Grounded

This week we're answering the question: What are two ways of understanding intuition? As I begin writing a book chapter on intuition, I am getting right on how different fields actually define the term. Drawing on philosophy, Black feminist thought, and religious studies, I explore two distinct understandings of intuition I’ve encountered so far. First, I introduce a philosophical conversation tha...

Episode brought to you by me hating on haters of my fav podcast and a 100-year-old Black nationalist newspaper. This week, we’re thinking about what it means to change your mind. And why doing so in public is one of the most important Black intellectual traditions we have IMO. I start by reflecting on my own relationship to honesty, embodied knowledge, and what I've been learning through living wi...

This week has me pondering time travel. Not the sci-fi kind. But the kind that happens when one develops intellectual relationships with people and ideas from the past. I explore what it means to not just think *about* the past, but with it. Drawing from my own work as an intellectual historian, I share how developing a relationship with a single question can become a time traveling machine (of so...

This week, we have a listener question! A lovely listener from Canada asked: What are your thoughts on Black Muslims making Islamic decisions? To answer, I take a step back and ask a different question: What makes a decision Islamic in the first place? I talk about what scholars call a "lived religion" approach to Islam and turn to Shahab Ahmed's What Is Islam? to think through how Muslims make me...

I’m talking the talk and walking the walk this week by channeling an episode on channeling. I explore two questions that have become central to how I think about channeling, knowledge, and purpose: What do I desire to know more about? And what desires to be known through me? Along the way, I discuss my experience as an academic advisor and helping students identify their intellectual passions, int...

This week, I’m thinking about self-determination: one of the most important concepts in Black political, intellectual, and spiritual life! Starting from a moment of personal reflection on feeling caught in an ebb rather than a flow, I explore what it means to determine the potentiality of your own being according to your own sense of things. Moving between Black intellectual history and my own lif...

This week, I’m reflecting on graduation, wanting to be a good ancestor, and a question that has been sitting heavily with me lately: How do you cope when ancestors disappoint us? Starting from my own experience walking across the graduation stage and thinking about the intellectual ancestors who made my work possible, I move into a conversation about what happens when the people who shaped us also...

This week on Grounded with Dr. Iman , I’m thinking about writer’s block, perfectionism, AI, and one of the questions that most transformed my intellectual and spiritual life: What counts as knowledge? Starting from my experience revising my first accepted journal article, I reflect on why mistakes in other people’s work have unexpectedly become grounding for me in a moment obsessed with perfection...

This week, I’m joined by cultural critic, researcher, and creator Tahirah (@sincerelytahiry) for a conversation on what counts as knowledge, burnout, and why Black women are often expected to be everything for everyone. We talk about Tahirah’s own spiritual and intellectual journey into this work. The conversation is grounded in her recently published, gorgeously written, and deeply vulnerable pie...

Why do we feel spiritually stuck… even when life is going well? In this episode, I open up about something I didn’t expect to be encountering post-PhD: feeling spiritually understimulated . No books or reading, just a check-in on what happens when stillness can lead to feeling disconnected, unfocused, and even bored sometimes. Things I am thinking about… Why do we associate spiritual growth with s...

“Why ‘Start With Yourself’ Is a Myth” What if the idea that success and wealth “start with yourself” is actually a myth? This week, I'm bringing a religious studies lens to the self-help industry and break down the buzz and backlash around Emma Grede’s Start With Yourself . I use it as a case study to think about how myths work and how the American Dream continues to sell individual success as the...

There’s so much talk about the divine feminine out there. So what’s divine about being femme?✨ This week, we turn to Audre Lorde and Ashley Coleman Taylor to get a sense of what is divine about the Black femme through a Black queer and religious studies lens. We talk about A LOT. What’s the difference between popular culture takes and social media discourse on the divine feminine and Lorde and Co...

We’ve got another listener question! 💌 This week’s: What do Muslims mean when they say, “I fear no one but Allah?” Drawing on my research on Black Muslima thought and history, I turn to two thinkers who have given the saying meaning within the context of U.S. anti-Blackness, imperialism, and gender violence: Safiya Bukhari and Amina Wadud. I discuss how the phrase has been a rallying call to stru...

Why I think studying religion is a social good… Bet you thought I was gonna say something like “it helps you understand the diversity of the world.” WRONG. If you’ve been here for a while, you know DEI speak ain’t got a place here. Now that I’ve got your attention. The study of religion… Is the study of what people do and the meaning they give to those actions. And once you know that, then you beg...

How can you see the unseen? And does it matter if you don’t “believe” in it, as a scholar of religion? This week, I’m thinking through how we, as scholars of religion (yes, that includes you if you’re listening), come to see and engage the unseen, regardless of whether we “believe” in it or can perceive it through our physical senses. I also share how I encounter and draw on the unseen in my own i...

We've got our first listener question! How did you make your writing practice feel like a spiritual practice? I break down three ways I made the dissertation writing practice feel like a spiritual practice: thinking about writing as channeling, ritualizing the whole thing, and working in some collective accountability. I've NEVER been motivated by the kind of disposition that says "get up and grin...

What's the difference between religion and spirituality? This is the second most frequently asked question I get as a scholar of religion, next to “Oh, so you're a minister.” And to be honest, folks tend to be disappointed by my answer to both. When it comes to the religion versus spirituality question, that is often because my answer focuses less on defining the terms and more on the question its...

I have a very complex, sometimes maybe a little too intense, relationship I have had with time. One that left me extremely skeptical of the saying "we're our ancestors' wildest dreams" when I first heard it. I’m coming to this reflection during the cross-over episode that is Ramadan intersecting with Black History Month, which has got me thinking its time to heal my own relationship to time. This...

Welcome to the Grounded podcast with your host, Dr. Iman. This is a space where the intellectual meets the spiritual. I'm a professor, scholar of religion, and someone trying to find her footing. I will introduce you to the people, discussions, and schools of thought that have changed how I see the world. Together we'll seek clarity, not in passivity or bypassing, but in intuition, critique, and i...

If you’re anything like me, you want your big-idea, smart podcasts to have some soul and life to them. But when you go looking for that in the more “woo-woo” corners, it can feel like everyone is promising to change your life or sell you something. And it doesn’t always feel grounded in the kind of research and intellectual work that makes spirituality feel real. So I’ve got something for you. Wel...