We open up about two family stories that changed how we understand mental health, culture, and the systems that claim to heal us.

Tamanda shares the story of her mother's diagnosis - and the painful reality of watching an indigenous African spiritual tradition be misread as delusion by a colonial medical model. Aiwan reflects on her own mother’s experience during the Covid-19 pandemic, when powerful nightly devotions were mistaken for pathology by an overstretched hospital system.

Together, we explore the thin, and often dangerous, line between faith and pathology.

We ask: When is a mental health issue truly an illness, and when is it a misunderstood expression of faith, culture, or trauma? What happens when healthcare systems don't recognise the spiritual and cultural realities of those they serve? And how does power shape diagnosis of Black people from the days of enslavement to the present?

Drawing from personal experience, community research, and historical context, we reflect on how our mothers’ stories reveal a larger truth about Black families, dignity, and survival. We discuss the legacy of colonial psychiatry, the deep cultural losses hidden inside clinical “treatments,” and why culturally sensitive care isn’t a luxury - it’s a necessity.

This episode is about systems, yes! …But it’s also about love, memory, spirit, and the everyday struggle to be fully seen.

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For this episode of Rigour & Flow, we’re back with another Notes From the Margins - our free-flowing format where we each bring something we can't stop thinking about.

Tamanda dives deep into the messy, glamorous world of Netflix’s Young, Famous & African. From Pan-African fame and chaotic conflict styles, we delve deep into the question of how reality TV sometimes hits deeper than we expect.

Aiwan brings us into the wild politics of Yellowstone - a neo-Western where land, capitalism, and colonialism collide, and where the lines between oppressor and oppressed blur fast. And in which we also ask, ‘Who are the Black cowboys?!’

And we respond to a word of warning from a friend: how do you host a podcast with your partner without doing "weird coupley sh*t"? We look at what we learned from We Can Do Hard Things and consider the strange art of sharing your life online.

From luxury mansions in Johannesburg to cowboy dynasties in Montana to the strange vulnerability of speaking publicly with someone you love - this episode is all about power, culture, and connection.

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Can you rewrite your money story – or are you stuck with the one you inherited? We crack open the money stories we inherited, and the ones we’re trying to rewrite.

Aiwan shares how growing up in a fundamentalist church taught her that true faith meant living modestly, shunning wealth, and being "in the world, but not of it" - until later encounters with the prosperity gospel preached that material success was a sign of divine favour. Meanwhile, Tamanda reflects on growing up firmly wedged between stark racialised wealth gaps within her family of origin - and how moving through different mindsets around privilege, poverty, and survival shaped her views on money, value, and freedom.

Together, we unpack the money mindsets we inherited, the financial habits we had to unlearn, and the scripts we’re now rewriting as a Black queer couple, building businesses, navigating generational change, and planning for a future still full of unknowns.

This episode is about the psychology of money, how race, class, and religion shape our attitudes to wealth, and why financial healing matters - for ourselves, and for our communities.

Please leave a rate, review and subscribe for weekly episodes.

Connect with us on:

• Substack
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• AiAi Studios
• Roots & Rigour

This is an AiAi Studios Production

©AiAi Studios 2025

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.