Sylly the Podcast, Episode 01

Get to know us!

Welcome to Sylly, a podcast for the curious and critical. We’re your hosts, Mbiye Kasonga and Tembe Denton-Hurst. We decided to do a podcast because our voice notes were getting out of hand and we saw an opportunity to bridge the gap between the media we were consuming and the way we were incorporating it into bigger ideas and concepts. We draw inspiration from everywhere, whether that’s a lesser-known bell hooks book or an episode of WAGS to Riches, and want to discuss how the elements connect. Think of our first episode as a primer. We talk about why now, why us, and where we’re coming from. It’s a taste of what we’ll be talking about and an opportunity to get to know us.

So why Sylly? Sylly is short for syllabus but also encapsulates the feeling of this moment. Everything currently feels a bit ridiculous but it’s also more important than ever to have context for our moment.

Moving forward, our episodes will be structured with two primary texts that we source and bring to each other to discuss. By the end we try to make sense of how these seemingly disparate concepts connect. We’ll also be doing office hours, where we noodle on topics you, the listener, are interested in or curious about. To submit topics email us at syllypod@gmail.com and if it makes our brains buzz, we’ll discuss it on the pod. Thanks for listening.

Links to listen

Apple

Spotify

Books We Talked About

• Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

• The First and Last King of Haiti by Marlene Daut

• Homebodies by Tembe Denton-Hurst

• Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

• Hope by Andrew Ridker

• The Black Utopians by Aaron Robertson

• Playworld by Adam Ross

• The Fraud by Zadie Smith

• Rejection by Tony Tulathimute

• Welcome to the Terrordome by Dave Zirin

• Curvy Girl Summer by Danielle Allen

---