Last year, eight of Brooklyn’s best and brightest were selected to spend 12 weeks learning how to write, produce, record and edit a podcast as part of BRIC’s second-ever Podcast Intensive. Armed with zoom recorders and with headphones up, these burgeoning audio stars took us into the basements and backrooms of the food service industry, on a life-and-death search through three million acres of national park, into the music that defines our existence, and inside a memory from seven summers ago.

In November, the cohort gathered in the BRIC ballroom for a live showcase of their work hosted by special projects manager Liam Billingham, and media artist and program instructor Nicole Solomon. 

The Industry Is Watching
By DeMarius “Champ” Kilpatrick

DeMarius “Champ” Kilpatrick is a Brooklyn based media producer and project manager.  His show The Industry Is Watching is a platform for creative entrepreneurs to elaborate on Industry related themes. 

The Usable Past
By Marie Nahikian

Veteran community organizer Marie Nahikian hosts The Usable Past, where activists share their stories of past and present organizing for better housing, food, banks, jobs, environmental and social justiceA Brooklyn resident, Marie most recently worked with U.S. Housing & Urban Development under President Obama and has participated in building 5,000 affordable homes in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, and New York. Marie has been a neighborhood, civil rights, housing and labor organizer, a community journalist, and in 1977 was a founder of WPFW-FM Pacifica radio in Washington, DC. 

Under The Table
By Vera Rios

Vera Rios is a Peruvian Anthropologist living in Brooklyn. She is a preschool teacher, studies food, food sustainability. She uses this as a resource to teach her students about these topics. Under The Table is a podcast that explores the experiences of Latinx women working in food using their own language with a Spanish/English bilingual approach. It celebrates diversity and highlights the key roles that women play in food.

SONIC BLACKNUSS
By Nia I'man Smith

Nia I'man Smith  is an arts administrator, educator, and creator of THE BLACK CONNECTION, a multi-platform exploration of her interests in the music, visual culture, and Orisa tradition of the Black Diaspora. Her show, SONIC BLACKNUSS, is a series of audio love letters dedicated to the songs and artists that make up the soundtrack of her life. Each episode, join her and a series of guests at the intersection of Black music and memory as she relives the past and present one song at a time. 

My Latinidad 
Maria Patricia Slee

Maria Patricia Slee was born in New York City to a bi-cultural family. She studied industrial design, and later became a writer and musician, which awakened her passion for storytelling. Her desire is to use audio stories as a way to celebrate those human connections that exist across imagined boundaries. Her show My Latinidad explores the complexity of Latino identity in the United States.

#WeMakinIt
By Kadie Henderson

Kadie Henderson is a Brooklyn-based performer and talker of sorts. Her show is a weekly conversation with local artists about the art they're making and how they maintain adequate water levels in the process #wemakinit.

Cinema Iran
By Arzoo Hansen

Arzoo Hansen is a Brooklyn-based cinephile and the founder of Wandering Zoo, LLC, a digital media consultancy. Her podcast, Cinema Iran, explores the beauty, diversity, and complexities of all things Iranian film and culture.

The Search
By Maria Luisa Tucker

Maria Luisa Tucker is an award-winning multimedia journalist. Her show, The Search, is a five-part series about the search for her father who went missing in 2006. While investigating the different theories about what happened to him, she explores what it means to be a family.
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Brooklyn, USA is produced by Sachar Mathias, Emily Boghossian, Shirin Barghi, Khyriel Palmer, and Charlie Hoixie, with help from Liam Billingham and Nicole Solomon. We’re tackling everything from language to cooperative economics this season and we want to hear from you. If you want in, send us tips, pitches, thoughts, ideas, self-destructing messages, or just regular normal emails and check out our pitch page for more information.