shado-lite is a brand new @shado.mag podcast hosted by Zoe Rasbash (@zorasbash) and Larissa Kennedy (@larissa_kennedy_). We will be using this podcast to navigate the big issues on your feed, moving from apathy and overwhelm to collective action and hopeful pathways forward. We’re not claiming to be experts in these issues – let’s remove the dichotomy of student versus teacher – but instead we want to take listeners on a collective journey of learning.
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In our final episode of our bookshelf mini-series, Isabella interviews Black feminist artist-researcher, writer and curator, Nydia Swaby. While often referred to as the first wife of Marcus Garvey, Amy Ashwood Garvey and the Future of Black Feminist Archives documents Swaby's work to recover Amy's life as a political activist, cultural producer and Pan-Africanist in her own right. In the podcast, she reflects on her expansive journey through Amy's fragmented and dispersed archives, engaging in h...
In today's episode, author A.S. Francis is joined by guest host Isabella Kajiwara for a powerful conversation on the life and legacy of Gerlin Bean - otherwise known as "Mother of the Movement." Together, they explore Bean's vital contributions to youth work, Black Power politics, gay liberation, and her deeply relational approach to leadership. Bean's efforts in intergenerational organising and transnational activism are also highlighted, while unpacking the challenges of documenting her legacy...
In today's episode, guest host Isabella Kajiwara is joined by black feminist writer and researcher Lola Olufemi in discussion of Claudia Jones: A Life in Exile by Marika Sherwood , the first book to chart her work in the movement for racial justice, focusing on her time in Britain. They discuss the importance of remembering Claudia Jones as a communist, acknowledging the exile and persecution she faced due to McCarthyism in the U.S. and how her life was shaped by state violence and surveillance....
In the last few years, we’ve seen the idea of ‘radical rest’ explode - but is rest always radical? Or has it been coopted by the wellness industry to placate us? Zoe and Larissa go back to radical rests’ roots in Black Womanist Thought and Crip Theory to understand how we actually tackle the social conditioning of toxic productivity under white supremacist capitalism. What does doing the bare minimum mean? How does resting our body-minds make space for broader economic and societal shifts? Hoste...
Since anti-apartheid activism, South Africa has been a beacon for people of conscience across the world to learn from. In this episode, Zoe and Larissa speak with a PhD student, Raees Noorbhai, who is an organiser with 10 years of experience fighting for free education at Wits University. Trialling a different episode format (feedback welcome!), Zoe and Larissa reflect on some of the learnings from our dialogue with Raees. This chat covers tactics like marches, mass meetings and hunger strikes. ...
From the peasant revolution in 1300s England to the Debt Collective’s abolishing nearly $200 million in student loans, debt resistance has long been a tool to bring people together. This week, Zoe and Larissa discuss historical wins and how debt abolition is a necessity in our demands for climate justice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
How do I make my street into a renewable power station? Speaking with Dan Edelstyn from the Power Project, this episode discusses how people power is fuelling renewable power generation on a street in Walthamstow. In Ann Pettifor’s seminal book, The Case for the Green New Deal, she wrote, “every building a power station”. Filmmaker duo Dan and Hilary have rose to the occasion alongside their community. The pair are capturing the process and using their art both to document the journey, and to co...
What happens when riders refuse to pay, and do it together? In this episode, we explore the fare strike as a bold social justice tactic, where collective refusal to pay transit fares, or drivers' refusal to collect them, becomes a tool to demand more equitable public services. From Chile to Japan, fare strikes have been used to demand better public transport, job protection and wage increases - but does it always work? Can we just stop paying for the bus to protest privatisation? Or does it requ...
This week, Zoe and Larissa are in conversation with community organiser, youth worker and educator, Sara Bafo. This episode draws on her extensive experience to consider how we can use the media, the limitations of mainstream channels, and how we build alternatives. They also discuss how to take these decisions collectively with accountability to those we organise alongside. N.B. this episode was recorded on Thursday 3rd July 2025 so all views expressed are from that date. Hosted on Acast. See a...
This week, Zoe and Larissa throw it all the way back to the medieval period to explore the history of the commons and the violent enclosures that helped birth capitalism. What can this forgotten legacy teach us about reclaiming shared resources and reimagining collective power? By revisiting the commons, the duo digs into how past struggles over land and labor can illuminate the tactics social movements need today - from resisting privatisation to building new forms of solidarity and mutual aid....
Serbia's students have sparked the country's largest mass mobilisation in the country's history - and they're not stopping at protests. Zoe and Larissa are joined by Kata from Extinction Rebellion Serbia to break down how radical solidarity between students and workers turned campus anger into nationwide power. From occupied universities to decentralised rural organising, this revolution is writing the figuring out a way of organising that genuinely builds alternative systems while tearing down ...
Zoe and Larissa are back with Season 3 of Shado-Lite. This season we are focusing on organising tactics from across the world and history that actually work. First up: the classic protest march. With fascism rising, military-industrial-complex raging, and borders hardening, are we still marching toward change or just marching in place? Time to get strategic about resistance. Let us know your thoughts by DMing us @shado.mag on instagram. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information...
Are you interested in learning more about the role of art and cultural production in resistance? Listen to this episode to find out about a book that is for you. In another guest episode with the inimitable Isabella Kajiwara, we are discussing ‘I, Rigoberta Menchú’, the autobiographical account of Rigoberta Menchú, a Mayan Indigenous K’iche woman. Rigoberta tells the story of her community’s resistance to the Guatemala government in the 1970s and their army-led repression of revolutionary moveme...
In our previous episode, we spoke about the importance of supporting political prisoners, but how do we better understand their experiences? The Trinity of Fundamentals by former Palestinian political prisoner, Wisam Rafeedie, is a semi-autobiographical account of his nine years in hiding from the occupation, penned from an Israeli prison. We often hear that each of us has a part to play in the revolution and this book is testament to that. This book is not only revolutionary in content but in h...
What does it really mean to live a revolutionary life? Assata Shakur’s autobiography offers deeply personal – and candid – reflections on struggle, survival, and liberation. This is why it is such a must-read for organisers across the world. Led by Isabella Kajiwara, the latest bookshelf season – Literature for Liberation – is exploring seminal autobiographies from revolutionaries across various struggles, inviting readers to reflect on the role of storytelling in our collective political educat...
In this episode actress and Quechua storyteller, Nathalie Kelley discusses with contributing SHADO editor Samara Almonte, her journey as an Indigenous storyteller amidst growing-up in diaspora. Nathalie is a graduate of Kiss The Ground's Soil Advocacy program, and on the board of the Fungí Foundation. She is passionate about using her IG platform of 1.6 million followers to highlight the threats against Indigenous communities around the world while elevating Indigenous wisdom and technologies as...
How is our energy system intertwined with the Israeli occupation of Palestine? Mariam and Felix, members of Energy Embargo for Palestine—an anti-imperialist climate collective—join us to explain how the fossil fuel industry sustains the Zionist project. After months of investigating BP, they discuss the company's involvement in historical repressive regimes, political maneuvering, pipeline construction, and the swindling of the British public, all in pursuit of controlling Middle Eastern oil. Re...
Do you often feel hopeless? Do you find it hard to imagine a better future for our world? So do we - which is why we’re bringing you this 3 part mini-series: World Building and Re-Imagination: How Fiction Can Free Us Our bookclub - shado’s bookshelf - ran earlier this year, and was a journey through some of the best science fiction, speculative and political fiction of past and present. How can fiction help us imagine and create different worlds? These kind of questions are more necessary now th...
Do you often feel hopeless? Do you find it hard to imagine a better future for our world? So do we - which is why we’re bringing you this 3 part mini-series: World Building and Re-Imagination: How Fiction Can Free Us Our bookclub - shado’s bookshelf - ran earlier this year, and was a journey through some of the best science fiction, speculative and political fiction of past and present. How can fiction help us imagine and create different worlds? These kind of questions are more necessary now th...
Do you often feel hopeless? Do you find it hard to imagine a better future for our world? So do we - which is why we’re bringing you this 3 part mini-series: World Building and Re-Imagination: How Fiction Can Free Us Our bookclub - shado’s bookshelf - ran earlier this year, and was a journey through some of the best science fiction, speculative and political fiction of past and present. How can fiction help us imagine and create different worlds? These kind of questions are more necessary now th...
Distinguished Professor Larissa Behrendt explores her journey from law to filmmaking, highlighting storytelling as a crucial tool for First Nations advocacy and healing. She emphasizes the holistic nature of Indigenous identity, the importance of building supportive cultural spaces in academia, and how media empowers self-determination by challenging colonial narratives and celebrating 65,000 years of cultural resilience. The discussion also touches on global Indigenous storytelling and inspiring future generations.
In this episode, contributing shado editor Samara Almonte is back to connect with Natasha Berting, a designer and writer from Bali, Indonesia and the communications editor for What Design Can Do (WDCD). WDCD is an international organisation that seeks to accelerate the transition to a sustainable, fair and just society using the power of design. Samara and Natasha discuss how WDCD works to address system issues at large, for example through circularity, as a way to address the climate crisis. Bu...
We always come back to how everyone deserves a right to home: somewhere safe and dignified to live. And over this season, shado-lite has traversed histories and geographies to understand how people have and still are fighting for that basic right: from Indigenous communities reclaiming their land, to the fight for Caribbean communities to access their beaches, to squatters in Brixton housing the homeless in unused buildings. Inspired Amarha Spence’s use of her ‘Grandads house’ to guide her work ...
On this week’s episode we are joined by Sarona Bedwan, on behalf of Makan, a Palestinian-led transformative education organisation that strengthens voices for Palestinian rights. Continuing on our series centred on the concept of home, this time we’re talking about how Israeli settler colonialism not only violently displaces Palestinian people from their homeland but commits psychological and ecological violence in efforts to sever the connection Palestinians have to land that they, and their an...
We’re talking about the importance of home this season, and it’s crucial we understand the impact of homeless and landless peoples on the world. This week we’re sitting down with Dandara, representing the MST or Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement - one of the largest peoples movement in Latin America, celebrating 40 years of action. Since 1984, the movement has lead more than 2,500 land occupations with 370000 families that are today settled on 7.5 million hectares of land they won as a result. ...
Okay but run it all back - for years feminists have asked us to understand the home as a place of work, as a place where labour is enacted for free everyday. The Wages for Housework movement launched in 1972 united women across geographies and lived experience with the idea that housework is not ‘innately womens work’ nor an ‘act of love’, but labour which capitalism depends on to thrive and therefore deserves a wage. Women deserve to get paid for all the invisible work that the world needs to f...
Can the club be a home? This week, Leticia Sánchez Garris joins the podcast to chat about her work creating cultural events and club nights for the African diaspora in Buenos Aires. Leticia founded Afro-hunting in 2017, a cultural movement which brings together and makes visible the beating heart of music, art and culture lead by and for those of afro-descent. How does coming together to experience joy help us build solidarity to get through the hard times? How has culture made the afro-historie...
As far back as we can go, communities have been on the move - migrating due to seasons, changing environments, cultures. Yet since 1500s in the UK, the state has clamped down on mobile communities, creating laws specifically to expel Gypsy, Roma and Traveller groups or force them to assimilate to static ways of living. In this episode Larissa and Zoe get heated about the importance of the Right to Roam for all of us, how living on the move is resistance and ask WHY is the state so scared of mobi...
This week Shado-lite hosts the incredible Samara Almonte, fellow shado-editor, storyteller, organiser, urban planner and creative director of Raíces Verdes podcast. Intended to be a chat on how language informs relationship to land and environment, the discussion spirals into navigating our own spiritual homecomings, Indigenous futurisms and how we can all uplift the fight for Indigenous communities self-determination and landback. Tune in to hear Larissa and Zoe processing Samara’s wisdom in re...
Community organisers resisting environmental colonisation in Jamaica are fighting for legal beach access and environmental personhood for beaches. Co-hosts Zoe and Larissa explore the Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement and similar campaigns in Barbados, Mexico and beyond, that have sought to reclaim beaches. This episode is a love letter to all those resisting the commodification of beaches, challenging neocolonial tourism, fighting for workers’ rights and environmental protections ...
