Rational Black Thought

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Rational Black Thought. I am your host, Neo Griot. This week’s title comes from Common’s “Be,” and it gives us the frame for this episode: the discipline of being present. Not present as in passive. Not present as in spiritually floating above reality while the world loses its mind in real time. I mean present as in awake, grounded, and clear-eyed. Present enough to see...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Rational Black Thought. I am your host, Neo Griot. This week’s episode is titled comes from the lyrics from the song “They’ Schools” by dead prez, the full lyrics I want to quote are: Why haven't you learned anything? Man that school shit is a joke The same people who control the school system Control the prison system, And the whole social system Ever since slaver...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Episode 279 of the Rational Black the podcast where we confront ideology with reason, power with truth, and myth with evidence. This week’s title comes from Bob Marley’s War, and those lyrics still cut with brutal precision: “Until the philosophy which hold one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war.” M...

Send us Fan Mail This week’s title comes from Gil Scott-Heron’s cutting question: “Was all that money I made last year, for whitey on the moon?” It is the kind of line that survives because the contradiction it names never really dies. It forces us to ask a hard question about priorities, power, and progress. Who gets the glory? Who gets the investment? And who is still down here waiting for basic...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Rational Black Thought. I’m your host, Neo Griot. This week’s title comes from the UK rapper Dave and his song "Black" and says something that needs to be said plainly because too many people still pretend not to understand it: Black is not divisive. Black truth is not divisive. Black memory is not divisive. Black resistance is not divisive. What is divisive i...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Rational Black Thought. I’m your host, Neo Griot.  Public Enemy gave us the language for this week’s title before most people were willing to admit what they were seeing. Public Enemy said it plainly: “Make America great again the middle just love it, when he wanna talk, walk y’all straight to them ovens.”   That line is not just a warning about Trump. It is an indictme...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Rational Black Thought. I’m your host, Neo Griot.  This week’s title comes from Blackalicious’ Brain Washers, and it captures something essential about the moment we are living through. The song is not merely about lies. It is about the construction of consciousness itself. It is about the way power reaches beyond laws and beyond force to shape perception, to rewrite me...

Send us Fan Mail Episode #274 – March 21, 2026 – “…"Don't you know the powers that be  Are using people as pawns, devouring we”   | Hi and welcome to Episode 274 of the Rational Black Thought podcast . I am your host, Neo Griot. This week’s title comes from Blackalicious and their song “Shallow Days”: “Don’t you know the powers that be are using people as pawns, devouring we.” And that l...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Episode 273 of Rational Black Thought. This week’s title is “ You need to get up, get out, and get something.” From Outkast, and that title captures the central truth of this moment. We are living in a time of confusion, cowardice, spectacle, and organized deceit, and none of it will be corrected by passivity. Not in politics. Not in culture. Not in religion. Not in Bla...

Send us Fan Mail I am your host, Neo Griot, and this is Episode 272 of the Rational Black Thought Podcast.  This week’s title is “Living under my greatness / What don’t kill me is motivation.”  by Anderson Paak and the Vanguard. The full lyrics I want to reference are: “I spent years being called out my name-Living under my greatness-But what don’t kill me is motivation. My faith is buried somewhe...

Send us Fan Mail Episode #271 – February 28, 2026 – “Crawling through a systematic maze…And it pains to demise…Pain in our eyes…” -  D’Angelo and The Vanguard  I am your host, Neo Griot, and this is Episode 271 of the Rational Black Thought Podcast.  This week’s title comes from D’Angelo and The Vanguard’s Black Messiah and the song Charade: “Crawling through a systematic maze…And it pains to demi...

Send us Fan Mail I am your host, Neo Griot, and this is Episode 270 of the Rational Black Thought Podcast.   This week’s title comes from Dame D.O.L.L.A.’s song “Blacklist”:  “Our culture beautiful, battle-tested and tough, we had enough-So you either come with some change or it's gon' be rough-Period.”   That’s the report. And the report says: we’re out of time for talk.  It’s time for...

Send us Fan Mail  | I am your host, Neo Griot, and this is Episode 269 of the Rational Black Thought Podcast.  This week’s title is a line Kanye dropped that still cuts like a scalpel:  “Drug dealer buy Jordans, crackhead buy crack / And a white man get paid off of all of that.” From “All Falls Down” on College Dropout.  And I’m starting there because it’s not just a lyric. It’s a diagnosis.  It’s...

Send us Fan Mail  | I’m your host, Neo Griot, and welcome back to Rational Black Thought .   This week’s title is a lyric from a Song by Billy Paul, “Am I Black Enough for You” and it’s not for nostalgia. It’s a political forecast we need to take to heart. It’s the sound of a people deciding that survival is not enough, and that we are done negotiating for dignity one exception at a time.   When B...

Send us Fan Mail Hey, family. I’m Neo Griot—Afrocentric, Pan-African, secular humanist, atheist, skeptic. And this is Rational Black Thought—where we don’t do feel good pieces, we do the hardcore truth.   Episode 267 is titled: “ Y'all think it's bougie, I'm like, it's fine-But I'm tryin' to give you a million dollars worth of game for $9.99” which are lyrics from the...

Send us Fan Mail Peace, family. I’m Neo Griot—Afrocentric, Pan-African, secular humanist, atheist, skeptic. And this is Rational Black Thought —where we don’t do bedtime stories for adults.  Episode 266 is titled: “We are the winners if we unclose our eyes.” which are lyrics from the song Nostalgie Amoureuse by the group Zap Mama led by Marie Daulne.   I am not using this as a hashtag. It’s meant...

Send us Fan Mail  Welcome to Rational Black Thought. I’m your host, Neo Griot. This week’s theme: Is about moving beyond survival, it is time for us to stop “living to fight another day” and to start fighting to win…for good.  Our title today comes from Gil Scott-Heron from his song “Winter in America” the words seem even more apropos today, it feels like a “nuclear winter in America”:   The Const...

Send us Fan Mail Our title today comes from Ay-Shay (an African musician) from her song “The Way I Feel” whose words really struck me this week, some of the other lines from this song are:   I feel like I'm not the only one who's frustrated  I feel like something's goin' wrong, I can't escape it  I feel that the destinies of those who are meant to be the best Are in the ha...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to Rational Black Thought. I’m your host, Neo Griot—secular humanist, skeptic, atheist, Afrocentric, Pan-African… and morally allergic to propaganda.   This is a year-end audit episode. Not a highlight reel. Not a “best-of” montage. An audit. Because reflection is not nostalgia—it’s strategy. It’s how you stop repeating cycles that were designed to keep you tired, confused...

Send us Fan Mail Intro: Quote of the Week: Frantz Fanon Unmasking the News:   Democracy Watch: When Reality Collapses at the Top:  Foreign Policy Watch: “Quarantine” as Empire-Speak and Nigeria: A Crusade Fantasy in Modern Clothes:  The Holy Hustle Continues:  Good News: Black Success That Circulates Power:  Strategies for Black Power: South Africa & Rhodesia — Independence Without Power Is a...

Send us Fan Mail Intro: Quote of the Week: James Baldwin Unmasking the News:   Democracy Watch: The Chief of Staff as Confessor: When the Mask Slips:  When Empathy Dies, Fascism Smiles:  Holy Robbery:  Good News: Capacity, Not Vibes:  Bible Study with an Atheist: The Immorality of Divine Tribalism: From Eden to Genocide: Reflections and Call to Action: Closing/Outro:   Sources: https://www.theguar...

Send us Fan Mail The Irrational Resolution of Cognitive Dissonance (Case Study) Brief Setup What Was Said Cognitive Dissonance 101 How the Somali Republican’s Mind Is Likely Working Identity-Protective Cognition: When Truth Loses to Tribe Historical & Psychological Roots: The Colonized Mind Why This Matters Beyond One Man on CNN The Insidious Nature of Irrational Dissonance Resolution A Ration...

Send us Fan Mail Intro: Quote of the Week: Maya Angelou “For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.”   Unmasking the News:   Trump’s Map of Minority Rule:  Trump’s Statements, Performative with a Body Count:  Preying on the Vulnerable:  Good...

Send us Fan Mail Intro:   Quote of the Week: Bell Hooks “...“white supremacy” is a much more useful term for understanding the complicity of people of color in upholding and maintaining racial hierarchies that do not involve force (i.e slavery, apartheid) than the term “internalized racism”- a term most often used to suggest that black people have absorbed negative feelings and attitudes about bla...

Send us Fan Mail Intro: Quote of the Week: Neo Griot Unmasking the News:   When You Pay the Ransom, You Get More Hostages:  White supremacy never retired:  When Churches Say “No” To A Hungry Baby:  Good News: Good News, But Also a Blueprint:  Strategies for Black Power: Are we in a “post-logic” world?: Reflections and Call to Action: Closing/Outro:   Sources: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/po...