Get to know Misha Euceph, the young changemaker behind The Michelle Obama Podcast
The 27-year-old’s newly-found podcast studio was recruited by Obama’s team for its mission-orientedness. The young entrepreneur opens up on her emotions towards working with the former First Lady, her creative process, and the power of audio
“As a literal immigrant to this country—to have gone into the arts, to have created a production company & to have then had the honor to make the @MichelleObama podcast [sic],” reads a tweet on Misha Euceph’s profile, one that summarises the 27-year-old’s journey well. Euceph, a Pakistani-American, migrated to the United States at the mere age of 12 and since then has consistently carved her niche—be it in the country’s media industry that doesn’t have enough women at the top tiers, or in the American community where she struggled to assimilate while holding on to her South Asian heritage. Her production company, too, is founded on values imbibed from her trailblazing experiences—elevating marginalised voices, emphasising vulnerability, honesty, and difficult conversations, and pushing the boundaries of audio. The overlap in the mission between The Michelle Obama Podcast—the former First Lady’s effort to channel her thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and experiences not just as a political figure but also as a Black woman, mother, wife, daughter, and all the other complex roles she assumes—and Euceph’s venture is what made for a natural path for the creative collaboration.
The quest for rawness and intimacy is deeply palpable in the podcast, which highlights the former First Lady’s “little moments and stories that the gift of hindsight had filled with new meaning,” as Obama says in the pilot episode. It sees Obama enter into candid discussions about topics meaningful to her—identity, community, women’s health, and much more. Vogue did a deep dive into Euceph's creative process for the show, while also learning about the young podcaster’s diverse experiences that led to this climactic moment in her career.
The initial response to the podcast has been amazing. How does it feel to have created this great product for the world?
When my team and I were first asked to work on this podcast for the former First Lady, we were just ecstatic because she's such a revered figure. Often when making a show for somebody who is really well known, especially when it comes to political figures, there isn't that level of intimacy and you hear very much the same story over and over again. And we felt really privileged and honoured that the [former] First Lady chose this medium and this show and this time, to go deeper. With her book [Becoming], she went into depth about who she was and really opened up about certain things about her life that we had never heard before. With the podcast, she took that even a step further.
In some ways, that's something that America was craving—remembering who our role models are and getting to know them again, in a way that you can't get to know them when they're in public office. So for us, it just felt like a privilege. It's been incredible working on the show, it's been so exciting that people have received the show well.
What’s so special about podcasts that sets them apart from any other medium?
For me, podcasting has always been such a weird thing because you're interacting with an audience, but you're also a lot of the time in a room with just one other person, having a conversation. And especially when you're interviewing or talking to people that you know well, or who you love and grew up with, it's so easy to forget that the equipment is there. It's not like film or TV where there are giant crews everywhere with lights and makeup. Audio takes it back to the most human form of connection, which is a conversation. No matter what format of podcasts you're working with, ultimately, it's somebody speaking to someone else speaking into your ears. And I think that's inherently more vulnerable and raw, and takes away all these barriers to connection.
How did the collaboration between you and the former First Lady come to be?
It's actually a really beautiful story. I have a really good friend called Mukta Mohan. She's half Indian, half Latina. She and I met a few years ago at drinks for a podcasting happy hour, and we really, really hit it off. I just could relate to her on a very deep level and it felt like we had this shared heritage and a very similar vision of what we wanted to do in podcasting. There are such few brown women who are at the top of the podcasting field and even in entertainment in general. She [eventually] got recruited to work with Obama's production company, Higher Ground Audio. And I went through a series of events—I was in a near-death accident, after which I decided to start my own production company. We got to talking and they really loved what we were doing with our production company, that it was mission-oriented and that we were centring people of colour. So the partnership made a lot of sense.
I think the Obamas have traditionally elevated voices of up and coming people of colour. If you notice in the podcast, a lot of the artists that you'll hear at the top are black women, women of colour, and young women who are emerging musicians, singer-songwriters and bands. That was the same approach when it came to who was going to make the podcast because we're a brand new production house, you know, they could have gone with anybody who's well-established.
What are some of the key production choices that you had to make? Was the level of intimacy always intended?
The most important thing to remember is that this happened during the pandemic. So, I just want to shout out to Higher Ground Audio (Dan Fierman, Mukta Mohan, Anna Holmes, and Janae Marable), to my own team (Arwen Nicks, Jonathan Shifflett, Andy Clausen, Menaka Wilhelm, Mary Knauf, Rachael Garcia, and Tamika Adams) and to the First Lady's team for even pulling this off in a pandemic and for understanding and valuing what Americans wanted and needed in this time and giving them that. It takes a lot of courage when you're in isolation and you're dealing with difficult things yourself to then make something for other people that brings joy and comfort.
Both in her book and her documentary, the First Lady has emphasised how much relationships matter to her. And so that became the premise of the podcast. I think relationships inherently are intimate. There's no way you can make a podcast within the framework of relationships where the host is talking to the people that she loves and not reach that intimacy. The goal was always to create something that's very, very raw, and intimate, where you feel like you're getting to know her a little bit better.
From Barack Obama to Michelle Norris, the show has a great and diverse line-up of guests. What was the process of narrowing down that list?
That’s something that evolved over time and frankly, a lot of it was also decided by the logistics of the quarantine and the stay-at-home orders. Another consideration was the subject matter—she [Obama] had decided on marriage, siblings, parenting, community, and women's health as the relationships being spotlighted—and it mattered that the guests could speak to those experiences.
The podcast has so many pause-worthy moments. What have been some of your favourite ones?
I honestly love the President and the First Lady's relationship. A lot of us find a lot of hope and beauty in that. I was 16 years old when Barack Obama was elected as President. I couldn't vote, I was a recent immigrant and all of a sudden a black man was running for president. His dad is Kenyan, he had spent time in Muslim countries like Indonesia and Pakistan, and he just felt like somebody who represented me and my people, who looked like me even though he's not ethnically or religiously the same. Witnessing him talking to his wife and having that respectful relationship in real-time, vs on-screen, was extremely special.
There’s also the time in the Sharon Malone episode where she (Obama) talks so openly about menopause, puberty, and your changing relationship with your body. She says something about beauty changing as you get older and the expectation that women should look beautiful in the way that a 20-year-old does throughout their lives rather than looking beautiful for a 30-, 40-, or 50-year-old. That just hit home really hard for me because I think that South Asian culture often emphasises youthfulness. Hearing somebody who is so literally beautiful and also beautiful as a person speaking so openly about body image was just really inspiring and meaningful.
This article originally appeared on Vogue.in
