Before #TimesUp, There Was Marilyn Monroe | Nat’s Favorite OZY Picks

Video producer and Atlanta native Nat Roe serves up both her favorite features and words of wisdom.

I’m probably at a concert or on a plane. As a music junkie, culture connoisseur, documentary aficionado and cheese plate fiend, I like to create and am constantly inspired by my surroundings, whether I’m riding the J train through Brooklyn or getting lost in a Moroccan medina. Rapper ASAP Rocky said it best: “When you’re making art, everything has to be cohesive.” That’s how I like to live as a producer, walking that line between work and art, evolving while holding a mirror up to society.

I started at OZY in 2016, fresh out of college, curious to experience life beyond my hometown of Atlanta. The past two years have been a whirlwind of growth, inspiration and excitement. I can’t quite articulate the amount of gratitude I have for this company — for expanding my universe and helping cultivate my identity. I love our team, and I am humbled to be among the ranks of such a talented, diverse crew.

The stories I chose for today’s curation represent some of what OZY does best — telling the stories behind the stories, including the good, the not-so-good, the weird and the inspirational, making a stranger feel like a friend, making you smarter and ultimately bringing us all a little closer.

Sabine Choucair travels around Lebanon’s refugee camps to record and create art based on the stories of the displaced.

Sabine Choucair is a clown with a mission. After years of clowning (yes, that’s a technical term) to boost morale for the Syrian kids stuck in the purgatory of Lebanon’s refugee camps, Choucair decided to try another form of art therapy. She began a project called the Caravan, which enables Syrians to create their own street theater based on the stories recounted and recorded by other Syrian refugees. And yes, they travel and perform out of a van.

“I thought, ok, how about instead of me telling these stories, how about I let them tell their [own] stories?” says Choucair of her troupe of refugee thespians. Not only is it important for the Syrian community to take ownership of this narrative, she says, but also “for the Lebanese community … to listen to these stories and decide for themselves if they want to love these people, or don’t want to love these people.”

The South African host of ‘The Daily Show’ tells Carlos Watson about the hardships he endured on his way to success.

Noah’s mother, Patricia, escaped death not once, but twice. Watson and Noah discuss the abuse Patricia faced at the hands of her second husband, and her miraculous recovery from a gunshot to the head.

But this fiercest of moms — Noah once told Oprah Winfrey that he was merely his mother’s “punk-ass sidekick” — also faced down a Black racist taxi driver who threatened her and her children. The cabbie threatened Patricia’s life because she had a mixed-race child with her (Noah), and thus had obviously been with a white man.