Far Flung with Saleem Reshamwala is a journey across the globe in search of the world's most surprising and imaginative ideas. It's not a travel show, exactly. It's a deep dive into the ideas that shape a particular spot on the map, brought to you by local journalists and creators. Weave through the streets of Bangkok with a motorcycle midwife. Time-travel with dinosaurs behind a hardware store in New Jersey. Meet a guy who dresses up as a luchador to protect citizens from traffic in Mexico City. Drop in, listen up, dig deep.
(And yes, we used to be called Pindrop!)
Far Flung with Saleem Reshamwala tells regional stories that deserve a global audience. Host Saleem Reshamwala is a writer and film director known for point-of-view documentaries and hip-hop videos. He also hosts the More Than A Feeling podcast and founded KidEthnic. Reshamwala contributed to an Emmy-nominated project about race for The New York Times. He identifies as Indian, Japanese, and white.
The podcast explores parts of cities that listeners might not know about. Insightful collaborators visit various destinations with him to interview locals. Nairobi, Bangkok, and Lima are among the locations. Some places are virtual, including Fortnite battlefields and Sea of Thieves.
Shirlette Ammons joins the podcast's host to visit Soul City, North Carolina. Ammons is a writer, film producer, and musician who grew up near Soul City in a town with an opposing agenda. Floyd McKissick developed Soul City in 1969 to welcome people of every ethnicity. Ammons says Black people built, populated, and governed it. It featured swimming pools and tennis courts, which minorities couldn't use elsewhere.
Ammons lived in a "shack" with an outhouse in the 1980s. She worked in pecan, tobacco, and potato fields for white farmers who owned her home. Ammons calls being Black a 24-hour job. It requires constant surveillance to ensure actions and voices aren't perceived as threats. Soul City sounded like a place to escape that. An original Soul City resident discusses whether it is a utopia.
A resident of Trieste in Italy tells listeners about the infamous bora wind. Trieste encounters cold, forceful wind that makes some residents energized and others anxious. It causes electric shocks when people shake hands. Many Trieste trees remain leafless on one side. Reshamwala investigates how wind affects people in ways they don't expect. A breeze on a hot beach could be a fire spreader in a dry forest. Switzerland's Foehn winds blow waterfalls upwards and cause reported paranoia. The wind is unpredictable and often unnoticed until it's detrimental.
This podcast reveals aspects of individual cities with applicable lessons for the world. Far Flung with Saleem Reshamwala drops new episodes on an intermittent basis.
Episodes