Cultural identity is often woven this way; we inherit names, habits, celebrations and stories before we understand their significance, then spend years deciding how they fit into our lives. The most interesting question may be what happens to those inheritances once they belong to us.
That question runs through Who Are You? Your Identity | Your Issue, a podcast hosted by Lebo Poen that explores culture, heritage, memory and the experiences people grow up with. Its episode topics range from personal names and dance to less expected intersections of history, art and everyday customs, giving listeners several ways into a subject that rarely has one straightforward answer.
A Name Has a Life Beyond Its Meaning
A name can carry a family’s ambitions, a language, a tribute to someone who came before or a choice made simply because it sounded beautiful. The person who receives it may eventually know its origin by heart, have only a fragment of the story or discover that different relatives remember the decision differently.
Then the name enters the wider world. Teachers attempt a pronunciation, friends invent shortcuts and official forms sometimes leave little room for the way a person actually introduces themselves. A nickname might feel affectionate in one setting and dismissive in another, depending on who uses it and whether it was welcomed.
Names also change their emotional weight over time. Someone who once wanted a name that would attract less attention may later treasure its connection to family; someone else may love their heritage yet choose to be known differently. Neither response cancels the history attached to the name.
The podcast includes an episode called ‘What’s In a Name?’ It is an approachable entry point for anyone curious about cultural identity because everyone has experience with names, even if their relationships with those names are very different. One apparently ordinary detail opens questions about inheritance, belonging and the freedom to define yourself.
Traditions Are Learnt in Motion
A tradition can look permanent when you watch it from a distance. Up close, it depends on people remembering steps, teaching children, making time for gatherings and sometimes improvising when circumstances change. Every repetition involves someone making the tradition happen again.
Dance makes that process visible. A person might learn by following the movements of older relatives at celebrations, while someone else encounters the same form through classes or performances far from its place of origin. The physical movement may be recognisable in both settings, yet the relationships and memories surrounding it can be quite different.
‘Dance Across Cultures with Kay’ brings this form of cultural expression into Lebo Poen’s podcast catalogue. It offers a specific subject for listeners interested in the ways people encounter traditions through movement, participation and shared experiences.
Preserving a tradition also involves decisions. A family might simplify a celebration when relatives live far apart, teach a younger generation in another language or combine familiar practices with new ones. Those choices can lead to disagreements, but they also reveal how culture continues through people whose circumstances keep changing.
Everyday Customs Carry Different Meanings
Consider the social customs surrounding a shared drink. The setting, occasion and people involved can influence whether it represents hospitality, celebration or an established family practice. What feels familiar in one environment may carry different associations elsewhere.
Lebo Poen’s catalogue includes a conversation with Tuanni Price about wine across cultures, placing a particular social and cultural subject alongside episodes on names and dance. These different subjects invite listeners to think about the practices through which people express belonging and recognise traditions. They also demonstrate how the podcast approaches identity through experiences that extend beyond conventional discussions of ancestry.
Customs have practical histories, too. Ingredients become easier or harder to obtain, people move and younger generations decide which parts of a gathering they want to preserve. An inherited practice can be cherished by one family member and questioned by another without either person having to abandon their connection to the family.
If you have ever tried to explain why a small ritual feels meaningful, you already know how difficult that can be. Its significance may rest in the person who taught it to you, the place where you once performed it or the comfort of knowing that someone else remembers it too.
The Stories We Inherit Are Not Perfect Records
Family memories are full of disagreements that begin with, ‘That is not how it happened.’ Two siblings can remember the same childhood event differently, and a story repeated for decades can gradually acquire details nobody can trace. Remembering involves perspective, rather than a flawless recording of the past.
Those stories still shape how people see themselves. A grandparent’s account of migration may influence a younger relative’s idea of courage, while a tale about a family business or a local neighbourhood may become part of how someone understands ambition and belonging. Later questions can complicate the cherished version without making the relationship behind it meaningless.
The episode ‘The Legacy of the Vikings, Poetry, Football with Dr Damian Garside’ offers an unusually varied combination of subjects within the podcast’s broader interest in identity. History, creative expression and sport may seem unlikely neighbours, yet each can provide a language through which people encounter a past, join a community or recognise something about themselves.
A person’s interest in historical traditions may coexist with a love of modern sporting culture or an attachment to a particular form of artistic expression. Those interests can draw on different communities and periods of history without needing to fit into one tidy account of heritage.
That range gives listeners different reasons to enter the podcast. Someone drawn to a conversation about dance may also become curious about the connections among history, poetry and football. The opportunity to encounter unfamiliar subjects is part of the attraction of exploring identity through individual experiences.
Belonging Does Not Come With a Single Test
People sometimes speak about heritage as though there were a checklist: speak the language fluently, know the recipes, observe the holidays, understand the history. These can be meaningful connections, but they do not describe everyone’s circumstances. Distance, family choices, displacement and ordinary change can alter which traditions a person has the chance to learn.
Someone who grew up far from their family’s place of origin may feel deeply attached to stories told at home and uncertain about customs practised elsewhere. Another person may know the language and celebrations well but feel little interest in continuing all of them. Both experiences can belong to a serious conversation about cultural identity.
There is an equally important distinction between inviting someone to share their experience and asking them to explain an entire community. No individual can speak for every person with a similar background, and even members of the same family may understand their heritage differently. The most memorable conversations leave enough room for disagreement, humour, affection and change.
These differences can also make people curious about their own assumptions. Hearing how someone else relates to a familiar tradition may raise questions about why certain practices have endured in your family while others have disappeared. An unfamiliar story can sometimes make your own background feel newly interesting.
Follow the Detail That Makes You Curious
You do not need an academic interest in cultural history to find a way into these subjects. A name you have always wondered about, a dance you recognise or an unexpected connection between history and a modern pursuit can be enough to begin exploring.
Lebo Poen’s selection of podcast topics offers several such starting points. You can try ‘What’s In a Name?’ if your own name has a story, or listen to ‘Dance Across Cultures with Kay’ if music and movement are closer to your experience. Different episodes offer different encounters with the show’s wider interest in what people inherit and what they make of it.
Listen to Who Are You? Your Identity | Your Issue on Spotify or YouTube, starting with whichever episode makes you curious enough to hear someone else’s story.
