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What and who do you include in a national Latino museum? That’s a question that many have been asking since late 2020, when Congress green-lit the creation of The National Museum of the American Latino. It’s a new addition to the Smithsonian Institution’s roster of national museums, many of which intend to preserve the history and culture of the United States. The fight to create The National Museum of the American Latino spans across decades. The idea was sparked by a damning 1994 report, commissioned by the Smithsonian itself, which concluded that the institution had a pattern of systematically excluding Latinos and Latinas from its programming and its staff. One of its top recommendations? To create a museum highlighting Latinos and Latinas in this country.   Now, in 2022, the museum is making moves. Even though there’s no building to house it yet, the National Museum of the American Latino has appointed a board, hired an inaugural director, and has even debuted its first show in the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. In the midst of all this, many are beginning to wonder what the vision of this museum will be, and how it plans to capture the wide diversity of Latino history and culture in the United States.   Show page: https://www.latinousa.org/2022/09/02/latinomuseum/ Apple Podcast Link: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shaping-a-national-latino-museum/id79681317?i=1000578129968

What started off as a hobby crafting beer at home turned into a real business for Juan Camilo, who’s now the founder and owner of Dyckman Beer Company in New York. Juan was born in the Dominican Republic and at the age of five he came to the U.S., where he grew up between Washington Heights and the Bronx. Using his cultural influences, Juan infuses Dominican flavors to make unique craft beer. Listen to learn more about Juan and the secret recipes he's working on.

Did you know that wine actually has roots that date back to Asia? There's a lot we get wrong about wine, according to our guest Justine Belle Lambright, a co-founder of Kalchē Wine Cooperative and expert on all things food & beverage. Listen to learn about Justine's experience in the industry and how they're changing the game with their own business.

Growing up, Jesse Havea didn’t see themselves represented on screen or on stages of Broadway shows. But everything changed when they started doing drag under the name Brita Filter. Being the first Polynesian queen on RuPaul's Drag Race inspired Brita to carve out their own space in the performance world through drag and find ways to bridge divides with their conservative Mormon family members.

New Year got you feeling reflective? Us, too. So today we're bringing you a conversation between Chris and Dr. Kira Hudson Banks, an expert on race and how humans make meaning out of it. Chris walks through the steps of what called "Racial Identity Development Theory" with Dr. Banks -- from the first time he noticed his own race to the moments in his life that have changed how he thinks about his place in the world. Learn more about Dr. Banks' work and listen to her podcast: Raising Equity  We are looking for stories about your names. Do you have a name that’s unique, one that’s hard for others to say? Do you have a funny story, an origin story? What do you think is special or beautiful about your name? Let us know! Send us an email or voice memo to BrownEnough@stitcher.com. You could wind up on a future episode.

Lisa Solomon is a mixed media artist and author obsessed with color. So who better than her to explain the beauty behind the color Brown?   We are looking for stories about your names. Do you have a name that’s unique, one that’s hard for others to say? Do you have a funny story, an origin story? What do you think is special or beautiful about your name? Let us know! Send us an email or voice memo to BrownEnough@stitcher.com. You could wind up on a future episode.

Twenty one year-old Nalleli Cobo spent more than a decade fighting to shut down an oil well across the street from her home in South Los Angeles. Nalleli says it's no coincidence that this well, and thousands of others like it, exist primarily in communities of color. Tune in to hear about the activism that won Nalleli the 2022 Goldman Environmental Prize -- aka the Green Nobel Prize -- and what she says we can all do in the fight against climate change.

Chris gets a storytelling masterclass from Martina Castro, the founder and CEO of Adonde Media, a multilingual podcast company. Martina is the host of several shows including the Duolingo Spanish Podcast. But you’ll be surprised to hear that speaking Spanish at home was a challenge for her growing up. Now, she is an amazing storyteller both in English and Spanish on a mission to make stories that reach global audiences.

I’m excited to bring you a special episode of Some of My Best Friends Are, a podcast from Pushkin Industries I recently had the pleasure of joining. On Some of My Best Friends Are, Harvard professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad and journalist Ben Austen, two best friends who grew up together on the South Side of Chicago in the 1980s, discuss their experiences with the absurdities and intricacies of race in America. I joined Khalil and Ben to talk about my own racial awakening – which I attribute to the moment I learned the “real” James Bond, Porfirio Rubirosa, was Dominican. And I share what it means, to me, to be Latinx in a country where most conversations about race are divided into black and white. You can hear more from Some of My Best Friends Are at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/sbfs2?sid=enough

“The caucacity!” says Mandi Woodruff-Santos, co-host of the finance podcast Brown Ambition, when Black and Brown communities are hit with 6 figures of debt by corporate banks after graduating college. In this episode, Chris chats with Mandi to understand why Black and Brown families are lagging behind in building wealth and what they can do to start changing the narrative.

Brown women have a right to laugh and they need to express it, says Indian immigrant and comedian Zarna Garg. Zarna went from being a lawyer, to a stay at home mom to her three kids, to a stand-up comedian and Tik Tok star. Today, she chats with Chris about how her kids convinced her to start a career in comedy, how she mines her culture for jokes, and what it means to be a Brown woman in the world of comedy.

Writer Mayukh Sen didn't always like to cook. But he found his way into the kitchen when he discovered seven inspiring women who changed the world of food by making an impact in American cuisine. Mayukh is the author of Tastemakers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food In America, a book that profiles women of diverse countries and cultures. Chris chats with Mayukh about how these seven women helped Americans transform how they cook and eat.   We are looking for stories about your names. Do you have a name that’s unique, one that’s hard for others to say? Do you have a funny story, an origin story? What do you think is special or beautiful about your name? Let us know! Please, send us an email or a voice memo to BrownEnough@stitcher.com.

"What are you?" That’s a very tricky question journalist and cartoonist Malaka Gharib is super familiar with as a first generation Filipino-Egyptian-American. Malaka grew up navigating three different cultures and two religions...something Chris can relate to as a Dominican-Colombian-American who grew up in the vibrant city of Queens, New York. Listen to learn more about how Malaka’s thinking about the question "What are you?" evolved and inspired her to write her first graphic memoir I Was Their American Dream. Her latest book It Won't Always Be Like This is out now.

Listen to this episode to find out exactly who in your life is a donkey and how to pay them no mind. Chris chats with actress and friend of show, Kyla Pratt, about growing up inside the entertainment industry and her long career on groundbreaking shows for Black and Brown folks.

Last time, we started to unpack the complicated history of how Dominicans think about race. Today, we keep that conversation going with Dr. Saudi Garcia, a writer born in the DR who identifies not as white, or latina, or afro-caribbean... but Black. She tells me about the bent towards whiteness she's been trying to fight for most of her life.         Did you grow up in Haiti or the DR? Or maybe in another place with a similar history of antiblackness? What have you learned and unlearned? Send your thoughts in an email or voice message to brownenough@stitcher.com.  

How can people from two countries in conflict come together? Well that's exactly what today's guest, France Francois, helps facilitate between Haitian- and Dominican-Americans.  France's organization runs workshops called Decolonizing Hispaniola, where they deconstruct historical myth and help everyone reimagine a conflict-free future.  Today, she chats with Chris about how she got into this work and what Haiti and DR have in common. Plus, producer Baudelaire reports back from one of France's workshops!   Did you grow up in Haiti or the DR? Or maybe in another place with a similar history of violence and antiblackness? What have you learned and unlearned? Send your thoughts in an email or voice message to brownenough@stitcher.com"

This episode is going to make you hungry. Because it's all about tacos! Chris chats with taco expert and professor Steve Alvarez about how cultures mix through their food by looking at one of Chris' favorite cross-cultural tacos: Tacos Arabes. Plus, the best tacos from LA to Queens!

Scoring all the right points in Hollywood ain't easy -- especially as a Brown person. Claudia Forestieri learned that first hand when creating her hit TV series Gordita Chronicles for HBO. The show was widely acclaimed and popular... but got cancelled after just one season. Chris chats with Claudia about the lessons she learned from pitching and creating Gordita Chronicles, and what Hollywood is failing to do for Brown communities.

Row House is on a mission to reshape the book publishing world. And its founder, Rebekah Borucki, has made it her business to welcome new authors of various backgrounds into it. Today, she talks to Christopher Rivas about stealing a book that changed her life, and how she infiltrated a white industry with her progressive agenda. Plus, we hear the backstory of how that led her to Chris, who has a new book out October 11th called Brown Enough. 

Comete ese miedo -- or eat your fear -- is what Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa's husband told her to do when imposter syndrome sneaks up on her. But across her decades long career, she's learned to embrace the pressure. Today, she talks to Christopher Rivas about how her parents' experience in the US shaped how she thinks about this country. Plus, what she hopes for the next generation of Brown journalists. Her new young adult book Once I Was You: Finding My Voice and Passing the Mic is out now.