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

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