🎙️ Indigenous Intelligence

What can the lives of women carrying goods through the markets of Accra teach us about resilience, identity and the future of Ghana? In this episode of Indigenous Intelligence, I sit down with anthropologist Dr Laurian Bowles, author of the newly released book Headstrong: Women Porters, Blackness and Modernity in Accra . We begin with Laurian's own story—her childhood, how anthropology found...

In this episode of the Indigenous Intelligence Podcast, Nii Okyne explores the journey that led him to submit a formal question to the UK Parliament regarding vitamin D guidance for people with higher melanin concentration. Blending science, ancestral wisdom, policy, personal experience, and cultural history, this episode examines:  why vitamin D is actually a hormone   how melanin affects sunligh...

The word deficiency points you toward food. But the active form of vitamin D is a hormone — called calcitriol — and your body makes it from sunlight, not from diet. When the system fails, it's not because you haven't eaten enough oily fish. It's because something is disrupting the production pathway. In this episode, I walk through how calcitriol is actually made, why melanin-rich s...