When U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt started his “Fireside Chats” in 1933, it was an attempt to use a relatively new mass media technology, radio, to explain Roosevelt’s policies and positions. They helped the American public understand how those policies may affect them.

Similarly, Fireside Chai is striving to use audio podcasting as a medium to tell stories and explore issues that are important to Indian origin Americans. We hope to connect the Indian American identity with its people.

Through personal stories and investigations, we will parse through the layers of culture, religion and personality to bring better understand of the issues facing Indian Americans.

In addition to telling stories, we want to hear your story and work together to better understand culture and ourselves. And we will provide an outlet to do so.

Come join us. Grab a cup of chai, sit on your warmest couch, listen to our podcast and support us in our goal to figure out what being an Indian American means.

First podcast coming soon

Fireside Chai’s first podcast episode is coming very soon, tentatively scheduled for Monday, Jan. 16, 2017. It will be an introduction of what Fireside Chai’s goals are, and of the editor, host and creator of the podcast, Vikaas Shanker.

Our next podcast will feature interviews with Indian Americans with unique perspectives, scheduled to run later next week. These are subjected to change based on how well we can work through the technical issues getting this up and running.

To provide any feedback, ideas or criticisms, please comment below, or email host Vikaas Shanker at FiresideChai@gmail.com, or at vshanker@firesidechai.com.