Fil-Am History Month is coming to a close, so I'm taking a few minutes to share some old clips of my grandparents, sharing stories from World War II.

Kristia Castrillo teaches 10th and 11th grade English at Balboa High School in San Francisco. Earlier this year, she was named as an honoree for San Francisco's Teacher of the Year award.

Kristia was born in San Francisco, lived in the Philippines as a teenager, and then moved back to the States for college. She's now worked in the San Francisco Unified School District for 11 years. We talk about how she got into teaching, being a city person, and how gentrification affects her public school students.

Music by RV Mendoza and Blue Dot Sessions. Logo by Niccolo Pizarro.

We hear some of your voicemails about how you got your nicknames. Then, Alan interviews his parents about theirs—and asks why he doesn't have one.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Logo by Niccolo Pizarro. For past episodes, subscribe or visit http://balikbayanshow.com. If you'd like to get in touch, email me at [email protected].

Giovanni Ortega is a playwright, actor, director, and an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Pomona College.

Gio moved to the US from the Philippines when he was 12. We talk about what that was like, the experience of being a "1.5 immigrant," how he became an artist who regularly engages with Filipino identity, and why LA is home now.

Music by RV Mendoza and Blue Dot Sessions. Logo by Niccolo Pizarro. For more about Gio's work, check out his website.

On this episode, we're joined by Natalia Roxas. She's a photographer, co-founder of Filipino Kitchen, and the organizer of this year's Kultura Festival, which takes place on August 19 in Chicago.

We talk about what it was like to grow up at a resort in the forest, moving to the U.S. as a teenager, starting Kultura four years ago, and whether she'd ever consider moving back to the Philippines someday.

Music by RV Mendoza and Blue Dot Sessions. Logo by Niccolo Pizarro. If you're in Chicago, get your Kultura tickets here.

Follow the show on Twitter @balikbayanshow, and send me an email at [email protected]. Thanks for listening!

I'd like to produce an episode about nicknames! You can do that by either recording a voice memo and emailing it [email protected], or you can call me and leave a voicemail, at (971) 800-1389.

Tell me your formal name, where you're calling from, your nickname, and how you got that nickname. Bonus points for any other stories about your nickname that have stuck with you over the years.

Does this count as a bonus episode? This is a re-airing of a short episode I produced a while back for Racist Sandwich, a podcast about food, race, class, and gender.

I promise this show won't be just about food, but I'd to give you all an idea of what kinds of formats I'm interested in. Yes, you'll hear one-on-one interviews, but I'd also love to experiment with your stories and your voices. This is fairly short, but making this episode was special to me.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Logo by Niccolo Pizarro. Get in touch on Twitter, or send an email to [email protected].

(Photo credit: Halil Marx07 / CC BY 3.0)

On Balikbayan's first(!) episode, we're joined by Sarahlynn Pablo, a writer and poet in Chicago who co-founded Filipino Kitchen and ran a Filipino food and arts festival in Chicago called Kultura for four years.

We talk about growing up between the Chicago suburbs and the Philippines, what it was like to start Filipino Kitchen, whether Filipino food really is unhealthy, and how a blog comment on her lugaw changed her life. Then, we go through a "Filipino Lightning Round" where we hash out critically important topics like karaoke, ube, and how good her Tagalog is.

Music by RV Mendoza and Blue Dot Sessions. Logo by Niccolo Pizarro.

Follow the show on Twitter @balikbayanshow, and send me an email at [email protected]. Thanks for listening!

Whenever I meet another Filipino in the US, I kind of want to know their entire life story. It's probably because I'm almost always the only Pinoy in the room.

I don't think I know enough about my fellow Filipino-Americans, even though there are more than 3.5 million of us here. That's where this show comes in.

Balikbayan is a podcast where you'll hear conversations and stories with Fil-Ams about the things that matter to us. It'll come out every two weeks, starting July 24.

I also want to hear from you. Do you have a story or guest idea? Email me at [email protected], and follow the show on Twitter @balikbayanshow.

Music by RV Mendoza. Logo by Niccolo Pizarro.