i'm glad you came upon my website in these vast interwebs.
my name is Lasha (they/them) — i’m an audio documentarian. i'm also a queer south asian first generation immigrant from a family of refugees. and i’m deeply disturbed by the idea that when society fails to tell a story, it implies that it is unworthy of being told. working to build understanding/empathy thru story is my form of resistance.
from 2014-2016 i worked at KALX as News Director and volunteer DJ in Berkeley CA, where I fell in love with freeform community radio.
at NPR’s Next Generation Radio fellowship in 2016 at KJZZ in Phoenix, AZ, i produced my first radio and experienced what it’s like to be in a diverse and inclusive newsroom for the first time.
i graduated from UC Berkeley with a bachelors degree in political economy in 2016. after graduating i joined the KALW newsroom in San Francisco for their summer journalism program.
in early 2017 i worked in partnership with the 1947 Partition Archive and produced a series of three short documentary films made from oral history interviews from their archive, to demonstrate the impact and memory of 1947's Partition.
in Spring 2017 i learned how to produce audio docs ocean-side at the Transom Story Workshop in Massachusetts.
in fall 2017 i became a producer at CANADALAND, a news & podcast startup in toronto. among other things, i ran the progressive political podcast, Commons. production of this show was almost entirely a one-person operation (me). i dug into stuff like immigration detention, the sixties scoop, and made a miniseries on policing.
i started freelancing full-time in 2018. i’ve freelance produced for Freakonomics Radio, VICE podcasts, Pacific Content, McSweeney's The Organist, NPR’s Code Switch, Gimlet, CBC podcasts, and more. i was the consulting producer of Historically Queer, an oral history-based project about the lives of QTPOC activists in the 60s and 70s.
in 2018, i also co-created Amplify, a storytelling conference & gathering for people of color (across all mediums), sponsored by AIR, KPCC In Person, & SF Film Fest.
in 2019, i wrapped up production on a longform audio memoir with Audible Originals called Thicker Than Water (about a Theranos whistleblower), and was a consulting producer on IDEO’s first podcast, Food x Design, about finding solutions to climate change within the food system.
i started working with 99% Invisible in late 2019. first i was the associate producer on a five-part series on homelessness and the homeless services system in Alameda County, called According to Need, for which we received a duPont-Columbia award in 2022. Here is my favorite episode of that series (though you should really listen in order). i was also the AP on the Judas and the Black Messiah Podcast, a five-part companion podcast to the 2021 movie of the same name.
these days, i’m a staff producer at 99% Invisible. I generally find myself drawn to reporting and writing about moments of collective cultural transition. Some of my favorites lately include making this story about how Stalin and his food Commisar Anastas Mikoyan curated and propelled the development of an entirely new cuisine that still exists today — Soviet cuisine — via a single State-authored cookbook. And this story about the cultural evolution of “Wilderness” in American history — told through the frame of the history of the crosscut saw.
when i’m not hunched over a laptop wearing headphones or doing interviews, i’m outside. you can find me selling produce at east bay farmers markets, beekeeping, walking my dog, or paddling on the Bay. i’m wild about hiking, lakes (especially the Great kind), and furious dancing.
you can reach me at lasha@99pi.org.