Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda

How do we move beyond stories of victimhood to stories of Black ingenuity and resistance? In this special summer Feedwarmer, Aiwan and Tamanda explore the power of audio storytelling to reshape how we understand Black history and agency. Aiwan pulls back the curtain on her experience producing "Escape the Underground Railroad" - the official companion podcast to Barry Jenkins’ acclaimed Amazon Pri...

It happened to us right here at Rigour & Flow. One of the stories we needed to tell turned out to be the one the digital world was least willing to amplify. In this Unfinished Business episode, Aiwan and Tamanda revisit some of the most powerful conversations from our Women's History Month series and ask: What happens when the systems designed to protect people end up protecting power instead?...

What happens when your white father, who’s your ultimate hero, has not lived your Black reality? In part two of our fatherhood series, Tamanda shares the intensely personal story of her father.   For years, he was the "encyclopaedic hero" of a "Disney-esque" childhood on a school campus in Botswana. But as the Tamanda of 11 years in age moved to the North of Ireland, the "invisible privilege"...

In this deeply personal episode, Aiwan shares the "three goes" she had at fatherhood and why all of them failed her.   From a biological father known only through fragments, to a step-parenting experience defined by high control religion and mushrooms growing out of tower-block walls, Aiwan and Tamanda peel back the layers of what happens when the "protector" figure is absent, abusive or cond...

DEI is under attack. But what exactly is being defended? We take on the three letters that have become everything from a flagellant workplace promise, to an impotent political punchline.   We get into Reform UK’s proposal to scrap the Equality Act, the backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion, and the class conversation that keeps being used as a wedge instead of a route to solidarity...

  Why do we let 'experts' from outside our communities decide what we need? Today, we’re talking about the politics of help, the myth of the 'hard to reach' and why genuinely community-led research has the potential to solve global crises like suicide and inequality.   From Black maternal health to Black men’s mental health, in this episode Aiwan and Tamanda explore what could happen whe...

What happens when the oppressed become the oppressor?   In this episode, taking inspiration from an article by Dr Yvon Guest, Aiwan and Tamanda pull back the curtain on the concept of the "wounded activist”, a phenomenon where unresolved trauma drives social movements, often leading to the very oppression, hierarchy and exclusion we claim to fight.   From the "untouchable founder" t...

Have you ever looked at your own neighbourhood and felt like you weren’t actually meant to be there?   In this episode, Aiwan and Tamanda reveal that it’s not in your head. It’s in the blueprints. We dive into the sobering reality that communities are increasingly under surveillance, including how the Metropolitan Police are far more directly involved in the architecture of homes, schools and...

Is body positivity dead in the wake of Ozempic? We're exploring how weight loss culture and the 'heroin chic' aesthetic are making a high-speed comeback under the guise of medical wellness.   ☕ Support the show: www.buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflow   With this being Mental Health Awareness week, we couldn’t think of a better time to put the spotlight on one of the most overlooked mental h...

92% of England is off-limits to the public. And 50% of the land is owned by 1% of the population. Most people in Britain believe they are free. But are we really?   Episode description and notes: In this episode of Rigour & Flow, we move between the personal and the structural to interrogate land ownership in Britain today. We start with the film  'Our Land'  and its explor...

95% of doctors who died during COVID-19 were Black and racially minoritised. And at the height of the pandemic, while making up only 14% of the population, Black and minoritised communities accounted for 63% of all healthcare worker deaths.   Why was the risk so unevenly distributed? It’s time to stop sitting with the numbers and shift the stakes.   In this Feedwarmer edition, ...

Rigour & Flow is evolving. After a full year of weekly episodes, we are moving to a Seasonal rhythm starting with Season 5 this May. In this intimate update, we reflect on our first year through the lens of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dream Count and our own personal Easter Monday reflections. We’re sharing the "why" behind our move to seasons, what the data from Year 1 told us, and a preview o...

Everyone has a podcast. But very few people sustain one. In this final episode of Season 4, we mark one year of Rigour & Flow - a milestone that feels both significant and, at times, improbable. Because behind the weekly releases, the conversations and the growth, there have also been moments of doubt, exhaustion, and the very real question of whether we could keep going. We reflect on what it...

Podcasting is shaping politics. But who controls the mic and who gets left out? In this episode, we turn the mic on the podcasting industry itself.   We start with Aiwan’s journey into podcasting, from the early iTunes and RSS era to producing shows professionally and use that to ask what makes podcasting so different from film, television and music.   What emerges is a picture of a medi...

From sex work in Georgian England to modern debates on marriage, consent and criminalisation, this episode of Rigour & Flow focuses on women’s perspectives on power, survival and who gets to define respectability.   We start by discussing the historical drama Harlots , a series set in 18th-century London that centres the lives of women working in the sex trade. Written by women, the...

It’s International Women’s Month. So what better time to ask: what would society look like if women were truly prioritised? In this week’s episode of Rigour & Flow, we explore the idea of matriarchy - not as a fantasy of female domination, but as a thought experiment about power, care and social priorities. We begin with the plot of a recent series we watched: ‘The Power’. Teenage girls develo...

Last week, we told the story of friendship rupture. But what happens when the mirror turns around? In Part 2 of our adult friendship series, we step into uncomfortable territory: the moments where we may have been the difficult one. The one who ghosted. The one who didn’t communicate. The one who hurt someone we loved. This episode moves beyond betrayal and jealousy to something quieter and harder...

Where do you stand on choosing to fix a failing friendship, or deciding to let it go?   Adult friendships are supposed to be the easy relationships.
No shared mortgage. No in-laws. No vows. Why then can they break you in ways that feel like such a fundamental failure?       In this episode of Rigour & Flow, we open a conversation that surprised us both. Using...

Many of us learned very young that sexual violence is “unsayable”. That naming it has consequences. In turn, sexual violence remains endemic, sustained by the silent treatment it is given, and by a society that tolerates such an insatiable appetite for violence without accountability.   In this episode, we step into terrains of this damaging silence and ask who it protects, who it punishes, a...

Whistleblowing is often framed as an act of courage. But in practice, it is more often met with punishment, isolation and quiet retaliation. In this episode of Rigour & Flow , we examine what actually happens when people tell the truth inside institutions that claim to value transparency, ethics and accountability. Drawing on lived experience, research and patterns across multiple sectors - in...

African knowledges have always been everywhere, in language, land, healing and survival. Yet most of us passed through the highest levels of education without ever encountering them.   In this episode, we step into the lecture halls of “higher” education and ask what it means to be trained to forget, and who that forgetting ultimately serves.   We begin inside higher education itself. Ta...

Education is not neutral. And for Black children, it is rarely complete.   School is often the first place where erasure is formalised, belonging becomes conditional, and history is taught as if our people were a footnote rather than the foundation. In this episode, we turn our attention to education - not as a neutral site of learning, but as a powerful system of selection, silence, and cont...

New year energy is usually about what we are chasing next. In this episode of Rigour & Flow, we slow that impulse down and start 2026 by asking, “What are we leaving behind in 2025?”   After an intense year of work, production, learning curves and hard lessons, we wanted something lighter for this conversation. The result is a mix of reflection and a lot of laughter, alongside some seriou...

In this Feedwarmer episode of Rigour & Flow , we spotlight a project from Aiwan’s back catalogue that brought her an enormous amount of joy to produce: Snatched! - the companion podcast celebrating all things RuPaul’s Drag Race . We open with a short preamble reflecting on why Snatched! mattered to AiAi Studios as a creative project - not just because of the joy and chaos of Drag Race, but as...

In this Feedwarmer episode of Rigour & Flow , we spotlight a podcast that had us nodding, wincing, laughing, and quietly re-evaluating our own friendships. We open with a short preamble and reflections on adult friendship; the stories we tell ourselves about loyalty, closeness, and safety, and the moments when something starts to feel off but we can’t quite name why. From there, we introduce a...