Hey guys, it's Hibba. We have some really big news to share with you. We just raised a round of investment.

Making Cunning Cultures the first venture-backed podcast company in the Middle East. This year,

we're growing from a single show to a network of shows,

and we're already working on our next few. Arabic and English productions, we're planning a

drama series, we've got a fiction show in the works, we're working on our first talk radio

style show, and what this all means is that for this show, which you're listening to now, we will still

continue to document stories from the Middle East and the spaces in between, and we'll be

producing it solely in English from now on. Our Arabic stories, we're going to reserve for our other

shows. All of this is to say that we are so excited for what's next. This is such an incredible moment

in Kernan Culture's history, and we want to thank you, our dear, dear listeners, whether you've

just discovered us or you've been with us from the very start. Thank you for supporting us as we

grow. In lieu of all these changes, you can imagine that we have been

hustling like crazy behind the scenes, and so we need a few weeks to get our next episode to you.

It'll be a love story, and we're releasing it on May 30th. In the meantime, we want to give you

a sneak peek of our next show.

It's called El Empire.

They say that TV shows have had more of an effect on American fear of Arabs and anything else.

And so that's something that I am very wary of things that are terrorist plots because I have no interest in continuing to build on the fear people have of Arabs.

The episode went viral. It was everywhere. I started having calls from agents and I didn't know how to do it.

I'm a housewife minding my own business doing a PhD. Why are you calling me? I don't know what to do it. I'm a housewife minding my own business, doing a PhD.

Why are you calling me?

I don't know what to do.

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