Podcast
Rational Black Thought
Hosted by Michael · EN
A discussion of all topics as seen through the eyes of a Black Atheist, Skeptic, Humanist, Existentialist
30episodes
Episodes
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Episode 282, May 16, 2026 - "Don't Believe the Hype" - Public Enemy
3d ago01:08:19Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailWelcome to Rational Black Thought. I am your host, Neo Griot.This week's title is "Don't Believe the Hype" from Public Enemy — because this episode is about the stories power tells to hide what power is actually doing.The hype tells us redistricting is just a technical process carried out by people with maps, computers, and respectable job titles. The truth is that redistricting is how political power decides which communities count, which get carved up, and which get to turn population into representation.The hype tells us the economy is stable because national numbers look manageable. The truth is that America has always called the economy healthy while Black workers remain exposed to a harsher, more fragile labor market.The hype tells us the media is neutral, religion is moral, and democracy will save itself if good people keep behaving better than the people trying to destroy it.I want to pause on that last one. We are living in a moment where Republicans are not merely competing for office. They are restructuring the rules under which future elections will be fought — using courts, state legislatures, maps, donor networks, media ecosystems, and administrative power to lock in advantage before voters ever show up. That is not normal politics. That is raw power. And while Republicans behave with the kind of despicable clarity that authoritarian movements always display, Democrats too often respond as if the referee is still fair, the rules are still sacred, and the courts are still neutral. That is not strategy. That is nostalgia with a campaign budget.Intro: Quote of the Week: Katherine McKittrick Unmasking the News: · Democracy Watch: Tennessee and the War on Black Political Space · 7.3 Percent and the Lie of the Stable Economy · Terry Reed and the Weaponization of Sacred Authority · Good News: Onyx Impact and the Infrastructure of Black Media Strategies for Black Power: Grassroots Hardball for 2026, Local Elections, and 2028 Reflections and Call to Action:Closing/Outro: Sources:https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/may/07/tennessee-republicans-pass-new-congressional-map-s/https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdfhttps://www.jpda.us/terrytown-pastor-terry-reed-guilty-of-sexually-abusing-teens/https://theatlantavoice.com/onyx-impact-black-media-investment/Power Concedes Nothing without a Demand...
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Episode 281, May 9, 2026 - “Never looking back or too far in front of me-The present is a gift, and I just wanna be”
1w ago01:31:59Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailWelcome 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 what is happening. Present enough to name it. Present enough to act.As Black people, we cannot ignore the past. The past is not just memory. It is policy, wealth theft, voter suppression, redlining, religious manipulation, and state violence echoing into the present. But we also cannot live chained to yesterday.And we cannot become paralyzed by tomorrow. The future matters, especially with 2026 approaching, but the future is not where action happens. The future is where consequences arrive.The present is where power is built.That is the theme this week. Being present means rejecting distraction. It means refusing magical thinking, whether it comes from religion, politics, conspiracy, or authoritarian theater. It means understanding that absurdity is not harmless when absurd people are handed power. A clown with a microphone is annoying. A clown with state authority is dangerous. Apparently that lesson still needs public funding.So this week, we stand in the present. Not trapped by the past. Not hypnotized by the future. Rooted in reality. Guided by reason. Committed to justice.Because the present is not just a gift. It is the battlefield where we decide what comes next.Here’s our agenda for the week:Intro: Quote of the Week: Stokely Carmichael Unmasking the News: Democracy Watch: The Map “Is” the Battlefield When the Clown Car Gets Security Clearance Drowned in Faith, Excused by Heaven Good News: Black Business Needs Systems, Not Slogans Bible Study with an Atheist: When Contradiction Becomes a Theological Excuse Reflections and Call to Action: Closing/Outro:Sources:https://www.reuters.com/world/us-supreme-court-blocks-louisiana-voting-map-with-second-black-majority-district-2026-04-29/?https://newrepublic.com/post/209928/donald-trump-derails-event-spiral-health?https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/apr/08/pastor-charged-drowning-baptism-ceremony-birmingham?https://www.blackenterprise.com/usbc-360-accelerator-black-owned-brands/Power Concedes Nothing without a Demand...
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Episode 280, May 2, 2026 - “The same people who control the school system - Control the prison system”
2w ago01:38:40Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailWelcome 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 jokeThe same people who control the school systemControl the prison system,And the whole social systemEver since slavery, know what I'm sayin'?That title comes from the spirit of conscious rap, where Black artists have often done what philosophers, preachers, journalists, and politicians frequently refuse to do: tell the truth without asking permission from power.At its core, this episode is about control.Not just control of money, courts, laws, schools, churches, or prisons, although all of that matters. I am talking about something even more foundational: control over reality itself.Who teaches us what is true?Who decides what knowledge counts?Who decides which voices are credible and which are dangerous?Who decides which history is legitimate and which history is divisive?Who decides whether Black political power is justice or a constitutional threat?Who decides whether a system is violent, or merely “law and order”?Before power controls the body, it usually tries to control the mind. It defines the categories. It names the problem. It chooses the evidence. It writes the curriculum. It controls the map. It tells the public who should be feared, who should be punished, who should be trusted, and who should be ignored.That is why the struggle for Black power has never been only a struggle for access. It is a struggle over meaning.Because if someone else defines reality for you, then even your resistance can be trapped inside their language.This is why philosophy matters. Not philosophy as academic decoration. Not philosophy as clever language for people with too much tuition debt and not enough sunlight. I mean philosophy as a survival tool. A disciplined way of seeing the world clearly, testing claims honestly, naming power accurately, and deciding how we must act.Black power requires more than outrage. It requires comprehension.It requires the ability to look past spectacle, propaganda, sacred language, legal theater, and algorithmic noise, and ask: what is actually happening here?That is the theme this week.Who controls reality? Who benefits from that control? And what does Black thought have to become if it is going to produce Black power? Intro: Quote of the Week: Kristie Dotson Unmasking the News: Democracy Watch: The Supreme Court Just Declared Black Representation Suspicious When the State Speeds Up Death, Black People Pay First and Pay the Most When the Church Becomes the Hunting Ground Good News: Black Institutions Know What to Do with Capital Strategies for Black Power: Building a Black Power Philosophy Reflections and Call to Action: Closing/Outro:Sources:Power Concedes Nothing without a Demand...
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Episode 279, April 25, 2026 - “Until the philosophy which hold one race Superior and another Inferior Is… Abandoned Everywhere is war”
3w ago01:38:26Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailWelcome 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.” Marley was not just entertaining, he was diagnosing the maladies of the world.Because war is not only bombs and battlefields. War is also hierarchy. War is domination dressed up as order. War is the lie that some people are entitled to rule, define, erase, and exploit others. War lives in political systems, in national myths, in religious dogma, in economic arrangements, and in the stories societies tell to make injustice sound natural.That is the world we still live in. A world where truth is bent to protect power, where history is rewritten to preserve innocence, and where institutions demand legitimacy that they have never earned. A world where domination survives not only through force, but through ideas. Through assumptions. Through inherited ways of seeing.So, for this episode, I want to stay with that theme. The struggle is not just against bad policies or corrupt leaders. It is against the underlying philosophies that make oppression possible in the first place. And until those philosophies are exposed, discredited, and abandoned, the conflict continues. Maybe it changes form. Maybe it changes language. But it does not end.This is Rational Black Thought. I’m your host, Neo Griot, and let’s get into it.Intro: Quote of the Week: Dr. Chike Jeffers Unmasking the News: · Democracy Watch: Trump Started the Redistricting War, Now He’s Crying Like a Little Bitch · The SAVE Act Is Voter Suppression Dressed Up as Giving a Fuck about Democracy · The Christopher W. Burns Story (ethics washing in action) · Good News: Fisk Is Preserving Audio and Black Memory Bible Study with an Atheist: From Canaan to Jews: Why the Bible Was Written Later Than It Pretends Reflections and Call to Action: Closing/Outro:Sources:https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/trump-revives-election-fraud-claims-after-virginia-redistricting-defeat-2026-04-22/https://apnews.com/article/proof-citizenship-voting-us-elections-trump-4688881c23d4ea64654cd24aacb47339?https://www.sec.gov/files/litigation/apdocuments/3-20935-2026-01-09-status-report.pdfhttps://www.newschannel5.com/news/state/tennessee/davidson-county/historic-recordings-from-fisk-universitys-campus-radio-station-digitized-to-preserve-black-history?Power Concedes Nothing without a Demand...
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Episode 278, April 18, 2026 -- “Was all that money I made last year For whitey on the moon?”
Apr 1701:31:01Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailThis 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 human needs to matter?That tension runs through this entire episode. We live in a society that can produce astonishing technological achievement, stage grand performances of patriotism and progress, and still leave ordinary people undereducated, underpaid, unhoused, and untreated. It can celebrate symbolic breakthroughs while refusing structural justice. It can market spectacle as advancement and expect us not to notice the difference.So tonight I want to sit with that contradiction. I want to deal with the gap between image and reality, between symbolic inclusion and material justice, between what this country says it values and what it actually funds. Because if we are going to think seriously about democracy, power, religion, race, or progress, then we have to start by asking a simple question: progress for whom?Intro: Quote of the Week: Amílcar Cabral Unmasking the News: Democracy Watch: When the Government Can Ignore the Court, the Law is no longer a shield—it's a prop When the System Cannot Beat You at the Ballot Box, It Tries to Erase the Ballot Credibility Is the Real Issue Good News With Caveats: Artemis II, Black Progress, and Earthly Priorities Strategies for Black Power: AI, Power, and the New Digital Color Line Reflections and Call to Action: Closing/Outro:Sources:https://apnews.com/article/f5ab5110336be20773e8aa8d5b484879?https://apnews.com/article/d247677aa601a85cac604645d50fc739?https://www.euronews.com/video/2026/04/16/pope-leo-xiv-visits-cameroon-as-biya-faces-unrest-and-separatist-war?https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/07/the-guardian-view-on-artemis-ii-the-light-and-dark-sides-of-the-moon?Power Concedes Nothing without a Demand...
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Episode 277, April 11, 2026 -- “Black is not divisive, they been lyin', and I hate the shit-Black has never been a competition, we all make this shit”
Apr 1101:03:53Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailWelcome 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 is the lie. What is divisive is the constant demand that Black people shrink ourselves, soften our analysis, mute our anger, and make ourselves digestible for a society that has built power by calling its own violence normal and our response excessive.And that is the through line this week. We are living in a moment where domination keeps trying to rename itself as order, where corruption keeps dressing itself up as righteousness, and where empire still wants to call itself civilization. The people lying to us want us to believe that naming white supremacy is the problem, that confronting Christian nationalism is the problem, that exposing hypocrisy is the problem, that insisting on evidence, law, history, and human dignity is somehow too much. But the real problem has never been the truth telling. The problem has always been the system that depends on lies to survive.This week’s episode sits right in that tension. It is about the struggle over who gets to define morality, who gets to define civilization, who gets to define truth, and whose humanity is treated as negotiable. And underneath all of that is the same old poison: the assumption that one narrow worldview, white, Western, Christian, imperial, has the right to sit in judgment over everybody else while calling itself universal.So when I say Black has never been a competition, I mean that Blackness is not something that has to diminish anybody else in order to matter. It is not a threat unless your worldview depends on hierarchy. Unless your identity depends on domination. Unless your politics depend on erasure. Then yes, every honest word sounds dangerous. Every act of memory sounds rebellious. Every demand for justice sounds like division. But that is not because Blackness is divisive. It is because truth destabilizes lies.Intro: Quote of the Week: James Baldwin Unmasking the News: Democracy Watch: Empire, Lawlessness, and Trump’s Threat Against a Civilization DOJ Says Bondi Can Hide Behind the Firing Opus Dei and the Holy Machinery of Power Good News: 404 Day and Black Civic Culture Done Right Bible Study with an Atheist: Pascal’s Wager: Christianity’s Favorite Bad Bet Reflections and Call to Action: Closing/Outro:Sources:https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-says-a-whole-civilization-will-die-tonight-if-iran-does-not-make-deal-2026-04-07/https://abcnews.com/Politics/doj-house-oversights-subpoena-longer-obligates-bondi-testimony/story?id=131841587https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/06/opus-dei-gareth-gore-pope-leohttps://www.blackenterprise.com/404-weekend-atlanta/?Power Concedes Nothing without a Demand...
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Episode 276, April 4, 2026 -- “Make America great again the middle just love it / When he wanna talk, walk y’all straight to them ovens”
Apr 301:11:37Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailWelcome 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 indictment of the political middle itself. The middle loves order more than justice, comfort more than truth, and decorum more than human dignity. That is why Democrats keep losing the moral and political plot. They spend billions chasing the approval of people who are permanently uncomfortable with real change, while Black people, the backbone of the party, are asked yet again to save a democracy that still refuses to represent us fully. We are good enough to rescue the system, but never important enough for the system to center. Public Enemy understood that fascism does not move forward on the will of the strong alone. It moves because the middle enjoys the feeling of safety that cruelty gives them. They may not light the fire, but they will stand in its warmth. That is the context for this week. Intro: Quote of the Week: Angela Davis Unmasking the News: Democracy Watch: Trump’s Iran War Was Built on Delusion, and He Is Trying to Exit Through a Cloud of Lies Birthright Citizenship, SCOTUS, and Trump’s Bloodline Politics The Holy Man, the Child, and the System That Keeps Calling Predators “Pastor” Good News: The Black Freedom Fund and the Power of Building for Us, Not Just Winning for Ourselves Strategies for Black Power: Unity, Not Uniformity Reflections and Call to Action: Closing/Outro:Let’s get into it. Power Concedes Nothing without a Demand...
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Episode #275 | Is the Total Story Told or Is It They Hide You From?
Mar 2801:23:50Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailWelcome 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 memory, to organize fear, and to train people to participate in their own subjugation. Here is the full stanza: Walk to a time when minds was oneCame into creation as itself, mankind was bornStep into the eye of the storm, survive as pawnCasualties of evil men, slidin' the blinders onLies will spawn, hey, are you conscious what side you're on?Is the total story told or is it they hide you from?Why are we, on the brink of murderin' more innocent?Now we slide, we're patriotic and so militant This describes the genius of every corrupt order. It does not survive by domination alone. It survives by manufacturing consent. It teaches people what to honor, what to repeat, what to forget, and what never to question. It wraps exploitation in the language of patriotism, wraps hierarchy in the language of morality, and wraps ignorance in the language of faith. And when that process is fully mature, people no longer experience control as control. They experience it as common sense. That is the danger. Because once a people have been taught to confuse obedience with virtue, spectacle with strength, and mythology with truth, they can be led anywhere. They can be marched into cruelty, into war, into silence, into submission, all while believing they are righteous, informed, and free. So this week, I want to frame our thinking around that central fact: the battle is never only over policy, territory, or institutions. It is also a battle over consciousness. Over who gets to define reality. Over who gets to name the enemy. Over who gets to tell the story of what is happening and why. And if we are serious about liberation, then we have to be just as serious about intellectual independence. Because once the mind has been colonized, the rest of the conquest is easy. Here is another line from the song: Brain washers, it's when you think how they wanna think Speak, how they wanna speak, livin' in defeat When you don't wanna question what they teach, as the truth With no proof, with the fear of burnin' in eternal heat When your programmed not to be your own man, but a sheep The entire song is full of insight, if you haven’t heard it, listen to it and let me know what you think. Now let’s get into this week’s episode:Intro: Quote of the Week: bell hooks Unmasking the News: Democracy Watch: Trump’s Imperial Hunger Is Not Foreign Policy. It Is PossessionThe Epstein Files Debacle Is Now a Story About Protection, Not DisclosureSean Feucht and the Colonial Reflex of Modern Christianity Good News: Black Business Growth Is Real, and the Strategy Is Visible Bible Study with an Atheist: The Efficacy of Thoughts and Prayers (revisited) Reflections and Call to Action: Closing/Outro:Sources:https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mexican-volunteers-load-boats-with-aid-energystrapped-cuba-2026-03-20/https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2026/03/21/prison-guard-told-fbi-about-suspicious-document-shredPower Concedes Nothing without a Demand...
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Rational Black Thought Ep. 274 | Trump, Iran, Empire and the Politics of Devouring People
Mar 2001:21:20Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailEpisode #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 line captures the deeper context of the moment we are living in. We are in an age of noise, distraction, and performance, where ordinary people are too often manipulated, divided, and consumed by systems of power that depend on confusion to survive. This is not just about individual bad actors. It is about a structure, a society where exploitation is normalized, where suffering is rationalized, and where too many people are taught to mistake being used for simply being alive. We are living in “shallow days and hollow nights”, and the real challenge is to see clearly enough not to be played by them. Intro: Quote of the Week: Ibram X. Kendi Unmasking the News: Democracy Watch: Trump’s Iran War and the Chaos Model of EmpireWhen Exposing Torture is Worse than TortureWhen the Church Starts Looking Like a Political Machine Good News: Blackness Is Not the Obstacle. It Is the Advantage Strategies for Black Power: How Oppressed People Gain Political PowerReflections and Call to Action: Closing/Outro:Sources:https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/19/threats-trump-economy-iran-war-inflation-fed-00833425https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-drops-charges-against-soldiers-accused-abusing-gaza-detainee-2026-03-12/?https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/religion/article/southern-baptist-members-decision-21235185.phphttps://www.ebony.com/donye-taylor-creator-strategist-digital-culture/Power Concedes Nothing without a Demand...
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Episode #273 – March 14, 2026 – “You need to get up, get out, and get something”
Mar 1301:12:48Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailWelcome 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 Black life.Here are more of the lyrics that are relevant for today: You need to get up, get out, and get somethingDon't let the days of your life pass byYou need to get up, get out, and get somethingDon't spend all your time tryna get highYou need to get up, get out, and get somethingHow will you make it if you never even try?You need to get up, get out, and get something (Get something)'Cause you and I got to do for you and I, that's whyFrom my perspective, the admonishment to not spend “…all your time tryna get high” is more than drugs, it is entertainment TV, it is mindless social media, it is ceaseless partying. In other words, it is mindless lethargy. Though it is better to have a plan, the effectiveness of a plan is never know until it is executed in reality and that is what “…get out and get something…” is telling us.This is a moment that demands action, clarity, discipline, and self-determination. It demands that we stop confusing outrage with power, symbolism with progress, and hope with strategy. Because if history teaches anything, it is that nothing changes for oppressed people until they decide to move with intention and build the force necessary to change their condition.That is the spirit of this week’s episode. Let’s get into it.Intro: Quote of the Week: Malcolm X Unmasking the News: Democracy Watch: Let’s deal with Georgia· Trump: They Probably did it to Themselves · Bishop Caught with his Hand in the Cookie Jar · Good News: This is what real community-building looks like in 2026 Bible Study with an Atheist: Archeology Proves What? Reflections and Call to Action: Closing/Outro:Sources:https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/house/georgia-house/ga-14-special-trumps-pick-advances-democrats-once-again-overperformhttps://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-experts-deeply-disturbed-by-child-deaths-escalating-middle-east-conflict-2026-03-04/?https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/pope-accepts-resignation-of-u-s-bishop-charged-with-embezzlement-and-money-launderinghttps://www.blackenterprise.com/black-doctor-identity-affirming-steam-box-kids/Power Concedes Nothing without a Demand...
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