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In this live episode, Tricia Eastman joins to discuss Seeding Consciousness: Plant Medicine, Ancestral Wisdom, Psychedelic Initiation. She explains why many Indigenous initiatory systems begin with consultation and careful assessment of the person, often using divination and lineage-based diagnostic methods before anyone enters ceremony. Eastman contrasts that with modern frameworks that can move fast, rely on short trainings, or treat the medicine as a stand-alone intervention. Early Themes: Ritual, Preparation, and the Loss of Container Eastman describes her background, including ancestral roots in Mexico and her later work at Crossroads Ibogaine in Mexico, where she supported early ibogaine work with veterans. She frames her broader work as cultural bridging that seeks respect rather than fetishization, and assimilation into modern context rather than appropriation. Early discussion focuses on: Why initiatory traditions emphasize purification, preparation, and long timelines Why consultation matters before any high-intensity medicine work How decades of training shaped traditional initiation roles Why people can get harmed when they treat medicine as plug and play Core Insights: Alchemy, Shadow, and Doing the Work A major throughline is Eastman's critique of the belief that a psychedelic alone will erase trauma. She argues that shadow work remains part of the human condition, and that healing is less about a one-time fix and more about building capacity for relationship with the unconscious. Using alchemical language, she describes "nigredo" as fuel for the creative process, not as something to eliminate forever. Key insights include: Psychedelics are tools, not saviors You cannot outsource responsibility to a pill, a modality, or a facilitator Progress requires practice, discipline, and honest engagement with what arises "Healing" often shows up as obstacles encountered while trying to live and create Later Discussion and Takeaways: Iboga, Ethics, and Biocultural Stewardship Joe and Tricia move into a practical and ethically complex discussion about iboga supply chains, demand pressure, and the risks of amplifying interest without matching it with harm reduction and reciprocity. Eastman emphasizes medical screening, responsible messaging, and supporting Indigenous-led stewardship efforts. She also warns that harm can come from both under-trained modern facilitators and irresponsible people claiming traditional legitimacy. Concrete takeaways include: Treat iboga and ibogaine as high-responsibility work that demands safety protocols Avoid casual marketing that encourages risky self-administration Support Indigenous-led biocultural stewardship and reciprocity efforts Give lineage carriers a meaningful seat at the table in modern policy and clinical conversations Frequently Asked Questions Who is Tricia Eastman? Tricia Eastman is an author, facilitator, and founder of Ancestral Heart. Her work focuses on cultural bridging, initiation frameworks, and Indigenous-led stewardship. What is Seeding Consciousness about? The book examines plant medicine through initiatory traditions, emphasizing consultation, ritual, preparation, and integration rather than reductionistic models. Why does Tricia Eastman critique modern psychedelic models? She argues that many models remove the ritual container and long-form preparation that reduce risk and support deeper integration. Is iboga or ibogaine safe? With the right oversite, yes. Eastman stresses that safety depends on cardiac screening, careful protocols, and experienced oversight. She warns against informal or self-guided use. How can people support reciprocity and stewardship? She encourages donating or supporting Indigenous-led biocultural stewardship initiatives like Ancestral Heart and aligning public messaging with harm reduction. Closing Thoughts This episode makes a clear case that Tricia Eastman Seeding Consciousness is not only a book about psychedelics, but a critique of how the field is developing. Eastman argues that a successful future depends on mature containers, serious safety culture, and respectful partnership with lineage carriers, especially as interest in iboga and ibogaine accelerates. Links https://www.ancestralheart.com https://www.innertraditions.com/author/tricia-eastman Transcript Joe Moore Hello, everybody. Welcome back. Joe Moore with you again from Psychedelics Today, joined today by Tricia Eastman. Tricia, you just wrote a book called Seeding Consciousness. We're going to get into that a bunch today, but how are you today? [00:00:16.07] - Tricia Eastman I'm so good. It's exciting to be live. A lot of the podcasts I do are offline, and so it's like we're being witnessed and feels like just can feel the energy behind It's great. [00:00:31.11] - Joe Moore It's fun. It's a totally different energy than maybe this will come out in four months. This is real, and there's people all over the world watching in real-time. And we'll get some comments. So folks, if you're listening, please leave us some comments. And we'd love to chat a little bit later about those. [00:00:49.23] - Tricia Eastman I'm going to join the chat so that I can see... Wait, I just want to make sure I'm able to see the comments, too. Do I hit join the chat? [00:01:01.17] - Joe Moore Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. I can throw comments on the screen so we can see them together. [00:01:07.02] - Tricia Eastman Cool. [00:01:08.03] - Joe Moore Yeah. So it'll be fun. Give us comments, people. Please, please, please, please. Yeah, you're all good. So Tricia, I want to chat about your book. Tell us high level about your book, and then we're going to start digging into you. [00:01:22.10] - Tricia Eastman So Seeding Consciousness is the title, and I know it's a long subtitled Plant Medicine, Ancestral Wisdom, Psychedelic Initiation. And I felt like it was absolutely necessary for the times that we are in right now. When I was in Gabon in 2018, in one of my many initiations, as as an initiative, the Fung lineage of Buiti, which I've been practicing in for 11 years now, I was given the instructions. I was given the integration homework to write this book. And I would say I don't see that as this divine thing, like you were given the assignment. I think I was given the assignment because it's hard as F to write a book. I mean, it really tests you on so many levels. I mean, even just thinking about putting yourself out there from a legal perspective, and then also, does it make any sense? Will anyone buy it? And on Honestly, it's not me. It's really what I was given to write, but it's based on my experience working with several thousand people over the years. And really, the essence of it is that in our society, we've taken this reductionistic approach in psychedelics, where we've really taken out the ritual. [00:02:54.05] - Tricia Eastman Even now with the FDA trial for MDMA for PTSD. There's even conversations with a lot of companies that are moving forward, psychedelics, through the FDA process, through that pathway, that are talking about taking the therapy out. And the reality is that in these ancient initiatic traditions, they were very long, drawn out experiences with massive purification rituals, massive amounts of different types of practice in order to prepare oneself to meet the medicine. Different plants were taken, like vomatifs and different types of purification rituals were performed. And then you would go into this profound initiatic experience because the people that were working with you that were in, we call it the Nema, who gives initiations, had decades of training and experience doing these types of initiatic experiences. So if you compare that to the modern day framework, we have people that go online and get a certificate and start serving people medicine or do it in a context where maybe there isn't even an established container or facilitator whatsoever. And so really, the idea is, how can we take the essence of this ancient wisdom wisdom, like when you look at initiation, the first step is consultation, which is really going deep into the history of the individual using different types of techniques that are Indigenous technologies, such as different forms of divination, such as cowrie shell readings. [00:04:52.18] - Tricia Eastman And there's different types of specific divinations that are done in different branches of And before one individual would even go into any initiation, you need to understand the person and where they're coming from. So it's really about that breakdown of all of that, and how can we integrate elements of that into a more modern framework. [00:05:24.23] - Joe Moore Brilliant. All right. Well, thank you for that. And let's chat about you. You've got a really interesting past, very dynamic, could even call it multicultural. And you've got a lot of experience that informed this book. So how did this stuff come forward for you? [00:05:50.02] - Tricia Eastman I mean, I've never been the person to seek anything. My family on my mother's side is from Mexico, from Oaxaca, Trique, Mixtec, and Michica. And we had a long lineage of practice going back to my, at least I know from my great, great grandmother, practicing a blend of mestiza, shamanism, combining centerea and Catholicism together. So it's more of like a syncratic mestiza, mestiza being mixed tradition. And so I found it really interesting because later on, when my grandfather came to the United States, he ended up joining the military. And in being in the US, he didn't really have a place. He's very devout spiritual man, but he didn't have a place to practice this blended spiritual tradition. So the mystical aspect of it went behind. And as I started reconnecting to my ancestral lineage, this came forth that I was really starting to understand the mystical aspect of my ancestry. And interestingly, at the same time, was asked to work at Crossroads Abigain in Mexico. And it's so interesting to see that Mexico has been this melting pot and has been the place where Abigain has chosen to plant its roots, so to say, and has treated thousands of veterans. [00:07:36.28] - Tricia Eastman I got to be part of the group of facilitators back over 10 years ago. We treated the first Navy Seals with Abogaine, and that's really spurred a major interest in Abogaine. Now it's in every headline. I also got 10 I got initiated into the Fung lineage of Buiti and have really studied the traditional knowledge. I created a nonprofit back in 2019 called Ancestral Heart, which is really focused on Indigenous-led stewardship. Really, the book helps as a culmination of the decade of real-world experience of combining My husband, Dr. Joseph Barzulia. He's a psychologist. He's also a pretty well-known published researcher in Abigain and 5MEO-DMT, but also deeply spiritual and deeply in respect for the Indigenous traditions that have carried these medicines before us. So we've really been walking this complex path of world bridging between how we establish these relationships and how we bring some of these ancient knowledge systems back into the forefront, but not in a way of fetishizing them, but in a way of deeply respecting them and what we can learn, but from our own assimilation and context versus appropriation. So really, I think the body of my work is around that cultural bridging. [00:09:31.07] - Joe Moore That's brilliant. And yeah, there's some really fun stuff I learned in the book so far that I want to get into later. But next question is, who is your intended audience here? Because this is an interesting book that could hit a few categories, but I'm curious to hear from you. [00:09:49.02] - Tricia Eastman It's so funny because when I wrote the book, I wasn't thinking, oh, what's my marketing plan? What's my pitch? Who's my intended audience? Because it was my homework, and I knew I needed to write the book, and maybe that was problematic in the sense that I had to go to publishers and have a proposal. And then I had to create a formula in hindsight. And I would say the demographic of the book mirrors the demographic of where people are in the psychedelic space, which It's skewed slightly more male, although very female. I think sex isn't necessarily important when we're thinking about the level of trauma and the level of spiritual healing and this huge deficit that we have in mental health, which is really around our disconnection from our true selves, from our heart, from our souls, from this idea of of what Indigenous knowledge systems call us the sacred. It's really more of an attitude of care and presence. I'm sure we could give it a different name so that individuals don't necessarily have any guard up because we have so much negative conditioning related to the American history of religion, which a lot of people have rejected, and some have gone back to. [00:11:37.06] - Tricia Eastman But I think we need to separate it outside of that. I would say the demographic is really this group of I would say anywhere from 30 to 55 male females that are really in this space where maybe they're doing some of the wellness stuff. They're starting to figure some things out, but it's just not getting them there. And when something happens in life, for example, COVID-19 would be a really great example. It knocks them off course, and they just don't have the tools to find that connection. And I would say it even spans across people that do a lot of spiritual practice and maybe are interested in what psychedelics can do in addition to those practices. Because when we look at my view on psychedelics, is they fit within a whole spectrum of wellness and self-care and any lineage of spiritual practice, whether it's yoga or Sufism or Daoist tradition. But they aren't necessarily the thing that... I think there's an over focus on the actual substance itself and putting it on a pedestal that I think is problematic in our society because it goes back to our religious context in the West is primarily exoteric, meaning that we're seeking something outside of ourselves to fulfill ourselves. [00:13:30.29] - Tricia Eastman And so I think that when we look at psychedelic medicines as this exoteric thing versus when we look at initiatory traditions are about inward and direct experience. And all of these spiritual practices and all of these modalities are really designed to pull you back into yourself, into having a direct relationship with yourself and direct experience. And I feel like the minute that you are able to forge that connection, which takes practice and takes discipline, then you don't need to necessarily look at all these other tools outside of yourself. It's like one of my favorite analogies is the staff on the Titanic were moving the furniture around as it was sinking, thinking that they might save the boat from sinking by moving the furniture around. I think that's how we've been with a lot of ego-driven modalities that aren't actually going into the full unconscious, which is where we need to go to have these direct experiences. Sorry for the long answer, but it is for everybody, and it's not just about psychedelics. Anyone can take something from this doing any spiritual work. But we talk a lot about the Indigenous philosophy and how that ties in alongside with spiritual practice and more of this inner way of connecting with oneself and doing the work. [00:15:21.22] - Tricia Eastman And I think also really not sugar coating it in the sense that the psychedelics aren't going to save us. They're not going to cure PTSD. Nothing you take will. It's you that does the work. And if you don't do the work, you're not going to have an 87 % success rate with opioid use disorder or whatever it is, 60 something % for treatment-resistant depression or whatever. It's like you have to do the work. And so we can't keep putting the power in the modality reality or the pill. [00:16:03.18] - Joe Moore Yeah, that makes sense. So you did an interesting thing here with this book, and it was really highlighting aspects of the alchemical process. And people don't necessarily have exposure. They hear the words alchemy. I get my shoulders go up when I hear alchemizing, like transmutation. But it's a thing. And how do we then start communicating this from Jung? I found out an interesting thing recently as an ongoing student. Carl Jung didn't necessarily have access to all that many manuscripts. There's so many alchemical manuscripts available now compared to what he had. And as a result, our understanding of alchemy has really evolved. Western alchemy, European alchemy, everybody. Perhaps Kmetic, too. I don't know. You could speak to that more. I don't keep track of what's revealed in Egypt. So it's really interesting to present that in a forward way? How has it been received so far? Or were you nervous to present this in this way? [00:17:25.10] - Tricia Eastman I mean, honestly, I think the most important The important thing is that in working with several thousand people over the years, people think that taking the psychedelic and the trauma is going to go away. It's always there. I mean, we We archetypically will have the shadow as long as we need the shadow to learn. And so even if we go into a journey and we transcend it, it's still there. So I would say that the The feedback has been really incredible. I mean, the people that are reading... I mean, I think because I'm weaving so many different, complex and deep concepts into one book, it might be a little harder to market. And I think the biggest bummer was that I was really trying to be respectful to my elders and not say anything in the title about Iboga and Abigain, even though I talk a lot about it in the book, and it's such a hot topic, it's really starting to take off. But the people that have read it really consider it. They really do the work. They do the practices in the book, and I'm just getting really profound feedback. So that's exciting to me because really, ultimately, alchemy... [00:18:55.22] - Tricia Eastman Yeah, you're right. It gets used Used a lot in marketing lingo and sitting in the depth of the tar pit. For me, when I was in Gabon, I remember times where I really had to look at things that were so dark in my family history that I didn't even realize were mine until later connected to my lineage. And the dark darkness connected to that and just feeling that and then knowing really the truth of our being is that we aren't those things. We're in this process of changing and being, and so nothing is is fixed, but there is a alchemical essence in just learning to be with it. And so not always can we just be with something. And and have it change, but there are many times that we can actually just be with those parts of ourselves and be accepting, where it's not like you have to have this intellectualized process It's just like, first you have the negrado, then you tune into the albeda, and you receive the insights, and you journal about it, and da, da, da, da, da Action, Mars aspect of it, the rubeda of the process. It's not like that at all. [00:20:44.15] - Tricia Eastman It's really that the wisdom that comes from it because you're essentially digesting black goo, which is metaphoric to the oil that we use to power all of society that's pulled deep out of the Earth, and it becomes gold. It becomes... And really, the way I like to think of it is like, in life, we are here to create, and we are not here to heal ourselves. So if you go to psychedelic medicine and you want to heal yourself, you're going to be in for... You're just going to be stuck and burnt out because that's not what we're here to do as human beings, and you'll never run out of things to heal. But if you You think of the negrado in alchemy as gasoline in your car. Every time you go back in, it's like refilling your gas tank. And whatever you go back in for as you're moving in the journey, it's almost like that bit of negrado is like a lump of coal that's burning in the gas tank. And that gets you to the next point to which there's another thing related to the creative process. So it's like As you're going in that process, you're going to hit these speed bumps and these obstacles in the way. [00:22:07.29] - Tricia Eastman And those obstacles in the way, that's the healing. So if you just get in the car in the human vehicle and you drive and you continue to pull out the shadow material and face it, you're going to keep having the steam, but not just focus on it, having that intention, having that connection to moving forward in life. And I hate to use those words because they sound so growth and expansion oriented, which life isn't always. It's evolutionary and deevolutionary. It's always in spirals. But ultimately, you're in a creative process would be the best way to orient it. So I think when we look at alchemy from that standpoint, then it's productive. Effective. Otherwise, it sounds like some brand of truffle salt or something. [00:23:09.12] - Joe Moore Yeah, I think it's a... If people want to dig in, amazing. It's just a way to describe processes, and it's super informative if you want to go there, but it's not necessary for folks to do the work. And I like how you framed it quite a bit. So let's see. There is one bit, Tricia, that my ears really went up on this one point about a story about Actually, let me do a tangent for you real quick, and then we're going to come back to this story. So are you familiar with the tribe, the Dogon, in Africa? Of course. Yeah. So they're a group that looks as though they were involved in Jewish and/or Egyptian traditions, and then ended up on the far side of like, what, Western Africa, far away, and had their own evolution away from Egypt and the Middle East. Fascinating. Fascinating stories, fascinating astronomy, and much more. I don't know too much about the religion. I love their masks. But this drew an analogy for me, as you were describing that the Buiti often have stories about having lineage to pre-dynastic Egyptian culture. I guess we'll call it that for now, the Kometic culture. [00:24:44.23] - Joe Moore I had not heard that before. Shame on me because I haven't really read any books about Buiti as a religion or organization, or anything to this point. But I found that really interesting to know that now, at least I'm aware of two groups claiming lineage to that ancient world of magic. Can you speak about that at all for us? Yeah. [00:25:09.24] - Tricia Eastman So first off, there really aren't any books talking about that. Some of the things I've learned from elders that I've spoke with and asked in different lineages in Masoco and in Fong Buiti, there's a few things. One, We lived in many different eras. Even if you go into ancient texts of different religions, creation stories, and biblical stories, they talk about these great floods that wiped out the planet. One of the things that Atum talks about, who is one of my Buiti fathers who passed a couple years ago, is Is the understanding that before we were in these different areas, you had Mu or Lumaria, you had Atlantis, and then you had our current timeline. And the way that consciousness was within those timelines was very different and the way the Earth was. You had a whole another continent called Atlantis that many people, even Plato, talks about a very specific location of. And what happened, I believe during that time period, Africa, at least the Saharan band of the desert was much more lush, and it was a cultural melting pot. So if you think about, for example, the Pygmy tribes, which are in Equatorial Africa, they are the ones that introduced Iboga to the Buiti. [00:27:08.08] - Tricia Eastman If you look at the history of ancient Egypt, what I'm told is that the Pygmies lived in Pharaonic Egypt, all the way up until Pharaonic Egypt. And there was a village. And if you look on the map in Egypt, you see a town called Bawiti, B-A-W-I-T-I. And that is the village where they lived. And I have an interesting hypothesis that the God Bess, if you look at what he's wearing, it's the exact same to a T as what the Pygmies wear. And the inspiration for which a lot of the Buiti, because they use the same symbology, because each part of the outfit, whether it's the Mocingi, which is like this animal skin, or the different feathers, they use the parrot feather as a symbology of speech and communication, all of these things are codes within the ceremony that were passed along. And so when you look at Bess, he's wearing almost the exact same outfit that the Pygmies are wearing and very similar to if you see pictures of the ceremonies of Misoko or Gonde Misoko, which I would say is one of the branches of several branches, but that are closer to the original way of Buiti of the jungle, so closer to the way the Pygmies practice. [00:28:59.16] - Tricia Eastman So If you look at Bess, just to back my hypothesis. So you look at Neteru. Neteru were the... They called them the gods of Egypt, and they were all giant. And many say the word nature actually means nature, but they really represented the divine qualities of nature. There's best. Look at him. And a lot of the historians said he's the God of Harmeline and children and happiness. I think he's more than the God of Harmeline, and I think that the Pygmies worked with many different plants and medicines, and really the ultimate aspect of it was freedom. If you think about liberation, like the libation, number one, that's drunkiness. Number two, liberation, you of freeing the joyous child from within, our true nature of who we are. You look at every temple in Egypt, and you look at these giant statues, and then you have this tiny little pygmy God, and there's no other gods that are like Bess. He's one of a kind. He's in his own category. You've You've got giant Hathor, you've got giant Thoth, you've got giant Osiris, Isis, and then you've got little tiny Bess. And so I think it backs this hypothesis. [00:30:48.27] - Tricia Eastman And my understanding from practitioners of Dogon tradition is that they also believe that their ancestors came from Egypt, and they definitely have a lot of similarity in the teachings that I've seen and been exposed to just from here. I mean, you can... There's some more modern groups, and who's to know, really, the validity of all of it. But there are some, even on YouTube, where you can see there's some more modern Dogon temples that are talking in English or English translation about the teachings, and they definitely line up with Kamehdi teachings. And so my hypothesis around that is that the Dogon are probably most likely pygmy descendants as, And the pygmy were basically run out of Bawiti because there was jealousy with the priest, because there was competition, because all of the offerings that were being made in the temple, there was a lot of power, connected to each of the temples. And there was competitiveness even amongst the different temples, lining the Nile and all of that, of who was getting the most offerings and who was getting the most visits. And so the Pygmies essentially were run out, and they migrated, some of them migrated south to Gabon and Equatorial Africa. [00:32:43.07] - Tricia Eastman And then If you think about the physical changes that happened during these planetary catastrophes, which we know that there had been more than one based on many historical books. So that whole area went through a desertification process, and the Equatorial rainforest remained. So it's highly likely even that Iboga, at one point, grew in that region as well. [00:33:18.00] - Joe Moore Have you ever seen evidence of artwork depicting Iboga there in Egypt? [00:33:24.17] - Tricia Eastman There are several different death temples. I'm trying to remember the name of the exact one that I went to, but on the columns, it looked like Iboga trees that were carved into the columns. And I think what's interesting about this... So Seychet is the divine scribe, the scribe of Egyptian wisdom. And she was basically, essentially the sidekick of Thoth. Thoth was who brought a lot of the ancient wisdom and people like Pythagoras and many of the ancient philosophers in Roman times went and studied in a lot of these Thoth lineage mystery schools. When you look at the the river of the Nile on the east side, east is the energy liturgy of initiation. It's always like if you go into a sweat lodge or if you see an ancient temple, usually the doorway is facing the east. West is where the sun sets, and so that's the death. And what's interesting about that is that it was on the west side in the death temple that you would see these aboga plants. But also Seixat was the one who was the main goddess depicted in the hieroglyphs, and there was other hieroglyphs. I mean, if you look at the hieroglyphs of Seixat, it looks like she has a cannabis leaf above her head, and a lot of people have hypothesized that, that it's cannabis. [00:35:16.03] - Tricia Eastman Of course, historians argue about that. And then she's also carrying a little vessel that looks like it has some mushrooms in it. And obviously, she has blue Lotus. Why would she be carrying around blue Lotus and mushrooms? I don't know. It sounds like some initiation. [00:35:36.19] - Joe Moore Yeah, I love that. Well, thanks so much for going there with me. This photo of Seixet. There's some good animations, but everybody just go look at the temple carvings picturing this goddess. It's stunning. And obviously, cannabis. I think it's hard to argue not. I've seen all these like, mushroom, quote, unquote, mushroom things everywhere. I'm like, Yeah, maybe. But this is like, Yes, that's clear. [00:36:06.27] - Tricia Eastman And if you look at what she's wearing, it's the exact same outfit as Bess, which is classic Basically, how the medicine woman or medicine man or what you would call shaman, the outfit that the healers would wear, the shamans or the oracles, those of the auracular arts, different forms of divination would wear. So if you really follow that and you see, Oh, what's Isis wearing? What's Hathor wearing? What's Thoth wearing? You can tell she's very specifically the healer. And it's interesting because they call her the divine scribe. So she's actually downloading, my guess is she's taking plants and downloading from the primordial. [00:37:02.00] - Joe Moore Well, okay. Thanks for bringing that up. That was a lovely part of your book, was your... There's a big initiation sequence, and then you got to go to this place where you could learn many things. Could you speak to that a little bit? And I hope that's an okay one to bring up. [00:37:22.22] - Tricia Eastman Are you talking about the time that I was in initiation and I went to the different ashrams, the different realms in, like Yogananda calls them astral schools that you go and you just download? It seemed like astral schools, but it seemed like it was a Bwiti initiation, where you were in silence for three days, and then Yeah, that one. So there were several different... I mean, I've done seven official initiations, and then I've had many other initiatic experiences. And I would say this one was incredible. Incredibly profound because what it showed me first was that all of the masters of the planet, it was showing me everyone from Kurt Cobain to Bob Marley to Einstein, all the people that had some special connection to an intelligence that was otherworldly, that they were essentially going to the same place, like they were visiting the same place, and they would go. And so the first thing I noticed was that I recognized a lot of people, and current, I'm not going I don't want to say names of people, but I recognize people that are alive today that I would say are profound thinkers that were going to these places as well. [00:38:57.05] - Tricia Eastman And interestingly, then I was taken into one of the classrooms, and in the classroom, this one, specifically, it showed me that you could download any knowledge instantaneously That essentially, having a connection to that school allowed you to download music or understand very complex ideas ideas of mathematics or physics or science that would take people like lifetimes to understand. So it was essentially showing this. And a lot of people might discredit that, that that might be a specific... That we as humans can do that. Well, I'm not saying that it's not that. I don't I don't want to say that it's anything. But what I can say is that I have definitely noticed the level of access that I have within my consciousness. And also what I notice with the masters of Bwiti, specifically in terms of the level of intelligence that they're accessing and that it's different. It's got a different quality to it. And so it was a really profound teaching. And one of the things, too, that I've learned is I use it to help me learn specific things. I don't know if I can give a positive testimonial, but I am learning French. [00:40:55.00] - Tricia Eastman And I noticed when I was in Aspen at the Abigain meeting, and I was with Mubeiboual, who speaks French, I started saying things French that I didn't even realize that I knew to say. I've had these weird moments where I'm actually using this tool And I'm also using it. I have a Gabonese harp. I don't know if you can see it up on the shelf over there. But I also went and asked for some help with downloading some assistance in the harp, then we'll see how that goes. [00:41:38.17] - Joe Moore Yeah. So that's brilliant. I'm thinking of other precedent for that outside of this context, and I can think of a handful. So I love that, like savant syndrome. And then there's a classic text called Ars Notoria that helps accelerate learning, allegedly. And then there's a number of other really interesting things that can help us gain these bits of wisdom and knowledge. And it does feel a little bit like the Dogon. The story I get is the receiving messages from the dog star, and therefore have all sorts of advanced information that they shouldn't we call it. Yeah. Yeah, which is fascinating. We have that worldwide. I think there's plenty of really interesting stuff here. So what I appreciated, Tricia, about how you're structuring your book, or you did structure your book, is that it it seems at the same time, a memoir, on another hand, workbook, like here are some exercises. On the other hand, like here's some things you might try in session. I really appreciated that. It was like people try to get really complicated when we talk about things like IFS. I'm like, well, you don't necessarily have to. You could. Or is this just a human thing, a human way to look at working with our parts? [00:43:20.15] - Joe Moore I don't know. Do you have any thoughts about the way you were approaching this parts work in your book versus how complicated some people make it feel? [00:43:30.00] - Tricia Eastman Yeah. I find that this is just my personal opinion, and no way to discredit Richard Schwartz's work. But parts work has existed in shamanism since forever. When we really look at even in ancient Egypt, Issus, she put Osiris act together. That was the metaphorical story of soul retrieval, which is really the spiritual journey of us reclaiming these pieces of ourselves that we've been disconnected from a society level or individually. And within the context of parts work, it's very organic and it feels other worldly. It's not like there's ever a force where I'm in the process with someone. And a lot of times I would even go into the process with people because they weren't accustomed to how to work with Iboga or game, and so they would be stuck. And then the minute I was like, you know, Iboga, in the tradition, it's really about... It's like the game Marco Polo. It's call and response. And so you're really an active participant, and you're supposed to engage with the spirits. And so the minute that things would show up, it'd be more about like, oh, what do you see? What's coming up here? Asking questions about it, being curious. [00:45:17.07] - Tricia Eastman If you could engage with it, sometimes there's processes where you can't really engage with things at all. So everything that I'm talking about is It was organically shown up as an active engagement process that it wasn't like we were going in. There have been some where you can guide a little bit, but you never push. It might be something like, go to your house, and it being completely unattached. And if they can't go there, then obviously the psyche doesn't want to go there, but it's really an exercise to help them to connect to their soul. And then in contrast, IFS is like, let's work on these different parts and identify these different parts of ourselves. But then let's give them fixed titles, and let's continually in a non-altered state of consciousness, not when we're meditating, not when we're actively in a state where we have the plasticity to change the pathway in the unconscious mind, but we're working in the egoic mind, and we're talking to these parts of ourselves. That could be helpful in the day-to-day struggles. Let's say you have someone who has a lot of rumination or a very active mind to have something to do with that. [00:46:57.01] - Tricia Eastman But that's not going to be the end-all, be-all solution to their problem. It's only moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic because you're still working in the framework where, I'm sorry, the Titanic is still sinking, and it may or may not be enough. It may or may not produce a reliable outcome that could be connected with some level of true relief and true connection within oneself. And so I think that people just... I feel like they almost get a little too... And maybe it's because we're so isolated and lonely, it's like, Oh, now I've got parts. I'm not by myself. I've got my fire I've got my firefighter, and I've got my guardian, and all these things. And I definitely think that IFS is a really great initiator into the idea of engaging with parts of ourselves and how to talk to them. But I don't think it's... And I think doing a session here and there, for some people, can be incredibly helpful, but to all of a sudden incorporate it in like a dogma is toxic. It's dangerous. And that's what we have to be really careful of. [00:48:23.25] - Joe Moore So thank you for that. There's a complicated discussion happening at the Aspen meeting. I think I was only sitting maybe 30 feet away from you. Sorry, I didn't say hi. But the folks from Blessings of the Forest were there, and I got a chance to chat with a number of them and learn more about nuclear protocols, biopiracy, literal piracy, and smuggling, and the works. I'm curious. This is a really complicated question, and I'm sorry for a complicated question this far in. But it's like, as we talk about this stuff publicly and give it increased profile, we are de facto giving more juice and energy to black markets to pirate. We're adding fuel to this engine that we don't necessarily want to see. Cameroon has nothing left, pretty much. From what I'm told, people from Cameroon are coming in, stealing it from Cabona, bringing it back, and then shipping it out. And there's It's like a whole worldwide market for this stuff. I witnessed it. This stuff. Yeah, right? This is real. So the people, the Buiti, and certain Gabanese farmers, are now being pirated. And international demand does not care necessarily about Nagoya compliance. United States didn't sign Nagoya protocol for this biopiracy protection, but we're not the only violator of these ethics, right? [00:50:00.22] - Joe Moore It's everywhere. So how do we balance thinking about talking about IBOCA publicly, given that there's no clean way to get this stuff in the United States that is probably not pirated materials? And as far as I know, there's only one, quote unquote, Nagoya compliant place. I've heard stories that I haven't shared publicly yet, that there's other groups that are compliant, too. But it's a really interesting conversation, and I'm curious of your perspectives there. [00:50:34.04] - Tricia Eastman I mean, this is a very long, drawn-out question, so forgive me if I give you a long, drawn-out answer. [00:50:41.01] - Joe Moore Go for it. [00:50:41.26] - Tricia Eastman It's all good. So in reality, I do believe... You know the first Ebo, Abogaine, that was done in the country was experiments on eight Black prisoners at a hospital under the MK program. [00:51:01.16] - Joe Moore Pre-lutz off, we were doing Abogaine tests on people. [00:51:06.00] - Tricia Eastman Yeah, so pre-Lutz off. I have a hypothesis, although a lot of people would already know me. [00:51:12.07] - Joe Moore No, I didn't know that. Thank you for sharing that with me. [00:51:14.13] - Tricia Eastman That's great. I'll send you some stuff on that. But the Aboga wanted to be here. The Abogaine wanted to be here. I think it's a complex question because on one side of the coin, you have the spirit of plants, which are wild and crazy sometimes. And then you have the initiatory traditions, which create a scaffolding to essentially put the lightning in a bottle, so to say, so that it's less damaging. [00:51:51.13] - Joe Moore It's almost like a temple structure around it. [00:51:53.16] - Tricia Eastman I like that. Yeah. Put a temple structure around it because it's like, yeah, you can work with new nuclear energy, but you have to wear gloves, you have to do all these different safety precautions. I would say that that's why these traditions go hand in hand with the medicine. So some people might say that the agenda of Iboga and even Abogaine might be a different agenda than the Buiti. And ultimately, whether we are Indigenous or not, the Earth belongs to everyone. It's capitalism and the patriarchy that created all these borders and all these separations between people. And in reality, we still have to acknowledge what the essence of Buiti is, which is really the cause and effect relationship that we have with everything that we do. And so some people might use the term karma. And that is if you're in Abogaine clinic and you're putting a bunch of videos out online, and that's spurring a trend on TikTok, which we already know is a big thing where people are selling illegal market, iBoga, is Is any of that your responsibility? Yes. And if I was to sit down with a kogi kagaba, which are the mamus from Colombia, or if I were to sit down with a who said, Hey, let's do a divination, and let's ask some deep questions about this. [00:53:54.01] - Tricia Eastman It would look at things on a bigger perspective than just like, Oh, this person is completely responsible for this. But when we're talking about a medicine that is so intense, and when I was younger, when I first met the medicine, I first was introduced in 2013 was when I first found out about Abigain and Iboga. And in 2014, I lived with someone who lived with a 14th generation Misoko, maybe it was 10th generation Misoco in Costa Rica. And then he decided to just start serving people medicine. And he left this person paralyzed, one person that he treated for the rest of his life. And Aubrey Marcus, it was his business partner for On It, and he's publicly talked about this, about the story behind this. If you go into his older podcasts and blog posts and stuff, he talks about the situation. And the reality is that this medicine requires a massive amount of responsibility. It has crazy interactions, such as grapefruit juice, for example, and all kinds of other things. And so it's not just the responsibility towards the buiti, it's also the responsibility of, does me talking about this without really talking about the safety and the risks, encourage other people. [00:55:49.10] - Tricia Eastman One of the big problems, back in the day, I went to my first guita conference, Global Abogaine Therapy Alliance in 2016. And And then, ISEARs was debating because there was all these people buying Abogaine online and self-detoxing and literally either dying or ending up in the hospital. And they're like, should we release protocols and just give people instructions on how to do this themselves? And I was like, no, absolutely not. We need to really look at the fact that this is an initiatory tradition, that it's been practiced for thousands of that the minimum level at which a person is administering in Gabon is 10 years of training. The way that we've made up for those mistakes, or sorry, not mistakes, lack of training is that we've used medical oversight. Most of the medical oversight that we've received has been a result of mistakes that were made in the space. The first patient that MAPS treated, they killed them because they gave them way over the amount of what milligrams per kilogram of Abigain that you should give somebody. Every single mistake that was made, which a lot of them related to loss of life, became the global Abogane Therapy Safety Guidelines. [00:57:28.19] - Tricia Eastman And so we've already learned from our mistakes here. And so I think it's really important that we understand that there's that aspect, which is really the blood on our hands of if we're not responsible, if we're encouraging people to do this, and we're talking about it in a casual way on Instagram. Like, yeah, microdosing. Well, did you know there was a guy prosecuted this last year, personal trainer, who killed someone And from microdosing in Colorado, the event happened in 2020, but he just got sentenced early 2025. These are examples that we need to look at as a collective that we need. So that's one side of it. And then the other side of it is the reciprocity piece. And the reciprocity piece related to that is, again, the cause and effect. Is A Abogaine clinic talking about doing Abogaine and doing video testimonials, spurring the efforts that are actively being made in Gabon to protect the cultural lineage and to protect the medicine. The reality is every Abogaine clinic is booked out for... I heard the next year, I don't know if that's fact or fiction, but someone told me for a year, because because of all the stuff with all the celebrities that are now talking about it. [00:59:05.20] - Tricia Eastman And then on top of that, you have all these policy, all these different advocacy groups that are talking about it. Essentially, it's not going to be seven... It's going to be, I would say, seven to 10 years before something gets through the FDA. We haven't even done a phase one safety trial for any of the Abigain that's being commercialized. And even if there's some magic that happens within the Trump administration in the next two years that changes the rules to fast track it, it's not going to cut it down probably more than a year. So then you're looking at maybe six years minimum. That whole time, all that strain is being put on Gabon. And so if you're not supporting Gabon, what's happening is it's losing a battle because the movement is gaining momentum, and Gabon cannot keep up with that momentum. It's a tiny country the size of Colorado. So my belief is that anyone who's benefiting from all the hype around Iboga and Abogayne or personally benefited with healing within themselves should be giving back, either to Ancestral Heart, to Blessings of the Forest, to any group that is doing authentic Indigenous-led biocultural stewardship work. [01:00:45.21] - Joe Moore Thanks for that. It's important that we get into some detail here. I wish we had more time to go further on it. [01:00:54.17] - Tricia Eastman I'll do a quick joke. I know. I have a lot. [01:00:57.17] - Joe Moore Yes. Now do Mike Tyson. Kidding. Yeah. So what did we maybe miss that you want to make sure people hear about your book, any biocultural stuff that you want to get out there? You can go for a few more minutes, too, if you have a few things you want to say. [01:01:20.03] - Tricia Eastman I mean, really, thank you so much for this opportunity. Thank you for caring and being so passionate about the context related to Buiti, which I think is so important. I would just say that I've been working with this medicine for... I've known about it for 13 years, and I've been working with it for 11 years, and this is my life. I've devoted my life to this work, me and my husband, both. And there isn't anything greater of a blessing that it has brought in our life, but it also is it's a very saturnian energy, so it brings chaos. It brings the deepest challenges and forces you to face things that you need to face. But also on the other side of the coin, everything that I've devoted and given back in service to this work has exponentially brought blessing in my life. So again, I see the issue with people doing these shortened processes, whether it's in an Abigain clinic where you just don't have the ritualistic sacred aspects of an initiatic context and really the rituals that really help integrate and ground the medicine. But you still have this opportunity to continue to receive the blessings. [01:03:09.23] - Tricia Eastman And I really feel in our current psychedelic movement, we essentially have a Bugatti. These medicines are the most finely-tuned sports car that can do every... Even more than that, more like a spaceship. We have this incredible tool, but we're driving it in first gear. We don't even really know how to operate it. It's like, well, I guess you could say flight of the Navigator, but that was a self-driving thing, and I guess, psychedelics are self-driving. But I feel that we are discounting ourselves so greatly by not looking into our past of how these medicines were used. I really think the biggest piece around that is consulting the genuine lineage carriers like Buiti elders, like Mubu Bwal, who's the head of Maganga Manan Zembe, And giving them a seat at the head of the table, really, because there's so much I know in my tradition, about what we do to bring cardiac safety. And why is it that people aren't dying as much in Gabon as they're dying in Abigan clinics. [01:04:37.28] - Joe Moore Shots fired. All right. I like it. Thank you. Thank you for everything you've done here today, I think harm reduction is incredibly important. Let's stop people dying out there. Let's do some harm reduction language. I actually was able to sweet talk my way into getting a really cool EKG recently, which I thought really great about. If you can speak clinician, you can go a long way sometimes. [01:05:11.20] - Tricia Eastman Yeah. Oh, no, go ahead. Sorry. [01:05:15.17] - Joe Moore No, that's all. That's all. So harm reduction is important. How do we keep people safe? How do we keep healing people? And thank you for all your hard work. [01:05:27.22] - Tricia Eastman Thank you. I really appreciate it. We're all figuring it out. No one's perfect. So I'm not trying to fire any shots at anybody. I'm just like, Guys, please listen. We need to get in right relationship with the medicine. And we need to include these stakeholders. And on the other side of the coin, I just want to add that there's a lot of irresponsible, claimed traditional practitioners that are running retreat centers in Mexico and Costa Rica and other places that are also causing a lot of harm, too. So the medical monitoring is definitely, if you're going to do anything, Because these people don't have the training, the worst thing you could do is not have someone going in blind that doesn't have training and not have had an EKG and all that stuff. But we've got a long way to go, and I'm excited to help support in a productive way, all coming together. And that's what me and Joseph have been devoted to. [01:06:45.02] - Joe Moore Brilliant. Tricia Eastman, thank you so much. Everybody should go check out your book Seeding Consciousness out now. The audiobook's lovely, too. Thank you so much for being here. And until next time. [01:07:00.14] - Tricia Eastman Thank you.    

In Gaza, a ‘man-made drought' is causing more misery: UNICEFTsunami early warning system kicks in across Pacific after Russia quake: UNDRRCholera alert could impact 80,000 children across Central and Western Africa

The Ransomware Minute is a rundown of the latest ransomware attacks & news, brought to you Cybercrime Magazine, Page ONE for Cybersecurity. Listen to the podcast weekly and read it daily at https://ransomwareminute.com. For more on cybersecurity, visit us at https://cybercrimemagazine.com.

This episode features Aarti Kawlra, Academic Director of the Humanities Across Borders program at IIAS, hosting discussion about indigo with three colleagues, scholars, and educators. Jody Benjamin is an Associate Professor of History at Howard University. His recent book is The Texture of Change: Dress, Self-Fashioning and History in Western Africa, 1700-1850 (Ohio University Press, New African History Series, 2024), which explores questions of state-making, social hierarchy, and self-making across parts of Mali, Senegal, and Guinea through the lens of textiles and dress in a context shaped by an emergent global capitalism, slavery, and colonialism. Min-Chin Chiang is an Associate Professor and the Chairperson of the Graduate Institute of Architecture and Cultural Heritage in Taipei National University of the Arts. Her work focuses on heritage craft, heritage education, and heritage dynamics in relation to community and colonialism. Finally, Jocelyne Vokouma is a researcher in the Department of Socioeconomics and Development Anthropology at the Institute of Social Studies (Institut des Sciences des Sociétés / INSS-CNRST) in Burkina Faso, where she specializes in the aesthetics of indigo in clothing.Indigo occupies a haloed place as a color, a craft, and a hi(story) of global interactions. Viewed largely as a dye-yielding plant with a specific chemistry and exchange value as a commodity, in this podcast, the guests focus on indigo as a tool for African and Asian self-consciousness. Brought to you ahead of the Africa-Asia ConFest to be held next month (June 2025) in Dakar, this episode centers on indigo as a livelihood practice and techno-cultural knowhow, taking two specific examples, namely, indigo in Taiwan and indigo in Burkina Faso. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Texture of Change: Dress, Self-Fashioning, and History in Western Africa, 1700 – 1850 (Ohio UP, 2024) examines historical change across a broad region of western Africa—from Saint Louis, Senegal, to Freetown, Sierra Leone—through the development of textile commerce, consumption, and dress. Indigo-dyed and printed cotton, wool, linen, and silk cloths constituted major trade items that linked African producers and consumers to exchange networks that were both regional and global. While much of the historiography of commerce in Africa in the eighteenth century has focused on the Atlantic slave trade and its impact, this study follows the global cloth trade to account for the broad extent and multiple modes of western Africa's engagement with Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Jody Benjamin analyzes a range of archival, visual, oral, and material sources drawn from three continents to illuminate entanglements between local textile industries and global commerce and between the politics of Islamic reform and encroaching European colonial power. The study highlights the roles of a diverse range of historical actors mentioned only glancingly in core-periphery or Atlantic-centered framings: women indigo dyers, maroon cotton farmers, petty traveling merchants, caravan guides, and African Diaspora settlers. It argues that their combined choices within a set of ecological, political, and economic constraints structured networks connecting the Atlantic and Indian Ocean perimeters. Jody Benjamin is a social and cultural historian of western Africa with expertise in the period between 1650 and 1850. His research is informed by a methodological concern to center the diverse experiences and perspectives of Africans in ways that transcend the limitations of the colonial archive. In broad terms, Prof. Benjamin's scholarship interrogates the multiple connections between west African, African diaspora and global histories through the lens of material culture, technology, labor, gender and race to reshape how historians think about western Africa's role in the history of global capitalism and its connections to contemporary questions of global inequality. Dr. Benjamin's work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the University of California Regents, University of California Humanities Research Initiative (UCHRI), the Hellman Fellows Fund, and the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. From 2022-2023, he was the Principal Investigator for a Mellon Sawyer Seminar, “Unarchiving Blackness,” exploring archival practices in African and African Diaspora Studies. Prior to Howard University, Dr. Benjamin taught at the University of California, Riverside. You can learn more about his work here. Afua Baafi Quarshie is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on mothering and childhood in post-independence Ghana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Texture of Change: Dress, Self-Fashioning, and History in Western Africa, 1700 – 1850 (Ohio UP, 2024) examines historical change across a broad region of western Africa—from Saint Louis, Senegal, to Freetown, Sierra Leone—through the development of textile commerce, consumption, and dress. Indigo-dyed and printed cotton, wool, linen, and silk cloths constituted major trade items that linked African producers and consumers to exchange networks that were both regional and global. While much of the historiography of commerce in Africa in the eighteenth century has focused on the Atlantic slave trade and its impact, this study follows the global cloth trade to account for the broad extent and multiple modes of western Africa's engagement with Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Jody Benjamin analyzes a range of archival, visual, oral, and material sources drawn from three continents to illuminate entanglements between local textile industries and global commerce and between the politics of Islamic reform and encroaching European colonial power. The study highlights the roles of a diverse range of historical actors mentioned only glancingly in core-periphery or Atlantic-centered framings: women indigo dyers, maroon cotton farmers, petty traveling merchants, caravan guides, and African Diaspora settlers. It argues that their combined choices within a set of ecological, political, and economic constraints structured networks connecting the Atlantic and Indian Ocean perimeters. Jody Benjamin is a social and cultural historian of western Africa with expertise in the period between 1650 and 1850. His research is informed by a methodological concern to center the diverse experiences and perspectives of Africans in ways that transcend the limitations of the colonial archive. In broad terms, Prof. Benjamin's scholarship interrogates the multiple connections between west African, African diaspora and global histories through the lens of material culture, technology, labor, gender and race to reshape how historians think about western Africa's role in the history of global capitalism and its connections to contemporary questions of global inequality. Dr. Benjamin's work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the University of California Regents, University of California Humanities Research Initiative (UCHRI), the Hellman Fellows Fund, and the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. From 2022-2023, he was the Principal Investigator for a Mellon Sawyer Seminar, “Unarchiving Blackness,” exploring archival practices in African and African Diaspora Studies. Prior to Howard University, Dr. Benjamin taught at the University of California, Riverside. You can learn more about his work here. Afua Baafi Quarshie is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on mothering and childhood in post-independence Ghana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Texture of Change: Dress, Self-Fashioning, and History in Western Africa, 1700 – 1850 (Ohio UP, 2024) examines historical change across a broad region of western Africa—from Saint Louis, Senegal, to Freetown, Sierra Leone—through the development of textile commerce, consumption, and dress. Indigo-dyed and printed cotton, wool, linen, and silk cloths constituted major trade items that linked African producers and consumers to exchange networks that were both regional and global. While much of the historiography of commerce in Africa in the eighteenth century has focused on the Atlantic slave trade and its impact, this study follows the global cloth trade to account for the broad extent and multiple modes of western Africa's engagement with Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Jody Benjamin analyzes a range of archival, visual, oral, and material sources drawn from three continents to illuminate entanglements between local textile industries and global commerce and between the politics of Islamic reform and encroaching European colonial power. The study highlights the roles of a diverse range of historical actors mentioned only glancingly in core-periphery or Atlantic-centered framings: women indigo dyers, maroon cotton farmers, petty traveling merchants, caravan guides, and African Diaspora settlers. It argues that their combined choices within a set of ecological, political, and economic constraints structured networks connecting the Atlantic and Indian Ocean perimeters. Jody Benjamin is a social and cultural historian of western Africa with expertise in the period between 1650 and 1850. His research is informed by a methodological concern to center the diverse experiences and perspectives of Africans in ways that transcend the limitations of the colonial archive. In broad terms, Prof. Benjamin's scholarship interrogates the multiple connections between west African, African diaspora and global histories through the lens of material culture, technology, labor, gender and race to reshape how historians think about western Africa's role in the history of global capitalism and its connections to contemporary questions of global inequality. Dr. Benjamin's work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the University of California Regents, University of California Humanities Research Initiative (UCHRI), the Hellman Fellows Fund, and the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. From 2022-2023, he was the Principal Investigator for a Mellon Sawyer Seminar, “Unarchiving Blackness,” exploring archival practices in African and African Diaspora Studies. Prior to Howard University, Dr. Benjamin taught at the University of California, Riverside. You can learn more about his work here. Afua Baafi Quarshie is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on mothering and childhood in post-independence Ghana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The Texture of Change: Dress, Self-Fashioning, and History in Western Africa, 1700 – 1850 (Ohio UP, 2024) examines historical change across a broad region of western Africa—from Saint Louis, Senegal, to Freetown, Sierra Leone—through the development of textile commerce, consumption, and dress. Indigo-dyed and printed cotton, wool, linen, and silk cloths constituted major trade items that linked African producers and consumers to exchange networks that were both regional and global. While much of the historiography of commerce in Africa in the eighteenth century has focused on the Atlantic slave trade and its impact, this study follows the global cloth trade to account for the broad extent and multiple modes of western Africa's engagement with Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Jody Benjamin analyzes a range of archival, visual, oral, and material sources drawn from three continents to illuminate entanglements between local textile industries and global commerce and between the politics of Islamic reform and encroaching European colonial power. The study highlights the roles of a diverse range of historical actors mentioned only glancingly in core-periphery or Atlantic-centered framings: women indigo dyers, maroon cotton farmers, petty traveling merchants, caravan guides, and African Diaspora settlers. It argues that their combined choices within a set of ecological, political, and economic constraints structured networks connecting the Atlantic and Indian Ocean perimeters. Jody Benjamin is a social and cultural historian of western Africa with expertise in the period between 1650 and 1850. His research is informed by a methodological concern to center the diverse experiences and perspectives of Africans in ways that transcend the limitations of the colonial archive. In broad terms, Prof. Benjamin's scholarship interrogates the multiple connections between west African, African diaspora and global histories through the lens of material culture, technology, labor, gender and race to reshape how historians think about western Africa's role in the history of global capitalism and its connections to contemporary questions of global inequality. Dr. Benjamin's work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the University of California Regents, University of California Humanities Research Initiative (UCHRI), the Hellman Fellows Fund, and the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. From 2022-2023, he was the Principal Investigator for a Mellon Sawyer Seminar, “Unarchiving Blackness,” exploring archival practices in African and African Diaspora Studies. Prior to Howard University, Dr. Benjamin taught at the University of California, Riverside. You can learn more about his work here. Afua Baafi Quarshie is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on mothering and childhood in post-independence Ghana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Did you ever wish there was a real School of Wizardry except for fish? You're in luck! In today's episode, "Marine Science Magnet High School," the crew gets educated with Eric Litvinoff from the Marine Science Magnet High School. Connecticut has excellent magnet schools which are paid for by tax dollars and allow for equal opportunity attendance for anyone in the state. MSMHS is one of those schools and it focuses on all things aquaculture. Not only do they have a very impressive program but they also are affecting legislative change and even making money for the school by growing captive bred fish and corals and providing them to hobbyists and distributors! The students often pick the species they want to grow and culture which means they have a much more vested interest in their animals. Come join us for a fun filled adventure through the molding of young scientific minds! Be sure to check out their Instagram to see all of the latest amazing things the school is up to, including some gorgeous photos of coral!This podcast is brought to you by the sergeant major. This fish earned its name for its vertical stripes much like the military commanders who earned their stripes on the battlefield.  Surprisingly the sergeant major is a type of damselfish, but at 22 cm in length, they are hardly little helpless things. Being a sergeant major isn't an impressive feat. They …are …everywhere. From the Northeastern United States to South America and from Portugal to Western Africa, there are few places in the Atlantic that aren't infested with these abundant fish. Cheers to you, sergeant major. We at Gettin Fishy salute you.Thanks for listening to Gettin' Fishy With It! You can find our new website at ⁠⁠www.gettinfishywithit.com⁠⁠. You can find us on Bluesky at ⁠⁠@gettinfishypod.bsky.social⁠⁠ and on Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @gettingfishypod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. You can also find us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. If you want to drop us an email, you can send your complaints (or questions!) to gettingfishypod@gmail.com.Our theme music is “Best Time” by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ FASSOUNDS⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Our audio is edited by Amber Park Chiodini. Amber has her own podcast all about movies, called⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ So What Happens Next?⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠We very much appreciate you taking the time to listen to our fifty-third episode! Please help out the podcast by subscribing on your podcast platform of choice. If you could leave us a review, that would be super helpful!If you would like to support the show, you can sign up as a paid member on our⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Substack⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or you can ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠buy us a coffee⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!Thanks and we'll “sea” you again in two weeks!

We didn't have a Christmas tree this year, so my brother and I made one from banana leaves and a coconut branch.                                                               ----------------Today's stories are told by Sarah Unglaub and Amy Ackmody, AFM missionary alumni on the Lobi Project in Burkina Faso, Western Africa. Subscribe and leave us a review if you enjoyed listening to today's stories!

Christian mission in the modern era has generally been conceptualized as a Western endeavor: “from the West to the rest.” The rise and explosive growth of world Christianity has challenged this narrative, emphasizing Christian mission as “from everywhere to everywhere.” Dr. Las Newman contributes to this revitalized perspective, interrogating our understanding of modern missions history by drawing attention to the role of African West Indians in the spread of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa. This comparative study of three nineteenth-century missionary expeditions critiques common narratives around West Indian involvement in the missionary enterprise. In To Die in Africa's Dust: West Indian Missionaries in Western Africa in the Nineteenth Century (Langham, 2024), Dr. Newman proposes that far from being misguided adventurers or nostalgic exiles, African West Indians were fueled by a quest for emancipation that was birthed in the crucible of Caribbean slave society. Acting as agents of the Western missionary enterprise, they nevertheless shaped an understanding of Christian mission as a force for justice and freedom that carried with it personal, religious, and socio-political implications. Dr. Newman argues that it was this conception, embraced and championed by African West Indians, that enabled the missionary project in Western Africa to survive, flourish, and ultimately take firm root in African soil. This study questions historical interpretations of the Western missionary endeavor, exploring the pivotal role of native agents in cross-cultural Christian mission and allowing readers to hear from marginalized voices as they tell their own stories of engagement, struggle, and liberation. Dave Broucek is a former mission worker in the West Indies and a mission educator and mission administrator. As a lifelong learner in the field of global mission, he values authors who tell the lesser-known stories of mission history and who provide critical reflection on the practice of Christian mission. He considers it a privilege to host authors such as Dr. Newman in a project to disseminate their work to a wider public. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Christian mission in the modern era has generally been conceptualized as a Western endeavor: “from the West to the rest.” The rise and explosive growth of world Christianity has challenged this narrative, emphasizing Christian mission as “from everywhere to everywhere.” Dr. Las Newman contributes to this revitalized perspective, interrogating our understanding of modern missions history by drawing attention to the role of African West Indians in the spread of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa. This comparative study of three nineteenth-century missionary expeditions critiques common narratives around West Indian involvement in the missionary enterprise. In To Die in Africa's Dust: West Indian Missionaries in Western Africa in the Nineteenth Century (Langham, 2024), Dr. Newman proposes that far from being misguided adventurers or nostalgic exiles, African West Indians were fueled by a quest for emancipation that was birthed in the crucible of Caribbean slave society. Acting as agents of the Western missionary enterprise, they nevertheless shaped an understanding of Christian mission as a force for justice and freedom that carried with it personal, religious, and socio-political implications. Dr. Newman argues that it was this conception, embraced and championed by African West Indians, that enabled the missionary project in Western Africa to survive, flourish, and ultimately take firm root in African soil. This study questions historical interpretations of the Western missionary endeavor, exploring the pivotal role of native agents in cross-cultural Christian mission and allowing readers to hear from marginalized voices as they tell their own stories of engagement, struggle, and liberation. Dave Broucek is a former mission worker in the West Indies and a mission educator and mission administrator. As a lifelong learner in the field of global mission, he values authors who tell the lesser-known stories of mission history and who provide critical reflection on the practice of Christian mission. He considers it a privilege to host authors such as Dr. Newman in a project to disseminate their work to a wider public. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Christian mission in the modern era has generally been conceptualized as a Western endeavor: “from the West to the rest.” The rise and explosive growth of world Christianity has challenged this narrative, emphasizing Christian mission as “from everywhere to everywhere.” Dr. Las Newman contributes to this revitalized perspective, interrogating our understanding of modern missions history by drawing attention to the role of African West Indians in the spread of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa. This comparative study of three nineteenth-century missionary expeditions critiques common narratives around West Indian involvement in the missionary enterprise. In To Die in Africa's Dust: West Indian Missionaries in Western Africa in the Nineteenth Century (Langham, 2024), Dr. Newman proposes that far from being misguided adventurers or nostalgic exiles, African West Indians were fueled by a quest for emancipation that was birthed in the crucible of Caribbean slave society. Acting as agents of the Western missionary enterprise, they nevertheless shaped an understanding of Christian mission as a force for justice and freedom that carried with it personal, religious, and socio-political implications. Dr. Newman argues that it was this conception, embraced and championed by African West Indians, that enabled the missionary project in Western Africa to survive, flourish, and ultimately take firm root in African soil. This study questions historical interpretations of the Western missionary endeavor, exploring the pivotal role of native agents in cross-cultural Christian mission and allowing readers to hear from marginalized voices as they tell their own stories of engagement, struggle, and liberation. Dave Broucek is a former mission worker in the West Indies and a mission educator and mission administrator. As a lifelong learner in the field of global mission, he values authors who tell the lesser-known stories of mission history and who provide critical reflection on the practice of Christian mission. He considers it a privilege to host authors such as Dr. Newman in a project to disseminate their work to a wider public. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/caribbean-studies

Christian mission in the modern era has generally been conceptualized as a Western endeavor: “from the West to the rest.” The rise and explosive growth of world Christianity has challenged this narrative, emphasizing Christian mission as “from everywhere to everywhere.” Dr. Las Newman contributes to this revitalized perspective, interrogating our understanding of modern missions history by drawing attention to the role of African West Indians in the spread of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa. This comparative study of three nineteenth-century missionary expeditions critiques common narratives around West Indian involvement in the missionary enterprise. In To Die in Africa's Dust: West Indian Missionaries in Western Africa in the Nineteenth Century (Langham, 2024), Dr. Newman proposes that far from being misguided adventurers or nostalgic exiles, African West Indians were fueled by a quest for emancipation that was birthed in the crucible of Caribbean slave society. Acting as agents of the Western missionary enterprise, they nevertheless shaped an understanding of Christian mission as a force for justice and freedom that carried with it personal, religious, and socio-political implications. Dr. Newman argues that it was this conception, embraced and championed by African West Indians, that enabled the missionary project in Western Africa to survive, flourish, and ultimately take firm root in African soil. This study questions historical interpretations of the Western missionary endeavor, exploring the pivotal role of native agents in cross-cultural Christian mission and allowing readers to hear from marginalized voices as they tell their own stories of engagement, struggle, and liberation. Dave Broucek is a former mission worker in the West Indies and a mission educator and mission administrator. As a lifelong learner in the field of global mission, he values authors who tell the lesser-known stories of mission history and who provide critical reflection on the practice of Christian mission. He considers it a privilege to host authors such as Dr. Newman in a project to disseminate their work to a wider public. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Christian mission in the modern era has generally been conceptualized as a Western endeavor: “from the West to the rest.” The rise and explosive growth of world Christianity has challenged this narrative, emphasizing Christian mission as “from everywhere to everywhere.” Dr. Las Newman contributes to this revitalized perspective, interrogating our understanding of modern missions history by drawing attention to the role of African West Indians in the spread of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa. This comparative study of three nineteenth-century missionary expeditions critiques common narratives around West Indian involvement in the missionary enterprise. In To Die in Africa's Dust: West Indian Missionaries in Western Africa in the Nineteenth Century (Langham, 2024), Dr. Newman proposes that far from being misguided adventurers or nostalgic exiles, African West Indians were fueled by a quest for emancipation that was birthed in the crucible of Caribbean slave society. Acting as agents of the Western missionary enterprise, they nevertheless shaped an understanding of Christian mission as a force for justice and freedom that carried with it personal, religious, and socio-political implications. Dr. Newman argues that it was this conception, embraced and championed by African West Indians, that enabled the missionary project in Western Africa to survive, flourish, and ultimately take firm root in African soil. This study questions historical interpretations of the Western missionary endeavor, exploring the pivotal role of native agents in cross-cultural Christian mission and allowing readers to hear from marginalized voices as they tell their own stories of engagement, struggle, and liberation. Dave Broucek is a former mission worker in the West Indies and a mission educator and mission administrator. As a lifelong learner in the field of global mission, he values authors who tell the lesser-known stories of mission history and who provide critical reflection on the practice of Christian mission. He considers it a privilege to host authors such as Dr. Newman in a project to disseminate their work to a wider public. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christian mission in the modern era has generally been conceptualized as a Western endeavor: “from the West to the rest.” The rise and explosive growth of world Christianity has challenged this narrative, emphasizing Christian mission as “from everywhere to everywhere.” Dr. Las Newman contributes to this revitalized perspective, interrogating our understanding of modern missions history by drawing attention to the role of African West Indians in the spread of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa. This comparative study of three nineteenth-century missionary expeditions critiques common narratives around West Indian involvement in the missionary enterprise. In To Die in Africa's Dust: West Indian Missionaries in Western Africa in the Nineteenth Century (Langham, 2024), Dr. Newman proposes that far from being misguided adventurers or nostalgic exiles, African West Indians were fueled by a quest for emancipation that was birthed in the crucible of Caribbean slave society. Acting as agents of the Western missionary enterprise, they nevertheless shaped an understanding of Christian mission as a force for justice and freedom that carried with it personal, religious, and socio-political implications. Dr. Newman argues that it was this conception, embraced and championed by African West Indians, that enabled the missionary project in Western Africa to survive, flourish, and ultimately take firm root in African soil. This study questions historical interpretations of the Western missionary endeavor, exploring the pivotal role of native agents in cross-cultural Christian mission and allowing readers to hear from marginalized voices as they tell their own stories of engagement, struggle, and liberation. Dave Broucek is a former mission worker in the West Indies and a mission educator and mission administrator. As a lifelong learner in the field of global mission, he values authors who tell the lesser-known stories of mission history and who provide critical reflection on the practice of Christian mission. He considers it a privilege to host authors such as Dr. Newman in a project to disseminate their work to a wider public. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/christian-studies

This discussion is with Dr. Jody Benjamin, a social and cultural historian of western Africa with expertise in the period between 1650 and 1850. He received his PhD in African and African American Studies at Harvard University in 2016. His research is informed by a methodological concern to center the diverse experiences and perspectives of Africans in ways that transcend the limitations of the colonial archive. His first book, the topic for this discussion, The Texture of Change: Dress, Self-Fashioning and History in Western Africa, 1700-1850 (Ohio University Press New African History Series, 2024), explores questions of state-making, social hierarchy and self-making across parts of Mali, Senegal and Guinea through the lens of textiles and dress in a context shaped by an emergent global capitalism, slavery, and colonialism. Prof. Benjamin's scholarship interrogates the multiple connections between west African, African diaspora and global histories through the lens of material culture, technology, labor, gender and race in order to reshape how historians think about western Africa's role in the history of global capitalism and its connections to contemporary questions of global inequality. Prior to Howard University, Dr. Benjamin taught at the University of California, Riverside. From 2021-2023, he was the Principal Investigator for a Mellon Sawyer Seminar, “Unarchiving Blackness” exploring archival practices in African and African Diaspora Studies. Dr. Benjamin's work has also been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the University of California Regents, University of California Humanities Research Initiative (UCHRI), the Hellman Fellows Fund, and the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

This is Fatima Seck and you're listening to Conversations in Atlantic Theory, a podcast dedicated to books and ideas generated from and about the Atlantic world. In collaboration with the Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, these conversations explore the cultural, political, and philosophical traditions of the Atlantic world, ranging from European critical theory to the black Atlantic to sites of indigenous resistance and self-articulation, as well as the complex geography of thinking between traditions, inside traditions, and from positions of insurgency, critique, and counternarrative.Today's discussion is with Souleymane Bachir Diagne, who teaches in the Departments of Philosophy and French at Columbia University. He is the author of a number of books on the history of logic, comparative philosophy, and the legacy of life philosophy in the francophone African tradition. In this conversation, we discuss his new book Open to Reason: Muslim Philosophers in Conversation with the Western Tradition, which examines the place of reason and rationality in the Islamic philosophical practices in Western Africa from the medieval period forward.

Welcome to Music Fishbowl - Music chatter for all! Dan is back with another stellar episode withba wonderful guest. Today's guests is Fabulos Seth. FabulosSeth ( @fabulosseth ) is a brand new artist hailing from Western Africa. His blend of hip-hop and RnB stylings has helped him develop a name for himself as a boundary-pushing musician. Dan speaks to FabulosSeth about his journey to becoming the artist he is today, the music scene in Ghana and about his latest music. This is not one to be missed. Listen to FabulosSeth on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/0sBZ3vmPPtPKMhFYabaCdI?si=agohqzUsRSWBJGdSeg2qEw Follow FabulosSeth on Instagram and TikTok: @fabulosseth Dan would like to thank FabulosSeth for being such a great guest. His time was kindly given and Dan really appreciates that. If you would like to be a guest on Music Fishbowl, contact Dan on Instagram ( @musicfishbowl ) or email him ( musicfishbowl123@gmail.com ). Whether you are a musician, someone who works in the industry, you have a vinyl account or you are just a music fan who wants to talk about their favourite music - all are welcome! Dan would like to thank all the listeners of Music Fishbowl. Your time, kindness and sharing really does help keep the podcast running! Follow Dan on Instagram: @musicfishbowl Listen to the podcasts playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2BoSFLQSShT9aGn7aR33KS?si=qIkKzzvrSfCiNQXk-_KHTQ Read the podcasts blog: https://musicfishbowlreviews.wordpress.com/ Check out the magazine I review for, Northern Exposure Magazine, here: https://northernexposuremagazine.co.uk/

This week, Erin Flanagan and Jake Shropshire discuss the apparent second assassination attempt on Donald Trump's life this year, the potential coup in Mali and destabilization of Western Africa, and a recent attack using pagers as bombs in Syria and Lebanon by the Israeli military. Plus, Have You Heard headlines to keep you up-to-date on the biggest stories from the week.

All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians by Phil Elwood https://amzn.to/3LPfR1S A bridge-burning, riotous memoir by a top PR operative in Washington who exposes the secrets of the $129-billion industry that controls so much of what we see and hear in the media―from a man who used to pull the strings, and who is now pulling back the curtain. After nearly two decades in the Washington PR business, Elwood wants to come clean, by exposing the dark underbelly of the very industry that's made him so successful. The first step is revealing exactly what he's been up to for the past twenty years―and it isn't pretty. Elwood has worked for a murderer's row of questionable clients, including Gaddafi, Assad, and the government of Qatar. In All the Worst Humans, Elwood unveils how the PR business works, and how the truth gets made, spun, and sold to the public―not shying away from the gritty details of his unlikely career. This is a piercing look into the corridors of money, power, politics, and control, all told in Elwood's disarmingly funny and entertaining voice. He recounts a four-day Las Vegas bacchanal with a dictator's son, plotting communications strategies against a terrorist organization in Western Africa, and helping to land a Middle Eastern dictator's wife a glowing profile in Vogue on the same time the Arab Spring broke out. And he reveals all his slippery tricks for seducing journalists in order to create chaos and ultimately cover for politicians, dictators, and spies―the industry-secret tactics that led to his rise as a political PR pro. Along the way, Phil walks the halls of the Capitol, rides in armored cars through Abuja, and watches his client lose his annual income at the roulette table. But as he moved up the ranks, he felt worse and worse about the sleaziness of it all―until Elwood receives a shocking wake-up call from the FBI. This risky game nearly cost Elwood his life and his freedom. Seeing the light, Elwood decides to change his ways, and his clients, and to tell the full truth about who is the worst human.About the author Phil Elwood is a public relations operative. He was born in New York City, grew up in Idaho, and moved to Washington, DC at age twenty to intern for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He completed his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University, and his graduate studies at the London School of Economics before starting his career at a small PR firm. Over the last two decades, Elwood has worked for some of the top – and bottom – PR firms in Washington. He lives in DC.

Teaching is a family business for this mother and daughter. When Daneé Pinckney was a student, her mom, Gail Bowers-Craig, enrolled in night school to earn a degree in education. In fact, Daneé says much of what she learned about teaching was from watching and listening to her mother in those years of study. It was Daneé, however, who blazed the Fund for Teachers trail. Last summer, Daneé used her $5,000 grant to research the ancestry of Black America through Benin, Ghana, and the Togolese Republic to produce an expansion of the depth of knowledge of Western Africa that also strives to dismantle discriminatory perspectives that will deepen student connections to literature, art, culture, and self-identity. Along for the ride, and on her dime, was Gail – who used the time to do a little of her own research for her middle school science students. Upon returning to Ohio, where they live and teach 30 minutes apart from each other, Gail decided to follow the example set by Daneé and apply for her own Fund for Teachers grant. And this summer, with Daneé as her “plus one,” Gail and two teammates from Euclid Middle School in Euclid, OH, will explore the Galapagos Islands in the tradition of Charles Darwin to tangibly demonstrate for students how science is valuable in shaping community and deepening the understanding of ourselves and the people around us.Today, we're learning from this mother/daughter team about who inspires whom, how, and lessons they've learned from years together at home and at school.

When we covered the elections in Senegal, Alex and Kaleigh were left with a cliffhanger when the election was cancelled in February. This month, the podcast is back with the twist election ending no one saw coming! The hosts are also sticking to the theme of elections in Western Africa and heading back to Togo for their election and controversial constitutional changes. Get in touch with us with any of your democracy queries: Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠@probpolitics⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠@probpolitics⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠probablyaboutpolitics@gmail.com

This week we talk about cacao, plantations, and bean-to-bar chocolate.We also discuss black pod disease, swollen shoot virus, and seed pod currency.Recommended Book: The City & The City by China MiévilleTranscriptThe cocoa bean, also called "cacao," is a seed derived from the cocoa tree, which is native to the Amazon Rainforest in South America.More than 5,000 years ago, near present day Ecuador, the Mayo-Chinchipe culture domesticated and cultivated this tree, which then found its way north into Mesoamerica—so parts of Central America, and modern day Mexico—and that's where we actually thought it came from until a handful of years ago, when new research pushed the initial domestication date back by about 1,500 years, tracking its path down into Ecuador by identifying cocoa residue on pottery from that time period down in that region.But way back then, it's thought that the pulp of this seed was used primarily to create an alcoholic beverage that was fermented to about the same alcohol percentage as a consumer-grade, modern day beer—just over 5%—and because of that utility in making this popular beverage, it was used as a currency in some parts of South and Central America.It's worth noting, too, that this tree and its seed would have originally been called kakawa, which was then turned into an Aztec derivative word much later, cacauatl, which then became cacao, when the Spanish colonized the region, and cacao then became cocoa when introduced to English-speaking parts of the world—and that variation of the word took over in the age of post-WWII globalization, due in large part to the popularization of chocolate products from English-speaking countries like the US and the UK, cacao only recently being reintroduced on that scale to differentiate more expensive cocoa products from those that have become mainstream.Also worth noting is that in addition to being used to produce a popular alcoholic beverage way back in the day, the cocoa bean was also turned into a kind of frothy spiced drink by Aztec royalty and other higher-ups in this part of the world, and that drink was enjoyed by high-born members of society for several thousand years, the beverage used in all sorts of rituals.And to make it, cocoa was whipped together with vanilla and other spices and sweeteners to produce something akin to a sort of hot chocolate the modern person would recognize, though leaning a lot more into those spices than most modern chocolates, rather than sugars and fats.This wasn't a widely available thing in most areas, and it probably wasn't the main end-product for most cocoa beans for most of history, as that alcoholic drink and its many derivatives were a lot more broadly available and widely disseminated.That said, different groups, across this region and across time, including the Maya and the Olmecs, had their own variations of this hot cocoa-like drink, and there's even an Aztec story that Quetzalcoatl was outcast by the other gods in their pantheon for sharing chocolate with humans, and some regional experts have speculated that the ritual of extracting the hearts from human sacrifices in the Aztec empire might be connected to the process of extracting the cocoa pulp from the cocoa bean seed pod when producing this beverage; though that's pretty speculative.The Aztecs came later than a lot of the other cultures in this region that partook in chocolate-related rituals and made cocoa-related goods, so that's likely part of why their rituals surrounding this drink were more elaborate than those of their neighbors, contemporary and forebear, but it's likely that the nature of the bean itself, which only grows in a finite region, about 20 degrees north and south of the equator, also had something to do with it.Because of that limited range, the Aztecs couldn't grow cocoa in their territory, and that meant it was always a luxury import for them, which meant—like many luxuries, even today—only the richest members of society could afford it, and that helped them differentiate themselves from the chocolate-less plebeians.This changed somewhat following the arrival of the Europeans in the Americas, when the Spaniards, who were maybe originally introduced to the drink by Montezuma or one of his underlings, brought the drink back home with them, eventually creating a new market for producers, though Europeans were not initially a fan of it, and mostly seemed to indulge because it seemed exotic, but early on they realized that because this bean already served as a unit of currency in many of the areas they were exploring and exploiting, it allowed them to deal with locals in a familiar way: this many cocoa beans for one thing, this many for another—it made negotiations and payment a lot cleaner and clearer, and cocoa beans could be easily transported for trade while also being useful, in a pinch, as a stable source of food while in transit, which compared favorably to other food goods they were bringing back home from their explorations and invasions, like bananas.What I'd like to talk about today is the modern chocolate market, and a dramatic price increase in cocoa beans that's raising eyebrows and concerns around the world.—The modern chocolate market has expanded in the years since Montezuma and the Spanish conquistadors to cover the whole of the globe, with products based on the cocoa bean on shelves in every country—even shut-ins like North Korea.In 2022, the global chocolate industry was worth something like $116 billion, which is more than double the $50 billion or so it was worth in 2009, and analysts expect this market's compound annual growth rate, which tallies the increase in the industry's return on investment each year, to remain steady at around 3.4%, which is solid, and predicated on the increase in the dark chocolate market, especially amongst health-conscious consumers, and the burgeoning plant-based and vegan chocolate markets, which further reinforce the perception of some chocolate as being a luxurious and healthful indulgence.Such luxury upbranding is key to those CAGR assumptions, as positioning some of these products as more expensive, but better versions of what's long been available allows chocolate companies to sell relatively less product for relatively higher prices, and that means expanding their customer base while also increasing their profit-margins.All of which would be vital for this sort of industry even during normal times, but it's even more important when things are going sideways with an industry's access to raw materials, which seems to be what's happening in the world of chocolate.In the 20th century, especially the late-20th century, the brands that were selling the most chocolate to the most people, globally, started gobbling up their competition. This period of acquisition and consolidation left us with about a dozen big chocolate manufacturers, globally, including names you've almost certainly heard of, like Cadbury, which is the biggest such company in the world, but also Hershey, Mars, Neuhaus, Ferrero, and Milka.Some of these companies, like Nestlé, are what's called bean-to-bar chocolate manufacturers, but most of the titans in this space melt chocolate from other manufacturers into their end-products, only using the bean-to-bar model for a few high-end offerings.But there are a slew of bean-to-bar companies still in operation, today, they just tend to be a lot smaller, because this model requires that they process their own cocoa beans in-house, rather than outsourcing, which tends to be required to achieve the scale that companies like Hershey and Mars have reached; it's a lot more time-intensive and expensive to do it this way.That said, the expansion of the chocolate market into a multi-billion, then more than $100 billion global industry necessitated expanding the footprint of its base-level production beyond its traditional South and Central American origins.Several other locations within that 20 degrees north and south of the equator spectrum have thus seen cocoa trees introduced, but the biggest producer of cocoa, today, is Côte d'Ivoire, the Ivory Coast, in Western Africa, where about 45% of the world's cocoa was cultivated, as of 2022, which amounted to around 2.2 million tonnes that year, alone.Neighboring Ghana comes in second, producing about half as much as Ivory Coast, with about 1.1 million tonnes produced that same year, and Indonesia is a distant third, producing about 667,000 tonnes in 2022.Combined with Ivory Coast's output, Ghana's cocoa bean industry, plus the smaller outputs of nearby Nigeria and Cameroon, account for about 70% of all the cocoa produced anywhere in the world.Ecuador, where the cocoa tree was seemingly first domesticated, is now all the way down in fourth place, producing about 337,000 tonnes of the bean for export in 2022.Because of the nature of how cocoa beans are harvested, and where, chocolate companies have huge sway over local politics and economics, and the folks doing the harvesting have historically not been treated terribly well, and in some cases their ranks have been filled with children.In some such areas, people are trafficked or enslaved and put to work harvesting cocoa beans, and even those who are there of their own behest are paid very little by international standards, not even a living wage (based on the cost of things like shelter and food in their regions), their incomes artificially capped by an agreement with the cocoa bean-buying industry, and though Fair Trade certification has become more common for many chocolate companies, demonstrating their commitment to paying better wages, and in turn allowing the folks producing the raw materials for their chocolates to actually be able to afford to buy chocolate products, which is not the case for those working in non-Fair Trade conditions, that's still not the norm, and in some areas the conditions faced by workers are pretty bleak, many of them children under the age of 15, many of them forced to work for various reasons, and all of them making just enough money to survive, but nothing beyond that, and in some cases, barely that.Most of these beans, the ones that end up in chocolate produced by those bigwig entities that dominate the global chocolate trade, are mixed together with beans from other locations on commodity markets, these companies buying them by the metric ton, similar to other food commodities that are traded in this way, like soybeans, milk, and palm oil.Distinct from most other commodities right now, though, is the increase in price cocoa beans are seeing on these markets.In 2022, the average price for a metric tonne of cocoa beans was somewhere between $2,200 and $2,500.That's of a kind with the typical pricing for the past decade or so, and though there was a massive spike in 1977, which was only about $5,700 per tonne in unconverted money, but that's about $28,000 per tonne if we account for inflation—so that was a pretty bad year for chocolate lovers and companies—but other than that and a few other aberrations through the decades, cocoa beans have been a pretty stable commodity, at least compared to other commodities that are thus traded.In February of 2024, though, cocoa bean prices shot up from those $2,500-ish per tonne prices all the way to around $6,000 per tonne, and then in March cocoa futures hit a record (unconverted for inflation) price of about $10,000 per tonne, which is a staggering leap of something like 4 to 5 times the usual cost.This price jump is being attributed to a confluence of variables, most of them contributing to a series of poor harvests in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, which again, together, account for most of the world's cocoa bean output.The El Niño phenomenon that's been messing with the global water cycle and increasing average global temperatures since July of 2023 is partly the blame here, as are the creeping effects of climate change, which have, in practice, moved the ideal growing areas for all sorts of plants, because of a tweak to the average global temperature knobs that have nudged things higher in most parts of the world, while also making weather patterns more irregular, compared to what we've become used to.Those climate nudges have also allowed diseases to spread faster and to new regions, including those that impact plants.Extreme and unusual rainfall in Western Africa sparked outbreaks of black pod disease, which usually hits after wet season, and all that rain was followed by a period of extreme dryness and drought, which stoked the spread of swollen shoot virus, which reduces output by up to 25% in the first year of infection, up to 50% in the second, and which ultimately kills its hosts, the cocoa trees, and once it spreads to a plantation, the whole plantation, all the trees, usually have to be uprooted and burned, new trees planted in their stead, before things can get up and running again—all of which takes a lot of time and resources.Cocoa manufacturers have been underinvesting in their plantations and smaller cocoa producers for years; so it's not just their workers that they're under-investing in, it's the infrastructure surrounding those workers, which is often decrepit and unsafe, and which has left them prone to these newly aggressive diseases and unusual climate happenings.And a lot of the cocoa produced in these top-producing countries are run by small-holders, not by large-scale plantations. And because these small-holders are often almost as impoverished as the people working on the plantations, they don't have the money to invest in treating disease or uprooting and replacing all their trees, and that's led to a surge in illegal mining operations in cocoa growing areas, because illegal miners come in and say they'll pay the owners of the land where they want to dig a reliable, if still small income, and those landowners don't really have a choice—cocoa doesn't provide them enough money to do more than sustain themselves, so they take what they can get, and every time this happens, that's less prime cocoa-growing land that's being used to grow cocoa.Because of all this, the mid-season crop coming out of Ivory Coast, the biggest producer in the world, is expected to be about a third lower than usual this year, and Ghana's production is expected to hit a 22-year low; hence, those dramatically hiked prices, which have been further inflamed by market maneuvers meant to protect investors from irregularities, but which have the practical effect of raising prices in the short-term, creating more volatility, not less.This price-surge and negative overall outlook for the industry is causing a fair bit of concern for the global chocolate market, which has some stockpiled supply of beans, but which is struggling to account for this increase in overall cost, and is thus attempting to prepare their customers for price hikes and fresh instances of shrinkflation: which basically means selling the same product for the same price, but with less of the product in the package; so maybe a candy bar selling for the same price as before, but the bar is 2/3 its former size.This has been a big discussion topic recently in part because of the recent Easter holiday, which is a big day for chocolate sales in many parts of the Western world in particular, so this situation is topical news, but also because it's representative of what's happening in other commodity and non-commodity markets, as well, as a result of many of the same factors.The global supply of coffee beans has been shrinking since 2021, labor and other systemic issues contributing to that, but the climate also changing where coffee grows best, and thus making life hard on the folks who currently grow most of it, in what were previously the optimal regions for doing so, but which aren't any longer, and may no longer be capable of growing these beans at all in a few decades, the way things are going.Olive oil is likewise seeing record-high prices in 2024, the price of extra virgin olive oil up 70% from a year previous, and 260% from two years ago, due to widespread drought across the Mediterranean, where most olives are grown, and because of a bacteria that's infecting olive trees more enthusiastically than ever before because of all that heat and drought.The banana industry is also raising alarms, too, as the change in global temperatures and the water cycle are combining with a collection of increasingly aggressive diseases and infections that are impacting banana growing regions in Australia, Asia, Africa, and South America, necessitating a clean-sweep approach similar to those used to get a cocoa bean plantation ready to grow, again, post-infection, requiring a lot of additional investment and leading to a lot of waste and diminished expectations.Most of these industries have enough of a backlog and stockpile to keep prices on shelves constant for a while after this sort of hit, but for all of these industries, prices are expected to go up, possibly permanently, because of this seeming new reality, and because of the nature of the entities operating in these spaces, and the systems they've deployed to keep their goods flowing to the entities that turn them into products that end up in stores around the world.So while chocolate is the first to really hit the public consciousness in terms of the companies that own this space trying to prepare their customer base for what's about to happen by making it known that their core prices have grown shockingly high, it's likely we'll continue to see this sort of base-level inflationary impact on all sorts of goods in the coming years, unless something fundamental changes about the variables impacting supply, or the business model they use to sustain their industries.Show Noteshttps://finance.yahoo.com/news/chocolate-market-size-worth-usd-191300029.htmlhttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/29/easter-eggs-chocolate-cacao-harvests-cocoa-prices-aoehttps://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/26/cocoa-prices-are-soaring-to-record-levels-what-it-means-for-consumers.htmlhttps://archive.ph/YnZH7https://apnews.com/article/easter-chocolate-africa-farmers-cocoa-ghana-4a4d58a4e6076c8d46258c1b4dc414c4https://archive.ph/SbWVFhttps://archive.ph/wPhkkhttps://www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-top-cocoa-producing-countries/https://www.statista.com/statistics/263855/cocoa-bean-production-worldwide-by-region/https://www.confectioneryproduction.com/news/47651/cocoa-sector-reaches-crisis-point-as-crop-prices-hit-10000-a-tonne/https://ycharts.com/indicators/cocoa_bean_pricehttps://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/3/30/chocolate-prices-to-keep-rising-as-west-africas-cocoa-crisis-deepenshttps://investorplace.com/2024/03/olive-oil-coffee-and-cocoa-prices-oh-my-3-grocery-store-items-to-watch/https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68534309https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2024/mar/analysis-cocoa-beans-short-supply-what-means-farmers-businesses-chocolate-lovershttps://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231220-illegal-mining-smuggling-threaten-ghana-s-cocoa-industryhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022316622143798?via%3Dihubhttps://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181029130945.htmhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolatehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoa_bean This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit letsknowthings.substack.com/subscribe

I spoke to lifelong Wednesdayite Madikay, who was born in The Gambia in Western Africa, to get his thoughts on Racism in Football from a personal level and share his experiences of racist chanting and abuse and just how it makes him feel as a black person.x.com/madikaybojang Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tostan was built on the belief that, given the right tools, communities can solve their problems better than foreign organizations. After two decades of supporting hundreds of communities across Western Africa, that belief has been proven true. Today, Tostan's CEO Elena Bonometti explains why the organization's unique community empowerment program is so effective and how other entities can implement it. If you want to learn more about Tostan, visit https://tostan.org/--If you aspire to be a System Catalyst and need resources to help you on your journey, subscribe to our newsletter. To learn more about our mission and our partners, visit systemcatalysts.com.This podcast is produced by Hueman Group Media. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to Humans of Travel! We're back from our winter hiatus, and we're gearing up to bring you a brand-new season featuring conversations from some of the most innovative and inspiring voices in travel. Our first guest is Beth Santos, the founder of Wanderful, a virtual and in-person community of more than 40,000 women of diverse ages and backgrounds, all connected through their love of travel. Santos has been recognized by Business Insider as one of 17 Changemakers Transforming the Hospitality Industry, and she's been named as one of 12 Inspiring People to Follow by Conde Nast Traveler. She's a self-proclaimed serial entrepreneur and community builder who has set out to disrupt travel for women worldwide, starting Wanderful during her time living off the coast of Western Africa. Since then, it's morphed into a robust member community with online resources and education, along with chapter events in more than 50 global cities. In this episode of Humans of Travel, Santos gives her take on women's place in travel planning and decision making, and what society gets wrong about female travel (hint: it doesn't follow the “Taken narrative”). She also takes listeners through her own journey, from the early days of blogging about Sao Tome and Principe to the evolution of Wanderful and what it offers its community of members. Know a great Human of Travel who has a compelling story to share? Send us an email at letters@travelagewest.com. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Wanderful Santos' website Santos on LinkedIn Santos on Instagram: @maximumbeth Santos' recent favorite book: The Last Resort Santos' podcast: 85% ABOUT YOUR HOST  Emma Weissmann is the Managing Editor of TravelAge West, a print magazine and website for travel advisors based in the Western U.S. She is also the co-host of Trade Secrets, a podcast created with sister publication Travel Weekly. TravelAge West also produces national trade publications Explorer and Family Getaways, as well as events including the Future Leaders in Travel Retreat, Global Travel Marketplace West, the WAVE Awards gala and the Napa Valley Leadership Forum.  ABOUT THE SHOW  TravelAge West's podcast, “Humans of Travel,” features conversations with exceptional people who have compelling stories to tell. Listeners will hear from the travel industry's notable authorities, high-profile executives, travel advisors and rising stars as they share the experiences — the highs and the lows — that make them human.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Carly Biggart, vice president of sales and marketing for the Americas for Hurtigruten Norway, talks with Alan Fine of Insider Travel Report about Hurtigruten's history, focusing on both coastal cruising along the Norwegian coast and expedition cruises that emphasize science and education when traveling with HX, Hurtigruten's new sister brand. Biggart details the fleet, including hybrid electric ships, plans for a zero-emission ship by 2030, and new itineraries, including the North Cape Express and a Western Africa expedition cruise. For more information, visit www.Hurtigruten.com and www.AgentPortal.Hurtigruten.com. If interested, the original video of this podcast can be found on the Insider Travel Report Youtube channel or by searching for the podcast's title on Youtube.

France has recently announced that it plans to leave militarily and diplomatically - Niger. What was the trigger? Western influence a mess? #Niger#Africa#Coup#RevolutionThank you, for listening..... as ever....!!!!....!!!... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nummo are the ancestral spirits of the Dogon people of Western Africa. Hermaphroditic, fish-like creatures that were human from the waist up, fish from the waist down and inhabited a world circling the star Sirius. While I couldn't make the music of the song half as interesting as the lyrical content, I attempted to mash up the Malian desert blues inspired by a chance encounter with Vieux Farka Toure with western-style string arrangements.

⭐️ THE SEVENTH PILLAR by bestselling author Alex Lukeman ⭐️

⭐️ THE SEVENTH PILLAR by bestselling author Alex Lukeman ⭐️

⭐️ THE SEVENTH PILLAR by bestselling author Alex Lukeman ⭐️

⭐️ THE SEVENTH PILLAR by bestselling author Alex Lukeman ⭐️

⭐️ THE SEVENTH PILLAR by bestselling author Alex Lukeman ⭐️

Sasha and Evan explore the unique world of wrestling in Western Africa and complain about Rob Koll...HIGHLIGHTS!!Serer PeopleOrigins of LaambRules(?)PovertyIdentityGriotWomen WrestlersIsabelle Sambou"Tyson"

Combine a Marketing, Branding, and Communications Expert, a Feminine Leadership Coach, and an Author, and you have the Extraordinary Visionary that is Lady Bodam Taiwo. During her impressive career spanning 15+ years, she has been instrumental in starting new businesses across Africa and building Luxury and Premium Brands across Western Africa. She has also managed the operations and performance of sales teams in the Fast- Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) Industry. She currently serves as the Head of Portfolio, Bond & Connect, Western Africa at Pernod Ricard where she plays a major role in creating and driving the execution of the long-term strategy for sustainable and profitable top and bottom-line growth of the portfolio across 22 African markets with a focus on 5 Key Markets. Bodam is the Visionary behind The Refined Lady Movement which equips ladies with the tools to grow impact, influence, and authority and distinguish themselves as Leaders by discovering and leaning into their innate femininity. Through The Refined Lady School, she offers Signature Courses and Masterclasses covering various aspects of Executive Presence, Etiquette, Protocol, Grooming, Diplomacy, Communication, and Hospitality among others. She also trains organizations on Leadership, Corporate Ethics, and Business Etiquette. She is also the host of The Refined Lady's Summit – an annual conference on feminine leadership, elegance, and culture. In 2022, Bodam was recognized as one of the Top 100 Career Women in Nigeria by 9-to-5 Chick. She was also awarded the Distinct Positive Values Award of the Year by The Iconic Brand Awards (TIBA) for her positive impact on society. In 2021, Bodam was named one of The Top 100 Most Inspiring Women in Africa by Leading Ladies Africa. She was also honored as one of twelve extraordinary Visionary Women of African Descent in the 2021 Future-Forward Female Folio. Bodam holds a B.Eng in Electronics Engineering from the University of Reading and an M.Sc in Mobile and Satellite Communications from the University of Surrey. She currently serves as a Volunteer Mentor in both institutions. In 2022, she also served as a mentor in Women In Business, Management and Politics (WIMBIZ) and the Academy for Women Entrepreneurs (AWE). She has a certification in Luxury Spirits Marketing from a collaboration program run by INSEAD Business School for Diageo Brands Ltd. She is also an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, United Kingdom.

This week I am SO excited to welcome back for a second time: father, entrepreneur, Navy SEAL veteran, author of the incredible books, ‘Transformed' and ‘Chameleon', Founder of Keh-jo Brand apparel and The 8th film productions, film producer, writer, director of “The Unexpected”, Hollywood actor, and jack of all trades and master at ALL of them: Remi Adeleke A true riches to rags - and rags to riches story, Remi calls his life the TRUE ‘Coming to America' story. Born into African Royalty in a small country in Western Africa, his picture-perfect life took a devastating turn after circumstances surrounding the death of his beloved father forced his family to uproot to America - which began a new life filled with adversity and struggles. After years of running the streets out in The Bronx, NY, Remi knew he needed a change and enlisted in the US Navy in 2002 and began his inspirational and transformational journey from Streets to SEALs where he worked in human intelligence. His debut book biography, “Transformed: A Navy SEALs Unlikely Journey from the Throne of Africa to the Streets of the Bronx to Defying All Odds” outlines the inspirational and personal story of Remi's life and how he overcame insurmountable odds and rose to prominence in literally everything he set his mind to - including the military and breaking into Hollywood. His newest project - a fictional follow-up to ‘Transformed' called “Chameleon” - is a fictional novel loosely based on his own experiences as a SEAL. In Remi's own words, “It's a fictional extension of my memoir, ‘Transformed'. All the things that I couldn't talk about in ‘Transformed', I fictionalized and created this fictional world with fictional characters and fictional events in order to be able to tell more of my story, but in a fictional way.”  If you are a survivor or whistleblower who wants to share your story on the podcast or wants to share any information privately with me, you can now email me at IMAGINEABETTERWORLD2020@GMAIL.COM! I also just started a Substack that you can support at www.EmmaKatherine.Substack.com.WATCH REMI'S FIRST EPISODE: S2E51 | "Remi Adeleke - 'The Unexpected' Global Networks of Organ Harvesting and Human Trafficking" - YouTubeCONNECT WITH REMI: YouTube:  Remi Adeleke - YouTubeInstagram: Remi Adeleke (@remiadeleke) • Instagram photos and videosTwitter: Remi Adeleke (@RemiAdeleke) / X (twitter.com)Kejo Brand Apparel: KEJO WEAR – Kejo WearBuy Remi's Book 'Transformed': Transformed: A Navy SEAL's Unlikely Journey from the Throne of Africa, to the Streets of the Bronx, to Defying All Odds: Adeleke, Remi: 9780785219767: Amazon.com: BooksBuy Remi's Book 'Chameleon': Amazon.com: Chameleon: A Black Box Thriller (Black Box, 1): 9780063238831: Adeleke, Remi: BooksWatch 'The Unexpected' Short Film: THE UNEXPECTED FILM by REMI ADELEKE (BronzeLens Film Festival Finalist) - YouTubeWatch 'Chameleon' Short Film: Chameleon Short Film By Remi Adeleke - YouTubeCONNECT WITH 'THE IMAGINATION': All Links: Your Profile (direct.me)Support the show

Welcome back to Humans of Travel! We're back from our winter hiatus, and we're gearing up to bring you a brand-new season featuring conversations from some of the most innovative and inspiring voices in travel. Our first guest is Beth Santos, the founder of Wanderful, a virtual and in-person community of more than 40,000 women of diverse ages and backgrounds, all connected through their love of travel. Santos has been recognized by Business Insider as one of 17 Changemakers Transforming the Hospitality Industry, and she's been named as one of 12 Inspiring People to Follow by Conde Nast Traveler. She's a self-proclaimed serial entrepreneur and community builder who has set out to disrupt travel for women worldwide, starting Wanderful during her time living off the coast of Western Africa. Since then, it's morphed into a robust member community with online resources and education, along with chapter events in more than 50 global cities. In this episode of Humans of Travel, Santos gives her take on women's place in travel planning and decision making, and what society gets wrong about female travel (hint: it doesn't follow the “Taken narrative”). She also takes listeners through her own journey, from the early days of blogging about Sao Tome and Principe to the evolution of Wanderful and what it offers its community of members. Know a great Human of Travel who has a compelling story to share? Send us an email at letters@travelagewest.com. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Wanderful Santos' website Santos on LinkedIn Santos on Instagram: @maximumbeth Santos' recent favorite book: The Last Resort Santos' podcast: 85% ABOUT YOUR HOST  Emma Weissmann is the Managing Editor of TravelAge West, a print magazine and website for travel advisors based in the Western U.S. She is also the co-host of Trade Secrets, a podcast created with sister publication Travel Weekly. TravelAge West also produces national trade publications Explorer and Family Getaways, as well as events including the Future Leaders in Travel Retreat, Global Travel Marketplace West, the WAVE Awards gala and the Napa Valley Leadership Forum.  ABOUT THE SHOW  TravelAge West's podcast, “Humans of Travel,” features conversations with exceptional people who have compelling stories to tell. Listeners will hear from the travel industry's notable authorities, high-profile executives, travel advisors and rising stars as they share the experiences — the highs and the lows — that make them human.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

During the first months of the pandemic, governments worldwide agreed that ‘following the science' with hard lockdowns and vaccine mandates was the best way to preserve life. But evidence is mounting that ‘the science' was all politics and time reveals the horrific human and economic cost of these policies. The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (Hurst, 2023) provides an internationalist-left perspective on the world's Covid-19 response, which has had devastating consequences for democratic rights and the poor worldwide. As the fortunes of the richest soared, nationwide shutdowns devastated small businesses, the working classes, and the Global South's informal economies. Toby Green and Thomas Fazi argue that these policies grossly exacerbated existing trends of inequality, mediatisation and surveillance, with grave implications for the future. Rich in human detail, The Covid Consensus tackles head-on the refusal of the global political class and mainstream media to report the true extent of the erosion of democratic processes and the socioeconomic assault on the poor. Toby Green and Thomas Fazi speak to Pierre d'Alancaisez about the emergence of a global consensus, the abject failure of the left to hold power to account, and the sometimes fine line between critique and conspiracy theorising. Richard Seymour's critique of the book on Politics, Theory, Other. Toby Green is Professor of African History at King's College London, and author of A Fistful of Shells and The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa. Thomas Fazi is the author and co-author of several books on economic and political issues, including Reclaiming the State. His article with Toby Green for UnHerd, The Left's Covid Failure, was translated into ten languages. He is a regular contributor to Compact. Pierre d'Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

During the first months of the pandemic, governments worldwide agreed that ‘following the science' with hard lockdowns and vaccine mandates was the best way to preserve life. But evidence is mounting that ‘the science' was all politics and time reveals the horrific human and economic cost of these policies. The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (Hurst, 2023) provides an internationalist-left perspective on the world's Covid-19 response, which has had devastating consequences for democratic rights and the poor worldwide. As the fortunes of the richest soared, nationwide shutdowns devastated small businesses, the working classes, and the Global South's informal economies. Toby Green and Thomas Fazi argue that these policies grossly exacerbated existing trends of inequality, mediatisation and surveillance, with grave implications for the future. Rich in human detail, The Covid Consensus tackles head-on the refusal of the global political class and mainstream media to report the true extent of the erosion of democratic processes and the socioeconomic assault on the poor. Toby Green and Thomas Fazi speak to Pierre d'Alancaisez about the emergence of a global consensus, the abject failure of the left to hold power to account, and the sometimes fine line between critique and conspiracy theorising. Richard Seymour's critique of the book on Politics, Theory, Other. Toby Green is Professor of African History at King's College London, and author of A Fistful of Shells and The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa. Thomas Fazi is the author and co-author of several books on economic and political issues, including Reclaiming the State. His article with Toby Green for UnHerd, The Left's Covid Failure, was translated into ten languages. He is a regular contributor to Compact. Pierre d'Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

In this week's Health Check we're talking about the protective effects of vaccines – but it's not quite what you think… We're delving into the science of how some vaccines could have unexpected effects beyond their intended target. They're called “non-specific effects” and we're only just at the beginning of our understanding despite scientists documenting this curious biological phenomenon more than 100 years ago. One of the earliest vaccines to be studied was the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccine for Tuberculosis, better known as the BCG. Professor Christine Stabell-Benn gives us a history lesson and brings us up to date with her team's research at the Bandim Health Project in Guinea-Bissau, Western Africa. Also in the programme we hear about a new device for fixing bones being trialled in Gaza and Sri Lanka – and already in use in Ukraine. We hear from surgeons about what kind of patients they are treating and from UK researchers on hopes it will offer a low-cost, easy-to-make alternative in countries where there are shortages of these fixators. Our studio guest this week is BBC News health and science journalist Philippa Roxby who'll talk us through the latest after an 11-year-old girl in Cambodia died from the H5N1 strain of bird flu and we'll discuss new studies on long Covid and how much exercise we should be aiming to do each day. Presenter: Claudia Hammond Producer: Gerry Holt & Emily Knight

On this episode of The Becoming Men Podcast, Ray De La Nuez is joined by Remi Adeleke. Remi was born in Western Africa, but following the death of his father, he, his mother, and his brother relocated permanently to the Bronx in New York City. After years of making regrettable decisions, Remi joined the Navy in 2002 and later became a Navy SEAL. As a SEAL he saw multiple combat deployments alongside some of the world's most elite men. Ending his successful naval career in 2016, he was led to pursue a career in speaking and acting. Since then, Remi has played roles in Transformers, 6 Underground, Plane, Ambulance, and Special Forces: World's Toughest Tests. He has also written and directed multiple award-winning short films. Check out MasterMyPurpose.com to reserve your spot for our new LIVE virtual course. This course will equip good men as they journey to live epic lives by helping them unearth their unique purposes and learn the skills, tools, and habits they need to become the purpose-driven men they were created to be. Want to meet with Ray One-on-One on a FREE coaching call? Click here to book our Zoom Call! Make sure you connect with Ray on Instagram @raydelanuez. Consider becoming a financial partner of this podcast. head over to TheBecomingMen.com/Partner. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/becomingmen/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/becomingmen/support

Boko Haram (Arabic: جماعة أهل السنة للدعوة والجهاد) is a Nigerian-based Islamic militant group founded by Mohammed Yusuf in 2002. The group seeks to impose its strict version of Islam across a swathe of Africa. Primarily active in the border area around Lake Chad, its violent insurgency has led to millions being displaced and the […]

When you say "African cichlids", you usually conjure up images of "peacocks" from Lake Malawi. This connotation is reductive because it ignores two facts. 1. Cichlidae is one of the most species diverse families of fishes in the world. 2. Africa is the second largest continent in the world. In this episode of the podcast, the Water Colors team try their best to ignore the African Great Lakes (Lake Malawi, Lake Victoria, and Lake Tanganyika) in order to explore the diversity of cichlids in ecosystems across the entire continent of Africa. You can share photos of your real African cichlids with us on the Water Colors Aquarium Gallery Podcast Listeners Facebook group. Corrections: - In this episode, we often use the phrase "Rift Lakes" to refer to Lake Malawi, Lake Victoria, and Lake Tanganyika. The "definition" we are using is more colloquial than it is accurate to the conventional geographic designation for lakes within the Rift Valley region of Africa. It might have been more accurate for us to say "African Great Lakes". - In this episode, Charles said "Rubrolatochromis", which is a genus that does not exist. We were talking about genera split from Pelvicachromis and he managed to erroneously "upgrade" the species Wallaceochromis rubrolabiatus to the genus level. - In this episode, Ben stated that baking soda (AKA sodium bicarbonate) has a "kpH" of 7.8. He was conflating the concepts pKa reaction of sodium bicarbonate carbonic acid, which have the respective pKa values of 10.3 and 6.4, with the 7.4-7.8 pH range that a sodium bicarbonate system will buffer to. Addendums: - The genus Haplochromis was originally coined by F.M. Hilgendorf in 1888 in an attempt to start sorting through the "wastebin genus" Chromis. He utilized Haplochromis obliquidens as his type species, but this entire arrangement was thrown into disarray when it was realized that "Chromis" was already in use for genus of small reef fishes, making it's usage for Pseudocrenilabrinae cichlids a junior homonym. This confusion has resulted in over a century of the taxonomic relations of this clade being redefined multiple times and the relationships between these clades are still misunderstood. Book Mentioned in this Episode: The Cichlids of Western Africa by Anton Lamboj Cichlids Mentioned in This Episode: - Discus (Symphysodon spp.) - Ram cichlid (Mikrogeophagus ramirezi) - Freshwater angelfish (Pterophyllum scalare) - Apistogramma spp. - Nanochromis spp. - Common krib (Pelvicachromis pulcher) - Wonderful goby cichlid (Gobiocichla wonderi) - Xystichromis sp. "Kyoga Flameback" - Haplochromis spp. - Aulonocara spp. - Pseudotropheus spp. - Copadichromis borleyi - Pseudocrenilabrus nicholsi - Egyptian/Victorian mouthbrooder (Pseudocrenilabrus multicolor) - Pseudocrenilabrus philander - Silver Katana cichlid (Haplochromis thereuterion) - Sardine cichlids (Cyprichromis spp.) - Malawi shell-dweller (Pseudotropheus lanisticola) - Jewel cichlid (Hemichromis spp.) - Jack Dempsey cichlid (Rocio octofasciata) - Hemichromis cristatus - Hemichromis lifalili - Regani dwarf pike cichlid (Crenicichla regani) - Hemichromis sp. "Moanda" - Black diamond Madagascar cichlid (Paratilapia polleni) - Oscar (Astronotus ocellatus) - Bichard's slender cichlid (Teleogramma brichardi) - Wallaceochromis spp. - Enigmatochromis lucanusi - Pelvicachromis silviae - Pelvicachromis sacrimontis - Pelvicachromis subocellatus - Nanochromis transvestitus - Nanochromis parilus - Nanochromis splendens - Pindu cichlid (Stomatepia pindu) - Pelvicachromis kribensis "Moliwe" - Soda cichlid (Alcolapia alcalica) - Tilapia cichlids (Oreochromis spp.) - Buffalo-head cichlid (Steatocranus casuarius) - Blue-lipped buffalo-head cichlid (Paragobiocichla irvinei) - African butterfly cichlid (Anomalochromis thomasi)

It's January 23rd. You're listening to the President's Daily Brief. Your morning intel starts now. ------ A good day to you, ladies and gentlemen. I've got three big briefs for you this morning that are shaping America — and the world. First, the FBI searched Joe Biden's home in Delaware late last week and they found more classified material. Meanwhile, Mr. Biden says he has no regrets about how he's handled the growing scandal. We'll talk about all of that. Second, a record number of illegal migrants crossed the southern border last month. I've got the details, to include the fact that an increasing number of those migrants are on the terrorist watch list. Third, get out those maps because we're heading to Africa this morning. From Senegal in Western Africa, to Zambia in Central Africa, and then down to South Africa, where we've got an energy crisis to talk about that has ripple effects all the way to Ukraine — and maybe the United States.  Later, we close out the podcast with listener feedback, and this one's a teaser for episode coming up this Friday, a show dedicated to you telling me that I'm wrong. It's going to be fun. ----- Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief. Email: PDB@TheFirstTV.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christmas is the season when we all gather to celebrate, bond, and share family time. We do this by way of sharing gifts, food items, and drinks. It can be described as a season for giving and receiving gifts. On this episode of the show, I have someone dear to me to discuss the season and the coming year. Her name is Beverly Chahonyo  Beverly Chahonyo is a seasoned Human Resource Professional with over 14 years of progressive and successful human resources experience within fast-paced environments in diverse and multicultural settings.  She is committed to devising and implementing sustainable solutions with a record of providing leadership expertise and HR solutions that deliver sustainable innovation and value creation for all stakeholders. Beverly currently works as an HR Consultant for the United Nations World Food Programme and has over the past 4 years established herself there across the Kenya Country Office, the Finance Division at their Headquarters in Italy, and the Regional Bureau for Western Africa. Over and above that, Beverly is a published author, a seasoned podcaster, an articulate orator, and a motivational speaker. She is known to us as Morolake, a daughter in the house, an executive coach birthed out of GEMSTONE's ECCP program where she has emerged as a clarity coach focusing on clarity of purposeLast but most definitely not least, Beverly is a lover of God and family, proudly Kenyan, and a proud daughter of Africa.Support the show

Overview: Today we're going to talk about African Insurtech. We'll discuss the consumer insurance landscape & analyze InsurTech players. This episode was recorded on October 17, 2022 Companies discussed: Reliance Health, BIMA, Naked Insurance, Pineapple Insurance, Amenli, Creditas, Minutos Seguros, Acko, Policy Bazaar, Casava Insurance, Reliance HMO, Lami, Turaco, Amanleek & Avidea Business concepts discussed: New product development, consumer market penetration & pricing strategy Conversation highlights: (01:20) Consumer InsurTech context (12:30) Insurtech in other emerging markets - India (23:40) Insurtech in other emerging markets - Brazil (34:50) Insurance context in Africa (47:17 ) Southern Africa startups (1:02:20) Western Africa startups (1:14:19) Eastern Africa startups (1:24:34) Northern Africa startups (1:31:42) Olumide's & Bankole's thoughts (1:55:05) Recommendations & small wins Olumide: Interested in investing in Africa Tech : Read about Adamantium fund & contact me at olumide@afrobility.com Founders looking for funding: If you're a B2B founder working on Education, Health, Finance or food, please contact me Recommendations: Miracle morning (Hal Elrod), 5AM club (Robin Sharma), How I found freedom in an unfree world (Harry Browne) & Early retirement extreme (Jacob Lund Fisker) 3 songs: Burna Boy - For My Hand (ft Ed Sheeran), Black Sherif - Second Sermon (Remix ft Burna Boy) & Craig David - I know you (ft Bastille) - Shoutout to my friend Jason Mothersill Small win: House party with friends Bankole: Recommendation: Ku Lo Sa - Oxlade, HBO - House of Dragons & Facebook Love - Jaywon / Essence Small win: Africa Tech Mixer in New York Other content: Baobab Network report on InsurTech & Standard Bank report All episodes at afrobility.com

This episode is going to blow your mind. This week, I am teaming up once again with Becky and Bridget from the 'Save Our Children Podcast' for a special combo episode featuring jack of all trades and master of all of them, Remi Adeleke! When I say Remi's resume and life story is impressive, I'm not joking and could easily spend an entire episode just on this intro alone! A true riches to rags and rags to riches story, Remi calls his life the TRUE ‘Coming to America' story. Born into African Royalty in a small country in Western Africa, his picture-perfect life took a devastating turn after circumstances surrounding the death of his beloved father forced his family to uproot to America - which began a new life filled with adversity and struggles. After years of running the streets out in The Bronx, NY, Remi knew he needed a change and enlisted in the US Navy in 2002 and began his inspirational and transformational journey from Streets to SEALs. Ironically inspired to join the Navy through Michael Bay films like “Bad Boy” and having a story that reads like a Hollywood film, Remi probably had no idea that his own resume would one day include making an appearance in the Michael Bay film, “Transformers” and scoring a major publishing deal with a book appropriately titled, “Transformed: A Navy SEALs Unlikely Journey from the Throne of Africa to the Streets of the Bronx to Defying All Odds” - a truly remarkable piece of literature you should all check out. Describing his life in one word, “Unexpected”, Remi joins us today to discuss the debut of his short film of the same name, “The Unexpected” that will premiere on Sept 30th and shines a bright light on topics that are near and dear to our hearts and typically shunned by creatives working in the entertainment industry: Human Trafficking and Organ Harvesting. His harrowing film has already been met with high acclaim and we couldn't be more honored to give you all the juicy details on this breakthrough project...WATCH 'THE UNEXPECTED' ON YOUTUBE: THE UNEXPECTED FILM by REMI ADELEKE (BronzeLens Film Festival Finalist) - YouTubeCONNECT WITH REMI: YouTube: @RemiAdeleke - Remi Adeleke - YouTube Instagram: @remiadeleke - Remi Adeleke (@remiadeleke) • Instagram photos and videosTwitter: (1) Remi Adeleke (@RemiAdeleke) / TwitterKejo Wear Apparel: KEJO WEAR – Kejo WearBuy Remi's Book, "Transformed": Transformed: A Navy SEAL's Unlikely Journey from the Throne of Africa, to the Streets of the Bronx, to Defying All Odds: Adeleke, Remi: 9780785219767: Amazon.com: BooksCONNECT WITH THE IMAGINATION:All links: Emma Pietrzak on Direct.meWebsite:Stand By Survivors - Everyone Has A Story...SXS Merch: https://my-store-c980d5.creator-spring.comSurvivor Store: Survivor Store (standbysurvivors.com) Support the show

Today's Combat Story is one of perseverance and hustle on another level. We hear from Remi Adeleke who deployed multiple times as a Navy SEAL, but only after overcoming a truly difficult childhood of being stripped of his family's wealth in Nigeria to hustling on the streets of the Bronx to make ends meet.Remi would be one of those rare people who wanted to become a SEAL even though he couldn't swim, just to give you an idea of his attitude and beliefs. [Support us on Patreon and get exclusive content and insights at www.patreon.com/combatstory]After leaving the service, Remi has done it all. He was contacted by Hollywood and has either acted in or advised on multiple blockbuster movies and shows like Transformers, SEAL Team, and most recently the Terminal List with Chris Pratt. He's also a best selling author with a fantastic book “Transformed: A Navy SEAL's Unlikely Journey from the Throne of Africa, to the Streets of the Bronx, to Defying All Odds,” a clothing line called Kojo and more.This is a true Combat Story of not just overcoming the odds down range, but overcoming every obstacle life in the inner city can throw at you. Find Remi Online: - Instagram @remiadeleke- Twitter @remiadeleke - Kojo Wear Clothing Line- Book Transformed: A Navy SEAL's Unlikely Journey from the Throne of Africa, to the Streets of the Bronx, to Defying All Odds- Muskegon Maritime Academy https://muskegonmaritimeacademy.org/ Find Ryan Online: - Ryan's Linktree https://linktr.ee/combatstory- Merch https://www.bonfire.com/store/combatstory/- Instagram @combatstory https://www.instagram.com/combatstory- Facebook @combatstoryofficial https://fb.me/combatstoryofficial- Send us messages at https://m.me/combatstoryofficial- Email ryan@combatstory.com- Learn more about Ryan www.combatstory.com/aboutus- Intro Song: Sport Rock from Audio JungleShow Notes:0:00 - Intro 0:27 - Guest Introduction (Remi Adeleke) 2:00 - Interview begins 4:26 - About his family's tribe from Nigeria and what it means to him today 7:12 - Growing up in Nigeria 13:16 - Formative years spent hustling in the Bronx 24:24 - Why the military?27:58 - Being in NYC on 9/11 30:56 - An influential recruitment officer and getting his record cleared 34:43 - Becoming a SEAL without knowing how to swim39:01 - First deployment experience 43:10 - Combat Story - First time outside the wire as a Humvee gunner 45:30 - Being an African American in the SEAL teams and how being black helped down range 50:25 - How his time in the Bronx gave him skills in the military 52:17 - Direct action ops and running sources 57:56 - Combat Story - a quick snatch and grab operation that turned into 14 hours with an intense foot chase 1:08:22 - The decision to get out 1:11:55 - Getting the call to work on Transformers without a formal audition and how he got into acting and consulting 1:21:50 - Starting the Muskegon Maritime Academy, a military themed charter school 1:26:59 - What did you carry into combat?1:27:32 - Would you do it again?1:27:50 - What do you think your old man would be saying now? 1:28:31 - Listener comments and shout outsThis interview is all about special operations and special operators. If you want to learn more about special opertaions, you can click: https://www.combatstory.com/This interview is describing what it takes to be in special operations but also try to cover the following subjects:- What are special operations?- Combat Story- Remi Adeleke- Navy SEALs- Combat OperationsRemi Adeleke was born in Western Africa, but following the death of his father, he, his mother, and his brother relocated permanently to the Bronx in New York City. After years of making regrettable decisions, Remi joined the Navy in 2002 and later became a Navy SEAL. Ending his successful naval career in 2016, he was led to pursue a career in speaking and acting. Remi holds a BS in organizational leadership and an MS in strategic leadership, both from the University of Charleston West Virginia. He resides in Southern California with his wife, Jessica, and their two sons, Cayden and Caleb.Speaking about joining the team, Adeleke said: “Since I departed from the military in 2016 my main focus in life has been to inspire, motivate and educate people — whether through writing, speaking, or visual storytelling."If you would like to learn more about Remi Adeleke I suggest you look into our various other video clips: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCyApoJr-mNmdMNwdk22xEQ_________________________Have I responded to all of your questions about what are special operations?Individuals who searched for Remi Adeleke also searched for Navy SEALs and we have interviews with many Navy SEALs at www.combatstory.com, including those in Naval Special Warfare Development Group (or DEVGRU), which many people refer to as SEAL Team Six.