Episodes
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I can trace the kernel of this chapter to February last year when I was asked this question by The Republic for their First Draft series: “The bulk of your work (as a writer, researcher, and visual artist) explores how Africans are making a living. Why is this important to you?”
And I replied: “It is important because life can be very hard and a lot of us get really tired. I’d like for us to be less tired, or at least for us to not have to work through exhaustion and onslaughts against our nervous systems. But we often have to work through all of those because we lack security, social protection, secure means of livelihoods, homes where we can relax, strong community structures, or on the individual level compassionate senses of self.”
This episode is a reflection on alienation, catastrophe, random acts of violence, cognitive dissonance, self-denial, brain fag syndrome, and some of the -isms at the root of these Nigerian nervous conditions today. It includes the voices of the film archivist Didi Cheeka, the international development practitioner Aaliyah Ibrahim, and the founder of Pax Herbals, Fr Anselm Adodo.
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01:57 Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions
05:03 Historical Context & Brain Fag Syndrome
07:55 Crisis of Meaning and Cognitive Dissonance
11:19 Alienation in Nigerian Society
15:09 Marx's Theory of Alienation
19:51 Understanding Nigeria's Political and Economic System
22:40 Catastrophe- Interminable and so, Interruptable
Website: sweetmedicine.me
Newsletter: studiostyles.substack.com.
Instagram: @ss.studiostyles
Support Sweet Medicine: https://flutterwave.com/donate/olt4tbjytsjr
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Adefolatomiwa Toye is a PhD student researching how the architectures of Nigeria’s first universities reveal the politics of nation building in our early post-Independence era. This was a fun conversation on the optimistic spirit of the Nigerian ‘60s, ethnic and class divides in Nigeria, challenges faced in accessing educational resources, the disconnect between universities and their surrounding communities, and the need for honesty and historical consciousness in addressing societal issues.
01:54 How is your archival research going?
05:30 The Role of Universities in Nation Building
12:05 Post-Independence University Politics
27:53 Reflections on Optimism and Disconnection
32:30 Class Divide and Awareness in Nigeria
Website: sweetmedicine.me
Newsletter: studiostyles.substack.com.
Instagram: @ss.studiostyles
Support Sweet Medicine: https://flutterwave.com/donate/olt4tbjytsjr
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Missing episodes?
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Amarachi Iheke is a doctoral researcher at Kings College London writing a dissertation on Azanian (South African) resistance anthems. This Saturday, I bring you a really powerful conversation I had with her that lasted four hours and meandered through many issues from standards of beauty, to corporal punishment, gerontocracy in Nigeria, the civil war, class and the Nigerian spirit world. It was my first recorded conversation in the series and exemplifies what I set out to do with these researchers and practitioners: get them to apply their academic expertise to everyday issues in our everyday Nigerian lives. The casual violence, the emotional repression, the cycles of harm and irresponsibility on one hand and everyday remedial acts of courage, storytelling and curiousity on the other hand.
03:04 Healing vs. Reconciliation
05:58 The Legacy of the Nigerian-Biafra War
12:00 Beauty Standards and the Burden of Appearance
17:53 Cultural Expressions and Radical Empathy
20:54 Courage and ‘Strength’ in Nigeria
36:59 The Cycle of Bullying and Power Dynamics
46:08 Biafra, the idea and symbol
50:29 Spirituality and Collective Responsibility
Website: sweetmedicine.me
Newsletter: studiostyles.substack.com.
Instagram: @ss.studiostyles
Support Sweet Medicine: https://flutterwave.com/donate/olt4tbjytsjr
#socialhealing #Nigeria #genocide #Biafra #resistance #ptsd #decolonisation #Africanspirituality #reconciliation #radicalempathy #gerontocracy
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Often I hear young people say, “Thank God our generation is documenting now. Thank God we are only just starting to appreciate archives.” Unfortunately, we are not the first. As Mrs Kudirat Ayoola, the lead archivist at the National Film, Visual and Sound Archive (NFVSA) in Jos, said to me in an interview about the economics of running a public archive in Nigeria: “better soup, na money kill am.”
In this episode, I propose we do four things with with History, the discipline:
1: Accept that it is not the be all and end all, and that it will not prevent existential death.
2: Make it in our backyards.
3: Be transparent with it.
4: Fund It!
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02:30 Exploring my Personal History and Education
11:42 Accept that it is not the be-all and end-all
16:44 Make It In Your Backyard
18:45 Be Transparent With It
21:06 Fund It!
29:11 Conclusion
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Website: sweetmedicine.me
Newsletter: studiostyles.substack.com.
Instagram: @ss.studiostyles
Support Sweet Medicine: https://flutterwave.com/donate/olt4tbjytsjr
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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This Sunday, I bring you a conversation I had with six people who joined the Studio Styles text club meeting on July 6, 2024. This was our third week of discussing Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
As with all our club meetings, the conversation moved from the text and into our everyday lives to explore how we can apply the ideas to action in our lives, what changes we’d like to see in the world and how we can contribute to making that change. We went on to discuss what fear is good for, feeling the fear and protesting anyway, #EndSARS and the question of whether Nigeria is a psychopathic entity not worth dialoguing with, the intelligence of plants and the potential of spirituality and plant medicine as transformative tools of change. It was from this conversation that I picked up the practice of using ‘life-affirming’ as a metric by which I now assess my actions and beliefs.
People in the episode:
Aaliyah Ibrahim, a writer and an international development practicioner
Gbope Onigbanjo, a consultant and researcher on international affairs, peace studies, and political economy
Chiamaka Dike, a journalist
Dede Israel, a writer and research analyst
Amanda Madumere, an ed-tech entrepreneur and arts administrator
Deborah Iyalagha, a writer and nursing student
Keren Lasme, an artist and researcher and the only non-Nigerian (Ivoirian) on the call.
01:10 Exploring Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed
06:35 Challenging Workplace Norms and Individual Freedom
12:03 The Limits of Dialogue in Liberation
14:58 Navigating Fear in Society
18:46 Imagining a Safe World
29:13 Life-Affirming Practices/What is the 'Human'
34:08 Spirituality and Plant Medicine as Tools for Change
#SweetMedicine #PauloFreire #socialhealing #Nigeria #fear #plant medicine #spirituality
Website: sweetmedicine.me
Newsletter: studiostyles.substack.com.
Instagram: @ss.studiostyles
Support Sweet Medicine: https://flutterwave.com/donate/olt4tbjytsjr
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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This Saturday, I bring you my conversation with Fr Anselm Adodo, the founder of Nigeria’s leading plant medicine research laboratory, Pax Herbals. Fr Anselm is a Benedictine priest at the Ewu monastery in Edo State and his work exeplifies a wide range of expertise spanning education, environmentalism, social work. Fr Adodo’s unwavering commitment is to inspire individuals and promote collaboration between academia and industry, paving the way for transformative advancements in healthcare.
In this conversation, perhaps more than any other in this project, we kept returning to how one’s material conditions affect their ability to see the bigger picture and tap into the healing that comes from meaning-making and re-storying one’s life, a task that requires vulnerability and integrity.
00:00 Introduction to Sweet Medicine Podcast
00:59 Father Anselm Adodo: A Journey of Healing and Discovery
09:27 Education and the genius of the local
14:40 How have Nigerians been taught to think?
17:58 The Impact of Capitalism on Nigerian Society
26:10 Social Innovation and Densu in Ayi Kwei Armah’s novel The Healers
30:31 Case Studies of Integrated Living in Africa
36:41 Thank you.
Website: sweetmedicine.me
Newsletter: studiostyles.substack.com.
Instagram: @ss.studiostyles
Support Sweet Medicine: https://flutterwave.com/donate/olt4tbjytsjr
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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In 2020, Nigeria's president Muhammadu Buhari comforted kidnapped and released school boys in Kankara, Katsina State by telling them that "You children are very lucky. I hope you will be very careful your success in the future depends not on subjects like History and English but Technology." This derision for the humanities (and the idea that one can study only one or the other, and when faced with the choice, one must study only Technology) is a widely held sentiment in Nigeria by leaders and everyday citizens.
In this episode, I make a case for why 'Humanities and Social Sciences' or 'Technology and Natural Sciences' is a false dilemma. Interdisciplinary education can provide a more holistic understanding of society and foster critical thinking and communication skills in individuals. The Humanities are critical for the well-being of a diverse, democratic and postcolonial society like ours because they help us define what 'better' means for us.
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00:00 Introduction to Sweet Medicine Podcast
05:20 Critique of Government Attitudes Towards Humanities
10:52 Interdisciplinary Approaches to Education
17:40 Personal Journey and Opportunities in Humanities
21:31 The Broader Impact of Humanities and Social Sciences
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Website: sweetmedicine.me
Newsletter: studiostyles.substack.com.
Instagram: @ss.studiostyles
Support Sweet Medicine: https://flutterwave.com/donate/olt4tbjytsjr
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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This episode brings snippets from the 14 conversations I had with guests working in the humanities and social sciences and oriented towards social healing in Nigeria. In these conversations, we discussed the ideas that animate their research, their career journeys and how they use their work to make tangible impact in their communities.
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to Sweet Medicine Podcast
01:13 Personifying Nigeria: A Patient's Perspective
04:57 Nigerians' Emotional Landscape: How have we been taught to think about how to be in the world?
09:17 Innovation is responding to our reality, to the gift of now
10:56 The Complex History of Nigerian Identity
16:13 Understanding Harm and Responsibility
Support Sweet Medicine: https://flutterwave.com/donate/olt4tbjytsjr
Guest list (in order of appearance in episode):
Chibu Obiajunwa, a medical doctor and clinical researcherAaliyah Ibrahim, a writer and international development practitionerDidi Cheeka, a filmmaker, critic and archivistAmarachi Iheke, a PhD student researching radical re-imaginations of African selfhoods in South AfricaObayomi Anthony, an artist, photographer, filmmaker and National Geographic explorerIsrael Wekpe, a theatre director and lecturer at the University of BeninTobiloba Akibo, a landscape architect and researcher,Mobolaji Otuyelu, an entrepreneur and an organiser for the Federation of Informal Workers (FIWON)Fr Anselm Adodo, the founder of the Pax Herbals https://www.paxherbals.net/about-us/Gbope Onigbanjo, a researcher and consultant working in the fields of international affairs, peace studies, and political economy with an MA in Conflict Resolution in Divided SocietiesOluwakemi Agbato, a design writer, researcher and founder of RENIKEJI jewelry design practiceAdefolatomiwa Toye, an architect and PhD student researching the role of Nigeria’s first universities in the development of national identityGbemi Adekoya, a psychotherapistTakeaways
The humanities and social sciences are crucial for social healing.Nigerians often live in a state of survival mode.Art can serve as a powerful medium for social change.Understanding historical context is essential for identity formation.Exemplary violence is a normalized part of Nigerian society.Innovation should respond to local ever-changing realities.Knowledge becomes real when it is personally relevant.Trauma can perpetuate cycles of harm within families and communities.People are complex and often face moral dilemmas.Healing requires a collective effort and understanding of our histories.Website: sweetmedicine.me
Newsletter: studiostyles.substack.com.
Instagram: @ss.studiostyles
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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This is the introductory episode to the Sweet Medicine podcast. Here I share my understanding of social healing an orientation towards life-affirming relations with ourselves, with all beings around us, and with the world that we are all co creating. By social healing, I also mean an exercise in integrity and integration, an exercise in the kind of connection we can achieve only by accepting ourselves as new as we will be every single day.
Listen for an overview of Nigeria's social problems today, an overview of how the Sweet Medicine project was designed and how the podcast will run over the next 8 weeks. Thanks for being here.
Website: sweetmedicine.me
Newsletter: studiostyles.substack.com
Instagram: instagram.com/ss.studiostyles
Support Sweet Medicine: https://flutterwave.com/donate/olt4tbjytsjr
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
