Who gets to define America? Immigrantly is Saadia Khan's weekly attempt to answer that — with artists, academics, cultural disruptors, and people whose ordinary lives contain something extraordinary. Saadia has worked in human rights, built a media company, and spent twelve years becoming an American — which is a long time to think about a question most people never ask. We go past the surface to the messy beauty of belonging. Identity is powerful, but unchecked it becomes an ego trap — so every…
Saves to your Listen queue, to pick up on another day or another device.
Feed Drop: Did You Know the Girl Scouts Was Led by a Pakistani American? Meet Noorain Khan (from Pehchaan)
This week, we're sharing an episode from Pehchaan, hosted by Bilal Lakhani with co-host Ambreen Ali, a show about the Pakistani diaspora in the US, told by the people living it. Their guest is Noorain Khan, who joined the Girl Scouts as a second grader in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and three decades later became the first Muslim American to lead the organization as National Board President. She's now…
Solo Episode: I Memorized the Civil War. Gettysburg Made Me Feel It
There's a question on the U.S. citizenship test, question 74, that asks you to name one cause of the Civil War. The Government accepts three answers: slavery, economic reasons, states' rights. Saadia memorized all three. She passed. She became a citizen. And she never felt a single one of them. Then, on a detour from a wedding in Maryland, she spent an afternoon at the Gettysburg museum in…
UNRWA USA CEO Mara Kronenfeld on Gaza, Genocide And Jewish Identity
UNRWA USA CEO Mara Kronenfeld is a Jewish American woman and the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor — and she leads the American nonprofit supporting the UN agency for Palestine refugees. In this episode of Immigrantly, Saadia Khan asks her what it costs to break the script. Mara traces her path from Riverside, California to a Fulbright year in Damascus, where friendships built in Yarmouk…
Feed Drop: Occupy! Episode 1: The Invitation (by Future Hindsight)
In 2011, a handful of skeptical New Yorkers answer a call to Occupy Wall Street. What they find feels less like a protest and more like a glimpse of a different world—one where people openly share stories of debt, hardship, and frustration. They start to build an anti-capitalist village in a tiny Manhattan park — under the watchful eyes of police. This is the first episode of Future Hindsight’s…
My First Guest Returns: Sahar Saleem on Corporate Exits And Somatic Healing
Seven years ago, Sahar Saleem was the first-ever guest on Immigrantly, talking about her creative marketing career at PepsiCo. She's back, and everything has changed. In this episode, we talk about leaving a corporate "dream job," breaking into screenwriting in LA right as the writers' strike hit, the quiet blacklisting of pro-Palestinian voices in Hollywood, and her pilot Cash, about a Pakistani…
Darializa Avila Chevalier Refuses to Fit in Your Box
"No one fits into these types of boxes." Darializa Avila Chevalier has spent her whole life being asked to pick one: Black or Latina, Dominican or American, organizer or politician. Two weeks ago, the 32-year-old from Harlem broke the biggest box of all, defeating a five-term incumbent to win the Democratic nomination in New York's 13th Congressional District, with no corporate money and no party…
Who Gets to Be American? A History of Birthright Citizenship on Trial (July 2025)
The Supreme Court just upheld birthright citizenship, striking down Trump's executive order in a 6-3 ruling that leans directly on a case 130 years in the making. We're re-releasing our deep dive into Wong Kim Ark — the Chinese American son of immigrants who won this exact fight at the Supreme Court in 1898 — because Chief Justice Roberts built this week's decision on Wong's story, by name. In…
Sharing a special episode this week from the More Muslim podcast. Reporter Tanita Rahmani realizes a small detail—blue ink instead of black on a marriage contract—means her marriage was never legally registered. That revelation sends her on a personal and investigative journey into the legal gray zone where many Muslim marriages exist: recognized by faith, but invisible to the law. From overlooked…
There's a voting bloc large enough to decide 126 congressional races and most of it isn't showing up. In this episode, Saadia Khan breaks down data on naturalized citizens, immigrant voter turnout, and civic participation in America, and makes the case that the ballot is one of the most powerful tools immigrants have but aren't using. From New York's 2026 primary to the $383 billion immigrants pay…
Too Foreign for Home, Too Foreign for Here (March 2025)
What does it really mean to belong, and what happens when belonging feels like betrayal? Beatriz Nour has lived this question. Born in France, raised between Brazil and Egypt, and based in Dubai for nearly a decade, she's the creator of the podcast InBetweenish and someone who knows firsthand what it costs to reject your heritage, and what it takes to slowly find your way back to it. In this…
