Gisele Regatão

Rapper Ana Tijoux became an international star in 2010 with her album “1977.” It was named for the year she was born, in France, to Chilean parents in exile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. After a 10-year hiatus, she released a new album in 2024: “Vida.” Reporter Gisele Regatao caught up with her during a summer tour in New York City.

Re-broadcast of my story originally aired on June 26, 2024.

Latino USA broadcasted my episode of the Monumental podcast, from PRX.
For generations, Christopher Columbus has been glorified in monument after monument across the United States. And while Columbus statues have recently started coming down, including in cities like Columbus, Ohio, the largest one in the world is standing tall —very, very tall… in a U.S. territory— the beach town of Arecibo, Puerto Rico. In this episode, reporter and journalism professor Gisele Regatão travels to Puerto Rico and beyond to uncover the roots of Columbus’ glorification in U.S. history and why he came to be represented in so many public statues—even though he never actually set foot on the U.S. mainland. And she visits a community artist in Woodside, Queens, who is confronting the myth of Columbus by creating new monuments that celebrate immigrant stories.

In the mid-’90s, two high-end New York art galleries began selling one fake painting after another – works in the style of Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko and others. It was the largest art fraud in modern U.S. history, totaling more than $80 million. This story, first published in January 2020, and re-broadcast here by Reveal by the fourth time, looks at how it happened and why almost no one ever was punished by authorities. 

As many as 50 churches, synagogues, mosques and temples in New York City are slated to become home for nearly 1,000 immigrant men. The two-year plan announced by Mayor Eric Adams in June means the city will pay houses of worship to help fill the desperate need for shelter, as more immigrants continue to arrive. 

Radiotopia Presents, the prestigious podcast network, aired my episode for PRX's Monumental, on their feed. The documentary-lenght episode uncovers the roots of Columbus’ glorification in U.S. history and why he came to be represented in so many public statues.

For generations, Christopher Columbus has been glorified in monument after monument across the United States. And while Columbus statues have recently started coming down, including in cities like Columbus, Ohio, the largest one in the world is standing tall - very, very tall… in a U.S. territory – the beach town of Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

In this episode, reporter and journalism professor Gisele Regatão travels to Puerto Rico and beyond to uncover the roots of Columbus’ glorification in U.S. history and why he came to be represented in so many public statues – even though he never actually set foot on the U.S. mainland. And she visits a community artist in Woodside, Queens who confronts the myth of Columbus by creating new monuments that celebrate immigrant stories.

Mugre Sur is known for their deeply political songs — and also their sense of humor. They’re tackling Ecuador’s political turmoil in their upcoming album,  “Sudamericamente.”

More than half a million Venezuelans have moved to Ecuador in the past five years. The small country is the fourth most popular destination for those fleeing the economic and political chaos of Venezuela, after Colombia, Peru and the US. But as Ecuador now faces its own political turmoil, discrimination against foreigners is on the rise, affecting gay and transgender Venezuelans particularly hard.

Scientists say research into newly found reefs could lead to important conservation efforts.

Those planning a Caribbean trip this summer better check the sargassum forecast. Earlier this year, scientists detected a record bloom of this large, brown floating seaweed. 

Yoselin Calcurian, 35, is among some 400,000 Venezuelans who went to Brazil, fleeing economic collapse and political chaos. She and many others say they are now struggling to find jobs and learn a new language.

A controversial housing dispute this week reveals a deep strain on the intake system for migrants. 

In Brazil, pork used to have a bad reputation. São Paulo’s A Casa do Porco, or The Pork’s House, has transformed pork into a gourmet food. 

For 12 years, Dalton Paula worked as a firefighter in Brazil. Today, the Black artist creates paintings, photos and installations that are at the Museum of Modern Art and The Art Institute of Chicago. I visited his home-studio-art school in Goiânia to report this feature for the national public radio show and podcast The World. 

The killing of George Floyd by police and the massive protests that followed energized the Black Lives Matter movement this year. But while most victims of police brutality are African American men, Black women are often the ones organizing protests and pushing for change. We rarely hear about who they are.

This will be a fiction podcast series about two of these women. Gina’s pro-Black, political-yet-entertaining online presence is a welcome balm to her community. Especially now. If she could only drown out the roaring noise of the monster outside, she might be able to record some more podcast episodes. They’re pretty popular.

Good thing Sound Fighter Systems exists. Dru, the soundproofing installer assigned to fix Gina’s noise problem, believes the sounds are all in Gina’s head. That is, until Dru begins to hear the monster outside, too, and now neither one of them is able to leave. Can agoraphobia be contagious? Is there really a beast just beyond Gina’s threshold? Or is it just 400 years’ worth of racism, oppression, and trauma manifest and threatening to come inside? This is a story about two African-American women who can't leave, can't stay. It's about America. It's about time.

The podcast series will be presented in four episodes, all written by playwright and television writer Inda Craig-Galvan and produced and directed by Gisele Regatão.

Episode 1 of the fiction podcast series "a hit dog will holler," which I produced and directed, was airead by Snap Judgement.

Part club, part roadmap, part therapy session, Degrees, a podcast by the Environmental Defense Fund, features in-depth conversations with change-makers using their careers to make a meaningful impacts.
Host Yesh Pavlik Slenk talks with everyone from storytellers to songwriters, city leaders to sustainability gurus and former White House staffers about their paths to solving the world’s biggest problems. I was hired by Podcast Allies to produced season 3, which launched on October 13th and features eight episodes. https://podcastallies.com/meet-the-team

DataLabia will be a podcast series in six episodes about sanitation, sewage and water services in the favela of Maré, one of the largest of Rio de Janeiro. I'm working with the two reporters and producers helping them develop the arc of the series, editing all their scripts and offering feedback on production. The podcast is expected to be released in August or September of 2021.

Cientistas na Linha de Frente (Scientists on the Frontline) will be a podcast series developed by the investigative non-profit organization Agencia Estado that looks at scientists who have been threatened in Brazil by far-right groups for their research on COVID, reforestation of the Amazon forest, pesticides and other issues. It's currently in production and is expected to be released in August.

Um Mar de Historias will be a fiction podcast series for kids about two corals and their adventures in the ocean of Porto de Galinhas, a small town in the Northeast of Brazil. The series, which will have eight episodes and will be in Portuguese, will cover issues like the importance of corals to the ocean's ecosystem and how corals are being affected by climate change. I'm working with the two creators helping them develop the arc of the series, editing all their scripts and offering feedback on production. The podcast is expected to be released in September of 2021.

In the mid-1990s, two high-end New York art galleries began selling one fake painting after another – works in the style of Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko and others. It was the largest art fraud in modern U.S. history, totaling more than $80 million. In this 40-minute-long investigative piece, I look at how it happened and why almost no one ever was punished by authorities. (This is a re-broadcast of my piece that first aired in January of 2020)

Cochicho is a website in Brazil for podcast producers. In this piece, I give tips on how to produce an anti-racist podcast, from the composition of the staff to the sources.

Thirty two million Latinos are eligible to vote this election – a record. But research suggests that, in battleground states, 57% of them are not going to cast ballots. Historically, Latino turnout has been lower than that of whites, Blacks and Asians. Many hoped things would be different this time around. Instead, traditional political strategies plus the challenges presented by COVID-19 made Latino voters a low priority again. Reporter Gisele Regatao reports on how that is playing out in two key swing states, Florida and Pennsylvania.

Brazil recorded its first death from COVID-19 on March 17th and by mid-June the country was the world leader in daily deaths. Overall, Brazil is only behind the United States both in the number of cases and deaths due to coronavirus. But Jair Bolsonaro, the country's right-wing nationalist president, continues to be dismissive about the threat posed by the virus. In this 27-minute piece, Gisele Regatao explains why Brazil, one of the largest economies in the world and a nation often in the forefront of innovative public health treatments, has failed to combat the pandemic.

Latinos could play a decisive role in the swing state of Pennsylvania in November’s presidential election. There are about 440,000 eligible Latino voters there and Trump won the state by around 44,000 votes in 2016, less than 1 percent.
Latinos are not only growing in numbers in the state, but they are more politically engaged than ever, particularly in two neighboring counties that were closely divided in the last presidential race: Berks and Lehigh.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign has been courting voters like these in Pennsylvania and other states for months. It’s something that other candidates have rarely done. But now that Sanders has dropped out of the presidential race, many wonder if former Vice-President Joe Biden will be able to win them over.
In this episode30-minute for NPR's Latino USA, I talk to Latino voters in Pennsylvania about their priorities, as well as with a Sanders strategist and a political scientist from the University of California Berkeley about the challenges ahead for Biden and how COVID-19 has changed the race.

In the mid-1990s, two high-end New York art galleries began selling one fake painting after another – works in the style of Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko and others. It was the largest art fraud in modern U.S. history, totaling more than $80 million. In this 40-minute-long investigative piece, I look at how it happened and why almost no one ever was punished by authorities.

Salsa fanatics thought “Siembra” was doomed when the album came out in 1978. The songs were too long. They bashed American consumerism and instigated Latinos to push for social change. But it became the first salsa record to sell more than one million copies. It’s still probably the best-seller in the genre. On this documentary length New York Icons, Gisele Regatao reports on why Siembra was so successful and how it eventually fostered a colossal fight.

From Van Gogh to Virginia Woolf, there are no shortage of examples of brilliant artists with troubled minds. Now new research proves that not only there is a link between periods of sadness and artistic brilliance, but that feeling blue can boost creativity on all of us. And it can be measured. One researcher concluded that a 9.3% increase in negative emotions by three major composers led to a 6.3% increase in works created in the following year. This feature looks at sadness as a powerful artistic tool.
(My feature starts at 34:47)

Many scientists believe oceans are experiencing a jellyfish boom. That has led to beach closures all over the world and even deaths in Australia and the Philippines. Gisele Regatao reports on new research on these mysterious creatures. 15:25 minutes in

“Cross Road Blues” is one of just 29 songs that bluesman Robert Johnson recorded, and more than any other, it encapsulates the myths that surround his life: He sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads to become a guitar virtuoso. He was murdered by a jealous husband. He was the founder of rock ‘n’ roll. Myths aside, Robert Johnson stood out for his complex personality and his technique. He was educated, he wrote his own songs and he played the guitar as if it were a piano: one hand played the rhythm and the other the melody. “It's wild,” says Jon Pareles, chief pop music critic at The New York Times. “It sounds like there's two or three guitars talking to each other.” In this edition of American Icons, parsing truth from hearsay in the history of Robert Johnson’s “Cross Road Blues.” And finding out what the song means at a time when many Americans are still on the crossroad, particularly in Johnson’s home-state of Mississippi, which has the highest poverty rate in the country — and where his grandchildren still live.

Gisele Regatao, a freelance reporter and assistant professor of journalism at Baruch College, tells CJR Editor and Publisher Kyle Pope how she lost a story because an NPR editor said her accent was too strong.

My Columbia Journalism Review column was quoted in this piece: https://www.mediaite.com/online/npr-killed-an-experienced-radio-journalists-story-due-to-her-brazilian-accent/

My Columbia Journalism Review article was quoted in this piece: https://current.org/2018/11/journalist-says-npr-nixed-story-she-speaks-with-an-accent/?wallit_nosession=1

My CJR column was quoted in this piece: https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/randy-hall/2018/11/08/npr-wont-air-brazilian-journalists-radio-story-because-her-accent

Why are foreign accents still a taboo in the national airwaves? Story was picked up by several online publications: https://www.mediaite.com/online/npr-killed-an-experienced-radio-journalists-story-due-to-her-brazilian-accent/ https://www.mhpbooks.com/we-need-more-diverse-voices-in-journalism-literally/ https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/randy-hall/2018/11/08/npr-wont-air-brazilian-journalists-radio-story-because-her-accent

Plans to restore and paint 2,500 houses in Bogotá’s historical downtown area of Candelaria are clashing with graffiti artists whose colorful murals have transformed the area and brought tourists to the neighborhood.

This is a feature about Martin Ramirez, a Mexican immigrant who was institutionalized in mental hospitals in Northern California for more than 30 years and is now considered by some critics to be one of the best artists of the 20th century.

Celestial Blood is a fiction podcast about love and secrets in the family of twins Sol and Mundo Lucero. It was the first podcast released in two languages, English and Spanish. It received a Sarah awards for audio fiction, a Latin Podcast awards and Gisele Regatao was featured on Elle.com as a producer who is expanding the art-form of podcasts. https://www.elle.com/culture/news/a45620/celestial-blood-bilingual-podcast/

Created, produced an edited a podcast series for Hyperallergic, a website about visual arts.

How small businesses are starting to flourish in Cuba.