Strictly Facts: A Guide to Caribbean History and Culture

Strictly Facts: A Guide to Caribbean History and Culture

Are you passionate about Caribbean history, its diverse culture, and its impact on the world? Join Strictly Facts: A Guide to Caribbean History and Culture as we explore the rich tapestry of Caribbean stories told through the eyes of its people – historians, artists, experts, and enthusiasts who share empowering facts about the region’s past, present, and future. Strictly Facts is a biweekly podcast, hosted by Alexandria Miller, that delves deep into the heart and soul of the Caribbean, celebrating its vibrant heritage, widespread diaspora, and the stories that shaped it. Through this immersive journey into the Caribbean experience, this educational series empowers, elevates, and unifies the Caribbean, its various cultures, and its global reach across borders.

Episodes

March 4, 2026 9 mins

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

What happens when you go searching for the words of Caribbean women—and find silence where there should be an echo? We follow that uneasy question into the kitchens, verandas, classrooms, and studios where wisdom has always lived, then ask why so little of it appears on slides, posters, and timelines. Along the way, we unpack how publishing power, archival choices, and diaspora netwo...

Mark as Played

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

A woman signs up 3,000 new members, walks into a meeting she was invited to lead, and is assassinated at the podium. That single moment opens a window into the hidden architecture of a global movement and the women who kept it alive when headlines and historians looked away. We continue our conversation with Dr. Natanya Duncan to explore the life and legacy of Princess Laura Adorkor ...

Mark as Played

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

What happens when the archive starts talking back? We sat down with Dr. Natanya Duncan to illuminate the women who built the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) from the ground up and gave the movement its global muscle. From a Kingston porch to Harlem kitchens and London cafés, their labor carried Garveyism across continents while reshaping what Black leadership looked li...

Mark as Played
January 21, 2026 14 mins

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

Think you know the Garvey story? Meet the two Amys who built its backbone. We dive into the lives of Amy Ashwood Garvey and Amy Jacques Garvey, Jamaican visionaries whose organizing, editing, and leadership turned a charismatic vision into a global movement. Their names appear in the margins of many textbooks, but their fingerprints are on every chapter of Garveyism’s rise, reach, an...

Mark as Played
January 7, 2026 7 mins

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

We are starting the year with a heart of gratitude and a clear plan for what comes next. We celebrate five years of Strictly Facts by looking at how this community-built project became a classroom, a living archive, and a love letter to Caribbean voices. Along the way, we reflect on the milestones of 2025. We revisit why this space exists: to center Caribbean history as a global stor...

Mark as Played

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

Celebrate the holidays with us with a throwback episode as we open a window onto a season where streets become stages, kitchens turn into archives, and every drumbeat and carol carries a story. From the clatter of cowbells in Nassau to the smoky crackle of a roast pig on Christmas Eve, the region’s holidays reveal how history lives in sound, taste, and togetherness. We start with the...

Mark as Played

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

A school bans “edges,” a graduation blocks braids, a child with locks is told to stay home—on the surface, they’re dress code debates. Look closer and you see a lineage of power: colonial respectability, “imperial cleanliness,” and the policing of Black and Brown bodies through hair. We sit down with artist, educator, and gender rights advocate amilcar sanatan to map how grooming rul...

Mark as Played

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

A building can be history you can walk through, and in the Caribbean those stories are contested, resilient, and alive. With Professor Dahlia Nduom, we explore how colonial styles, tourist imagery, and community ingenuity have shaped what gets built and what gets erased as we move from great houses to tenement yards, spaces that encode climate logic, kinship, and care. We unpack how ...

Mark as Played

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

A storm can level homes, but it also reveals what we stand on. Hurricane Melissa’s record winds and devastating surge tore through Jamaica and neighboring territories, but the story is bigger than wind speed—it’s a living history of language, science, memory, and community that runs through the Caribbean. We trace the roots of “hurricane” to Taino and Kalinago cosmologies, revisit Cu...

Mark as Played

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

Sacred land, contested memory, and a centuries-long fight for sovereignty, this conversation with Dr. Garrey Dennie traces the deep antiquity of the Kalinago in St. Vincent, their transformation into a maritime powerhouse, and the strategic choices that delayed European domination for generations. Instead of a single “first contact,” we explore two: the catastrophic arrival of Europe...

Mark as Played

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

What if the medicine you need was growing right outside your door? We sit down with author and farmer Aleya Fraser to trace the living thread of Caribbean herbalism as she details in her new book Caribbean Herbalism: Traditional Wisdom and Modern Herbal Healing

Together, we unpack the tension between modern convenience and disappearing habitats, and we get practical about ...

Mark as Played

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

What if everything we thought we knew about Caribbean literary history was incomplete? That's the premise of today's captivating conversation with Professor Alison Donnell, whose groundbreaking new book, Lost and Found: An A to Z of Neglected Writers of the Anglophone Caribbean (Papillote Press 2025), challenges the traditional narrative that Caribbean literature primarily ...

Mark as Played

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

In the mid-20th century Caribbean, cinema became a powerful tool for nation-building, education, and political messaging through two remarkable organizations with surprisingly parallel methods but divergent ideologies. Dr. Pedro Noel Doreste Rodríguez joins us for this enchanting history in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month.

The story begins in 1949 when Puerto Rico es...

Mark as Played

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

Storytelling lies at the heart of Caribbean identity. Award-winning filmmaker Alyscia Cunningham joins us to unravel the power of Caribbean folklore through the lens of modern cinema. As a first-generation Trinidadian-American, Cunningham's childhood was filled with spine-tingling tales from her parents' homeland in southern Trinidad. Today, she channels those experiences i...

Mark as Played

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

When we lose a loved one, the stories they carried often disappear with them—unless we find ways to preserve them. This powerful truth drives creative consultant Calvin Walker's experimental audio project "Daylight Come," which traces his family's migration from Jamaica to the United Kingdom and connects deeply personal narratives to broader historical movements. ...

Mark as Played

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

What drives someone to pick up a camera and document untold Caribbean history with no formal training? For Richard Vaughn, it was a simple realization: the political stories that shaped the modern Caribbean were either missing from film archives or told through a heavily biased lens. Vaughn takes us on his remarkable journey from curious Jamaican-American to award-winning documentary...

Mark as Played

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

 Thirty-five years ago on July 27, 1990, Trinidad and Tobago experienced a shocking violation of its democratic foundations when Yasin Abu Bakr and the Jamaat al-Muslimeen stormed Parliament and the national television station, holding the Prime Minister hostage and declaring the government overthrown. This episode delves into a Caribbean coup that rarely makes the history books but ...

Mark as Played

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

Freedom wasn't granted—it was seized through blood, sweat, and unwavering resistance. Across the Dutch and Danish Caribbean colonies, enslaved Africans fought against brutal systems of oppression that are often overshadowed in mainstream historical narratives focused on British, Spanish, and French colonial powers.

When thousands gathered in St. Croix on July 2nd, 1848,...

Mark as Played

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

When we picture World War I and II, we rarely envision Caribbean soldiers in RAF uniforms flying bombing missions over Nazi Germany or Trinidad's oil refineries fueling the Battle of Britain. Yet these overlooked contributions not only helped defeat fascism but transformed the Caribbean's political landscape forever. In this eye-opening episode, historian John Concagh joins...

Mark as Played

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.

Caribbean American Heritage Month invites us to explore the rich tapestry of identities that shape our diaspora experience. In this episode, we uncover the fascinating yet often overlooked story of "The Merikins" – formerly enslaved Black people who joined British forces during the War of 1812 and later established thriving communities in southern Trinidad. After gaining th...

Mark as Played

Popular Podcasts

    If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

    Dateline NBC

    Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

    Betrayal Season 5

    Saskia Inwood woke up one morning, knowing her life would never be the same. The night before, she learned the unimaginable – that the husband she knew in the light of day was a different person after dark. This season unpacks Saskia’s discovery of her husband’s secret life and her fight to bring him to justice. Along the way, we expose a crime that is just coming to light. This is also a story about the myth of the “perfect victim:” who gets believed, who gets doubted, and why. We follow Saskia as she works to reclaim her body, her voice, and her life. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at betrayalpod@gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.

    The Dan Bongino Show

    The Dan Bongino Show delivers no-nonsense analysis of the day’s most important political and cultural stories. Hosted by the former Deputy Director of the FBI, former Secret Service agent, NYPD officer, and bestselling author Dan Bongino, the show cuts through media spin with facts, accountability, and unapologetic conviction. Whether it’s exposing government overreach, defending constitutional freedoms, or connecting the dots the mainstream media ignores, The Dan Bongino Show provides in-depth analysis of the issues shaping America today. Each episode features sharp commentary, deep dives into breaking news, and behind-the-scenes insight you won’t hear anywhere else. Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dan-bongino-show/id965293227?mt=2 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4sftHO603JaFqpuQBEZReL?si=PBlx46DyS5KxCuCXMOrQvw Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/bongino?e9s=src_v1_sa%2Csrc_v4_sa_o

    The Breakfast Club

    The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!

Advertise With Us
Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2026 iHeartMedia, Inc.