The Three Most Popular Episodes from Race Beyond Borders Season 2

Season 2 of our podcast Race Beyond Borders travelled across the world in search of underexplored experiences of Blackness. In charting the global African diaspora—from Italy to Iran, Martinique to Colombia—this season raised new questions about what it means to be Black beyond conventional notions and beyond white supremacy. Check out the season's three most popular episodes which offer compelling lessons for constructing expansive, decolonised Black identities and home in on the lived experiences of Black people from Iran, Martinique and Italy.

In Season 2’s opening episode, Adama Sanneh, co-founder and CEO of the Moleskine Foundation, walks us through his coming of age as a young Black man in an Italy plagued by cultural silences about Blackness. Listen as he shares why he’s embracing the possibilities for the emergence of an expansive Black identity in Italy, one fashioned by those who embody it.

In this episode of Race Beyond Borders, we travel to Martinique, the birthplace of towering intellectual figures such as Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon. Listen as our guest, Roseline Armange, a clinical psychologist who studies identity among other aspects of Black life in Martinique, guides us into her people’s rich past and present. In the conversation, she explains how Martinicans negotiate a complex relationship with mainland France while embracing a distinctive identity.

Iran is known for its nuclear and geopolitical power, and its Revolution of 1979 that reverberated around the world. And despite being a vibrant, multiethnic country with one of the world’s oldest civilisations spanning three millennia, little is known about the country’s Black population. In this episode, our guest, Priscillia Kounkou Hoveyda, guides us through the emotional terrain of the Black experience in Iran.