Welcome to the third blog post about Brazil in preparation to our trip in May 2020. This post I will share one interesting CNN segment that I saw this week and a podcast that I really like when it comes to understanding Brazilian politics and society. First, the CNN segment: it was a brief report on cachaça, Brazil's spirit. People always asks me what is the difference between rum and cachaça and I never knew how to explain it, this article helped me with that. This segment also reminded me of a Timbalada song called "Cachaça". The kind of music Timbalada plays is very much the soul of Bahia and Salvador. We will visit percussion schools and have classes that mirror their music style.

I have been meaning to post about Explaining Brazil for a couple of weeks. This is a great resource produced by phenomenal reporters, dealing with many issues. I will post a link to the podcast on Sticher (here) but you can find in any podcast aggregator. Below I share links to the episodes that relate directly to our course themes.

• How Lula's story explain Brazil
• Marvel's "gay kiss" controversy
• Brazil's prison wars 
• Discovering Little Africa in Rio de Janeiro (we are not going there, but this episode is really good)
• Being LGBT in Bolsonaro's Brazil and LGBT inclusion in Brazil
• Two episodes about Marielle Franco's assassination (links here and here)
• The business of carnaval in Rio
• Brazil's war on drugs
• Racism in soccer (this is also a really good episode)
• Abortion rights in Brazil
• The return of certain diseases in Brazil

This gives you a lot of interesting and easy to access information about Brazil. If you are already into podcasts, just add this one to your list!

WHAT I AM LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW: Elza Soares- A Carne

This is my first post sharing interesting links that can help you understand more about Brazil. First, some fun news from Salvador, where we will spend most of our time in May of 2020. This year a large shopping mall in the city hired its first Black Santa. Even though the city is over 80% black or of mixed descent, this is the first time a mall decided to change the perspective of what it means to be Santa. Here is a link to the news from a Brazilian website. This was the only link I found in English.

Below I will now share two videos. The first is a classic video from PBS and Henry Louis Gates Jr. that is part of his Black in Latin America series. The episode on Brazil does a good job at showing some of the basic issues with the idea of racial democracy in Brazil.

The second video is an interesting video posted by the Chinese Global Television Network (CGTN), posted in May of 2019, about the city of Salvador and the African roots in the city. This video provides students going a glimpse of what you will see in May of 2020. 

I will keep adding more videos, podcasts, and newspaper articles that I find about Brazil. If you happen to find something interesting, please share with me on Twitter, down here in the comments section, or via email.

WHAT I AM LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW: BaianaSystem and Tropkillaz- Saci (Remix)
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