In this episode, we sit with Kamini Ramachandran, a storyteller, educator, and creative force behind MoonShadow Stories and Storyfest Singapore.

🎧 Listen to hear about:

* Her grandfather, the storyteller: a planter from Kerala who lived in Malaya, from whom Kamini learnt to love stories

* The wildness of nature 🐍: a cobra encounter at four, the love of a dog named Bobby 🐕, and how he protected her

* Cherishing books 📚 that allowed her to travel into her imagination, and magazines that allowed her to travel everywhere else

* The living, breathing art of oral storytelling, and why it matters beyond childhood

* Why she disdains the idea of “moral endings” in stories, asking her audience to find meaning that is personal and discovered

* Nights spent with the Elders of the Tiamar, and her time visiting the Orang Asli

* The importance of sharing stories — sharing with permission, consent, and acknowledgement

* Working with AI 🤖 and realising that she no longer fears it

* Immersive storytelling through projects like Harry Potter and Jurassic Park: The Exhibition 🎭

* The power of stories to remind you that you are not alone — to ground, connect, and heal 💛

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Does your family history live in its favourite foods? Do you see food not just as sustenance, but as legacy, identity, and history — passed from hand to hand, from kitchen to kitchen? If so, this podcast is for you.

In this episode, we speak to Chef Devagi, the Spice Queen of Singapore. She shares recipes, yes — but more importantly, stories of resilience and reinvention.


Listen to hear about:

* migration stories that stretch from India and East Timor to Burma and, finally, Singapore

* glimpses of 1950s Singapore — kampung life, Waterloo Street hawkers, and walking to Paya Lebar airport to wave at strangers

* the letter to The Straits Times, signed “poor student”, that would fund her education

* United Nations food rations turned into pancakes, payasam, gulab jamun

* HDB stories of food crossing corridors: Chinese, Malay, and Indian families exchanging dishes and ideas

* the three women who shaped her — her grandmother, mother, and periamma — and their thosai stalls

* how she went from school clerk to cooking teacher, to becoming the Spice Queen of Singapore

* original recipes and stories of Singaporean Indian dishes: Thanni saaru, tahu sambal, pink condensed-milk kesari, appam jala/roti jala, and an Indian-style mutton rendang

* resilience and reinvention — how Chef Devagi kept moving forward and stayed hungry

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of The Brown Box, we chat with Yulianna Frederika, co-founder of Lepak Conversations — an online advocacy platform bringing vital Malay Muslim issues into the mainstream.

This is a deeply personal conversation, with Yulianna consciously moving away from the version of herself that tried to fit into the moulds people expected, and towards a more authentic and truthful way of being.

We speak about:

• Growing up in an interfaith family, with Muslim prayers and Christian music woven into daily life

• Her Indonesian heritage — a great-grandmother with royal roots, and a great-grandfather who was an artist

• The auntie who shared her room and opened up the world for her

• A difficult relationship with her mother, who used her Malayness against her, and whose love language was food

• Wearing the hijab, and later understanding the prejudice hijab-wearing women face

• Starting Lepak Conversations

• Its work supporting Malay/Muslim mental health through campaigns like You Ok Bro?

• Speaking up for Palestine

• Batik — and finding her way back home through its patterns and stories

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.