Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda

Silence and Shame: Sexual Violence and the Institutions that Protect It

Many of us learned very young that sexual violence is “unsayable”. That naming it has consequences. In turn, sexual violence remains endemic, sustained by the silent treatment it is given, and by a society that tolerates such an insatiable appetite for violence without accountability. In this episode, we step into terrains of this damaging silence and ask who it protects, who it punishes, and what it costs to speak out. We begin with memory. Tamanda reflects on the moment she first encountered the word “rape” as a child, and the shock of being told never to say the word again. We trace how “unsayability” becomes culture - how silence is taught, reinforced and often rewarded by wider society. We examine the instinctive disbelief that greets disclosures of abuse, and the psychological defences that surface when believing someone would require us to confront our own histories. Then we take the fight for justice to institutions. Universities. Creative industries. And justice systems. We explore what happens when belief demands action, and action threatens power. Why do institutions so often choose disbelief? Why does position protect perpetrators? How do cultures of silence become entrenched through complicity? Tamanda reflects on navigating sexual misconduct within academic spaces, including the bind of having to cite known perpetrators to move through the system’s assessment hoops. Aiwan examines how the entertainment industry reproduces similar dynamics through scarcity, blurred boundaries and informal power - creating what she calls a “Bermuda triangle” of silence. We move on to whisper networks. The informal, often women-led circuits of protection that emerge when formal systems repeatedly fail. Discussing their necessity, their limits, and what they reveal about institutional trust. Throughout, we hold to one principle: safety before testimony. Even in cases where justice is achieved, the process itself can be devastating. With that in mind, we ask: What do survivors truly owe the world? And do unsafe systems deserve our disclosure at all? In closing, we return to the personal and the practical. To therapy. To allies. To gauging risk. To the hope that even making sense of one’s own experience is a step toward protection. This is not an episode about individual villains or public scandal. It is about structures. Rather than offering prescriptions or calls to disclosure, we sit with a more difficult truth: that silence is sometimes imposed, sometimes chosen, and sometimes the only viable survival strategy available. ⚠️ Content note: This episode contains discussion of sexual violence, abuse of power and institutional harm. Please take care while listening. 🎙️ In this episode:Unsayable from the start: How childhood silence around sexual violence shapes adult speech and shameDisbelief as defence: Why the first response to disclosure is often “But do you believe her?”Silence by design: How institutions teach, reinforce and reward quiet complicityBelief and consequence: Why institutions choose disbelief when belief would demand actionThe Bermuda Triangle of survival: Small industries, reputational risks and the cost of speaking upWhisper networks explained: How informal systems of warning emerge when formal systems failAcademic entanglement: Citing scholars accused of harm and the structural bind of professional survivalMen and masculinity: Why patriarchy makes male disclosure uniquely difficultSafety before testimony: Why getting to safe matters more than satisfying institutional narrativesFinding allies and resources: From therapy to the 1752 Group and survivor-led protection networks🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/D3cqvxgI0-o🔁 Share with someone navigating institutional silencing and safety ☕ Want to support the show? Buy us a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflow Please rate, review and subscribe for weekly episodes.Connect with us on:TikTokInstagramLinkedInAiAi StudiosRoots & RigourThis is an AiAi Studios Production©AiAi Studios 2025 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why Do Institutions Protect Perpetrators Over Survivors? | Whistleblowing & Power

Whistleblowing is often framed as an act of courage. But in practice, it is more often met with punishment, isolation and quiet retaliation.In this episode of Rigour & Flow, we examine what actually happens when people tell the truth inside institutions that claim to value transparency, ethics and accountability.Drawing on lived experience, research and patterns across multiple sectors - including academia, media, charities and the creative industries - we explore why whistleblowers so often become the problem, while harm is minimised, managed or protected.We explore the gap between official reporting processes and informal power: how complaints are received, reframed, delayed or quietly buried; why “doing the right thing” frequently backfires and how institutions close ranks when truth threatens reputation, funding or authority.Similarly, we explore what happens when allegations of wrongdoing enter the public sphere, how reactions play out on social media, and what we’ve encountered ourselves since launching the show.This is a discussion about retaliation that doesn’t always look dramatic, but is deeply effective. It’s about progressive spaces that punish, often reproducing the same silencing they claim to oppose. And it’s about the emotional, professional and psychological costs of refusing to stay quiet.Rather than offering a simple morality tale, we sit with the uncomfortable reality: that silence is often rewarded, truth is seen as a liability, and whistleblowers are rarely protected in the ways policy suggests.This episode is for anyone who has ever been told to report concerns and then learned directly the cost of doing so. 🎙️ In this episode:The system punishes courage: why speaking up often triggers retaliation rather than protectionThe whistleblowing myth: how “doing the right thing” is celebrated rhetorically but punished in practiceThe whistleblowing paradox: why institutions tell you to report harm, until you actually doWhy systems close ranks: reputation management, risk containment and the quiet defence of powerProgressive spaces aren’t exempt: how charities, media, academia and creative industries reproduce the same silencing dynamicsRetaliation without spectacle: exclusion, stalled careers, informal blacklisting and being reframed as “difficult”Silence as currency: how compliance, restraint and loyalty are rewarded over truthWhat accountability would actually require and why institutions resist it🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/FWzSfpNpimI🔁 Share with someone thinking about power and accountability☕ Want to support the show? Buy us a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflow Please rate, review and subscribe for weekly episodes.Connect with us on:TikTokInstagramLinkedInAiAi StudiosRoots & RigourThis is an AiAi Studios Production©AiAi Studios 2025 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Whitewashed Lecture Halls | African Knowledges and the Limits of the Western Higher Education

African knowledges have always been everywhere, in language, land, healing and survival. Yet most of us passed through the highest levels of education without ever encountering them. In this episode, we step into the lecture halls of “higher” education and ask what it means to be trained to forget, and who that forgetting ultimately serves. We begin inside higher education itself. Tamanda reflects on achieving the highest formal qualification possible, a PhD, while being taught almost nothing about Black people, African histories or global majority cultures within the core curriculum. She speaks about navigating universities that were not built for us, encountering racism and silencing, being mocked for studying race, and carrying the emotional weight of ancestral absence inside institutions that claim neutrality. From Britain and Northern Ireland to Southern Africa, we trace how entire peoples, geographies and ways of knowing have been written out of what counts as knowledge. Not by accident, but by design. From there, we go deeper. Together, we unpack how higher education operates through state-sanctioned curricula where silence is framed as objectivity and colonial histories are avoided rather than confronted. We explore how African spiritual, ecological and communal ways of knowing were dismissed as backward or dangerous, even as their insights were extracted, repackaged and profited from elsewhere. We confront epistemicide in practice. Dismissal, extraction, pathologisation and profit. We ask what this has cost a world now facing ecological collapse, mental health crises, and deep social fragmentation. This is not only a loss borne by Africans and Caribbeans, but a collective impoverishment of how humanity understands care, land, community and survival. In closing, we return to vital African knowledges themselves. Knowledge rooted in connection, collective life, healing, land and embodiment. Tamanda reflects on what she reclaimed during her PhD, her commitment to documenting the knowledge of her ancestors, and why putting our stories on record matters in systems where what is written is what is recognised. This is a conversation about remembering. About power. And about why African knowledges are not supplementary or symbolic, but essential to making sense of the world we are living in now. 🎙️ In this episode:Colonial higher education exposed: What higher education reveals about Black history erasure in universities State-sanctioned silence: How colonial curricula erase entire peoples, geographies and colonial historiesErasure by design: Why African knowledges were dismissed, pathologised and written out of what counts as knowledgeWho gets to be a knower: Power, legitimacy and the marginalisation of Black academics in white institutionsEpistemicide in practice: The global consequences of destroying indigenous ways of knowing and insightWhat modernity forgot: How the strength of collective life, connection and ritual were lost in the pursuit of profit and progressReclaiming the archive: On ‘writing what I like’ and why putting ancestral knowledge on record matters deeplyKnowledge for everyone: Why African knowledges are not niche or symbolic, and what it costs us to keep pretending they are 🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts
🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/x5RYSYRRs5Y🔁 Share with someone thinking about knowledge, power and belonging📬 Reflections or stories to share? rigourandflow@gmail.com☕ Want to support the show? Buy us a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflowPlease rate, review and subscribe for weekly episodes.Connect with us on:TikTokInstagramLinkedInAiAi StudiosRoots & RigourThis is an AiAi Studios Production©AiAi Studios 2025 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Black Kids, White Classrooms: Black History Erasure, Colonial Control & Britain’s Education System

Education is not neutral. And for Black children, it is rarely complete. School is often the first place where erasure is formalised, belonging becomes conditional, and history is taught as if our people were a footnote rather than the foundation.In this episode, we turn our attention to education - not as a neutral site of learning, but as a powerful system of selection, silence, and control. Drawing on our own schooling across Botswana, Northern Ireland, London, Leeds, and the Midlands, we reflect on what we were taught, what we internalised, and what we later had to unlearn. Aiwan reflects on moving from a Black-majority school in South-East London to predominantly white classrooms in Leeds, navigating the silence around race while carrying the weight of being “the only one.” She speaks about the hidden curriculum - how schools quietly teach you who is centred, who is valued, and who is merely tolerated - and why supplementing formal education at home became essential to developing a fuller sense of self. Tamanda draws on her education in Botswana, Northern Ireland, and England, as well as her later academic experience, to examine how education systems claim neutrality while carefully avoiding power. She reflects on moments where critical thinking was praised in theory, yet penalised in practice - revealing the tight boundaries around what could be questioned, named, or challenged. Together, we explore how Black history is routinely framed as optional or supplementary in UK schooling, rather than foundational to understanding Britain itself. We examine the expectation that Black families must fill the gaps - through Saturday schools, community learning, books, travel, and cultural memory - simply to counter what is missing, sanitised, or distorted in statutory education. We then consider what Aiwan learned over ten years educating young minds as a teacher herself. This is a conversation about power, not pedagogy alone. About what knowledge is protected, what knowledge is deferred, and why calls for “balance” or “neutrality” so often function to preserve the status quo. And about the long-term emotional and intellectual cost of learning in systems that demand assimilation while withholding recognition. 🎙️ In this episode:Encounters with erasure: Growing up Black in White education systems, beginning with the deafening silence around Black historyThe curated curriculum: How schooling disciplines curiosity, avoids power, and prioritises order over understandingSupplementing the system: Learning Black history beyond the classroom through Saturday schools, newspapers and self-directed studyWhen curiosity is punished: A defining moment where questioning the curriculum was met with anger, revealing what was “off limits”Entering teacher training: Confronting Eurocentric ideas of intelligence, culture and legitimacy as a Black womanTeaching from lived culture: What happened when music education met connective language, rhythm and real-world experienceBeyond Black History Month: Tokenism, cherry-picked heroes and how Black history must be continuous and connected to the nowChanging the status quo: What it means to teach with care, responsibility and cultural fluency for the next generation 🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qQ6-XNwHaeY🔁 Share with someone thinking about education, history, or curriculum reform☕ Want to support the show? Buy us a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflowPlease rate, review and subscribe for weekly episodes.Connect with us on:TikTokInstagramLinkedInAiAi StudiosRoots & RigourThis is an AiAi Studios Production©AiAi Studios 2025 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“I’m Done Performing Productivity!” | Burnout, Worth & Walking Away

New year energy is usually about what we are chasing next. In this episode of Rigour & Flow, we slow that impulse down and start 2026 by asking, “What are we leaving behind in 2025?” After an intense year of work, production, learning curves and hard lessons, we wanted something lighter for this conversation. The result is a mix of reflection and a lot of laughter, alongside some seriously important focus points as we step into the year ahead for Rigour & Flow, AiAi Studios, as well as Roots & Rigour. We launched into our on-mic reflections without comparing notes at all for this one - each of us sharing five things we are consciously putting down as we enter into a year we both want to feel totally different from that last! Aiwan reflects on leaving behind the misused word “talent” in the creative industries, exploring how it enables poor behaviour, while erasing the intense work of entire teams. She speaks about productivity systems that promised balance, but only delivered pressure, pain and anxiety. And finally, the cost of allowing other people’s visions to dominate her time, energy and creative life. Tamanda reflects on entering public-facing work after years in academia and the shock of navigating online hostility and automated culture war commentary. She talks about funding applications, funding rejections, the need to centre realism, and the difference between backing yourself and building expectations on timelines you do not control. Together, we unpack over-functioning, the consequences of straying out of our lanes, underestimating the labour behind the scenes in creative work, and the subtle ways self-abandonment often masquerades as dedication. We close with reflections on choosing to trust our experience and instinct more this year, planning for guilt-free rest, living truthfully and outline some simple decisions we have made to build a work and life balance that can be sustained. 🎧 In this episode:The misuse of “talent”: How creative industries blur the lines of contributions, empower poor behaviour, and overlook collective effortProductivity promises and personal cost: Systems that claimed balance but delivered anxiety, rigidity and rebellionWasted social media arguments: Navigating public commentary spaces, automated hostility, and why not every comment deserves a responseOptimism and timelines: Funding hopes, rejection, and learning the difference between backing yourself and just getting your hopes up too earlyOver-functioning and reciprocity: The hidden costs of filling the gaps others leave behind because you are a high performerStaying in your lane: Underestimating creative processes, straying into everything, and learning to respect and trust others’ expertiseSelf-care as infrastructure: The importance of planning rest, nourishment and recovery before crisis hits 🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xuvHT96FGeY🔁 Share with someone choosing differently this year☕ Want to support the show? Buy us a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflow Please rate, review and subscribe for weekly episodes.Connect with us on:TikTokInstagramLinkedInAiAi StudiosRoots & RigourThis is an AiAi Studios Production©AiAi Studios 2025 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.