Podcast Pioneer

After being run over by a car in 2019, Misha Euceph decided she wasn’t going to let fear of failure hold her back from taking a big risk. Still recovering from the near-death accident today, the podcast host, writer and producer created Dustlight Productions, a mission-driven podcast studio with diversity at its core.

Dustlight will release its first original podcasts in 2021, and Euceph ’17 MS is an executive producer on The Michelle Obama Podcast, in collaboration with Higher Ground Audio and Spotify.

It’s clear that Euceph did not fail.

Euceph’s first foray into podcasting came with Beginner, an autobiographical series about her experience as an immigrant in America (Euceph and her family moved to the U.S. from Pakistan when she was young). 

While working at Southern California NPR affiliate KPCC, Euceph produced The Big One, an earthquake-survival-guide podcast. Her next podcast, Tell Them, I Am, featured Muslims telling the stories of their lives. It was named among the best of 2019 by Time.

Dismayed by a scarcity of diversity in audio production, Euceph is determined for Dustlight to be a positive force for change. While creating Dustlight, she thought, “What if diversity wasn’t just an objective but rather the company was made up of people with different perspectives who were encouraged and given a safe space to speak up and implement their ideas?”

Dustlight is now making shows that “push audio forward,” says Euceph, who wants to bring a “Pixar standard” to podcasting. When you’re watching a movie, she says, “you know it’s a Pixar production because, for one, it’s incredible every single time. And two, it has a distinct aesthetic and writing style and sound. It’s important to us at Dustlight that you can hear our fingerprint in everything we make.”