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.
Visit shado’s website: shado-mag.com
Podcast artwork: @sayeeda.bacchus
Podcast production and music: @flrs.carla
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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.
Visit shado’s website: shado-mag.com
Podcast artwork: @sayeeda.bacchus
Podcast production and music: @flrs.carla
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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. Olufemi highlights Jones' efforts to bring an analysis of gender and race to Communist parties' understandings of exploitation, and how Jones harnessed cultural production as a mode of consciousness-building and resistance. Olufemi and Kajiwara discuss the challenges of sustaining revolutionary work amidst state surveillance and economic precarity, and what it will take for us to build truly inclusive and cross-disciplinary movements.
This episode is part of a mini-series inspired by our latest shado bookclub season: To Be Loved, Is To Be Remembered: Archiving for Liberation. We explored titles from Lawrence Wishart Books' Radical Black Women collection, curated in collaboration with the Black Cultural Archives to redress erasures of Black British and Black Transnational Feminist histories. These works shine a light on the lives and activism of Claudia Jones, Gerlin Bean and Amy Ashwood Garvey - three revolutionary figures whose legacies continue to shape global justice movements.
Lola Olufemi is a black feminist writer, researcher and Associate Lecturer based in the design school at University Arts London. Her work focuses on the utility of the political imagination in the textual and visual cultures of radical social movements, examining the role cultural production plays in materialist resistance and collective conceptualisations of futurity. She is author of Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Pluto Press, 2020), Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (Hajar Press, 2021), and the forthcoming Against Literature (2026).
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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?
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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. Tune in to hear about how all of these have been used in South Africa’s Fees Must Fall movement, and to gain inspiration for the movements you’re a part of. Let us know if you’ve used any of these, or if you’re hoping to now!
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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 compel others to action.
Tune into the Power Station film coming out soon here: https://membership.power.film/join-free
References:
The Case for the Green New Deal by Ann Pettifor
https://www.waterstones.com/book/artpolitik/neala-schleuning/9781570272486
Stream Dan and Hilary’s previous film, Bank Job
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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 require a deeper, more strategic approach.
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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.
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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 the old ones.
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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.
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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 movements. Rigoberta describes the violence and brutality faced by Indigenous Guatemalans during this repression.‘I, Rigoberta Menchú’ is an account that she calls the testimony of her people and this legacy has continued to inspire indigenous peoples in struggle throughout Central America.
This is the final book of the last bookshelf series ‘Literature for Liberation’ which has traversed revolutionary autobiographies, exploring the role of storytelling in political education and movement ecosystems. In this episode, we discuss the threads of shared experience between these accounts – in repression, resistance, community building and worldmaking. From these stories, we learn lessons about how to build the future we are dreaming of.
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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 how it came to exist through comradeship in the Palestinian resistance, too. In this episode, shado’s Isabella Kajiwara returns as a guest to the pod and talks about the incredible story behind that brought this book into being, and the lessons we can learn from it.
Tune in for this expansive discussion about how we might apply those lessons, and use the book as a tool in our organising — including a reflection on what it means to critically engage with the shortcomings of revolutionaries.
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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 education and movement ecosystems.
Isabella explains that the aim of the season is not to individualise struggle or put people on pedestals, but to study revolutionary lives as a lens through which to understand the wider struggle they are part of. By understanding how Assata Shakur understood political education, resisted carceral repression, and leaned on kinship throughout her organising, we can learn important lessons about what it means for each of us to live a revolutionary life.
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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 means of coming back into harmony with our ecosystem.
Resources:
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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.
References:
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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 than ever, in a political moment defined by apathy and fear.
We need radical and visionary politics of action and creation! This mini-series we’ll be taking each book and delving into the stories that can help us imagine otherwise, sharing insights from our book club for those who missed it. Our last book in the series, The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin is a titan of science fiction, credited for changing the genre with its brilliant and complex worldbuilding. What would a world without hierarchy really look like in practice, and is it possible?
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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 than ever, in a political moment defined by apathy and fear.
We need radical and visionary politics of action and creation! This mini-series we’ll be taking each book and delving into the stories that can help us imagine otherwise, sharing insights from our book club for those who missed it. Our second book in the series, Begin the World Over by Kung Li Sun, is a revolutionary counterfactual novel about the US Founders’ greatest fear —that Black and Indigenous people might join forces to undo the newly formed United States of America— coming true.
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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 than ever, in a political moment defined by apathy and fear.
We need radical and visionary politics of action and creation! This mini-series we’ll be taking each book and delving into the stories that can help us imagine otherwise, sharing insights from our book club for those who missed it. Our first book, Palestine+100, is an anthology which poses a question to twelve Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in the year 2048 - a century after the tragedies and trauma of what has come to be called the Nakba?
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Contributing SHADO editor Samara Almonte is back to discuss the power of storytelling through a First Nations worldview with distinguished professor Larissa Behrendt AO. Larissa has a legal background with a strong track record in the areas of Indigenous law, policy, creative arts, education and research. She is a Native Title holder and member of the Yuwaalaraay (yuwalarai) Euahlayi Aboriginal Corporation and is also a member of the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council. Larissa is also an award-winning author, filmmaker and host of Speaking Out on ABC Radio. In this episode, Larissa shares about her upbringing as an Aboriginal woman and how storytelling has been a practice for cultural preservation, healing and advocacy for her.
Additional Resources:
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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. But where does the concept of circularity come from and who should benefit from it?
To learn more about circularity, visit the following resources:
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