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What's the difference between religion and spirituality? This is the second most frequently asked question I get as a scholar of religion, next to “Oh, so you're a minister?" And to be honest, folks tend to be disappointed by my answer to both.

When it comes to the religion versus spirituality question, that is often because my answer focuses less on defining the terms and more on the question itself. I am fascinated by what is really going on in people’s thought worlds when they want me to distinguish between religion and spirituality in the first place.

This week, I'm thinking through my own experiences alongside Robert Orsi’s Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (Princeton University Press, 2005).

If you like the episode, don’t forget to follow me over at the grounded pages (on spotify and apple podcasts), share Grounded, with a friend and follow me @imanabdk on socials.

Hey Name It! fam, if you’re liking these episodes be sure to follow Grounded over at the main pages to not miss an episode!

New ones everyday Monday✨

FOLLOW US HERE!

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I have a very complex, sometimes maybe a little too intense, relationship I have had with time. One that left me extremely skeptical of the saying "we're our ancestors' wildest dreams" when I first heard it. I’m coming to this reflection during the cross-over episode that is Ramadan intersecting with Black History Month, which has got me thinking its time to heal my own relationship to time.

This week, I'm finding grounding in a beautiful concept written about by Alexis Pauline Gumbs: dream time. This idea really changed how I think about my responsibility to, as they say, use my time wisely.

Follow me @imanabdk on socials for more at the intersections of the spiritual and the intellectual!

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I did the reading so you don't have to, but as always, I'd love to hear what you think about it too! Send me a DM or comment on the show directly on Spotify.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “Prophecy in the Present Tense: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee Pilgrimage, and Dreams Coming True,” Meridians 12, no. 2 (2014): 142–152.

Hey Name It! listeners! If you enjoyed the reading, research, and connections we made here, then you'll for sure enjoy this new podcast with Dr. Iman. Follow Grounded for new episodes every Monday!

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Welcome to the Grounded podcast with your host, Dr. Iman. This is a space where the intellectual meets the spiritual. I'm a professor, scholar of religion, and someone trying to find her footing. I will introduce you to the people, discussions, and schools of thought that have changed how I see the world. Together we'll seek clarity, not in passivity or bypassing, but in intuition, critique, and imagination. Some episodes are just me reflecting on where I'm finding my footing. Others draw more closely from my own research on religion and spirituality, tracing where I've seen others find theirs. And sometimes we're joined by experts, friends, and even you, the listeners, learning with each other and seeking rootedness together. So wherever this episode takes us, I'm really glad you're here. Let's get grounded.

Hi friends! In this episode, we are talking about genocide. What is genocide? How did the word come about? Why are some genocides recognized and remembered, while others are not? The truth is, we don’t have all the answers—but we can start by turning to the life of Raphael Lemkin.

In our case study, we think alongside Lemkin’s global vision, who first defined “genocide” in print in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Influenced by the Armenian Genocide and his own family’s mass murder during the Holocaust, Lemkin derived the word genocide from the Greek prefix genos (meaning race or tribe) and the Latin suffix cide (meaning killing). According to Lemkin, “genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and punish.” In the eighty years since its invention, the word genocide has skyrocketed in usage across mass media, popular literature, and everyday speech. 

On a more personal note…this episode happens to fall on Kohar’s birthday. Coincidence or synchronicity? As a descendant of genocide survivors still awaiting reparations, she reflects on her entanglement within this history and shares her own family’s survival story. What can we learn from the powerful testimonies of survival, collective refusal, self-determination, and radical love that emerge in the face of genocide? 

As always, we close out with our half-baked thoughts—the segment where we share ideas that we haven't fully fleshed out but stand fully behind. You’ll just have to listen to the episode to hear those.Thanks for listening! Please rate and review the podcast on Spotify and Apple Music, follow us @nameitpod, and share the episode with a friend!

Where We Know From: 

Lemkin, Raphael, and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Division of International Law. 1944. Axis Rule in Occupied Europe : Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress. Washington [D.C.]: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Division of International Law.

Lemkin, Raphael. “Genocide.” American Scholar  15, no. 2 (April 1946): 227-230.

"Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 260 A (III), December 9, 1948."

https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition

Hey friends! In this episode, we’re talking all about cults. What makes something a cult and something else, well, not a cult? Does the word "cult" even mean anything, or is it just a label to signify, “I don’t agree with these people”?

Before diving into the TL;DR of Making the American Religious Fringe: Exotics, Subversives, and Journalists, 1955–1993 by Sean McCloud, we rewind to 1959, when Malcolm X was introduced to mainstream (White) American audiences for the first time. This happened through the airing of a docu-series called The Hate That Hate Produced. And oh my, did people lose their minds.

What’s that got to do with cults, you ask? Well, the CBS documentary introduced Malcolm X and Black nationalist organizations, like the Nation of Islam and the African Nationalist Movement, to the public as—yep, you guessed it—cults. But not just any cults: “Negro cults.” The Hate That Hate Produced serves as a perfect case study for examining the deeply racialized criteria mainstream news outlets use to define a cult.

Iman loves McCloud’s argument that calling something a “cult” says much more about the person doing the labeling—the cult-caller—than it does about the “cult” itself. A classic “what you say about me says more about you” moment. But Kohar disagrees. Will we ever see eye-to-eye on the topic? Let us know your take by leaving a comment on Spotify or Instagram.

As always, we close with our Half-Baked Thoughts segment, where we share ideas we haven’t fully fleshed out but still stand behind 100%. You’ll just have to listen to the episode to hear those!

Thanks for listening! Please rate and review the podcast on Spotify and Apple Music, follow us @nameitpod, and share this episode with a friend!

Where we know from:

The Hate that Hate Produced by CBS News (1959): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsYWD2EqavQ 

Sean McCloud, Making the American religious fringe: Exotics, subversives, and journalists, 1955-1993. Univ of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Hey, friends! In this episode, our big idea is Black nationalism! What would life in the U.S. look like today if Black folks, post-emancipation (1865), had received forty acres and a mule—or any form of reparations for that matter? What if they had been granted the opportunity to build a sovereign nation within the territorial United States? What if their efforts to systematically and structurally reimagine the parameters of citizenship as a dispossessed people on native land had not been violently suppressed?

In a time when the nation is asking, "Why do it gotta be like this?" we look back 100ish years to one of the many moments when Black thinkers reimagined and organized toward a different vision of life within the U.S. We’re talking about Harry Haywood’s 1928 Black Belt Thesis, which demanded that the geographic region of the Black Belt (stretching from Washington, D.C. to eastern Texas) be given to the descendants of enslaved people to create their own independent nation, to be known as the Black Belt Republic. How did he plan to do it? Well, you gotta listen to find out more about Haywood’s vision for an independent Black nation.

When we talk about Black nationalism as a movement, philosophy, and way of life, are we talking about the same thing as run-of-the-mill White nationalism? For an answer, we turn to Adom Getachew’s Worldmaking After Empire. Spoiler alert: the answer is no! Getachew defines Black nationalism on its own terms, as the process of Black worldmaking—not empire-building.

As always, we close out with our half-baked thoughts—the segment where we share ideas that we haven’t fully fleshed out but stand fully behind. You’ll just have to listen to the episode to hear those.

Thanks for listening! Please rate and review the podcast on Spotify and Apple Music, follow us @nameitpod, and share the episode with a friend!

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Where We Know From:

Harry Haywood, “Resolution on the Negro Question in the United States of America,” Communist International, 1928, accessed December 2, 2024, https://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/CIResNNQ.pdf.

Adom Getachew, Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019).

Hannah Foster,“Black Belt Republic (1928-1934).” BlackPast, March 9, 2014. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/black-belt-republic-1928-1934/.

Timothy V. Johnson, “The Black Belt Thesis: An Interview with Timothy V. Johnson,” Platypus, February 1, 2022, https://platypus1917.org/2022/02/01/the-black-belt-thesis-an-interview-with-timothy-v-johnson/.

Imani Perry, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation(New York: Ecco, 2022).

Parev fam! Sister Sledge said it best: we are fam-ily! Today, we are meditating on the term “elastic kinship”—literally! Episode 6 offers a guided meditation, a potential outlet for listeners to connect with us, chosen kin, and ancestors during a tear-filled vulnerable hour. How do we choose our family? And what does the history of photography have to do with this complex question? The answer lies within YOU…and this episode! 

In the words of Saidiya Hartman, “Flexible and elastic kinship were not a ‘plantation holdover,’ but a resource of black survival, a practice that documented the generosity and mutuality of the poor” (91). Before we give you the TL;DR of Hartman’s book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals, we share the story of Papa Renty, an enslaved African man photographed in 1850 by Louis Agassiz at Harvard—nude, violated, and exposed. Today, his descendant Tamara Lanier is fighting for her ancestor’s justice, reparations, and the return of his image. #FreeRenty!

As always, we close out with our half-baked thoughts— the segment where we share ideas that we haven't fully fleshed out but stand fully behind. You'll just have to listen to the episode to hear those. Thanks for listening! Please rate and review the podcast on Spotify and Apple Music, follow us @nameitpod, and share the episode with a friend!

Where we know from:

“An Inter/Racial Love History,” We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora. University of Texas Press, 2023, 37-53.

Hartman, Saidiya. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals. W. W. Norton, 2020. 

“Inheritance,” Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, 29: 1 (2022), 128.

Tamara Lanier et al.. Free Renty: Lanier V Harvard Gravitas Ventures, 2022.

Hey, friends! In this episode, we’re diving into the world of psychic knowledge. What exactly does “psychic” mean? What makes some knowledge psychic and other knowledge… well, not so psychic? And was anyone else forced to experience Spotify’s “song psychic” feature, in the same way that Apple forced us to download that random U2 album? 

Before we give you the tl;dr of Yvonne Chireau’s Black Magic: Religion in the African American Conjuring Tradition and LaShawn Harris’ Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy, Iman has Kohar ask a question to Spotify’s Magic8Ball-coded “song psychic” feature. Why? Because we’re curious about how a corporation, recently tapping into the spiritual trend with astrology-based playlists and features, defines the term “psychic.”

But Iman, deep in her religion-nerd bag, isn’t convinced by this corporatized definition. Instead, we turn to the readings for a definition of psychic knowledge that has, for centuries, been a part of Black women’s religious history. The term is also personal for us, and Kohar shares how a psychic dream inspired her family’s immigration to the States.

As always, we close out with our half-baked thoughts—the segment where we share ideas that we haven't fully fleshed out but stand fully behind. You’ll just have to listen to the episode to hear those.

Thanks for listening! Please rate and review the podcast on Spotify and Apple Music, follow us @nameitpod, and share the episode with a friend!

Where We Know From:

Spotify. "Spotify’s Song Psychic Is Ready to Answer Your Burning Questions." Spotify Newsroom, February 29, 2024. https://newsroom.spotify.com/2024-02-29/spotifys-song-psychic-is-ready-to-answer-your-burning-questions/.

LaShawn Harris, Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City’s Underground Economy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016).

Yvonne P. Chireau, Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

Ah, preservation…what is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear this word? Perhaps you thought of paintings like the eminent Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, pristinely preserved since 1503. Perhaps you thought of the ever-growing collection of ancient Indigenous artifacts neatly stored behind glass at your local museum. Or maybe you even remembered the family stories told and the canned peaches preserved in your grandmother’s kitchen.

In episode 4, we build a bridge between two sacred sites: the persisting presence of a 17th-century Nipmuc dugout canoe (carbon dated to 1640-1680 AD), sitting at the bottom of Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester, MA today and Aghtamar Cathedral, a monastery-turned-museum and the 9th-century sacred Armenian spiritual haven of Lake Van, brought to life in a short film by Talin Avakian, Kohar's sister and a talented filmmaker, storyteller, and documentarian.

As always, we close out with our half-baked thoughts—the segment where we share ideas that we haven't fully fleshed out but stand fully behind. You’ll just have to listen to the episode to hear those. Thanks for listening! Please rate and review the podcast on Spotify and Apple Music, follow us @nameitpod, and share the episode with a friend!

Where we know from: 

Avakian, Kohar. "Introduction to the Exhibitions." In Boundless: Native American Abundance in Art and Literature, edited by Lisa A. Crossman and Heid E. Erdrich, Amherst College Press, 2025. (Forthcoming May 13, 2025 & still in revision). Citable link:https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.14513702

Talin Avakian, dir., Time of the Gulls. 2014. The ARF Eastern Region Centennial Committee, 2014. Online film. Vimeo link here: https://vimeo.com/112526569

Hey friends! In this episode, we're diving into intimacy. Is knowing the “type” of person someone is really the same as knowing them? And does adding your Myers-Briggs letters to your dating app profile actually lead to better matches? 🤔

This week, we're on a mission to find a definition of intimacy that's deeper than the usual, and we found one in Jennifer Nash’s Black Feminism Reimagined (2018). But before we give you the TL;DR of Nash’s work, we take a fun detour into the history of the Myers-Briggs test. Did you know the test was originally designed to match people with the "right" jobs? Now it’s popping up on dating apps like Tinder to help users find the "right" people. Kinda weird, right? Maybe you think so too, or maybe you’ve made MB your own, and hey, we love that for you!

Taking a step beyond MB, we explore Nash’s idea of a Black feminist love politics, which offers us a different way to think about intimacy. What if intimacy wasn’t about fitting someone into a type, but about an ethic of witnessing—seeing the world as someone else sees it? And what if vulnerability wasn’t about the power to hurt someone, but the ability to be undone and remade through your encounters with others? 

As always, we wrap up with our half-baked thoughts—where we share ideas we haven’t fully worked through yet, but we totally stand behind. You’ll just have to tune in to hear them!

Thanks for listening! Don’t forget to rate and review the podcast on Spotify and Apple Music, follow us @nameitpod, and share the episode with a friend! ✨

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Where We Know From:

Jennifer Nash, Black feminism reimagined: After intersectionality. Duke University Press, 2018.

Gillian Brockell, "Katharine Briggs and Isabel Myers: The Women Behind the Personality Test You Can’t Avoid." The New York Times, October 14, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/14/obituaries/katharine-briggs-and-isabel-myers-overlooked.html

David Stovall, "The Racist Beginnings of Standardized Testing." NEA Today, September 27, 2021. https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/racist-beginnings-standardized-testing

Take the Myers-Briggs test! https://www.16personalities.com/