Season 4 kicks off with Shalina Patel, an award-winning history teacher and co-founder of The History Corridor on Instagram. Shalina tells us about her career journey and what motivated her to become a history teacher. We talk about the tendency to be tokenistic when it comes to teaching diverse history, for example a gloss over the Windrush Generation or the glorification of the British Empire, without much reflection of the consequences of exploitation and racism. The relevance of these isolated stories is then buried within the broader curriculum. So I ask, how do we create spaces for impor ..read more

“Disabled people are infantilised, sensationalised or they’re just not believed.”   We end Season 3 on a thought-provoking note and I’m pleased to welcome Lucy Stafford to the show. Lucy is the Director of Patient Led Engagement for Access (PLEA), a non-profit which advocates for access to medical cannabis through mainstream healthcare. She speaks about her experience as a long-term patient of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a rare, life-long genetic disorder which can cause debilitating effects. Drawing from her own experiences, she explains how we can facilitate greater accessibility for those ..read more

To mark Black History Month, the final guests of season 5 are Alison Burton and Natalie Duvall, founders of March Muses, which produces luxury gifts representing people of colour and received backing from Dragons’ Den’s Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden. They are the only UK brand to have created a full range of Black Christmas decorations, shining the light on the need for diverse and inclusive figurines and baubles at Christmas time.  Alison and Natalie are single mums who also have full time day jobs and share their perspectives on balancing entrepreneurialism, motherhood and creativity ..read more

Our first guest of 2021 is Sangeeta Pillai. She is the founder of Masala Podcast and Soul Sutras, a feminist platform tackling taboos in South Asian culture. South Asia is made up of diverse countries, ethnicities, cultures, faiths, and traditions. One thing that we share universally across the continent and beyond, is patriarchy. It forms a part and parcel of our social fabric. As a Keralan born Indian having spent a large part of her life in India, and now in the UK, Sangeeta talks about what intersectionality means to her and the patriarchal values which hold all women back universally. &nb ..read more

Today’s guest is Jane Chelliah, a South Asian midlife influencer and blogger who talks candidly about motherhood, feminism and transforming the female midlife crisis into a happy phase in life. Jane didn’t always see herself as a mother but found that she was absolutely besotted in love with her daughter when she was born.  Jane describes herself as a Feminist mother. I ask her what that means to her and she shares an evocative metaphor: “It’s about putting that oxygen mask on yourself first before putting it on your child, and that way, you can not only be the best version of yourself bu ..read more

*Apologies in advance for the slightly off sound quality; we hope you still find the content meaningful.* What is Artificial Intelligence? What role can it play in ensuring information is factually correct (especially during a pandemic) and that data is gender disaggregated? Today I’m joined by our first honorary male guest, Freddie Kalaitzis, Senior Research Fellow in Machine Learning at the University of Oxford. We know that AI is modelled on human behaviour, and given that humans are innately biased, can we trust AI to be unbiased and neutral?  Freddie also talks about his work with Am ..read more

The first guest of this special series on the joys and challenges of maternity and motherhood, is Joeli Brearley, Founder and Director of Pregnant Then Screwed. It started off as a safe space for mothers to share stories of their pregnancy discrimination and has evolved to become a one-of-a kind charity that lobbies against the gender pay gap, maternity discrimination and aims to be a voice for working mothers. Joeli shares striking examples of pregnancy discrimination she’s come across through PTS’s Advice Line and how she’s used these examples to galvanise change in maternity policy. She als ..read more

Brown Don’t Frown is back! Season 5 drops September 2022! Make sure you hit the subscribe button and you will be notified as soon as a new episode goes live.  Inspired by my own personal journey with pregnancy and motherhood, this will be a special series covering the joys and challenges of motherhood and maternity, empowering change in childcare, mental health and the workforce. Sign up to our newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/186e92c0ae06/browndontfrownpodcastnewsletter.  If you enjoy listening to the podcast, please consider supporting it - all for as little as the price of a coffee ..read more

The final episode of season 4 is here and joining us is Dina Begum, a British-Bangladeshi cook and writer who is passionate about highlighting the underrepresented recipes and authentic food traditions of Bangladesh. For Bengalis and Bangladeshis, and across much of the South Asian continent, food is inseparable from humanity, community, purpose and love. I ask Dina why food is so important to her and whether she always saw herself as a cook. Food is a very visceral experience. Flavours, spices or certain dishes can be nostalgic if we associate them with a particular memory or event. Food can ..read more

Deborah Broomfield is a doctoral candidate in Women and Planning. Her research focuses on spatial inequalities, urban planning and their intersection with deprivation, race and class. Urban planning overlaps with both politics and technical knowledge because of its focus on land use and the built environment, encompassing infrastructure, water, the air we breathe, transportation, networks, and communications. Deborah talks about her career journey and how she got into urban planning later in life. I ask Deborah how she thinks urban planning will respond to the challenges we have seen during th ..read more