Shows
Madame Speaker SaysWhy You’re Tired, Angry… and Weirdly Happy🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text meTired. Angry. Happy. The Truth About This Year We SurvivedWhat if there’s nothing wrong with you for feeling tired, angry, hopeful, and joyful all at once? This week, I’m pulling back the curtain on why so many of us—especially Black women and marginalized leaders—are carrying emotional contradictions that actually make sense in this chaotic world.From political exhaustion to tiny pockets of joy, from grief to grit, from outrage to laughter…this episode is your reminder that your emotional complexity isn’t a flaw—it’s a compass...
2025-12-2137 min
Madame Speaker SaysOrganize Against Autocracy: From Fear to Action with Vanessa Priya Daniel | What Women of Color Teach Us About Power🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text meUnrig the Game: How to Organize Through Autocratic Fear with Vanessa Priya DanielWhat's your part to contribute when autocracy tightens its grip and fear becomes a daily ration? For Vanessa Priya Daniel, the answer has always been: organize. But not the performative kind—the kind that might get you attacks...from your own team. The kind that moves $100 million from donor control to community power. The kind that may costs you everything and also, actually work.In her book, Unrig The Game, Vanessa breaks down what organizin...
2025-12-141h 11Madame Speaker SaysNonStop Productivity Is a Scam: The Lie Killing Your Thought Leadership🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text meThe Productivity Lie That's Killing Your Thought Leadership (Why Rest Is Your Secret Weapon)What if the most powerful move you can make as a thought leader isn't relentless productivity—but radical restoration? After a sudden health crisis forced me to stop everything--including a week off this podcast schedule--I'm here to unpack the toxic lie that pausing makes you irrelevant. Here, I reveal why clarity and resonance require you to rest deeply.IN THIS EPISODE:The health scare that exposed the hidden cost of...
2025-12-0745 min
Madame Speaker SaysHow to Get Paid to Tell Stories in Time of Resistance with Anna Malaika Tubbs🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text meFrom Stanford Grad to Paid Storyteller: The Thought Leadership Blueprint for Resistance with Anna Malaika TubbsWhat does it really take to build a career around storytelling and public speaking—especially when the world needs your voice most? Anna Malaika Tubbs, award-winning author of "The Three Mothers" and "Erased," breaks down the exact roadmap from validating your "crazy" dream to leveraging your platform as a tool for change in times of division and crisis.IN THIS EPISODE:Why your vision of getting paid to write books...
2025-11-231h 20
Madame Speaker SaysStop Waiting for Permission: How to Share Your Story & Build Your Platform with Kutloano Skosana🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text me📧JOIN OUR NEWSLETTER: Madame Speaker SaysWhy Black Women's Stories Matter - And How to Master Yours with Kutloano Skosana RicciYour story isn't just yours—it's a lifeline for someone walking streets halfway across the world who needs to hear they're not alone. Kutloano Skosana, founder and host of Shades and Layers podcast, reveals why mastering your personal narrative isn't optional for Black women and women of color, how the right people at the right time can transform everything, and why your voice matter...
2025-11-161h 09
Madame Speaker SaysFacing Bankruptcy, Finding True Currency with Art Chang🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text me📧 NEWSLETTER: Madame Speaker Says (Weekly Truth Bombs)Why 98% of Immigrant Businesses Fail (And What One Bankruptcy Survivor Learned) | Art Chang on Leadership, Small Business, and the Currency Beyond MoneyWhat happens when your business dies at 27 and still, your employees don't leave you? Art Chang—NYC mayoral candidate, women's studies major, and bankruptcy survivor who went on to build dozens of wildly successful companies—reveals the hidden currency that saved him, why immigrant entrepreneurship myths are dangerous and the systemic failures killing small businesses in America.IN THIS EPI...
2025-11-091h 08
Madame Speaker SaysShe Almost Died and Came Back to Tell Y'all: Stop Letting These Jobs Pimp Your Integrity🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text meShe Almost Died and Came Back to Tell Y'all: Stop Giving These Companies Your Integrity for FreeWhat happens when you almost die—and then go back to work in a place built on performative safety? In this raw, unflinching conversation, Jodi-Ann Bury shares how a three-week hospital stay rewired everything she thought mattered about career, status and survival—and why she couldn't keep lying to protect a company's image.We get into:💀 The hospital reckoning — When you think your life is over, the only thing...
2025-11-021h 14
Madame Speaker SaysSkip the Book Deal: One Powerful Article with Kleaver Cruz🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text meSkip the Book Deal: One Powerful Article with Kleaver CruzTired of waiting for the "right time" to become a thought leader? In this episode, we sit down with Kleaver Cruz to explore the alternative path to publishing—and why you don't need a book deal to build authority.We get into:🔥 How one well-written article can attract editors and agents—bypassing years of the traditional publishing grind📖 Why there are no hard and fast rules in publishing—success looks different...
2025-10-261h 14
Madame Speaker SaysClaiming Audacity: Building Thought Leadership For Marginalized Voices ft. Sisonke Msimang🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text meBuilding Thought Leadership as a Marginalized Voice 🎙️✨Tired of waiting for permission to lead? In this episode, we sit down with Sisonke Msimang to unpack what it actually takes to become a thought leader—especially when the world wasn't built with you in mind.We get into: 🔥The audacity required to claim your voice when structural violence says you shouldn't 📖 Why your belief in yourself has to come FIRST—before the book deal, the Ted stage, the validation 👁️ The power dynamics keeping marginalized voices off the megaphone (and how to...
2025-10-191h 18
Madame Speaker SaysSinging Survival with Joy Harjo - BONUS Episode - 2020 Replay🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text meOur 2020 Conversation with Joy HarjoJoy Harjo—the first Native American U.S. Poet Laureate, saxophonist, member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and the woman who held that laureateship longer than anyone in decades—breaks down why joy isn't escape, it's resistance.This conversation pulls from her work that refuses to separate poetry from music, grief from celebration and survival from beauty. Harjo, who lost her mother young, played jazz in honky-tonks to pay for college and still writes poems that make you weep and dance in the same brea...
2025-10-121h 12
Madame Speaker SaysNikki Giovanni on Toni Morrison: Why "The Bluest Eye" Still Saves Lives 50 Years Later🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text meBONUS Episode - From our 2020 Conversation with Nikki GiovanniThink poetry is just pretty words? Think again. Nikki Giovanni—who survived lung cancer, buried her best friend James Baldwin, and kept teaching at Virginia Tech through everything—breaks down Morrison's genius, the writers who shaped her, and why celebrating "The Bluest Eye" fifty years later isn't nostalgia, it's survival.This was our 2020 conversation when the world felt like it was cracking open and we needed Giovanni's voice—sharp, warm, uncompromising—more than ever.You'll hear her talk about...
2025-10-051h 05
Madame Speaker SaysFighting Autocracy with Arundhati Roy - BONUS Episode - 2020 replay🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text meOur 2020 Conversation with Arundhati Roy Think love is just sentiment? Think again. Arundhati Roy—author, activist, truth-teller extraordinaire—breaks down how love becomes revolution, how tenderness transforms into resistance, and why the most radical act might just be refusing to harden your heart in a brutal world.This was our 2020 keynote for "Love as a Kind of Cure's Freedom Festival, hosted with my partner in crime Cleyvis Natera. This conversation was recorded when the world felt upside down and we needed Roy's fierce wisdom more than ever.You'l...
2025-09-281h 23
Madame Speaker SaysBuilding Unshakeable Confidence: The MAIN Character Method™ That Changes Everything🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text me🎯 PART 3/3 - The MAIN Character Method™: How to Embody Unstoppable AuthorityReady to own every room like Beyoncé owns a stadium? This is where everything clicks. We're breaking down the complete MAIN Character Method™ framework that transforms brilliant people from invisible to impossible to ignore.Think you can't have that level of aura and embodiment? Think again. You ARE capable of main character energy—you just need the right method to unlock it. The MAIN Character Method™ makes it simple: Mindset, Action, Impossible moves, Nonstop revision.Starting with M for...
2025-08-1634 min
Madame Speaker SaysUnpacking Why Brilliant People Hide (spoiler? you're not just humble)🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text me 🎯 PART 2/3 - Why Brilliant People Hide (Spoiler: It's Not Humility)We're diving deep into the real reason brilliant people stay invisible: the fear of judgment that makes you defer to everyone else's narrative except your own. You know that voice that says "What I have to say is stupid" or "Who would want to listen to me anyway?"Time to call BS on that voice and understand what's really happening underneath. Because when you hide behind other people's stories, you don't come off as generous—you come off as inauth...
2025-08-0927 min
Shades & LayersIntroducing: Madame Speaker Says with Magogodi oaMphela Makhene (BONUS)Send us a textBONUS EPISODE📣 INTRODUCING our new podcast bestie Madame Speaker Says hosted by Magogodi oaMphela Makhene. For this special bonus episode, we did a podswap and the featured guest is skin educator, beauty editor and founder of ThisThatBeauty, Felicia Walker. The skin is your largest living organ and Felicia believes it is not vanity to care for your skin. It needs care like any other part of your body and she'll tell you how you can radiate beauty from the inside out in every space you enter...
2025-08-051h 04
Madame Speaker SaysBecoming the Storyteller You're Secretly Stalking (PART 1/3) - VISION🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text me🎯 PART1/3 - Getting Clear on Your Vision Tired of nodding politely while dumber people mansplain your own brilliance back to you? Tired of saying 'someday I'll write that book' while the same plain vanilla people publish plain vanilla stories that become bestselling books? Stop studying success in theory and start dissecting it in practice. We're reverse-engineering how expert storytellers you actually admire built their visibility and platforms—not through inspiration porn, but through strategic study of what actually works. You'll walk away with a 7-day framework to identif...
2025-08-0431 min
Madame Speaker SaysBreaking Into Global Cinema with Karabo Lediga - BONUS Episode🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text me🎙️ BONUS EPISODE from our podcast sisters at Shades & LayersWhat happens when the dream your mother sacrificed everything for becomes your personal nightmare? Johannesburg-based filmmaker Karabo Lediga explores this haunting question through her debut feature film "Sabbatical" – a raw portrayal of a 30-something woman forced to return home after professional failure, confronting how her elite education created distance from her mother and the psychological cost of chasing parental dreams. From Netflix's "Queen Sono" to her grandmother-inspired short "What Did You Dream?" - Karabo shares insights on sustaining a creati...
2025-08-031h 02
Madame Speaker SaysLiving Big At Every Age with Maki, my mom!🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text meSeason 1 Finale with my Mom!This is it — Episode 10 and our Season 1 finale! And who better to close out this incredible season than my own mother, Maki Makhene, MSW? (But since I love you, I'm dropping a fun bonus episode next week with a very cool surprise! 👀 Stay tuned.)In this deeply personal conversation, my mom and I dive into: 🔍 High-functioning depression — you're crushing it but running on fumes 🔞 Life after 60 - your best life at every age🌱 Authentic self-care practices that existed long before corporate w...
2025-07-2750 minMadame Speaker SaysEmbracing Mistakes That Made Me with Magogodi🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text meReal Talk - My Story Behind The MicThis personal episode reveals the mistakes, missed chances, and mindset shifts that shaped who I am as your host. I'm pulling back the curtain and sharing my story—the hard lessons I learned in my 20s and 30s so you don't have to. What you'll learn:My biggest regrets from my earlier decades - and how they became my greatest teachersMindset shifts that completely transformed my perspective on successWhy I'm passionate about helping others through actionable insi...
2025-07-2019 min
Madame Speaker SaysUnpacking the True Cost of Female Entrepreneurship with Yvonne Biggins🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text meThe True Cost of Being a Female Entrepreneur 💼💥Tired of pretending it’s all fine? You're not alone.In this episode, I sit down with Yvonne Biggins to unpack her latest research on the real challenges women entrepreneurs face—and the powerful, creative ways they push through.We get into:📉 Why only 1.8% of UK equity funding goes to all-women teams👩👧👦 The pressure of being in the "sandwich generation"📈 Why 97% of women enjoy entrepreneurship, despite the odds💡 Science-backed tools to boost your business and your well-beingThis conv...
2025-07-131h 10
Madame Speaker SaysSide Hustling As A Corporate Baddie with Sewela Langeni🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text meBalancing A Corporate Gig & Purposeful Side Hustle with Sewela In this episode, we’re joined by the powerhouse that is Sewela Langeni—a full-time corporate leader and the founder of one of Johannesburg’s most beloved bookstores: Book Circle Capital, nestled in the heart of Melville. 📚We talk about what it means to build something beautiful and necessary in a place still shaped by its past. Sewela is doing what so many dream of—balancing a high-level career while creating space for stories, community, and...
2025-07-061h 11
Madame Speaker SaysBecoming An IVF Mom with Courtney Montague🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text me🎙️ ON TODAY's EPISODE - Becoming An IVF Mom While Building a Business What happens when a Type A, high-achieving entrepreneur faces the one thing she can’t plan, schedule, or control?In this powerful episode of Madame Speaker Says, we get real about becoming moms while building businesses. I'm joined by my brilliant friend Courtney Montague for a raw, funny and soul-stretching convo about her journey to motherhood through sperm donation—and my own story of surrender during postpartum.WE COVER🎯 Letting go of control (hello Type A’...
2025-06-2959 min
Madame Speaker SaysCreating Worlds Without Bias with Anu Gupta🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text me🎙️ ON TODAY's EPISODE - Creating a World Without Bias by Anu Gupta“What would it feel like to live in a world without bias?”It’s a simple question—with radical power. In this episode, Anu invites us to pause, reflect, and imagine. Because if people can dream up colonies on Mars, surely we can dare to envision equity right here on Earth.🌍✨ Where our mind goes, our energy flows.What if we gave ourselves permission to feel the world we want before we build it?This conversation will move yo...
2025-06-221h 11
Madame Speaker SaysUnlearning Grind Culture with Dr. Kate Otto Chebly🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text me🎙️ ON TODAY's EPISODE - Unlearn the Grind: Presence Over Productivity with Dr. Kate Otto CheblyWhat happens when you realize the voices that shaped you—school, church, whitewashed "success"—never actually had you in mind? Kate Otto joins me to unpack the toxic productivity scripts so many of us grew up with, especially as ambitious girls in all the wrong environments.We get into what it takes to deprogram—to save yourself, in your 30s or whenever you wake up—from the grind-at-all-costs gospel. Kate shares her real, lived practice...
2025-06-151h 23
Madame Speaker SaysMaking Art & Leading Loud with Sarah Crowell🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text me“She said, ‘They’re not really Black.’ I said… ‘Oh really?’”Instead of clapping back, Sarah Crowell told a story—and changed the room.In this episode, visionary artist and cultural strategist Sarah Crowell joins me to talk about the power of storytelling, the politics of belonging, and what it really means to lead creatively in a world that wants to put us in boxes.We talk about how she dared to be a creative thought leader as an artist, and how Sarah uses movement—both literal and cultural—to create change wi...
2025-06-0845 min
Madame Speaker SaysTurning Grief into Rocket Fuel with Carla Fernandez🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text me🎙️ ON TODAY's EPISODE - Grief as Rocket Fuel with Carla FernandezWhat shifts when you really understand that time is temporary?In this powerful episode, I sit down with @renegade.carla—grief worker, storyteller, and author of Renegade Grief and Try Not to Cry at Work—to talk about what it means to live with that knowing.We get honest about grief, presence, and the sacredness of everyday moments—like the mundane phone calls with your mom that one day, you won’t be able to make. Carla reminds us that los...
2025-06-011h 17
Madame Speaker SaysBuilding Business Abroad - Exit with Alicia DeLia🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text me🎙️ ON TODAY's EPISODE - Exit Strategy with Alicia DeLiaTired of the grind? Wondering if there’s more to life than hustle and high costs in the U.S.? There is. And Alicia DeLia of DeLia Impact Advisors is here to prove it.In this episode, we’re talking real options for living better and freer—abroad. Whether you’re dreaming of raising a thriving business and happy babies beyond U.S. borders, or just craving a taste of international life, this convo is your permission slip t...
2025-05-251h 16
Madame Speaker SaysGlowing at 50 with Felicia Walker🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text me🎙️ ON TODAY's EPISODE - Your Power Glow with Felicia Walker Ever walk into a room and feel like your brilliance is dimmed by burned out skin? You're not alone—and this episode is your glow-up intervention.Beauty editor, entrepreneur, and founder of ThisThatBeauty, Felicia Walker joins me to share her signature approach to radiating power from the inside out. From boardrooms to brunches, your beauty and presence should speak before you do—and Felicia breaks down exactly how to make that happen.✨ GET: Your Glow Up Guide📲 FOLLOW Felicia: @thisthatbe...
2025-05-181h 02Madame Speaker SaysMadame Speaker Says - Trailer🙋🏽♀️Like this Episode? Text meMadame Speaker Says is the podcast for women of colour ready to own the mic, drop that book and get paid like a legend.Join Magogodi oaMphela Makhene - author, speaker and coach - for real talk, shortcuts and receipts to help you lead with confidence — on stage, on the page and way beyond the 9–5. No caucacity, no crusty old school leadership. Edges snatched. Script flipped. No apologies.Fresh episodes drop weekly.Pull up. –Still not seen as...
2025-05-1300 min
Field RambleField Ramble with Magogodi oaMphela MakheneSend us a textOn this episode of the Ramble, an interview with Magogodi oaMphela Makhene in which we discuss her stunning, debut short story collection, Innards. Set in Soweto (where Magogodi was raised) her stories map the lives of a small group of residents living under and after apartheid.By turns shockingly violent and deeply funny Innards is beautiful wrought from the first page. It is fiction that lays bare the enduring nature of trauma and celebrates the capacity of people to pursue life amid daunting realities.There is so much to l...
2024-03-0726 minField RambleField Ramble with Magogodi oaMphela MakheneOn this episode of the Ramble, an interview with Magogodi oaMphela Makhene in which we discuss her stunning, debut short story collection, Innards. Set in Soweto (where Magogodi was raised) her stories map the lives of a small group of residents living under and after apartheid.By turns shockingly violent and deeply funny Innards is beautiful wrought from the first page. It is fiction that lays bare the enduring nature of trauma and celebrates the capacity of people to pursue life amid daunting realities. There is so much to love about Magogodi’s work, but for...
2024-03-0745 min
Radio 2000 MixesThe Catch Up [STUDIO]: Dr Kgafela oa MagogodiWe’re joined by Dr Kgafela oa Magogodi, band leader of a spoken word and music outfit Marabele, he’s also a Storyteller, Playwright and Director.
2024-02-0138 min
Hong Kong's MorningsideSide 5: The Changing Power of Language and StorytellingFor Morningside’s 2023-2024 One Book Programme, the author of Innards – a collection of short stories set in Soweto, South Africa – Magogodi oaMphela Makhene visited Hong Kong. During her trip, she discussed her book with Junior Fellow Alayna Lee and her journey as a writer and a storyteller. Her work on Innards and her social enterprise “Love As a Kind of Cure” demonstrates her belief in how communication, creativity, and community can be a force for change.
2024-01-3034 min
PAGECASTInnards by Magogodi oaMphela MakheneThank you for joining us on this episode of Pagecast, a podcast series presented by Jonathan Ball Publishers.
In this episode, we're joined by Sewela Langeni, the owner of Book Circle Capital, a bookstore specialising in African Literature. She sits down with Magogodi oaMphela Makhene, the author of the novel Innards, for an engaging discussion.
Set in Soweto, the urban heartland of South Africa, Innards tells the intimate stories of everyday black folks processing the savagery of apartheid. Rich with the thrilling textures of township language and life, it braids the voices and perspectives of an...
2024-01-2926 min
Rádio UFRJ - A Voz Livre - Poesia SonoraArtistas da Irlanda, França, África do Sul, Áustria, Itália e Austrália01 – Gary Barwin – turnpips a door 02 – Jérôme Game – Ceci nest pas une légende ipe pe ce03 - Kgafela oa Magogodi – Microphones04 - Jörg Piringer – Stine05 - Maurizio Nannucci - Cut Words 06 - Amanda Stewart – Residue Produção, gravação, edição e locução: Marcelo BrissacMúsica “Drácula” usada no prefixo e sufixo, autoria de Marcelo Brissac e Livio Tragtenberg
2022-05-1330 minRádio UFRJ - A Voz Livre - Poesia SonoraA Voz Livre (Poesia Sonora) - episódio 6Poesia sonora que vem da África do Sul, com o autor Kgafela oa Magogodi!.Produção, gravação, edição e locução: marcelo brissac.Música “Drácula” usada no prefixo e sufixo, autoria de marcelo brissac e livio tragtenberg.
2020-10-3027 min
PM Live on SAfmRevolutionary Council ❝ glad Mahumapelo has finally found a relationship with rationality ❞SAfm — The North-West Premier Supra Mahumapelo has told us, he intends resigning his post as Premier of the province this morning. This comes just hours after ANC's Top Six, led by President Cyril Ramaphosa met at Luthuli House here in Johannesburg this past weekend, where they were to decide the premier's fate. Tsepiso Makwetla to leader of civil society group, the Revolutionary Council in the Northwest, Thato Magogodi.
2018-05-0903 min
LiteratureGail Nattrass, Alexander Matthews and MagogodiMakheneGail Nattrass talks about her book “A Short Story of South Africa”; Editor, Alexander Matthews talks about the Aerodrome Literary Journal; then Magogodi Makhene shares more on her Caine Prize for African Writing shortlist for her story “The Virus”.
2017-08-1349 min