and the unseen. Also hearing from six of the Race Matter's current producers, Sara El Younghun, Toobs, Joannie Lee...

We know that what we do today is intiamtely connected with what has been done before.  Samantha Haran and Tim Worton reflect as kinfolk on their journey with Race Matters, and expanding into their queerness. They pay tribute to the episodes and producers that drew them into community, and challenged them into evolving and unfurling their embodiment of queerness in so called Australia, as two...

Sehej Kaur and Wen Pei Low share a tender and vulnerable episode about their friendship and celebrate queer and crip kinship together. They share stories of navigating sterile, western medical systems and how they found and held each other through it all. They dream of crip futures that move beyond simply surviving and toward thriving. Sehej reads a poem by Dom Kelly that is titled “an elegy...

"We have been doing this because we love our people” Joannie Lee and Sara El Youghun welcome Moh, a community builder and organiser from Myanmar to talk about her peoples’ fight for freedom, self-determination and justice from brutal military imperialism. Together they talk about taking pride in our solidarity and what it takes to keep our collective movement for liberation alive and i...

"I want it to feel like you're in my living room including the chaos" On today's show, Alicia Zhao and Bruce Koussaba (of  Liberation Cinema ) are in conversation with the brilliant and staunch organiser of  Miya Miya Film Club,  Karim Nasser. Miya Miya is a grassroots, community film screening space, carved out as a gathering place for discovery, dialogue and connection - centred a...

To be able to truly envision better world—not just in vague outlines, but vividly in all its colour and brilliance, so much so that you begin to taste on it on your tongue—is the first step to making revolution. A special collaboration with R.T. Samuel takes us on a journey through their deep and abiding love of speculative fiction, and the possibilities in holds for liberatory world-m...

How do we sustain ourselves for the revolution?  Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah is a multi award-winning novelist, human rights advocate, lawyer and sociologist researching Arab & Muslim social justice movements, Islamophobia and the war on terror. Yvonne Hong and Sara El Youghun are joined by Randa in conversation about the release of her new book  Discipline , unpacking the daily reality of...

How do we rely on each other and take ownership of our collective liberation? Sehej and Janey take us through sites of DIY culture and alternative economies. From ad-hoc sound systems in Bengal, a sound tower in Palestine, to enclaves and car parks of Wentworthville; exploring ecologies of repair and world building in refusal of extractive colonial power. Together they remind us that the way we me...

A love letter to the hearts and labour of community radio, beaming from a shipping container in Brixton, London aka  Reprezent Radio. Binta Yade is a London-based poet, community builder, storyteller and legacy community radio broadcaster. This is her ode to the radio station that she calls home, and the many people that keep it going through tireless amount of time, love, music selecting, te...

How do you ground your work in the sacredness of life while needing to speak back to the very powers destroying them? Shareeka Helaluddin and Tommy Boutros speak to journalist and novelist Omar El Akkad, following the release of his aching and relentless title " One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. " The work pieces together words and narratives displaced by the violence of empire...

"I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth..." These poetic words by Black revolutionary Assata Shakur reverberate through the work of Munanjahli and South Sea Islander scholar, writer and truth-teller Dr. Chelsea Watego, in conversation with Samantha Haran and Ethan Lyons. Chelsea is known for her fierce commitment to justice and unapologetic advocacy for First Nations sovereignty a...

Non-linear sounds, improvising as spiritual catharsis, computer coding as companion. Sehej Kaur & Alicia Zhao immerse into the sound worlds of naarm-based artist Nū. Utilising live coding, Ethiopian samples, gospel trills and reclaiming non-linear time. We unearth the world-building of TECHNOFRO and relinquish into the divine unknown of hope and possibility. This episode includes clips from Nū...

What does it mean that desire, even queer desire, is built on dead bodies? What happens when we realise that our desires, even our most intimate, erotic ones, may be rooted in specific, traceable violence and death? Wiradjuri baddie and alleged tender queer Ethan Lyons on all things TWINK. The desire, the violence, the whiteness of it all. Joined by his dear friend David Soriano, on discerning the...

“Breath. Something we all have in common, yet most take for granted”  An invitation to listen in, attune to, hold breath and be in solidarity with those in our community living with Long Covid. In collaboration with Dr Poppy de Souza, we bring you stories gathered from her  Holding Breath  exchange and from the Race Matters community, reflecting on their experiences and...

"We are in a decolonial moment, we need the energy to keep going" A conversation between Shareeka Helaluddin and astrologer, spirit worker for the liberation,  Ra Life . Hear them on what it is to use their gifts in the toolkit for revolution, guiding people to tap into their capacity and ancestral wisdom as tactic for political organising. Less woo woo, more depth and fury. Produced, hosted...

"... and in truth it is a story that is not mine nor hers; I am searching for the shape of what is ours." Hear  Sara and Joannie are in conversation with Palestinian writer and academic Micaela Sahhar. Together, they discuss Micaela’s gorgeous new memoir,  'Find Me At The Jaffa Gate,’ which aims to assemble and reclaim the story of her family through fractured memories, objec...