Podcast Recommendations: Celebrating Black History Month

Podcast recommendations featuring Black creators, hosts, and producers

Black History Month may be coming to an end, but celebrating and honoring Black communities should and will continue. 

Aurélia Durand

At EarBuds, we have a strong relationship with curiosity and exploration, and podcasts are our love language. We love listening to stories and hearing the accounts of folks all over the world through audio. Like many other audio communities, we wanted to put together a list that celebrates Black storytelling — whether it be in the form of a podcast that shares the side of American history you never learned, elevates Black experiences (like radical acceptance in the form of natural hair), or takes you on an audio adventure about Black cowboys, which, we’d never heard of prior. 

We wanted this playlist to be a space of history and education, but also celebration. We have chosen podcasts that illuminate crucial historical figures and events, podcasts that touch on important issues in the Black community, and podcasts that honor and give space to Black voices and creators. When curators create a list, we ask that three out of the five podcast episodes be hosted or produced by women, non-binary folks, and/or people of color. While EarBuds is run by two white women, we represent a large community of diverse curators, and want to celebrate these voices and stories in audio by listening, learning, and supporting.

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The Playlist:

1. Black History Year: Building Black Futures with Kamau Franklin

2. 1619: The Economic That Slavery Built

3. BBC World Service: Nasa’s Pioneering Black Women

4. School Colors: Old School 

5. The Stoop: Black on Air 

6. Blackbelt Media LLC: (Natural) Heads Held High

7. Floodlines: Reckoning

8. Cuz Black Girls Podcast: Black Female Relationships

9. California Love: Compton Cowboys

10. Therapy for Black Girls: Affirming Your Queer Identity

11. Still Processing: We R-E-S-P-E-C-T Aretha Franklin

12. Code Switch: Who’s ‘Black Enough’ For Reparations

13. Why Food?: Zoe Adjonyoh: Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen

14. Black Men Can’t Jump [In Hollywood]: Judas and the Black Messiah

15. Historically Black: Black Love Stories

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We kicked off Black History Month with a curated list by Joshua Moore, lead producer of the Seizing Freedom podcast and host of Versify Podcast, who wanted to “empower people to question what they know about American history. And believed that questioning starts with hearing just how much more to the story there actually is.” 

Solange. Photo: Black Planet

The theme of his list is titled, Blackberry The Masses, a lyric from Solange Knowles’s “Almeda.” Moore felt that this song was an anthem about Black people's “indelible fortitude, beauty, and influence,” and made a playlist to honor and celebrate those qualities. We hope to carry forward his work with this playlist. 

Take a listen, and enjoy these podcasts and the beautiful and complex stories they tell.