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PODCAST

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda

The show where business meets love, and culture meets critique. We’re Aiwan and Tamanda, two Black women with 20 years each in entertainment, research, and social justice. We’re also a married couple figuring out what it means to build a life and two businesses together.We"ll talk about the realities of running a business, making creative work that matters, and navigating research with integrity.What You’ll Find:Honest conversations on entrepreneurship, research, and creativity.Unpacking the

society & culture personal journals

All Episodes

52:35

Why Do Institutions Protect Perpetrators Over...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2026/02/10

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

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54:55

Whitewashed Lecture Halls | African Knowledges and...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2026/02/03

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

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1:31:45

Black Kids, White Classrooms: Black History Erasure,...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2026/01/27

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

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58:32

“I’m Done Performing Productivity!” | Burnout, Worth...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2026/01/20

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

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46:51

Snatched! | Behind the Scenes on RuPaul’s Drag Race...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2026/01/13

In this Feedwarmer episode of Rigour & Flow, we spotlight a project from Aiwan’s back catalogue that brought her an enormous amount of joy to produce: Snatched! - the companion podcast celebrating all things RuPaul’s Drag Race.We open with a short preamble reflecting on why Snatched! mattered to AiAi Studios as a creative project - not just because of the joy and chaos of Drag Race, but as producers who care deeply about sound, pacing, playfulness, and permission to lean fully into camp, queer

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42:23

She Love Bombed the F*ck Out of Me: The...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2026/01/06

In this Feedwarmer episode of Rigour & Flow, we spotlight a podcast that had us nodding, wincing, laughing, and quietly re-evaluating our own friendships.We open with a short preamble and reflections on adult friendship; the stories we tell ourselves about loyalty, closeness, and safety, and the moments when something starts to feel off but we can’t quite name why. From there, we introduce an episode of the Unapologetically Black Podcast that literally woke Tamanda up in the dead of night.Hosted

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27:22

What a Gold Medal Meant for Black Britain: Tessa...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2025/12/30

In this Feedwarmer episode of Rigour & Flow, we share a moment of encounter: meeting sporting history in the flesh.The episode opens with us setting the scene at CLIMB 2025, where Aiwan attended a talk by Olympic gold medallist Tessa Sanderson and knew immediately she had to hear more. After that brief introduction, we move into a live conversation between Aiwan and Tessa, recorded at the AiAi Studios stand during the festival.Tessa Sanderson is the first Black British woman to win an Olympic

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48:57

Why We Love Reality TV: Unguilty Pleasures with Liv...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2025/12/23

In this Feedwarmer episode, we spotlight one of our absolute favourite projects of 2025: Unguilty Pleasures - the Real Housewives–inspired podcast we launched this year as a collaboration between AiAi Studios and Daylight Productions.Hosted by Liv Little and Scarlett Curtis, Unguilty Pleasures is a joyful, self-aware ode to reality TV, escapism and the softer corners of culture we don’t always give ourselves permission to enjoy. From the chaotic brilliance of The Real Housewives to the emotional

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1:03:23

Why Are Mixed Race People Always Asked to Pick a Side?

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2025/12/16

We return to a conversation that never really settled.After the unexpected response to Season 2’s “Episode 19: Are Mixed Race People ‘Properly Black’?”, we sit with what lingered; the comments, the discomfort, the language policing, and the familiar demand that mixed race people either ‘pick a side’ or ‘play the bridge’.This isn’t a debate about identity labels. It’s a reflection on what mixedness is asked to do in a world structured by racial hierarchy.We begin with language: the push to abandon

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52:51

Healing, boundaries and borders: Mental health, money...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2025/12/09

In this Notes from the Margins edition of Rigour & Flow, we follow three journeys that sit at the heart of Black life: how we heal, how we give, and how we move through a world that does not always want us in it.Tamanda opens with a little-known and astonishing history of mental health care in Nigeria. Long before global psychiatry learned to speak about community, Dr Thomas Adeoye Lambo pioneered a model that placed patients with local families, blended medical care with traditional healing,

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1:10:25

Pentecostalism & Zionism: Faith, Conditioning & the...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2025/12/02

We step into the charged, intimate territory of religion, politics and the stories we were raised to believe, and ask how aspects of Pentecostal conditioning continue to shape how many of us understand Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East today.We begin with the lessons we absorbed long before we had language for them: Zion as a sacred homeland, Jews as “God’s chosen people,” Muslims as enemies in spiritual warfare, and Israel as a nation that could never be questioned without risking blasphemy

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1:11:17

‘Divorce is like death’: Leaving, grieving and...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2025/11/25

Divorce is sheer grief. It pulls apart your routines, your identity and the story you believed you were living. In this episode of Rigour and Flow, we open up with one of our most private conversations.Tamanda shares the long road from confusion to clarity in her first marriage. She reflects on growing up with parents who modelled peace but not conflict, and how that silence left her without the tools to navigate a hint of difficulty in her own relationship. She talks about sexless partnership,

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1:09:48

Lost Black Boys: Education, The Red Pill & Incel Culture

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2025/11/18

We take education to task. Asking who it serves, what it leaves out and what it means for boys growing up in an age of algorithms and Andrew Tate.Aiwan opens with a question many 18-year-olds are asking today: "Is university still worth it?" She shares what she gained from structured learning in music technology and what 20 years in a creative industry taught her that a degree never could. We talk debt, discipline and the difference between education and enlightenment. And, dare we say, even

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1:02:41

Could You Work With Your Partner? | Love, Labour &...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2025/11/11

In this episode of Rigour & Flow, we step into the tender terrain of family business: where bedrooms and boardrooms can potentially become interleading doors. From millennia-old trading families to today’s co-founder couples, we ask what it takes to build something together without breaking each other.Our conversation starts with a question we hear often: “How do you run a business with your spouse?” To get to the heart of it, we trace our journey of running two entities side by side: AiAi

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1:43:09

Super Rich Africans | The Soft Life & Hard Truths of...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2025/11/04

We turn our gaze to the glittering world of Africa’s super rich - and ask what wealth really means in a world built on inequality.Beginning with the BBC documentary From Lagos to London: The Rise of Nigeria’s Super Rich, we unpack the rise of “soft-life” culture, the myth of meritocracy, and the emotional price of Black excellence. From oil money and old elites to Instagram entrepreneurs and Dubai Bling escapism, we explore how class divides shape not only who gets to live well - but whose stories

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1:04:41

Bad Gals Get The Corner Office | Millie Odhiambo,...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2025/10/28

The original African Bad Gal gets us going, Kenyan MP and activist Millie Odhiambo Mabona, whose fearless voice and legendary one-liners have cut through flaccid politics with candour. From calling out men on the parliamentary floor on decisions, periods (!), to publishing her book Rig or Be Rigged, Millie embodies the unapologetic role needed for women to step into power.From there, we pivot to the plains, asking why the wildlife stories of Africa are still told through a White lens. Where are the

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56:02

How a Fake African Agony Aunt Shaped a Generation:...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2025/10/21

We travel back to the glossy pages that raised us - the agony-aunt columns, gossip spreads, and advice pages that shaped girlhood across Africa and beyond.At the centre of the story is Dear Dolly - an advice column that captured the hearts of readers across the continent of Africa, answering questions about love, shame, and desire. What few people knew was that, in the early days at least, “Dolly” wasn’t a woman at all, but a group of men writing under her name.Reading directly from the Drum

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1:00:33

The Land Is Still Not Ours | Colonial Legacies,...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2025/10/14

We step into the charged terrain of land, power, and belonging - and ask who really gets to claim ownership of land in Africa. Beginning with a screening of The Battle for Laikipia at Hyde Park Picture House, we trace the tensions between Indigenous Samburu pastoralists and fourth-generation white settlers in Kenya - and unravel how the logic of private property, colonial inheritance, and climate crisis continue to shape who eats, who survives, and who gets fenced out.From there, we widen the lens

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38:14

Confronting FGM in Britain: “A Lifetime Sentence” |...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2025/10/07

FGM, cultural silence, and women’s rights in Britain today.In this feedwarmer - and our very first Rigour & Flow On The Go - we take our podcast out of the studio and into community spaces. Live from Climb25 in Leeds, Aiwan reflects on the intimacy of podcasting, how deep conversations can cut through even in a noisy public space, and the art of capturing sound in the moment. From the clang of a circus game in the background to the warmth of our signature African textile on the table, this is

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32:25

Undocumented & Working in London: A Hidden Struggle |...

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda ·

2025/09/29

Trans rights, migrant labour, and the hidden lives of domestic workers in Britain.In this feedwarmer, we shine a light on Our Place Is Here - a powerful three-part podcast series created in partnership with the Our Place Is Here campaign produced by Aiwan and AiAi Studios in collaboration with gal-dem. The Filipino Domestic Workers Association, and campaign partners fighting for migrant workers’ rights including Kanlungan Filipino Consortium, The Voice of Domestic Workers, Kalayaan, and Purpose

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