Empower House Radio KXEP-LP

Nusaiba's Neighbors S1E3 TheeLanaiii

In honor of Juneteenth, Nusaiba interviews a local Black Artist in San Antonio named Lanai. She gives us an insight on her experiences as a black artist from Chicago now navigating her artistry and life in San Antonio. This episode contains important conversations and awareness towards racism and the reality of Black and African Americans till this day. Black culture is extremely important for the music industry and we honor the artists that pioneered the music industry. Lanai talks about what inspires her music and expresses her opinions along with her experiences with the community.

Nusaiba's Neighbors S1E2 Yasmeena Yaani

The 2nd episode of Nusaiba's Neighbors introduced a local San Antonio artist, Yasmeena Yaani, as she gives us an insight on being a Syrian R&B artist. She hold on to her Syrian identity as she uses her culture to express herself in her music with a twist. Yasmeena gives us an insight in her life as she allows the audience to get to know the deep and vulnerable parts about her and how music has saved her life. We share our common traditions and sing a few songs. She debuts her song "Inte Feene," which means "You are within Me."

Nusaiba's Neighbors S1E1 w/ Daniel "Ali" Jimenez

This is the first episode of Nusaiba's Neighbors where she starts off her show by having a vulnerable conversation with one of her closest friends, Daniel "Ali" Jimenez as he describes his new life as a Latino revert living in San Antonio. He tells us how his life has changed and the way he still holds on to his Mexican identity while embracing a new religion. 

Platica Y Poetics- Una plática with Jerry Robledo Season 4, Episode 10

Una plática with Jerry Robledo Season 4, Episode 10
Some conversations ask you to bring your whole self with a side of vulnerability to the table. This was one of them. Sitting across from Jerry I knew within the first few minutes that this platica would be closer to a revealing, confession. On the menu, two writers, two parents, peeling back the language we use to protect, explain, and translate ourselves. We connected speaking of our children, and about unconditional love that terrifies you with its size. We realized that we both spoke a language from the depths of el ‘alma’, the soul's dialect. Where pain, grief, fear, and unknown speak to another. Jerry's forthcoming poetry collection moves through fatherhood not as a role performed, but as an act of witnessing. He writes of his daughter's becoming, and his admission that he expressed himself to mothering, having never quite known what a father does. We spoke about how parenting was never meant to be divided by gender at all, that the real work is ushering, exposing our children to the full range of what it means to be human. He spoke with such honesty about trying to unlearn in his lineage and what he is trying to preserve. We spoke to the Mexicano and American identity and the contradiction of that space. In the end I felt like I was at a barecito in Monterrey, cigarillo in hand, cold tequila talking to a primo about life’s honest truths. In the end arriving at the last course on the menu was inheritance, what he hopes his daughter will know about the man who raised her. A present, imperfect, with a bleeding heart in hand. A translator of poesía, el camino, love, and survival. This episode was not an interview. It was two parents, two poets, speaking the language of truth.

Platica Y Poetics S4E9- Xelena Gonzalez

A Conversation with Xelena González Creator of Lotería Remedios & Author 
What began as a plática — the kind that feels less like an interview and more like a random conversation you didn't anticipate, unfolded into one of the most tender, genuine exchanges of this season. Sitting with Xelena González felt like sitting with easiness to wisdom. A grounded sensation. The kind that comes from a woman who has done inner work and is not afraid to pass on enlightenment through her ‘Remedios.’ We began at the core of her work — with the self. With remembering. Xelena's creative life has been shaped by a continuous returning, a reclamation of what the world has abandoned, awareness of natural word, and how listening to ancestral guides, is medicinal. Her artistic becoming, she shared, required to unlearn as much as it has required her to create — to strip away the goals, molds, the expectations, and find again what was whole before any of that arrived. As an artist, she’s tethered to herself not through perfection, but presence. Through small, sacred acts of returning. The theme of motherhood moved through our entire conversation like an undercurrent, not as a role, but our, fuerza, force. Xelena spoke about how becoming a mother transformed not just what she creates but why. She sees a deep correlation between mothering and storytelling, both acts of cariño. The stories she writes for children are not separate from the mother she is; they are of the same gesture, of care, and maternal instinct. And for those of us still becoming, or in need of guidance, turn inward, trust the season you are in, listen to the energy of the cosmos, pull a card or two from the Remedios deck and listen to its wisdom. Light a candle and open your corazón to the healing the universe offers through nature, ancestral wisdom, and presence. 

The Empower Hour- Armando Estrada w/ Erika Thompson HPV Vaccination

The Empower Hour- Armando Estrada w/ Karla Kopalli- Nature/Nurture

The Empower Hour- Johnny Space Dragon w/ George Cisneros Mega Corazon

Platica Y Poetics S4E9: Erika Prosper

Season 4, Episode 9: Erika ProsperSome mujeres you meet become instant friends; others step naturally into a role of cariño y cuidado — a comadre. As the mics went live, I was engulfed by La Erika’s powerful presence, one that could be immediately recognized and held in reverence. Our culturally rooted pláticafelt like the kind that has unfolded at sobremesas across the world. Conversations about the elevation of la mujer en su poder. In San Antonio’s former First Lady, Erika Prosper ‘la mera jefa’ in embodied action y palabra, I encountered not simply a civic leader, but a mujer deeply anchored in el campo, memoria, and community. I opened with the question, “Who is Erika Prosper?” From that moment, the room shifted — a comida laid out before us, homemade picadillo y tortillas on the table. What unfolded was not a formal interview, but mera plática. We journeyed back to her beginnings in the fields of South Texas, where el campo first shaped her hands, her ganas, and her understanding of dignity in labor. She spoke of migrant roots not as hardship alone, but as a living archive of resilience carried in the body and spirit. El mero campo ‘el mero maestro’ guiding her toward becoming a cultural steward of San Antonio de Béjar. Our conversation moved through the layered soul of Yanaguana, San Antonio as sacred ground, indigenous inheritance, migrant corridor, artistic sanctuary. We reflected on literacy as liberation, not merely the reading of books, but the expansion of self, culture, and empowerment. The ability to reclaim one’s story. To shape destiny. La Erika, una mujerona. Throughout our sitdown, she honored and elevated women, reminding us that resilience is not accidental; it is cultivated through conviction y comunidad. Her tenure as First Lady was not mere duty, but stewardship. For the people, by the people. I walked away from our conversation feeling empowered in comunidad and reaffirmed in palabra. Our exchange was a reminder that cultural conviction, when paired with literacy, cariño, and persistent labor, becomes un legado, living legacy en acción y palabra viva.

Platica Y Poetics S4E7 Carmen Gray

The only items missing from our space were an incense slowly burning, and perhaps green tea. What began as a carefully outlined interview was dissolved almost immediately. My physical questions — printed, prepared, structured — disintegrated into space the moment Carmen Gray began to speak. Instead of a formal exchange, what unfolded was something far more sacred: a plática of intuition. An esoteric current entered the room. We spoke less about genre and more about destination. Less about craft and more about what calls to us. When I asked, “Who is Carmen Gray?” the answer did not arrive as biography, it arrived as presence. Tejana. Mexicana. Teacher. Storyteller. Woman attuned to the mystical undercurrent of language. Her roots are not decorative; they are ‘tierra’ soil. Culture and lineage do not simply influence her fiction and poetry; they animate within characters and settings. In her worlds of horror, magical realism, historical fiction, dark romance, and verse, the supernatural is not spectacle but inheritance. I realized Carmen does not shift, she acutely listens to lineage, what whispers to a mystics’ ear.Our conversation deepened when we entered the terrain of language. As an educator Spanish for over two decades, she lives in the liminal space where meaning shapes and reforms. We reflected on how bilingualism reshapes rhythm, and how code-switching is not fragmentation but expansion. My question about sound, scent, texture gifted a sweet pause and breath. My Aquarius air gifted the body remembrance before the response. We spoke about how writing is less about invention and more about excavation, the difficult unearthing of what has always lived beneath the surface. This plática led to speaking about what we hope readers feel in their bodies long after the final page. The lingering scent, tremor in the chest, recognition. Our space, the plática became poetry