Who we are, where we come from, and how we reconnect.
Stories and conversations about how people reconnect with their cultural heritage and what it means to them.
Through interviews, personal stories, and solo episodes, Roots Renewed explores identity, family, migration, adoption, language, belonging, and legacy. It also looks at the everyday ways culture lives in our lives.
“I was told not to say I was Oromo.”
“I still can’t get it right.”
“Everyone finally looked like me.”
The show looks at cultural connection from many starting points: interrupted relationships, new discoveries, deep existing ties, difficult inheritance, preservation, and legacy.
The show explores questions like:
Newest first
Tami Dee García
Legacy & Preservation • Family History & Genealogy
She almost threw away her great-grandmother’s rocking chair. Years later, it became the fragment that helped her see how much of her family story was hiding in plain sight.
Watch / Listen → to I Almost Threw It AwayDr. Jason Johnson interviews Tami Dee García
Cultural Identity & Belonging • Legacy & Preservation
After years of making unconventional choices about family, identity, and career, Tami lets a longtime friend turn the questions back on her.
Watch / Listen → to I Did What I Wanted. Not What They Wanted.Tami Dee García
Language • Cultural Identity & Belonging
Tami tells her own story of growing up cut off from her Dominican and Jamaican heritage.
Watch / Listen → to How Can a García Not Speak Spanish?Aselefech Evans
Adoption • Cultural Identity & Belonging
An Ethiopian adoptee was told not to say she was Oromo, and it took 30 years to claim it.
Watch / Listen → to She Hid Her Oromo Identity for 30 Years. Then She Learned Why.Natalie Preddie
Cultural Identity & Belonging • Diaspora & Migration
Kings and queens in her lineage, and she still asks whether she has earned the right to claim it.
Watch / Listen → to It Was Always JamaicaGreg Maurice
Cultural Identity & Belonging • Diaspora & Migration
Too Haitian for some rooms and not Black enough for others, he chooses his culture every day.
Watch / Listen → to Not Haitian Enough. Not Black Enough.Hilary Giovale
Difficult Inheritance • Family History & Genealogy
A ninth-generation settler learned her ancestors gained from stolen land and enslaved labor, and chose repair.
Watch / Listen → to The Amnesia of WhitenessMelat Terefe
Legacy & Preservation • Diaspora & Migration
Her fashion brand DolMel turns her grandmother’s tattoo patterns into a way home for Ethiopians abroad.
Watch / Listen → to Tattoos Like Her GrandmotherHugo Maynard
Diaspora & Migration • Cultural Identity & Belonging
He had every kind of success but felt empty until he went back to his St. Kitts and Nevis roots.
Watch / Listen → to The Bentley Was a Prison.Kim Lawson
Family History & Genealogy • Diaspora & Migration
A DNA test after her mother’s death led to a village, a queen mother who looked like her, and Ghanaian citizenship.
Watch / Listen → to A DNA Test. A Ghanaian Passport.Roberto Hannibal
Legacy & Preservation • Cultural Identity & Belonging
Food and music keep him connected to where he comes from, even as the family recipes remind him how much can be lost when knowledge is not passed on.
Watch / Listen → to “I Still Can’t Get It Right”Tamara Buzyna Adams
Family History & Genealogy • Legacy & Preservation
Her grandmother’s Russian Civil War diaries held a story nobody in the family had asked about.
Watch / Listen → to They Didn’t Want to Remember. Nobody Asked.Marla Teyolia
Cultural Identity & Belonging • Diaspora & Migration
The only one in her family born on this side of the border, she became an Indigenous healer.
Watch / Listen → to The Ancestors Called My NameLisa Dare
Cultural Identity & Belonging • Legacy & Preservation
She code-switched so completely a friend “forgot” she was Chinese, and now the elders who taught her are gone.
Watch / Listen → to “I Forgot You Were Chinese.”Natalie Berthe
Difficult Inheritance • Legacy & Preservation
She moves from finding the truth to deciding what to do about it.
Watch / Listen → to Stop Whitewashing It. (Part 2)Jessica Fischer Golden
Language • Diaspora & Migration
Her family helped build the Panama Canal, and years later her daughter asked, “Can you speak regular?”
Watch / Listen → to Can You Speak Regular?Natalie Berthe
Difficult Inheritance • Family History & Genealogy
She spent her life fighting racism, then learned her Belgian family helped run the Congo.
Watch / Listen → to My Family Colonized the Congo. (Part 1)Chlarissa Harrison
Family History & Genealogy • Legacy & Preservation
She found a spiritual tradition in her own family that no one had talked about.
Watch / Listen → to Their Comfort Is Not My Concern.Ariana Quinones
Adoption • Family History & Genealogy
Adopted into a Puerto Rican family, a DNA test revealed she was Ecuadorian and led to a nephew her husband already knew.
Watch / Listen → to Everyone Finally Looked Like Me.Dr. Omowale Crenshaw
Diaspora & Migration • Cultural Identity & Belonging
He took an African name, then a night in Nigeria showed him how the continent saw him.
Watch / Listen → to Same Ship. Different Stop.Anika Hobbs
Cultural Identity & Belonging • Diaspora & Migration
She built a store for African diaspora design, and someone still walked in and called her “just regular Black.”
Watch / Listen → to Just Regular Black?Marie-Yolaine Toms
Cultural Identity & Belonging • Diaspora & Migration
A first-grade teacher gave her a new name, and hearing her real name called on a mountain in Haiti brought it back.
Watch / Listen → to Reclaiming My NameShowing 9 of 22 episodes
