Culture Clash Radio
My momma always told me I had a face for radio, but accessing that rarefied air seemed forever beyond my grasp…, or so it was until I became a grad student (university radio is surprisingly accessible now that few people listen to it). In 2014, I started Culture Clash, a show about the varieties of the expat experience, on Boğaziçi Radyo. My co-host at that time was Andrew Estey, a Canadian with many stories to tell of coming of age in Ankara and Istanbul.
After a successful season in which we built a global fan base of dozens, we had to take an unexpectedly long haitus when I went to NYU for an exchange semester and Andrew returned to the happy, desolate tundras of Alberta, Canada. After I returned from NYU, I simple never found a suitable replacement for Andrew. He was my Karl Pilkington, and those (sadly) don’t grow on trees. Marriage, graduation and the trials of building a career in a foreign country made a return to radio a remote prospect.
Many a long year passed before I found myself again a grad student, this time at Koç University. I won’t pretend that the empty recording booth prominently positioned in the student union wasn’t the thing that most stood out to me about this new university, but would I have the time for a new show, and most importantly (after seeing it empty for months): did Koç University still even have an radio club?
It turned out that they do, and off I was on a new adventure riding those tasty electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 Hz and 300 GHz. This second season saw weekly guests join me in the booth to discuss their experiences of cultural immersion in Turkey and abroad and featured a bit more serious and insightful conversation than did the innagural season with Andrew. The show also managed to expand to two hours, giving us time to really deep dive into our topics and to play more music than ever before.
The show is now on haitus from recording due to the Corona virus pandemic, but will return later this year. Check out previous episodes on the Youtube channel.