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
134 episodes
The Truth Is A Process And We Still Have To Live With It
The strangest thing about the truth is how often it arrives late. A story your elders carried for years gets dismissed as “just talk” until an archive opens, a report drops, a government admits wrongdoing, or scholars finally confirm what commu...
*Throwback* How Exile From St. Vincent Shaped Garifuna Identity with Dr. Paul López Oro
Today, we reshare our reasoning with Dr. Paul López Oro to trace the Garifuna story across Caribbean history, from St Vincent and the Carib Wars to forced exile in 1797 and the building of communities along the Central America Caribbean coast i...
Rethinking Borders, Rethinking Belonging with Drs. Patsy Lewis and Kristen Kolenz
Headlines turn migration into a single story about borders and crisis. We open the lens, traveling through the Caribbean and Latin America to reveal routes, identities, and cultural worlds that rarely make it into the frame. Joined by co-editor...
Building A Living Archive Of Caribbean Women’s Wisdom
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 ...
Recovering Architects Of The UNIA with Dr. Natanya Duncan Part II
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 headli...
Recovering Architects Of The UNIA with Dr. Natanya Duncan Part I
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 Kings...
Two Amys, One Movement
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 gl...
Five Years, Forward for 2026!
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 Caribbe...
*Throwback* Celebrating the Holidays in the Caribbean
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 smok...
School Hair Codes, Colonial Respectability, And Caribbean Rights with amílcar peter sanatan
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...
Reclaiming Caribbean Architecture with Professor Dahlia Nduom
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 ...
We Will Rise Again: A Post-Melissa Reflection
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, s...
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines' Three Hundred-Year Fight For Sovereignty with Dr. Garrey Dennie
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 cho...
Where Land, Memory, and Medicine Meet with Aleya Fraser
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
Beyond the Canon: Unearthing Early Caribbean Literary Treasures with Dr. Alison Donnell
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,
Cuban and Puerto Rican Cinema's Political Lens with Dr. Pedro Noel Doreste Rodríguez
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 Ro...
Caribbean Horror: Bringing Folklore to Film with Alyscia Cunningham
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 chi...
From Jamaica to England: Documenting Caribbean Family Histories with Calvin Walker
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 "
The Art of Truth: How Documentary Filmmaking Captures Caribbean Political Movements with Richard Vaughan
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 archive...
Six Days That Shook Trinidad: The 1990 Coup Attempt with Eskor David Johnson
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...
The Chain is Broken: Emancipation Day and Dutch and Danish Colonial Legacies
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 histor...
Caribbean Airmen: Untold Stories of World War Heroes with John Concagh
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 d...
From Colonial Marines to Caribbean Pioneers: The Merikins of Trinidad
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 peopl...
Between Two Empires: The Battle for Freedom in the Atlantic World with Matthew Taylor
The forgotten liberation of thousands stands at the intersection of British military history and the African diaspora. When historian Matthew Taylor stumbled upon brief mentions of Black soldiers in British uniform during the War of 1812, he br...
Our Culture Doesn't Break, It Transforms: Evolving Caribbean Identity
What remains of Caribbean identity when our most treasured traditions begin to shift? Bridging thoughts from our recent episodes, I tackle this profound question on cultural evolution. Caribbean culture has never been static—born from struggle,...