The Liminal Space

This is the seventh and final episode in our series of short-form episodes, produced in collaboration with The Common Good Collective.

In this closing episode, we step back to reflect on what seven episodes of storytelling from Cape Town have revealed. We revisit the arc of the series, from grounding ourselves in our bodies with Bongeka and Aphiwe, to the critical hope of Ashley and Helene, the courage of Ncedisa, the radical imagination of Leila, and the belonging found at Charlie and Barry’s dinner table.

We explore the power and danger of stories, drawing on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Danger of a Single Story and James Cone’s call for a global analysis of liberation. We ask what it means to tell stories from the Global South without claiming to speak for it, and challenge the ways resources and power are still gate-kept by those claiming to want change. The episode opens and closes with collectively written poems on the role of stories in making a new world.

Themes

Reflection. The danger of a single story. Global South and Global North. Collective liberation. Interrogating our own narratives. Stories as world-making. Power and resources. Invitation to the listener.

Featured Voices

Tristan Pringle is a life and executive coach, facilitator, and poet based in Cape Town.

Rashid Adams is a musician, songwriter, music producer, and ethnomusicologist based in Cape Town.

Credits

Produced by Rashid Epstein Adams

Music by Rashid Epstein Adams (AKA Arkenstone) and Pursuit

A collaboration between The Common Good Podcast and The Liminal Space Podcast

Links

Podcast: linktr.ee/theliminalspacepod

Substack: theliminalspacepodcast.substack.com

Instagram: @theliminalspacepod

This is the sixth in our series of seven short-form episodes, produced in collaboration with The Common Good Collective.

In this episode, we start by reflecting on how we became friends, and introduce two unlikely friends of ours: Charlton Alexander, a tour guide and facilitator who invites people to connect with the city and its stories, and Barry Lewis, an architect from the UK who has spent decades building sandbag homes alongside communities in Cape Town’s townships through his organisation UBU (Ubuhle Bakha Ubuhle / Beauty Builds Beauty).

Through a clip from the original Liminal Space episode, Charlie and Barry speak about a community dinner in Muizenberg where there is no queue, no power dynamic, and a really good meal. People keep coming back not for the food but for the contact time. Barry challenges us to throw out the lazy questions that aren’t generating anything new, and Charlie reframes homelessness by pointing out that people living on the streets do have a home, they just don’t have a house. We then reflect on what it means to create spaces of belonging and how that might change a neighbourhood, a city, and eventually a world.

Themes

Community dinners. No queue, no power dynamic. Belonging through a meal. Lazy questions. Houselessness vs homelessness. Contact time. Friendship across difference. Creating spaces of belonging.

Listen to the Full Episode

This episode features clips from The Liminal Space Season 1, Episode 5: Kinship, Assimilation and Making Home in the Colonial City with Charlton Alexander and Barry Lewis. The full conversation is available on all podcast platforms.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Watch on YouTube

Featured Voices

Charlton Alexander is a tour guide and facilitator based in Cape Town. He invites guests to the city to connect with the people and land in experiences that are life altering.

Barry Lewis is the director of UBU (Ubuhle Bakha Ubuhle / Beauty Builds Beauty), a company focused on developing the technology of sandbag housing in low-income communities in South Africa.

Tristan Pringle is a life and executive coach, facilitator, and poet based in Cape Town.

Rashid Adams is a musician, songwriter, music producer, and ethnomusicologist based in Cape Town.

Credits

Produced by Rashid Epstein Adams

Music by Rashid Epstein Adams (AKA Arkenstone) and Pursuit

A collaboration between The Common Good Podcast and The Liminal Space Podcast

Links

Podcast: linktr.ee/theliminalspacepod

Substack: theliminalspacepodcast.substack.com

Instagram: @theliminalspacepod

This is the fifth in our series of seven short-form episodes, produced in collaboration with The Common Good Collective.

In this episode, we begin with a wide-ranging exploration of shared consciousness, ubuntu, and the Hebrew concept of tzedakah, before introducing Leila Kidson, a social systems researcher, facilitator, and designer who co-founded the social design studio OCTOPI. Through a clip from the original Liminal Space episode, Leila paints a picture of radical imagination that is refreshingly honest. Not a world where everyone is happy, but one where we have the capacity to sit across from someone we disagree with and recognise their humanity.

She asks what happens when survival needs are met, when communities are modular rather than insular, when walls become picket fences. We then reflect on the impediments to even simple human connection, from visa hierarchies to the way wealth privatises our lives, and close with questions about neighbours, kindness, and bridging the distance from your front door to theirs.

Themes

Ubuntu. Radical imagination. Communal vs individual living. Any two people at a table. Shared consciousness. Picket fences, not walls. Future generations. Tzedakah and right standing.

Listen to the Full Episode

This episode features clips from The Liminal Space Season 2, Episode 13: Reorienting Ourselves Toward Community and Building Bridges with Leila Kidson. The full conversation is available on all podcast platforms.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Watch on YouTube

Featured Voices

Leila Kidson is a social systems researcher, facilitator, and designer focused on better integrating grassroots voices into systems design, advocacy and action. She is co-founder of OCTOPI, a South African social design studio.

Tristan Pringle is a life and executive coach, facilitator, and poet based in Cape Town.

Rashid Adams is a musician, songwriter, music producer, and ethnomusicologist based in Cape Town.

Credits

Produced by Rashid Epstein Adams

Music by Rashid Epstein Adams (AKA Arkenstone) and Pursuit

A collaboration between The Common Good Podcast and The Liminal Space Podcast

Links

Podcast: linktr.ee/theliminalspacepod

Substack: theliminalspacepodcast.substack.com

Instagram: @theliminalspacepod

This is the fourth in our series of seven short-form episodes, produced in collaboration with The Common Good Collective.

In this episode, we explore the role music plays in grounding us, reminding us of our humanity, and giving us the courage to resist. We introduce Ncedisa Nkonyeni, an African-centred systems change and field learning partner, who reminds us about morality and what courage looks like in the face of systems that dehumanise.

Through a clip from the original Liminal Space episode, Ncedisa shares a story about a Tori Amos lyric that gave her the courage to walk away from a scholarship when she realised the research she was being asked to do was fundamentally afrophobic. We then reflect on what it means to negotiate our own complicity within unjust systems, and whether giving, in all its forms, could become an act of laying down power rather than exercising it.

Themes

Music as resistance. Non-collusion. Ethical courage. Complicity and the status quo. Giving as laying down power. Joy as humanising. Systems change.

Listen to the Full Episode

This episode features clips from The Liminal Space Season 2, Episode 10: Systems Thinking and Rehumanising Narratives with Ncedisa Nkonyeni. The full conversation is available on all podcast platforms.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Watch on YouTube

Featured Voices

Ncedisa Nkonyeni is an African-centred systems change and field learning partner. She teaches systems change, helps organisations apply it to their strategies, and partners with collectives committed to discovering organisational well-being.

Tristan Pringle is a life and executive coach, facilitator, and poet based in Cape Town.

Rashid Adams is a musician, songwriter, music producer, and ethnomusicologist based in Cape Town.

Credits

Produced by Rashid Epstein Adams

Music by Rashid Epstein Adams (AKA Arkenstone) and Pursuit

A collaboration between The Common Good Podcast and The Liminal Space Podcast

Links

Podcast: linktr.ee/theliminalspacepod

Substack: theliminalspacepodcast.substack.com

Instagram: @theliminalspacepod

This is the third in our series of seven short-form episodes, produced in collaboration with The Common Good Collective.

In this episode, we unpack the idea of critical hope, drawing on the work of Jeff Duncan-Andrade and a powerful quote from Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of Hope. We introduce Ashley and Helene Visagie, founders of Bottom Up, a Cape Town youth organisation that equips teenagers with tools of critical thought to question the systems around them rather than simply plugging gaps.

Through clips from the original Liminal Space episode, Ashley describes the shift from fixing broken toilets to asking why they’re broken in the first place, and how capitalism alienates us from our work, each other, and the environment. Helene speaks about telling kids the truth without leaving them stranded in despair, and what it takes to move forward together. We reflect on when we first encountered critical thinking, and why imagining a new world requires us to question the imagination behind the current one. The episode closes with a guided imagination exercise inviting listeners to picture their neighbourhood 20 years from now.

Themes

Critical hope. Democratising critical thought. Stop plugging gaps. Alienation under capitalism. Education as liberation. Imagination as action. Youth as co-constructors of change.

Listen to the Full Episode

This episode features clips from The Liminal Space Season 1, Episode 3: Critical Hope and Being Human with Ashley Visagie. The full conversation is available on all podcast platforms.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Watch on YouTube

Featured Voices

Ashley & Helene Visagie are the founders of Bottom Up, a Cape Town-based youth organisation that develops socially engaged leaders who can critically analyse how political, economic, and cultural systems produce inequality, and then organise to change them.

Tristan Pringle is a life and executive coach, facilitator, and poet based in Cape Town.

Rashid Adams is a musician, songwriter, music producer, and ethnomusicologist based in Cape Town.

Credits

Produced by Rashid Epstein Adams

Music by Rashid Epstein Adams (AKA Arkenstone) and Pursuit

A collaboration between The Common Good Podcast and The Liminal Space Podcast

Links

Podcast: linktr.ee/theliminalspacepod

Substack: theliminalspacepodcast.substack.com

Instagram: @theliminalspacepod

This is the second in our series of seven short-form episodes, produced in collaboration with The Common Good Collective.

In this episode, we head to Khayelitsha, where two young founders, Bongeka and Aphiwe (Qhama), have created something remarkable: Thembisa Ratanga, a community space they describe as “a safe space in a not-so-safe place.” Through a clip from the original Liminal Space episode, we hear them reflect on the deep connection between nature, spirituality, and the body. Yoga poses that imitate trees and birds. Sunsets you don’t plan but can’t avoid. The quiet gift of a wetland on the edge of a township.

We then unpack what it means to “just be” in a world that demands we constantly produce or consume, and ask whether rest itself might be a revolutionary act.

Themes

Coming home to our bodies. Being vs doing. Nature asteacher. Rest as resistance. Spatial apartheid and its legacy. Yoga in the township. Eliminating economic isolation.

Listen to the Full Episode

This episode features a clip from The Liminal Space Season 2, Episode 11: What happens when we reclaim our stories and find home in our bodies? with Bongeka and Aphiwe. The full conversation runs about an hour and is available on all podcast platforms.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Watch on YouTube

Featured Voices

Bongeka & Aphiwe (Qhama) are the founders ofThembisa Ratanga, a Khayelitsha-based NPO that uses education, art, and sport as tools for community development and self-empowerment. Their space has been dubbed “a waterfront in the township.”

Tristan Pringle is a life and executive coach, facilitator, and poet based in Cape Town.

Rashid Adams is a musician, songwriter, music producer, and ethnomusicologist based in Cape Town.

Support Thembisa Ratanga

Bongeka and Aphiwe are currently running a BackaBuddy campaign to support day-to-day logistics and building improvements for the kids in their community. If you’d like to contribute, visit the link below.

Donate on BackaBuddy

Credits

Produced by Rashid Epstein Adams

Music by Rashid Epstein Adams (AKA Arkenstone)

A collaboration between The Common Good Podcast and TheLiminal Space Podcast

Links

BackaBuddy: backabuddy.co.za/campaign/tembisa-ratanga

Podcast: linktr.ee/theliminalspacepod

Substack: theliminalspacepodcast.substack.com

Instagram: @theliminalspacepod

This is the first in a series of seven short-form episodes, produced in collaboration with The Common Good Collective.

What happens when imagination meets reality? In this pilot episode, we kick off a special miniseries connecting The Liminal Space with the Common Good conversation. We share what drew us to the idea of liminality and explore the stories that ground us right now; from earth as a shared garden to the liberating power of intuition. The episode closes with a collectively written poem on imagination, storytelling, and the search for glimpses of a better world.

About the Series

Over seven episodes, released weekly on Wednesdays, this miniseries brings a Global South perspective to the Common Good Podcast’s core themes: the significance of place, eliminating economic isolation, and the structure of belonging. Through conversations with guests in Cape Town; from yoga practitioners in Khayelitsha to educators, and community organisers; we explore what it looks like to rebuild belonging in the wake of extraction and inherited inequality.

Credits

Recorded and produced by Rashid Adams

Music by Arkenstone / Rashid Adams

A collaboration between The Common Good Podcast and The Liminal Space Podcast

Links

Podcast: linktr.ee/theliminalspacepod

Substack: theliminalspacepodcast.substack.com

Instagram: @theliminalspacepod

As we mark the end of 2025, we created a brief episode to share some lessons learned during our recent “hibernation” period. During this time of quiet, seeds of possibility have been germinating underground. We’ve been slow-cooking a couple of possible collaborations, letting new ideas soften and deepen, and giving space for a few new people joining our team to find their footing. More on all of that in due course.

For now, we’re choosing to stay in this liminal space intentionally: not quite “away”, not quite “back”, and not rushing either.

We feel so grateful that we could record again this year, as we put together the 8 episodes which comprised season 2 of our podcast. The conversations, the questions, the moments of honesty, and the way the show kept teaching us how to listen is what keeps us excited about what's next.

The two small offerings mentioned in this episode:

1. A poem by Tristan; see the full text on our substack.

2. A neat collation of themes from season two — a small map of the terrain we’ve explored. It’s there for your wandering on lazy afternoons. We won’t say too much; part of the fun is discovering what it shows you. See link here. 

Thank you for being here with us, on the threshold. We’re looking forward to what comes next, and we’re letting it arrive in its own time.

The music in this episode is composed and arranged by Rashid Epstein Adams / Arkenstone.

We started season 2 with a question, "Can stories change systems?" We weren't sure that we would land on an answer but we thought of it as a thread we could explore throughout the season. In some episodes we had beautiful answers to that question, and even more beautiful questions. We end this season reflecting on the season. And rather than trying to summarise each conversation, which we may do in future in some format, we rather offer some brief reflections.

Our starting point for this episode was self-analysis. We asked the question “where were we at” in terms of creative energy, personal wellbeing, and how grounded do we feel. What emerged was an idea for a shorter episode. We both answer the question “What stories ground you?”.

We now take a break for the South African winter. Hibernating. And then we plan to emerge in the spring with new energy, inspiration and more questions, conversations and - of course - plenty of stories.

The song Tristan references is by Pearl Jam and is called “Present Tense”, whilst Rashid shares a quote from the book Kapilolo’s Kulimatji: A !xun San storyteller’s memoir (2016) by Kapilolo Mario Mahongo.

Right at the end of the episode, Rashid reads a quote from an editorial titled “Speaking truth to power: Indigenous storytelling as an act of living resistance” by Aman Sium and Eric Ritskes, which comes from the book Decolonization, Indigeneity, Education & Society (2015). It says:

“If stories are archives of collective pain, suffering and resistance, then to speak them is to heal; to believe in them is to reimagine the world”.

The music in this episode is composed and arranged by Rashid Epstein Adams / Arkenstone and Pursuit.

Abduragman Adams (also known as Abdu Adams) is an award-winning South African actor, director and drama lecturer. He has appeared in several television shows including Heartlines, Known Gods, Rugby Motors and Die Boland Moorde. In 2015 he landed a starring role in the kykNET soap opera, Suidooster, set in Cape Town in the fictional suburb of Ruiterbosch. He also worked on 7de Laan, where he played the character of David Abrahams. He also starred in award-winning films such as Four Corners (2013) directed by Ian Gabriel and won a SAFTA award for best Supporting Actor in Daryne Joshua’s feature film Noem My Skollie (2016).

His passion for performance extends into his work in various South African theatre productions. He also loves mentoring the next generation for the screen and stage and is the founding director of the Saturday Varsity Film Academy, which specialises in Acting Master Classes designed to make actors screen and set ready. Abduragman is currently working on his one man theatre show, titled From Constantia to Manenberg Avenue, a memory play which explores his unique performance DNA as an actor, arts activist and educator.

In this episode Abdu shares with us lessons learned in his career both as an actor, and as a nurse. He was trained and worked as a nurse before what he calls a Divine intervention. Access to a dreamspace led him on a trip to a drama department that would change his life. Abdu also reflects on refusing the stories that told him not to pursue acting as a career and choosing to do it anyway. We delve into the power of dreaming, with Abdu remarking, “If you don't dream, you’re dead”.

At the end of the episode we have some fun speaking about the characters he has portrayed over the years. This was a special episode and the first time we interviewed a family member, with Abduragman also being Rashid’s beloved uncle.

The music in this episode is composed and arranged by Rashid Epstein Adams / Arkenstone and Pursuit.