Media Storm - This Is How You Do It: Coiled's Leanne Alie

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

Warning: Some strong language Media Storm hosts Mathilda and Helena meet their mainstream media matches! In this crossover bonus series with The Guilty Feminist, they interview journalists trying to make an imperfect industry a little bit less so, about their noble goals and - you guessed it - the hypocrisies and insecurities that undermine them! Brought to you by The Guilty Feminist, every other Thursday. This week’s episode features all-around broadcast queen Leanne Alie (TW: @leannealie / IG: @leannealie_). The host and creator of Coiled - an award-winning documentary podcast about Black hair - also pulls the strings behind-the-scenes as a podcast commissioner for BBC Sounds, where she advocates to bring unheard voices into the mainstream media. She spills the beans on the Black hair industry, shares some surprising stories she’s brought to the table in her role as BBC commissioner, and explains why more Black joy is needed in our news. The episode is hosted by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia). For more information on The Guilty Feminist and other episodes: visit https://www.guiltyfeminist.com tweet us https://www.twitter.com/guiltfempod like our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/guiltyfeminist check out our Instagram https://www.instagram.com/theguiltyfeminist or join our mailing list http://www.eepurl.com/bRfSPT For more information on Media Storm: Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/mediastormpod or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mediastormpod or Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@mediastormpod like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MediaStormPod send us an email [e-mail] check out our website https://mediastormpodcast.com Media Storm is brought to you by the house of The Guilty Feminist and is part of the Acast Creator Network.  The Guilty Feminist theme is by Mark Hodge and produced by Nick Sheldon. Media Storm music is by Samfire (@soundofsamfire). Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/media-storm. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Hulu original series Murdoch Death and the Family dives into secrets, deception, murder, and the fall of a powerful dynasty. Inspired by shocking actual events and drawing from the hit podcast, this series brings the drama to the screen like never before. Starring Academy Award winner Patricia Arquette and Jason Clark. Watch the Hulu original series Murdoch Death in the Family, streaming October 15th on Disney Plus. Welcome to This Is How You Do It, the mash-up series from The Guilty Feminist and Media Storm, where we celebrate the people working to make the media just that little bit better. I'm Helena Wadia. And I'm Matilda Mallinson and we're the hosts of MediaStorm,

the podcast that hands the mic to people with lived experience and calls out what the mainstream media could be doing better to report on marginalised groups. Our guest this week is a podcast, producer, presenter and a podcast. consultant and the host and creator of Coiled, the documentary podcast that explores black afro hair in all its forms and textures. It's Leanne Ali. Leanne, we are really happy to have you here. How are you doing? I'm good. Thank you for having me. Before we get cracking, it's a Tuesday evening when we're recording this and this Tuesday evening I really need some wine. Yeah. Can I offer you Pino, Griejo, carbon neutral, such fine? I love Fertilda's like, can I offer you the only bottle of wine

on the table, we'd have no other one. It's a pino-grito or pino-grijo? I went wine tasting for my birthday, which was incredible. Goes wine tasting once. I think she knows everything about wine. Check the colour against a piece of white paper. You know you smell it, but your whole nose in.

Twirl it to oxidise it. Obviously. We're doing this now. We're doing this now. A piece of paper. Does this say that it's cheap? And then on the first sip, you're supposed to like chew it to like prepare your mouth of the wine.

And then you take a sip. Honestly, that's horrible. I feel like that was open quite long time again. Is this the time where also I say that I am slightly allergic to white wine? Are you? Yeah, it always gives me a rash. Why am I drinking it? At least this is just an audio medium.

Keep drinking. Yeah, true, true. I really need a glass of wine today because I got cyberflashed this morning, which is not a term I'd ever heard of before. Do you know what that is? No, but I can hazard a guess. So someone out there in the world airdropped me a picture of their penis.

And so we spent the morning googling, how do you report being cyberflashed and is it illegal? And I don't actually think it's illegal yet. It said you had to report it to the British Transport Police, but this didn't happen on transport. This actually happened in our offices, so... Oh my gosh. The culprit is somewhere within these walls.

How do you even report that sort of thing? Or did they say screenshot it and contact 101 or something? I was like, I don't want a screenshot. I've already got one version of it on my phone. I don't need another. It's horrible. It's horrible. Let's move on to something a little bit more positive, which is everything about Leanne,

who's just amazing, which we know because actually we were at the women's podcast awards together earlier this year. And you rate up like the biggest award. I won runner up for a change in the world one moment of time. But you guys run an award as well, didn't you? Runner up as well. Yeah, we gave a speech. We gave a speech like we were the winners.

Yeah, I'd get off the stage. Yeah, we were runners up for role models, so I guess we're almost role models. and you're almost changing the world. I'll take it. I'll take it. We really wanted to have you on The Ann because you have a similar goal to Media Storm, which is about promoting diversity

and inclusion in the audio industry and beyond. We, of course, have to talk about your podcast, Coiled. Just tell us what Coiled is and how it started. So it's a documentary podcast like you guys mentioned, which takes Afro Hair and uses it as a lens to talk about other things, such as race, gender, culture and identity and in a broader sense

how that intersects with the Black British experience and the reason I wanted to start is because do you remember that very first lockdown that we had and then they let us out for the first time? Vividly. I remember vividly also

because it was August and I was going to a barbecue but I was like okay first thing first I need to go to the hair salon I need to sort out my hair and the very first thing I did is get my hair relaxed and I just did it without even thinking

which is when you chemically straighten your hair And then shortly after that, I watched Emma DeBiri's Hair Power Documentaries. So good. It's so good. And I watched it and everybody on the documentary was talking about how powerful their hair was, how amazing it was. And that's when I realized, oh, actually, my hair can't do any of these things because I've been straining it for so long. And that's when I realized, okay, maybe now is the time for me to, like, go back to my natural hair. And it just uncovered loads more questions that I wanted to explore and answer.

And I decided that I wanted to document that on a podcast as well as, transitioning from my relaxed hair back to natural hair because I'd been relaxing my hair since I was 10 years old. Wow. How has that transition been? Have you found that power that you saw being spoken about by these women? Completely. I could either do like the gradual thing, just wait for my roots to grow out or I could just chop the whole thing off. And I was really hesitant to chop it off because I'd never had my hair short. The more I learned, especially about the history of Afro hair and these Western ideas of how hair should look quote unquote. It was the best thing I think I've ever done. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You tell your own hair journey on the podcast, but you also, as you mentioned, find out loads of things about the history of black hair. What were some of the most interesting things you found out about the black hair care industry? I'll give you like my top three. So the first thing was in the post-colonial days, hair was more of a marker of race than skin colour, which really transfers into today's world if you think about ideal standards of beauty. So if your hair was more kinkier or coylier, you'd be considered more black than even looking at your skin tone, which I thought was really interesting. The other thing as well is that such a big chunk of the hair care industry does not even belong to the black community.

Well, that leads us on to something very interesting, I think, which is that you won moment of the year, this year at the British Podcast Awards, which was a huge win for a really interesting conversation that you had with the CEO of Pax Cosmetics, which is the largest distributor of black hair care in the UK. There is to me no such thing as a value of a black owned and support black owned business and so forth. And I say that as a black man. I mean, something kicked off on social media last year in the height of all this Black Lives Matter thing where people were turning to rubbish, you know, hair care companies. I mean, I joined a couple of these groups. There was one of them in particular that started and within two weeks had over.

over 100,000 followers. And I thought, this is fantastic. Let me register as a business. And I got slated. You know, you're not black. You're not black. And I'm like, well, and then they banned me from the thing. But didn't you say that Pax is a family-owned Pakistani business and not technically black-owned business? Now, when I listened to this moment of the year, my mouth was honestly on the floor a little bit. Just tell us what happened and really what made this moment of the year. I knew I wanted to do an episode on the business. of the black hair care industry. And I knew that in order to have this conversation properly,

I was going to have to speak to Pax, because they're the biggest Afro hair care provider in the UK. At the time I was recording, there was a lot more interest in finding out who are the brands that you're buying from. And this has happened because the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, like a lot of black people are a lot more cognizant

of where they spend their money. And so I asked him, because I'd done the research, like I knew Pax wasn't a black-owned company. So I asked him how he felt about more people wanting to buy from black-owned businesses and how that affects Pax. And he essentially just said that he doesn't really care about black-owned businesses despite that being the majority of his customer base.

And when I asked him how he identified, he identified as a Jamaican, but we all know that Jamaica is a nationality, not an ethnicity. When I was listening to it, I was really impressed, actually, with how you handled the situation, because the way that he replied to you, it was like he was trying to patronise you into having doubt in your line of inquiry, which was a very reasonable line of inquiry.

And that's something that I've definitely encountered in interviews before, especially when you're interviewing people in positions of authority. Well done you for standing your ground when they were the right questions to be asking. And it's interesting because when we dived into this a bit deeper, there was a lot of other companies that have been doing similar things, especially over that period, trying to parade as black owned businesses. In reality, they're not because they can see how powerful the black pound is. They're not being as transparent as they could be.

terms of who owns their businesses. Let's talk a little bit about the headlines that have been coming up recently on this subject. We had the Equality and Human Rights Commission recently say that children with Afro-textured hair should not be prevented from wearing natural hairstyles at school and that banning hairstyles such as braids and cornrows are likely to be unlawful. And this happened, you know, there was a story about a girl who had been sent home from school multiple times for her hair for this reason. When you read this news, how does that make you

feel? Oh my gosh, I'm related. And that girl, I think you're talking about Xena Alpha. So she was on the podcast as well on the last episode. And at the time that we were recording, she was still campaigning to try and get enough signatures to get this petition scene in Parliament. So for this change to come in now, like, it's amazing. Is there a part of you that feels frustrated with how this conversation is still going? Like, you've done a whole podcast on it. Is it a part of you? frustrated that you've had to do a whole podcast on it? Completely. It shouldn't be this way at all. One of the most amazing things about Afro hair is that you can do so much with it. And so for that to be policed and seen as

political, for you to be other just on the basis of something that is so natural, it's just hair. Let it be. It's really, really frustrating. People only now see that as an issue. I can't speak to how that affects girls and children growing up in terms of their identity. But you definitely see how those ideas seep into everyone else's mindset and create biases that materialise later on in the workplace. I actually remember going to a talk on implicit bias and they were teaching us about algorithmic bias, which is when search engines like Google reinforce the stereotypes of hair

to make this example. They searched in Google images, unprofessional hair, and it was all black women's hair, natural hair, that came up. I actually saw that as well when I was doing my research. for the podcast. I was going on YouTube and just like doing research and when I was typing in specific terms around black hair or afro hair, a lot of these videos would come up that would be like transforming my forcey hair into like curly coily like waves. So even though it was focused around afro hair, it was a certain type of afro hair. So there was still this messaging that certain

types of afro hair aren't seen as desirable, which I think is what you're saying around the algorithmic bias. Leanne, you're also the commissioning producer of BBC Sounds Audio Lab. Can you tell us a bit about what it is you look for when you're commissioning and how you bring in your philosophy about diversity with that role? So specifically for AudioLab, I'm looking for people with untold stories, stories that aren't really represented in the media, mainly because they're the type of stories that wouldn't really be commissioned

anywhere else across the BBC or any other platform. A lot of people, when they hear the words diversity and inclusion, they're kind of turned off because it has become a buzzword. It's truly at the top of my philosophy, but even I find it frustrating sometimes. I think sometimes we forget the message of why diversity and inclusion is so important. Can we just reiterate that message here today? I hear you with the buzzwords because for me, diversity and inclusion should just be embedded into your day-to-day activities. no matter what industry you're in. And in terms of audio, that's about making sure we represent the audiences that are coming

to us. A, that's how we build empathy within our audiences, because the more we understand about each other, the more empathy that we can have. I've learned so much about so many different groups specifically through listening to podcasts, and it's just giving me such a wider view of the world that we live in. And that's how you change behaviours in society. In terms of making the content, the more diverse your product. teams are, the more interesting the ideas are going to be. If you have commissioners especially

that all have similar backgrounds, similar tastes, the output is going to be very similar. That's just boring. Well, on that note, let's take another sip of this horrible wine that's giving me a rash and we'll be back in a couple minutes. Hannah, what happened to your face? Welcome back to This Is How You Do It with Leanne Ali. It's Jeannie Time, which means that Helena is transforming from a rashy Persian princess into a purple genie to grant Leanne one wish about what you would change if you could change one thing about the media. You don't get three wishes, you get one.

So my main thing would be, can we have less stories about black trauma? I would really love to see that. Where are the stories about Black Joy? There are some, but not nearly as much as getting commissioned. So I want to see stories about Black Joy, black people doing amazing things, not just about the trauma. I love, love that Jeannie time. That's one of my favorites so far, genuinely.

And actually, it's really reminded me of quite a lot of people that we've interviewed over the course of Media Storm, especially on our episode about trans rights. And they kind of said the same thing. They said, can we please see some trans joy in the media? You hardly ever get to see it. So why is that important? Why is it important to see Black Joy?

The media is very powerful. And the more stories you see about a certain thing, if you don't identify with that group, you're going to automatically associate certain things with that group, and that's how stereotypes are formed. And so if we're constantly just being fed these stories about Black trauma, we're just not being humanized, if that makes sense. We're just kind of seen as a group that go through certain things

and don't experience joy the same way that everybody else does. Sympathy is not the same as empathy. Actually, this was a kind of a learning lesson for me when we did our episode on homelessness. And when I interviewed people who were in this situation, I asked everyone, you know, what are the most constructive responses? Like from everything you know about the problems causing homelessness,

what do you see is the most effective? solutions and i actually didn't include that in the main episode i made like a bonus episode which came out the following week but when the main episode came out and it didn't include any of those solution oriented questions that i'd put to our lived experience guests one of the message me and said actually you know that's kind of not that helpful when you just paint homelessness as a problem and thought that i should have integrated that more into the main episode itself and I do actually know that that's really important because in journalism you can get so focused on everything that's going wrong in the world. And that is not what the news always is

or what it always should be. Speaking of joy in the media, what is your favorite story that you've ever been involved in or featured in? One of the podcasts that have come out of BBC Sounds Audio Lab is called Who Was Michael X? One of the reasons why I love this story is because I'd actually never heard of this person until Hamza, who's the producer and the creator of this podcast, came to us with this pitch. And Michael X was a Black British activist. He was a very cool person in the Black British Black Power movement. But by contrast, he was also a bit of a pimp. And he also had a dark side to him. His story can actually tell us a lot about activism that we see today and what we can learn from it. And there are a lot of parallels with the Britain

that he experienced back in the 50s and 60s and what still happens today. And one of the most interesting things about this story is that Hamda, the producer, he'd been researching this story for about a year and a half before he'd even come to us to pitch to us. And he literally pitched it to every single other platform there is

and nobody wanted to commission it. And as soon as I saw that treatment, I was like, this is fantastic. And this also goes to show why diversity and inclusion matters at the top. It's not about just getting those work experience or interns in on a really shitty salary at the bottom so that you can tick your box and you can tick your diversity quota and say, look, we do have people of colour in the newsroom. It's about those people at the top making these key decisions. Exactly.

Leanne, before we leave you, no, before you leave us, do you? We lock up, yeah? Oh, that really tickled me. Where can people follow you? Do you have anything to plug? Okay, so you can find me on your favourite social media platform. I'm at my name, Leanne Alley, with the underscore on Instagram.

Even TikTok? You know what? I didn't want TikTok here. I was with my friends in Rome. And the reason I can visit the group to go to Rome is because I'm obsessed with the Lizzie McGuire movie. We created that scene. But that's what my TikTok is worth a TikTok.

If anything is worth a TikTok, that is worth the TikTok. Go through it. It's called like 50 views. Anyway, you can listen to my podcast, coiled, wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for listening. Media Storm will be back next week with our season finale, and it's a big one. Next week we're taking on the death taboo, investigating how we stigmatize and even criminalized dying. We will be bringing you some bonus content over the Christmas season, but in the meantime, why not check out

the latest guilty feminist. Deborah is joined by Guilty Fem favorite Kima Bob and the wonderful Jordan Gray. Follow MediaStorm wherever you get your podcast so that you can get access to new episodes as soon as they drop. If you like what you hear, share this episode with someone and leave us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps more people discover the podcast and our aim is to have as many people as possible hear these voices. You can also follow us on social media at Matilda Mal at Helena Wadia and follow the show via at MediaStorm pod. Get in touch and let us know who you'd like us to speak to and what you'd like us to cover. Media Storm, an award-winning podcast from House of the Guilty Feminist, is part of the ACAS

Creator Network. It is produced by Tom Silinski and Deborah Francis White. The music is by Samfire.