Podcasting An Institute is a real-time experiment in building power through voice. Hosted by Hendel Leiva, the show follows an unfolding process: using a podcast to imagine, test, and potentially bring to life an Audio × Democracy Institute in public. Each episode follows the conversations and breakthroughs that surface in trying to build civic media infrastructure from the ground up without a finished blueprint. From late-night realizations to industry reckoning, to funding questions, Podcasting An Institute documents what becomes possible when audio isn’t just a medium but a starting point.
Are We Only Teaching Podcasting, or Teaching What's Possible? with Anika Jackson
On this episode of Podcasting an Institute, I visit Anika Jackson, CEO of Your Brand Amplified and professor at the University of Southern California. Anika shares how her Thai, Laotian, and American identity shaped her commitment to amplifying underrepresented voices, how launching her own podcast opened the door to a career in higher education, and why she's passionate about making entrepreneurship and financial success more accessible. From generating six figures in podcast revenue to teaching students how to build business plans around their creative work, Anika offers insights into the opportunities, challenges, and realities of building a sustainable career in audio.
Recorded at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, our conversation explores Anika's vision for making USC a hub for podcast education, the challenges facing students who want to use audio for social impact, and the potential for smaller podcasts to build greater collective influence. We also discuss the emerging vision for Audio × Democracy, the need to connect educators, creators, and organizations already working at the intersection of audio and civic engagement.
18 Aug 2026
Believing in Podcasting: Arielle Nissenblatt on a Decade of Building the Medium
The conversation around Audio × Democracy is expanding, and on this episode of Podcasting An Institute, I’m joined by the first guest representing the audio side of this work. Arielle Nissenblatt has spent the past decade helping shape the podcast industry as a strategist, writer, community builder, and advocate. We talk about what she has learned from watching podcasting grow from an emerging medium into a global industry, why creator communities have mattered through both its boom years and downturns, and what it tells us that libraries, universities, and even resorts are now investing in permanent spaces for audio.
From there, the conversation turns to how podcasting’s growing influence is beginning to show up in politics and civic life. Arielle talks about being hired to develop a podcast strategy for a political campaign, the growing recognition that candidates need to enter podcast spaces to reach people differently, and how she once mobilized dozens of podcasts to distribute abortion-access resources following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Together, we explore what these developments reveal about podcasting’s evolution beyond content and entertainment, and what it could mean to understand audio as civic infrastructure connecting creators, institutions, politics, and public life.
9 Jun 2026
The Freedom to Create: Comedy, Podcasting, and Comunidad with Michael Diaz (Juan Bago)
On this episode of Podcasting an Institute, I sit down with trailblazing comedian, actor, producer, and podcaster Michael Diaz, better known to many as Juan Bago. Our paths first crossed through the New York Latino Film Festival and later through Latinos Out Loud, where Mike gave me the opportunity that helped shape my professional journey in audio. From his early days in Washington Heights and public-access television to Room 28, Flama, Bago Briefs, and the creation of Latinos Out Loud, Mike reflects on a career built not by waiting for permission, but by creating opportunities across multiple mediums. Through Mike's personal story, we explore the evolution of Latino media and how community-driven storytelling helped shape a generation of creators before anyone called it civic media.
Along the way, we discuss mentorship, belonging, podcasting's rise as a cultural force, and the surprising intersections between community media and democratic participation. From Julián Castro's appearance on Latinos Out Loud to Mike's encounters with Zohran Mamdani, our conversation traces how voice moves from neighborhoods and cultural spaces into public life. We also reflect on the people and relationships that make creative communities possible, the responsibilities that come with influence, and why authentic conversation remains one of the most powerful forces in media today.
7 Apr 2026
Beyond The 5 Percent: The Case for Spending It All, with Laura Lemus
On this episode of Podcasting An Institute, I sit with Laura Lemus, Nonprofit Partnerships leader, one of my first colleagues in movement-building work, and someone who unexpectedly set off my podcast career. We go back and trace her path from organizing into a successful career in philanthropy and her pivot into tech, where she continues expanding her work rooted in her values around community. What she shares is what she learned from the inside: a sector that understands the language of equity, can name the problems clearly, and still struggles to move resources in the ways communities actually need. After years working in funder education and organizing, she describes watching the same conversations repeat while very little changed, despite clear data, urgency, and demand from the field.
She recalls the early 2020s, when the system proved it could move differently. Money flowed faster, restrictions dropped, and impact followed, and then it stopped. This episode sits at that intersection, part reckoning, part blueprint, with Laura speaking truth to power, challenging both funders and builders to confront the limits of existing systems and consider what it would take to build something more honest, more responsive, and more powerful.
10 Mar 2026
Before the Movement Exists: Founder Psychology and the Welcoming Bet with David Lubell
On this episode, I sit down with movement builder and social entrepreneur David Lubell to unpack the origins of Welcoming America, the national initiative that helped bring the idea of “welcoming communities” into the mainstream. What began as a local project in Nashville eventually spread across the United States and inspired a global network through Welcoming International. David reflects on how the early movement took shape, why its strategy focused on building local alliances instead of chasing federal political power, and how pivotal moments transformed welcoming work from a loose set of community initiatives into a national movement.
We also go deeper into the ideas and mindset behind building something that lasts. David shares how early gatherings of practitioners evolved from passive learning spaces into an active network demanding infrastructure, why listening to communities became central to the model, and how initiatives like Welcoming Week and local dialogue efforts emerged organically from the network itself. Along the way, he reflects on the founder psychology required to pursue a vision before it has proof, the gradual process of building legitimacy as a leader, and how welcoming initiatives have adapted to shifting political climates. For builders, organizers, and anyone interested in how ideas scale from one community to a global network, this episode offers a rare inside look at how durable social infrastructure is built.
3 Feb 2026
After Age of Audio: Podcasting’s Structural Question
At Podfest Multimedia Expo in Orlando, a screening of the documentary Age of Audio stirred a set of questions I couldn’t shake about where podcasting actually is today. Watching the film as someone who has spent years building audio inside nonprofits and movement spaces, I found myself both focused on podcasting’s origin story as well as its current phase. During the Q&A, I asked whether the film’s ending was pointing toward an existential question about podcasting’s identity—or a more practical one about economic instability—because the medium today feels pulled in multiple directions at once.
3 Feb 2026
No Grant, No Permission: Why the Institute Starts with Voice, with Maria Javier
On this first guest-featured episode of Podcasting An Institute, I welcome Maria Javier—a longtime friend and builder whose career spans city government, immigration advocacy, national campaigns, and democracy institutions—for a conversation that does something very specific: it publicly declares an institute before it exists. We say the words Audio × Democracy Institute out loud—awkwardly, imperfectly, without a grant, a funder, or a finished plan—and treat voice, not paperwork, as the starting point. This episode flips the usual order of legitimacy, using conversation itself as infrastructure.
From there, we get concrete about what’s broken. We talk about why progressive spaces struggle to build long-term media power, how risk aversion and capital shape institutional behavior, and why the right understood audio as infrastructure years ago. Maria challenges the idea that lack of funding is a failure, reframing it instead as a design choice—one that opens the door to audience-first legitimacy, private donors, and grassroots backing. Along the way, the episode quietly names who this institute is actually for: movement folks who want media skills without gatekeeping, audio creators who want political purpose, and the handful of people who keep finding themselves at the edges of both worlds. The conversation doesn’t resolve the tension—it documents it, and that documentation is the point.
3 Feb 2026
Building in Public: 3AM at Target, Dreaming an Institute
In this episode, I reflect on how Podcasting An Institute came into being—and why now is the moment to build it. After fourteen years working across nonprofit and social justice spaces, I trace the threads that led me here: a three-month sabbatical, time spent in Portugal opening up my thinking, receiving the Frank Karel Scholarship at ComNet, and realizing—again and again—that audio does something democracy work desperately needs. It holds memory. It builds trust. It carries nuance. And yet, there’s been no real infrastructure behind the intersection of audio and democracy. No institute. Just fragments.
2 Feb 2026
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Let’s go far together by showing how podcasting functions as civic infrastructure.
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