Deschooling Dialogues

Recorded at Tierra Valiente in Costa Rica, this episode of Deschooling Dialogues features Kumu Ramsay in conversation with host Alnoor Ladha. Following a week of teachings with Diné elder Mona Polacca, Kumu shares deep insights on Indigenous sovereignty, the colonization of Hawai‘i, the sacred meaning of Aloha, and the necessity of restoring ancestral wisdom in a consequence-blind culture. This li...

This dialogue with Dr. Jessica Hutchings explores the grief and resilience of Māori communities amid renewed assaults on language, culture, and land under a far-right government. Hutchings weaves insights from her dual activist heritage—Māori sovereignty and Gandhian resistance—with a call to remember ourselves as nature-beings. She shares Māori cosmology as a pathway to healing and warns against...

In this conversation, Bayo Akomolafe and Alnoor Ladha explore the entanglements of identity, activism, whiteness, and emergence in a time of planetary crisis. Bayo challenges the notion of human centrality, advocating for humility as ‘dis-ability’ — an epistemological opening to new ways of knowing, being, sensing and relating in the world. They discuss whiteness not as a racial category but as a...

Episode 7 - Alnoor Ladha with Vanessa Andreotti Welcome to the Deschooling Dialogues. Today my guest is Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, who's a scholar, activist, organizer, and one of the founders of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Arts/Research Collective , as well as Dean of Education at the University of Victoria. Vanessa is author of  Hospicing Modernity: Facing humanity’s wrongs and...

Episode 6 - Alnoor Ladha with Orland Bishop Today I have the honor of being with a dear friend, elder and mentor Orland Bishop. Orland Bishop is the founder and director of ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation in Los Angeles, where he has pioneered approaches to urban truces and mentoring at-risk youth that combine new ideas with traditional ways of knowledge. ShadeTree serves as an intentional comm...

Episode 5 - Alnoor Ladha with Zhenevere Sophia Dao. Today I have the honor of being with a dear friend, elder and mentor Zhenevere Sophia Dao. Zhenevere Sophia Dao is founder of the philosophy of Post-Daoism and the MogaDao practice tradition. She has been a teacher and innovator of mythosomatic practices for nearly 30 years, and writes on wide variety of spiritual, philosophical, and cultural sub...

In this episode, I meet with Tiokasin Ghosthorse. Tiokasin is a Lakota elder. He is the founder and host of First Voices Radio that has been running for 31 years, the first Native-only radio show in Turtle Island. He's also the founder of the Akantu Institute. He's a dear mentor, older brother, friend, ally, teacher and elder. I'm excited to have him here on this episode of Deschooling Dialogues.

In this episode of Deschooling Dialogues, host Alnoor Ladha talks with Sophie Strand. She is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. But it would probably be more authentic to call her "a neo-troubadour animist with a propensity to spin yarns that inevitably turn into love stories." Her first book of essays The Flowering Wand:...

Today we'll meet with V, formerly Eve Ensler, the founder of V-Day, of One Billion Rising, of so many important organizations and non organizations, movements in the space of social justice and beyond. She's also the co-founder of City of Joy, which is a physical healing center and space in the Congo. She is the author of Vagina Monologues, The Apology, her latest book Reckoning just came out. We'...

HOST | ALNOOR LADHA The Deschooling Dialogues is a collaboration between Culture Hack Labs and Kosmos Journal. This is a podcast about both unlearning and remembering, as our species is being prepared for even deeper complexity, breakdown, tragedy, renewal, and rebirth. This transition calls upon all of us to be vigilant students of our cultures, to contemplate our entangled destinies, to abandon...