

Immigrantly
Saadia Khan | Immigrantly Media
Join Saadia Khan on Immigrantly, the award-winning podcast that dives deep into immigrant narratives and the messy beauty of identity, race, and belonging in America today. Each week, Saadia, a human rights activist, social entrepreneur, and proud cat mom, hosts unfiltered conversations with diverse voices: artists, academics, cultural disruptors, and everyday people with extraordinary cultural stories.At Immigrantly, we go beyond surface-level diversity to explore how culture, immigration, and inclusion shape real lives. We believe identity is powerful, but when unchecked, it can become an ego trap. That’s why every episode unpacks the nuance, humor, and contradictions of what it means to belong.Inclusive storytelling. Immigrant perspectives. Real talk—never flattened.To join this fun, thoughtful, and inclusive community, subscribe!
Producer & Host: Saadia Khan
Editorial Review: Shei Yu
Content Writers: Michaela Strauther, Bobak Afshari, Rainier Harris, Adiba Hussain & Saadia Khan
Sound Design & Content Editor: Haziq Ahmad Farid, Paroma Chakravarty, Steve Martin, Lou Raskin
Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson
Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Follow us on IG @immigrantlypodsTwitter @Immigrantly_podTikTok @ImmigrantlyYouTube: @immigrantlypodsSubscribe to our PatreonImmigrantly podcast is an Immigrantly Media production.For advertising inquiries, please email at info@immigrantlypod.com
Producer & Host: Saadia Khan
Editorial Review: Shei Yu
Content Writers: Michaela Strauther, Bobak Afshari, Rainier Harris, Adiba Hussain & Saadia Khan
Sound Design & Content Editor: Haziq Ahmad Farid, Paroma Chakravarty, Steve Martin, Lou Raskin
Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson
Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Follow us on IG @immigrantlypodsTwitter @Immigrantly_podTikTok @ImmigrantlyYouTube: @immigrantlypodsSubscribe to our PatreonImmigrantly podcast is an Immigrantly Media production.For advertising inquiries, please email at info@immigrantlypod.com
Episodes
Mentioned books

Dec 9, 2025 • 50min
A Daughter 's Search for Truth
In this powerful conversation, journalist and author Karin Jensen takes
us inside the real-life story behind her memoir The Strength of Water. Her mother’s life stretched from a Chinese laundry in 1920s Detroit to a village in wartime China, to navigating racism, domestic work, and reinvention in mid-century America. Karin shares how she pieced together silences, uncovered buried memories, and learned to hold complexity, contradiction, and compassion all at once.
If you’ve ever wondered what your parents carried so you could stand where you stand, this one will stay with you long after you listen.
Join us as we create new intellectual engagement for our audience. You can find more information at http://immigrantlypod.com.
Please share the love and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts &
Spotify to help more people find us!
You can connect with Saadia on IG @itssaadiak
Email:saadia@immigrantlypod.com
Host & Producer: Saadia Khan I Content Writer: Saadia Khan I Editorial review: Shei Yu I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Immigrantly Podcast is an Immigrantly Media Production.
For advertising inquiries, contact us at info@immigrantlypod.com
Want to go deeper into your own identity? Download
Belong on Your Own Terms, the app helping first-gen, second-gen, and
third-culture kids reclaim belonging on their own terms. link below
http://studio.com/saadia
Don't forget to subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for insightful podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dec 2, 2025 • 56min
Jokes That Go There: Lana Salah on Comedy Without Apology
In this deeply human and sharply funny conversation, Palestinian American comedian Lana Salah joins Saadia in the studio for an unfiltered exploration of comedy, identity, loss, and truth-telling in a world that often prefers silence.
Lana, an engineer-turned-comedian whose life spans the Bay Area, the Middle East, and now Los Angeles, breaks down how humor becomes cultural critique, emotional survival, and a form of resistance. From navigating rooms where her Palestinian identity is met with discomfort, to balancing factual vs. emotional truth onstage, to turning the heaviness of genocide, grief, and personal history into art, Lana holds nothing back.
Saadia and Lana dive into:
How comedy becomes a vessel for truths that policy papers can’t deliver
The tension between emotional truth vs. factual truth in stand-up
Why Muslim women are not a monolith and never were
The cost and power of speaking honestly about Palestine in American comedy spaces
How loss, family, and survival shape Lana’s voice onstage
Her unexpected journey from engineering to performing at the Comedy Store
This episode is raw, tender, political, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. It’s a story about belonging, complexity, and what it means to turn pain into purpose without losing your humor along the way.
Join us as we create new intellectual engagement for our audience. You can find more information at http://immigrantlypod.com.
Please share the love and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify to help more people find us!
You can connect with Saadia on IG @itssaadiak
Email: saadia@immigrantlypod.com
Host & Producer: Saadia Khan I Content Writer: Saadia Khan I Editorial review: Shei Yu I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Immigrantly Podcast is an Immigrantly Media Production.
For advertising inquiries, contact us at info@immigrantlypod.com
Want to go deeper into your own identity? Download Belong on Your Own Terms, the app helping first-gen, second-gen, and third-culture kids reclaim belonging on their own terms. link below
http://studio.com/saadia
Don't forget to subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for insightful podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nov 25, 2025 • 10min
Flipping the Thanksgiving Script — Immigrant Style
Thanksgiving is marketed as a serene celebration of gratitude, family, and food, but Saadia’s immigrant household tells a different story. In this extended solo episode, she unpacks the chaos that unfolds when her husband and daughters take over the kitchen, the tradition-defying choice to cook lamb instead of turkey, and the reality of observing the holiday completely sober (which, spoiler: makes everything more intense). Saadia uses her own experiences to reflect on how immigrants reshape American holidays, how gratitude can coexist with frustration, and why acknowledging the messy parts of tradition might actually make them more meaningful. A funny, thoughtful, deeply relatable look at what Thanksgiving really feels like for so many of us.
Join us as we create new intellectual engagement for our audience. You can find more information at http://immigrantlypod.com.
Please share the love and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify to help more people find us!
You can connect with Saadia on IG @itssaadiak
Email: saadia@immigrantlypod.com
Host & Producer: Saadia Khan I Content Writer: Saadia Khan I Editorial review: Shei Yu I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Immigrantly Podcast is an Immigrantly Media Production.
For advertising inquiries, contact us at info@immigrantlypod.com
Want to go deeper into your own identity? Download Belong on Your Own Terms, the app helping first-gen, second-gen, and third-culture kids reclaim belonging on their own terms. link below
http://studio.com/saadia
Don't forget to subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for insightful podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nov 18, 2025 • 52min
Who Needs a Time Machine? I Changed Countries
What does it mean to belong in America without proving your worth? Why are immigrants still expected to be extraordinary just to be seen as enough? And what happens when we stop performing successfully and simply allow ourselves to be human?
In this deeply resonant conversation, host Saadia Khan is joined by Bilal Lakhani, Pakistani-American journalist, writer, and host of the podcast pehchaan, to explore identity, home, immigrant guilt, and the often-unspoken emotional cost of leaving the place you love.
Bilal shares how moving from Karachi to the United States led to clinical depression, why raising his daughter changed his understanding of belonging, and how many immigrants internalize the belief that they must achieve in order to deserve space in America. The episode unpacks
The pressure on immigrants to be extraordinary rather than ordinary humans
Why do many naturalized citizens hesitate to call themselves "immigrants?”
Why pauses, joy, and rest are a form of quiet protest
The evolving future of Pakistani-American identity and representation
Whether you identify as an immigrant, first-gen, third-culture kid, or simply someone trying to understand your place in the world, this conversation offers language, community, and comfort.
Join us as we create new intellectual engagement for our audience. You can find more information at http://immigrantlypod.com.
Please share the love and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify to help more people find us!
You can connect with Saadia on IG @itssaadiak
Email: saadia@immigrantlypod.com
Host & Producer: Saadia Khan I Content Writer: Saadia Khan I Editorial review: Shei Yu I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Immigrantly Podcast is an Immigrantly Media Production.
For advertising inquiries, contact us at info@immigrantlypod.com
Want to go deeper into your own pehchaan? Download Belong on Your Own Terms, the app helping immigrants, first-gen, and third-culture kids reclaim belonging on their own terms. link below
studio.com/saadia/belong-app
Don't forget to subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for insightful podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nov 11, 2025 • 52min
Reproductive Care, Eugenics and the Myth of Too Many People
What if the story you’ve been told about “overpopulation” is a lie?
Historian Dr. Lina-Maria Murillo, author of Fighting for Control: Power, Reproductive Care, and Race in the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands, joins Saadia Khan to unravel a century of reproductive politics that have shaped how we talk about abortion, contraception, and “desirability.” The episode exposes how eugenics quietly evolved into modern population-control policies and why blaming poor folks for “too many children” masks the real crisis: resource hoarding and racial capitalism.
From Mexican border clinics to U.S. legislative battles, this conversation challenges everything we think we know about reproductive rights. It’s uncomfortable, revelatory, and necessary.
Listen to understand why true reproductive justice means more than the right not to have children; it means the right to raise them in safety, dignity, and care.
Join us as we create new intellectual engagement for our audience. You can find more information at http://immigrantlypod.com.
Please share the love and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify to help more people find us!
You can connect with Saadia on IG @itssaadiak
Email: saadia@immigrantlypod.com
Host & Producer: Saadia Khan I Content Writer: Saadia Khan I Editorial review: Shei Yu I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Immigrantly Podcast is an Immigrantly Media Production.
For advertising inquiries, contact us at info@immigrantlypod.com
Don't forget to subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for insightful podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nov 4, 2025 • 47min
The Quiet After Snowfall
Award-winning novelist Shobha Rao joins Saadia Khan to talk about the stories that define and defy us. In this wide-ranging conversation, Shobha reflects on immigrating to the U.S. at age seven, learning English through Little House on the Prairie, and how the quiet of her first snowfall changed her forever.
Her latest book, Indian Country, connects the legacies of British colonialism and American expansion while weaving a tender meditation on marriage, identity, and the longing for home. Shobha shares how failure shaped her writing, why language can both limit and liberate, and what “mutating through love” truly means.
Join us as we create new intellectual engagement for our audience. You can find more information at http://immigrantlypod.com.
Please share the love and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify to help more people find us!
You can connect with Saadia on IG @itssaadiak
Email: saadia@immigrantlypod.com
Host & Producer: Saadia Khan I Content Writer: Saadia Khan I Editorial review: Shei Yu I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Immigrantly Podcast is an Immigrantly Media Production.
For advertising inquiries, contact us at info@immigrantlypod.com
Don't forget to subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for insightful podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oct 28, 2025 • 16min
What We Are Called: The Language That Keeps Immigrants Out
Don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter, Hyphenly; it's our no-fluff love letter with hot takes, heartfelt stories, and all the feels of living in between cultures. Come for the nuance, stay for the vibes! Link below
https://hyphenly.beehiiv.com
In this powerful solo episode of Immigrantly, host Saadia Khan shares why she is angry and why she is paying close attention to the words we use around immigration. Prompted by a recent ProPublica investigation by journalist Hannah Allam, Saadia explores how government agencies like ICE use terms like “removable,” “alien,” and “target” to strip immigrants of their humanity.
From media narratives to political rhetoric, Saadia breaks down how language builds systems and why the shift in migrant demographics, especially the rise of families and children crossing the border, has triggered a more fear-based response in both policy and media.
This episode is a reflection, a call-out, and a call-in because changing the language is the first step toward changing the system.
Join us as we create new intellectual engagement for our audience. You can find more information at http://immigrantlypod.com.
Please share the love and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify to help more people find us!
You can connect with Saadia on IG @itssaadiak
Email: saadia@immigrantlypod.com
Host & Producer: Saadia Khan I Content Writer: Saadia Khan I Editorial review: Shei Yu I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Immigrantly Podcast is an Immigrantly Media Production.
For advertising inquiries, contact us at info@immigrantlypod.com
Don't forget to subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for insightful podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oct 21, 2025 • 49min
Grief, Memory and the Art of Enough
Don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter, Hyphenly; it's our no-fluff love letter with hot takes, heartfelt stories, and all the feels of living in between cultures. Come for the nuance, stay for the vibes! Link below
https://hyphenly.beehiiv.com
What does “enough” really mean? In this profoundly personal conversation, Saadia Khan sits down with Jaime Roque, musician, storyteller, and host of Recurrent. This Getty podcast uncovers the hidden stories behind monuments, places, and people.
Born to Mexican immigrant parents, Jaime grew up between California’s Central Valley and Los Angeles, surrounded by music, community, and the sounds of his family’s jewelry shop. From farmwork to fatherhood, he reflects on how loss, love, and art shape his identity and why he now embraces what he calls “the art of enough.”
Saadia and Jaime explore how storytelling helps us reclaim what’s sacred, challenge expectations, and honor the people who shaped us.
This episode is an invitation to slow down, find meaning in the quiet moments, and celebrate the fullness of our identities.
Join us as we create new intellectual engagement for our audience. You can find more information at http://immigrantlypod.com.
Please share the love and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify to help more people find us!
You can connect with Saadia on IG @itssaadiak
Email: saadia@immigrantlypod.com
Host & Producer: Saadia Khan I Content Writer: Saadia Khan I Editorial review: Shei Yu I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Immigrantly Podcast is an Immigrantly Media Production.
For advertising inquiries, contact us at info@immigrantlypod.com
Don't forget to subscribe to Immigrantly Uninterrupted for insightful podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oct 14, 2025 • 1h 4min
Why We Don’t Act and How to Change That
Don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter, Hyphenly; it's our no-fluff love letter with hot takes, heartfelt stories, and all the feels of living in between cultures. Come for the nuance, stay for the vibes! Link below
https://hyphenly.beehiiv.com
Most of us mean well. So why don’t we act when it matters?
In this episode, Saadia Khan sits down with philosophers Alex Madva (Cal Poly Pomona) and Michael Brownstein (John Jay College, CUNY), co-authors of Somebody Should Do Something from MIT Press. The episode unpacks the gap between good intentions and meaningful action, exploring why moral inertia is so common, how cynicism can masquerade as realism, and what it really takes to move from awareness to impact.
If you’ve ever wondered why doing good feels so hard, this conversation offers a mix of clarity, challenge, and hope.
Join us as we create new intellectual engagement for our audience. You can find more information at http://immigrantlypod.com.
Please share the love and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify to help more people find us!
You can connect with Saadia on IG @itssaadiak
Email: saadia@immigrantlypod.com
Host & Producer: Saadia Khan I Content Writer: Saadia Khan I Editorial review: Shei Yu I Sound Designer & Editor: Lou Raskin I Immigrantly Theme Music: Simon Hutchinson | Other Music: Epidemic Sound
Immigrantly Podcast is an Immigrantly Media Production.
For advertising inquiries, contact us at info@immigrantlypod.com
Don't forget to subscribe to our Apple Podcasts channel for insightful podcasts. Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oct 7, 2025 • 52min
How Priyanka Ganjoo Built Kulfi Beauty’s Inclusive Vision
Priyanka Ganjoo, founder of Kulfi Beauty and former Estée Lauder and Ipsy executive, shares her inspiring journey as a South Asian entrepreneur. She discusses how her wedding planning ignited her passion for inclusivity in beauty, leading to the creation of products like the cherished 'Nazar No More' kajal. Priyanka dives into the importance of cultural storytelling, challenges of representation, and how joy and self-expression are central to her brand, while reshaping the beauty industry to embrace diversity.


