What can we learn from uncertainty? How can using beans help with measuring uncertainty? And are we really living in unusually uncertain times?

In this episode of the Our Long Walk podcast, my co-host Johan Fourie and Jonathan Schoots speak with Jenny Trinitapoli, Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Since 2008 she has led Tsogolo la Thanzi (TLT), a landmark longitudinal study of young adults in Balaka, southern Malawi, following the same respondents for more than a decade as they navigate relationships, sex and childbearing amid a severe AIDS epidemic.

Demographers love tidy bins; cross-national datasets demand them. Yet some domains are genuinely uncertain. Early in Jenny’s Malawi work, Likert-scale questions about HIV risk generated high rates of ‘don’t know’ and outright refusals. Rather than throw those away, the TLT team designed questions to measure uncertainty.

Some of Jenny’s mentioned work:

An Epidemic of Uncertainty

The Flexibility of Fertility Preferences in a Context of Uncertainty

This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance.

For more information about the episode and to subscribe to Johan’s newsletter, visit ourlongwalk.com.

Why does mobile money reduce agricultural investment in rural areas—and what does this reveal about migration as a development tool? Is high-skilled emigration bad for countries, or can brain drain become brain gain?

In this episode of the Our Long Walk podcast, Johan Fourie and Jonathan Schoots speak with Cátia Batista, Professor of Economics at Nova School of Business and Economics and founder of the NOVAFRICA Research Centre. Trained at the University of Chicago, Batista runs field and lab‑in‑the‑field experiments on migration, remittances, financial inclusion and technology adoption, with projects stretching from Cape Verde and Mozambique to Kenya.

Some of Catia’s mentioned work:

Brain drain or brain gain? (in Science)

Mobile money

Irregular migration

This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance.

For more information about the episode and to subscribe to Johan’s newsletter, visit ourlongwalk.com.

What is the difference between magic and religion – and why does it matter for economics?

In this episode of the Our Long Walk podcast, Johan Fourie and Jonathan Schoots speak with Paul Seabright, Professor of Economics at the Toulouse School of Economics and one of the most original voices on how humans cooperate. For nearly two centuries economists forgot that religious organisations were businesses as much as anything else, but in his new book, The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power and People, Seabright invites us to look beyond doctrine, at the activities and exchanges that keep the show on the road.This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance. For more information about the episode and to subscribe to Johan’s newsletter, visit ourlongwalk.com.

What does a serious defence of modernity look like? In this episode of the Our Long Walk podcast, Johan Fourie and Jonathan Schoots speak with Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, philosopher of African political thought at Cornell University, about Táíwò argument that modernity is not a cultural label, nor a Western badge to be worn or discarded, but a set of commitments that any society can domesticate and make its own: individual dignity, the centrality of reason, and an open horizon of progress. Some of Femi’s mentioned work:Africa Must Be Modern: https://iupress.org/9780253012753/africa-must-be-modern/Against Decolonisation. Taking African Agency Seriously: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/against-decolonisation/How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa: https://iupress.org/9780253221308/how-colonialism-preempted-modernity-in-africa/This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance. For more information about the episode and to subscribe to Johan’s newsletter, visit ourlongwalk.com. The podcast is also available on: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4VEH9dz... Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast...

In a rapidly changing world marked by trade wars, shifting alliances, and resurgent nationalism, what can history teach us about the future of globalisation? Is America’s retreat from global leadership inevitable, and what might Britain’s past decline reveal about the potential paths ahead?

In the first episode of Season 2 of Our Long Walk, Jonathan Schoots and Johan Fourie talk to Tony Hopkins, Emeritus Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History at Cambridge University, about gentlemanly capitalism, globalisation, and the rise and fall of empires, among other topics.

Some of Tony’s work:

The Land Where Nothing Works: How Britain Lost the Plot (2024)

Capitalism in the Colonies: African Merchants in Lagos, 1851–1931 (2024)

American Empire: A Global History (2018)

This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance.

For more information about the episode and to subscribe to Johan’s newsletter, visit ourlongwalk.com.

There’s an Igbo saying, quoted by Chinua Achebe, that goes like this: ‘A man who does not know where the rain began to beat him cannot say where he dried his body.’ It’s a fitting way to end Season 1 of the Our Long Walk podcast, a season shaped by the question: what can Africa’s history teach us about its present, and its possible futures?

In the final episode of this season, hosts Johan Fourie and Jonathan Schoots take a moment to reflect on the season. They talk about long arcs and short turns. About the origins of states, of elite contestation, of trade, urbanisation, industrialisation. About the weight of colonial legacies and the promise of post-colonial reinvention. From 100,000 years of human prehistory to today’s aid policies and trade wars, this season’s guests have shown us how deeply the past shapes the terrain on which African societies move.

The Our Long Walk podcast will be back in August with Season 2: new guests, new questions, same stubborn curiosity. But we would love your help shaping it. Send your suggestions, ideas, or complaints to [email protected].

Subscribe to Johan's newsletter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance.

What if history is not only what we are told, but also what we choose to remember? What if the stories of apartheid are not just tales of villainy and victimhood, but of complexity, contradiction and human agency? And what if loving a country – its landscapes, its memories – requires that we also confront its darkest truths?

In this final interview of the first season of Our Long Walk, Jonathan Schoots and Johan Fourie sit down with Jacob Dlamini, Associate Professor of History at Princeton University, field guide, journalist, and one of South Africa’s most original historical thinkers

Dlamini’s idea of critical love runs through the episode. Loving the Kruger, loving South Africa, while refusing to romanticise or forget. To hold on to splendour without letting go of truth. To honour beauty without denying complicity. That is the work of history.

Some of Jacob’s mentioned work:

Askari

Safari Nation

The Terrorist Album

Dying for Freedom

This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance.

For more information about the episode and to subscribe to Johan’s newsletter, visit ourlongwalk.com.

To send in questions or comments, send a voice note to [email protected].

How should we understand the era before Africa’s colonisation? Was it a period of stagnation or one of profound innovation and change? Why has the ‘Scramble for Africa’ dominated historical narratives, often overshadowing Africa’s own dynamic histories? Can warfare be understood not only as destructive but also as a creative and even culturally significant force?

In this episode of the Our Long Walk podcast, Jonathan Schoots and Johan Fourie explore these critical questions with Richard Reid, Professor of African History at Oxford University and author of the recently published book, The African Revolution: A History of the Long Nineteenth Century.

Some of Richard’s mentioned work:

Inaugural SOAS lecture

Warfare in African History

This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance.

For more information about the episode and to subscribe to Johan’s newsletter, visit ourlongwalk.com.

What determines opportunity in Africa? Does religion shape upward mobility? How do artificial borders, landmines, and weak states constrain economic development? And why has Africa largely resisted the global rise of populism?

In this episode of the Our Long Walk podcast, Jonathan Schoots and I sit down with Elias Papaioannou, academic director of the Wheeler Institute for Business and Development and professor of economics at the London Business School. Elias is a leading researcher in international finance, political economy and economic history – especially of Africa. His work blends rich historical datasets with cutting-edge econometrics to reveal how institutions, geography, and social structures shape long-run development.

Some of Elias’s mentioned work:

Religion and educational mobility in Africa

The political economy of populism

The long-run effects of the scramble for Africa

Landmines and spatial development

This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance.

For more information about the episode and to subscribe to Johan’s newsletter, visit ourlongwalk.com.

How far back should economic history go?

Most textbooks start with agriculture, trade, and the emergence of states. But what if we looked further – beyond written records, beyond cities, beyond even the first farms? What if the deepest economic lessons come not from the past few thousand years, but from the hundreds of thousands before them? For most of history, when things got bad, people ran. But with farming came rulers, taxation, and the first states – and suddenly, leaving wasn’t so easy. As Ola Olsson puts it, understanding why we stopped roaming is key to making sense of the world today.

In this episode of the Our Long Walk podcast, Johan Fourie and Jonathan Schoots interview Ola Olsson, professor of economics at the University of Gothenburg and author of Paleoeconomics: Climate Change and Economic Development in Prehistory.

Ola’s mentioned work:

Floods, droughts, and environmental circumscription in early state development: the case of ancient Egypt

Fiscal capacity in “post”-conflict states: Evidence from trade on Congo river

This podcast is produced with the help of Voice Note Productions. Our producer is Vasti Calitz with editing done by Andri Burnett. Kelsey Lemon provided helpful research assistance.

For more information about the episode and to subscribe to Johan’s newsletter, visit ourlongwalk.com. The full playlist of all Our Long Walk podcast songs is available here.