Busy Being Black with Joshua Rivers

Afleveringen

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  Archival Pleasures — Dr Ajamu X 09.07.2026 27min

  Dr Ajamu X explores taking responsibility for what we create, and the punk-radical necessity of tending to archives that reflect and honour the complex and pleasureful lives of queer Black folk—now and in the so-called past. Regular Listeners have access to the full and ad-free conversation on Busy Being Black's Patreon. This conversation was recorded at the 2025 Kinfolk Convening in Manchester. 'I think we have a reluctance to talk about pleasure for pleasure's sake; to validate it, we feel we have to attach it to something else like politics or sexuality. Sometimes it's just the thing itself. There is a reluctance to talk about what makes us feel good—what we want done with our Black bodies, with our lovers or with our friends—[because] we live in a pleasure-phobic society.' ⁠Dr Ajamu X⁠ is a darkroom and fine art photographic artist, whose practice, aesthetics and theoretical provocations privilege sensuality, and the tactile, material elements of the photographic act. Ajamu's work is held in numerous private and public collections, including the Autograph ABP, Tate Britain, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. Busy Being Black's theme music was created for the show by Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter. The oceanic cellos that open the show were created for Busy Being Black by Dylan Halverson. Cover photo of Ajamu © 2024 Henry Mills Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Foundations of Excellence — Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason 01.07.2026 25min

  There is perhaps no better person to speak to about Black creative expression and excellence through art than Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason—the matriarch, mother and woman who makes possible the prodigious creativity of the seven Kanneh-Mason siblings.   In her book, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, Kadiatu shows that the key to a creatively fulfilling and purposeful life is in how we live in between the highs and the lows—the relationships we nurture, the humour we entertain and in the routines we build that honour and sustain our passions.  Part II of my conversation with Kadiatu continues on Patreon for Regular Listeners: patreon.com/busybeingblack This conversation was recorded at Manngington Book Bash 2025, one of the UK's most cherished literary festivals.  If the interiority & craft of authors, writers & artists stir your imagination to whirling, come to Mannington Book Bash 2026. Thank you to Henry Layte and the team at the Book Hive. Busy Being Black's theme music was created for the show by Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter. The oceanic cellos that open the show were created for Busy Being Black by Dylan Halverson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Not So Minor Black Figures — Brandon Taylor 24.06.2026 58min

  I sat down with award-winning author Brandon Taylor live at Brixton House Theatre to mark the UK launch of his latest novel, Minor Black Figures. Our conversation explores what happens when Black artists resist the demands of the always-on attention economy to instead embrace the archives, tend to our cultural inheritances and allow ourselves—and the characters in our art—the messy complexities we are so often encouraged to hide. 06:20 How's your heart? 18:00 Real Life in a Black Square Summer 36:00 Minor Black Figures in Interminable Pandemics 43:00 It's okay to be an uppity negro Get your copy of Minor Black Figures from your local bookshop. This episode includes the voices of: Lorraine Hansberry and Pamela Sneed.  If the interiority & craft of authors, writers & artists stir your imagination to whirling, come to Mannington Book Bash. Busy Being Black is only sustainable with community support. Become a Regular Listener on Patreon ✷ patreon.com/busybeingblack Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Sensuous Knowledge — Minna Salami 24.04.2026 1u 1min

  As we bear witness to the destruction of our world and kin through handheld technologies designed as slot machines, and increasingly disoriented by the hourly oscillations between the cannibal horror and unutterable awe of being human in 2026, Minna Salami reminds us that we won’t build new worlds with the same words that built this one. Read that again, friends. With her full-bodied philosophy, sensuous knowledge, she calls us back to the wild, sensate, subterranean and queer within and beyond us so that we can reclaim what europatriarchal knowledge systems taught us was uncivilised and savage—including the innumerable ways of knowing that have nothing to do with taxonomies or science or murder. Minna says that ‘freedom is the ability to conjure and then create of our lives the sense of rapture and joy that is our birthright.’ And we know very well that europatriarchal knowledge systems quite explicitly do not offer that as an option About Minna Salami ✷ Minna is an acclaimed afrofeminist scholar, author and cultural critic. Her publication, Kaleido, explores society, culture and power through the kaleidoscopic method: a sensuous, multilayered and epistemically polyamorous approach to knowledge that draws from multiple intersections and cultures. Busy Being Black is the award-winning podcast for Black LGBTQ+ creative, cultural & spiritual inquiry. If the podcast moves you, please: Support ✷ https://buy.stripe.com/aFa3cw82KfqeeNE0UdgjC00 Subscribe ✷ http://www.youtube.com/@busybeingblacktube Follow ✷ https://www.instagram.com/_busybeingblack PERKS + PARTNERS advaya creates courses to awaken the human spirit & inspire purposeful action in the world. Otherworlds begins on 12 May and provides the perspectives, practices & community we need to become active & empowered agents for emerging futures: https://advaya.life/otherworlds 🔑 BUSY-OTHERWORLDS for 15% off advaya+ membership Founded in 1969, Pluto Press is one of the world’s oldest radical publishers & their focus remains making interventions in contemporary struggles: https://www.plutobooks.com/?s=imagination&post_type=product 🔑 BUSY50 for 50% off Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Dancing to Freedom — Candice D'Meza 18.04.2026 54min

  My bodacious conversation with theatre-maker and cosmological enchantress Candice D'Meza opens with my poem, Our Life Together. Inspired by an exchange between Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin, the poem is a fitting expression of the ways Black artists think, feel and create across time and space to build the worlds we need now. Candice D'Meza builds liberated worlds through art, cosmology and the Imagination Institute, where she teaches others to reclaim the operational divinity & living power of the Black radical imagination: https://www.candicedmeza.com/ How to inhabit the version of yourself that has already made it through Why the crisis of imagination leaves us vulnerable to the violent desires of capitalism Embracing the body's curriculum and learning through pleasure instead of pain What Harriet Tubman teaches us about the impossible Why they can never make us forget who we are Busy Being Black is the award-winning podcast for Black LGBTQ+ creative, cultural & spiritual inquiry ✷ https://www.busybeingblack.com/ If the podcast moves you, please: Support ✷ https://buy.stripe.com/aFa3cw82KfqeeNE0UdgjC00 Subscribe ✷ http://www.youtube.com/@busybeingblacktube Follow ✷ https://www.instagram.com/_busybeingblack PERKS + PARTNERS advaya creates courses to awaken the human spirit & inspire purposeful action in the world. Otherworlds begins on 12 May and provides the perspectives, practices & community we need to become active & empowered agents for emerging futures: https://advaya.life/otherworlds 🔑 BUSY-OTHERWORLDS for 15% off advaya+ membership Founded in 1969, Pluto Press is one of the world’s oldest radical publishers & their focus remains making interventions in contemporary struggles: https://www.plutobooks.com/?s=imagination&post_type=product 🔑 BUSY50 for 50% off Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  The Paradise of Our Intimacy — Dean Atta 25.03.2026 45min

  Poet and author Dean Atta returns to Busy Being Black to share how therapy, memoir-writing and entering into his "big man stage" have transformed his relationship with his mental health, creativity and self-acceptance. The episode opens with a joint reading of Dean's poem "Two Black Boys in Paradise"—the poem that inspired the BAFTA-winning animation of the same name—and closes with Dean reading "On Days When" from his poetry collection There Is Still Love Here. Busy Being Black is the award-winning podcast for queer Black creative, cultural and spiritual vitality. If the show moves you, consider ⁠buying me a coffee or a book⁠. Dean Atta is an award-winning Black British writer from London known for his heartfelt storytelling rooted in his Greek Cypriot and Jamaican heritage. He writes poetry, fiction and nonfiction for all ages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  How to Love Yourself — Dean Atta 21.03.2026 37min

  Busy Being Black returns on Tuesday 24 March 2026 with a new conversation between me Dean Atta, who recently won a BAFTA for Two Black Boys in Paradise. Today, in honour of World Poetry Day, I’m resurfacing our 2018 conversation in which we explore recovery and intimacy, desire and vulnerability and the role of poetry in bringing us closer to ourselves, to each other and to people who are no longer with us. This episode includes two poems by Dean: Black Flamingo and How to Love Yourself. Support the show. About Dean ✷ Dean Atta is an award-winning Black British writer from London known for his heartfelt storytelling rooted in his Greek Cypriot and Jamaican heritage. He writes poetry, fiction and nonfiction for all ages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  The Alchemy of Black Joy — Rosel Jackson Stern 10.03.2026 54min

  Art is a vital mechanism through which we process grief and sustain life. In times of intense discord, denying our impulse to create often results in destructive behaviours. Artist and writer Rosel Jackson Stern offers a gentle provocation to anyone feeling paralysed by the current geopolitical climate: find and nurture even the tiniest moments of joy. By anchoring life in joy, Rosel has built an artistic and spiritual practice that moves them closer—with every prayer, sweep of the brush and stroke of the pen—to a world where queer Black people experience an abundance of peace, community and creative vitality. It is in and through our joy we find our freedom, and this episode is a reminder that liberation is rooted in the timeless intimacy of the present moment. Watch this conversation. About Rosel ✷ Rosel Jackson Stern (they/them) is an artist, journalist and writer whose creativity spans several mediums and modalities. The purpose of their work is to carve out space for the unknown, and is a testament to what happens when we take leaps of faith. Busy Being Black is the award-winning podcast for Black LGBTQ+ creative, cultural & spiritual inquiry. If the podcast moves you, buy me a book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  All My Poems Are Sad N*gga Poems — Ben Ellis 21.10.2025 58min

  Today marks eight years since Busy Being Black first came to life: on 21 October 2017, I produced and hosted an event called Forbidden Fruits, anchored by a conversation about love, intimacy and belonging among queer Black men. I couldn't have known in that moment how much I would need this space. Ben Ellis is a poet—and a poet in the way James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and René Ménil meant it: one ordained to dive into the unconscious and awaken the rest of us with their marvels. I am stunned and struck by the energy of Ben's poetry, his vulnerability, his rage. I am enlivened by his sensitivity, his heartache and his desire for peace of mind. I am grateful to honour my own thresholds by bearing witness at the gates of his. If you enjoyed this conversation, you'll enjoy the ⁠Black Marvellous⁠: a growing collection of conversations that adventure into Black imaginative vigour—in art, attitude and life. — Chapters 00:26 Are you avoiding your own emergence? 02:04 The ordination of the bard: 8 years of Busy Being Black 12:43 Ben recites Pansies 16:32 All my poems are sad n*gga poems 24:19 There is no word for depression in my native tongue 29:25 Who is served by the performance of our grief? 33:16 Ben recites Milkshake 37:09 Can we reclaim any spirituality from within the religions that have harmed us? 47:23 I am Black first and Black also 51:00 Ben recites To Orlando 53:37 Peace of mind 55:55 Every gesture is a prayer when you know who you are — Thank you: This episode includes wisdom from ⁠Candice D'Meza⁠, ⁠Rev. Jide Macaulay⁠ and ⁠Bayyinah Bello⁠. If this conversation resonates with you, there are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠buy me a book⁠. The songs 'Busy Being Black' and 'Baptism' were created for Busy Being Black and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter, and Dylan Halverson, respectively. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Our Miraculous Hearts — Phoebe Boswell 21.09.2025 58min

  A tender meditation on grief, healing and courage with multidisciplinary artist Phoebe Boswell, who creates portals that return us to our miraculous hearts. If you'd like to see the art we discuss in this conversation, you can watch this episode on @busybeingblacktube. The ⁠⁠Black Marvellous⁠⁠: a growing collection of conversations that adventure into Black imaginative vigour—in art, attitude & life. — If this conversation resonates with you, there are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or buy me a book. The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter. The song 'Baptism' was created for the show and in collaboration with Dylan Halverson—and inspired by the oceanic overwhelm I felt engaging with Phoebe Boswell's art & the music she commissioned from bassist Gregg August: 'The promise of your redemption is within the depths you've been avoiding.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Black Duende — Mojisola Adebayo 25.06.2025 58min

  Inspired by Afrosurrealism, surrealist philosophy and the archetypal imagination, the Black Marvellous is a growing collection of conversations that adventure into Black imaginative vigour—in art, attitude and life. Who better than Mojisola Adebayo to remind us of the adventure and irreverence of Black artistry, during and beyond times of crisis? In this conversation, which originally aired in February 2023, Mojisola takes us on a journey from Goldsmiths University to Antarctica, to space and back again, to explore how we utilise performance to challenge the sanctity of whiteness, what an orgasm-seeking space odyssey tells us about the world-changing potential of queer Black pleasure, and how the reanimation of the life and story of Henrietta Lacks prompts us to consider our own genealogical and cosmic immortality. — Thank you: If this conversation resonates with you, here are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠buy me a book. The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  A Life Worth Writing About — Kuchenga Shenjé 31.12.2024 46min

  You’ll no doubt have heard of and read Kuchenga Shenjé's debut novel, The Library Thief, which brings together her passions for history, mystery and rebels; and you’re likely to have felt the warmth and humour of her writing in publications like British Vogue and Stylist. In our conversation, we explore how she came to the transformative decision to pursue sobriety, her hodgepodge approach to her spirituality and spiritual practice, how the deferred dreams of her mother and grandmother have shaped how she enjoys her life and what she’s learned from the characters in her novel and daring women across history about what it means to live a life worth writing about. You can find out more about Kuchenga here. Thank you If this conversation resonates with you, here are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠contribute towards production costs⁠. The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Rehumanising the Black Meme — Legacy Russell 10.12.2024 56min

  I’ve been invigorated by Legacy Russell’s ongoing inquiries into how we come alive together. Whether she’s encouraging us to think expansively about the connection between marine life and Black agency under duress, or pointing us towards the liberatory possibilities at the intersection of our bodies, genders and technologies, her work is evidence of her desire and drive to live in a world in which Black folks thrive. We explore how an investigation into visual culture helps us appreciate and reckon with the role Black people have played in shaping the modern world, our responsibility as global and digital citizens to harness the internet to collectively push forward what our shared future looks like, and what we learn from what it means to really live—or to not live—from the ancestors who refused to survive the Middle Passage.  Legacy's first book, Glitch Feminism, explores how we find liberation in the glitch between body, gender and technology; her second book, Black Meme, shows us how images of Blackness have always been central to our understanding of the modern world. Both are available from Verso Books. Thank you If this conversation resonates with you, here are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠contribute towards production costs⁠. The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  A Posture of Improvisation — Maleke Glee 26.11.2024 53min

  How do we engage with and sustain Black cultures, communities, histories and futures outside of the extractive infrastructures and institutions that thrive on Black death and disposability? Maleke Glee is a curator and scholar of cultural sustainability who offers go-go music as a wonderful working example: a genre and sonic landscape native to Washington DC, with an insular economy that supports self-taught and formerly incarcerated musicians. Our conversation today also explores the spiritual work that undergirds Maleke’s ongoing research into and preservation of go-go music, how initiatives for Black inclusion within art world institutions often stifle ongoing efforts to sustain Black vernacular cultures, and how a closer relationship to ugliness helps us queer what it means to embody and pursue Black excellence. Thank you If this conversation resonates with you, here are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠contribute towards production costs⁠. The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Our Stories, Told By Us — Angelina Namiba 26.08.2024 55min

  Angelina Namiba serves as a possibility model for effective and sustained engagement with those vulnerable to HIV. When she was diagnosed in the early 90s, she immediately set to work to understand why Black women were being left out of national efforts to combat the spread of the virus, and she participated in and assembled groups of women committed to raising the voices of women living with HIV globally. She is a titan within England’s HIV advocacy movement and she has worked for almost 25 years to promote and advocate for the involvement of women living with HIV in forming and informing local and national HIV strategy and policy. Today, we explore the resilience required to sustain our advocacy when our lives are systemically undervalued and the ongoing need for cultural competency within the NHS, which despite being built on the backs of Black women, still leaves so many Black women to suffer in silence. Angelina shares the mnemonic device she created to help women remember their rights when engaging with healthcare practitioners, and the role literature, storytelling and book clubs have played in bringing her and others like her together to effect systemic change. Angelina reminds that in the face of anti-Blackness, homophobia and misogynoir, it has always been us looking after us. Recommended reading: Our Stories Told by Us by Angelina Namiba Queer Footprints by Dan Glass Thank you If this conversation resonates with you, here are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠contribute towards production costs⁠. The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Sustaining Our Thriving — Dennis Carney 12.08.2024 57min

  Dennis Carney is an elder whose respect among our community needs no justification nor explanation. Among much else, he led the now-closed Black Gay and Lesbian Centre in Brixton, and he has worked for 25 years as a therapeutic practitioner, supporting Black gay men to love themselves more deeply, hold their emotions more gently and show up in the world more fully. We explore his involvement in the Stop Murder Music campaign, the internationalism of Brixton’s Black Gay and Lesbian Centre and the creation of “Let’s Wrap”, the UK’s first-ever discussion group for Black gay men, which was hosted at London Lighthouse, the leading hospice and charity for people living with HIV. We attend to the history of the long 1980’s, and Dennis shares his advice and insights on what we should pay closer attention to about that fraught, traumatic and generative period of our collective history. Dennis shares how his disillusionment with the efficacy of protests and marches helped recalibrate his energy and efforts towards self-empowerment within our communities, and we broach the ever-important topic of intergenerational conversations, including what we learn from each other in our efforts to get free. Dennis reminds us that love for oneself and community, especially within a world so primed for lovelessness, has a singularly motivating power that supports us in being the change we hope to see in the world. Thank you If this conversation resonates with you, here are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠contribute towards production costs⁠. The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  My Word Creates My World — Jean Lloyd 05.08.2024 1u 3min

  We are living through a particularly tense geopolitical moment and I have found myself in a near-constant state of anger over the past couple of weeks. I have had to work very hard to ensure the language and energy I put out into the world is not only angry, but productive. To help me – and us – show up with compassion and clarity in this moment, I’m resurfacing my 2019 conversation with communications provocateur Jean Lloyd. Jean has spent her life deeply committed to the emancipation of the human spirit and she invites us to focus on and remember that language is a tool used to create, not destroy. We explore the difference between talking and communication; forgiveness and making peace with unanswered questions and missing apologies; the urgent, important and life-long work of being ourselves; and communication as the essential tool for love and our liberation. Thank you If this conversation resonates with you, here are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠contribute towards production costs⁠. The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  Black to the Future — Irenosen Okojie 30.07.2024 46min

  I’m thrilled to share this conversation with British Nigerian writer and curator Irenosen Okojie, which was recorded at the Garden Cinema in London after a private viewing of Blitz Bazawule’s new musical adaption of The Color Purple. Our conversation was one of many events that took place as part of Irenosen’s Black to the Future festival, an afrofuturist celebration of outstanding Black artists and a growing space for visionary imaginings to thrive. We explore why The Color Purple aligns with Irenosen’s notions of afrofuturism; the lessons we can learn from characters within the novel and the musical about Black hope, family and love; and the ways Black queer people across space and time continue to live, by example, the futures we deserve to inhabit together. Thank you If this conversation resonates with you, here are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠contribute towards production costs⁠. The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter. Thank you to our friends at Warner Bros, The Royal Society of Literature and The Garden Cinema for making this conversation with Irenosen possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  We Are Rehearsing Freedom 16.07.2024 1u 1min

  The urgent problems of our time require collective engagement with the generative offerings of our imaginations. Whether our work calls us to challenge the extractive practices ruining our planet, educate a new generation of thinkers and creators, or to put out into the burning world poetry that awakens and enlivens, each of us carries – and feels the weight of – a responsibility to help fashion a better future. My guests today offer us ways to tackle the demands of liberation through active engagement with the Black radical imagination and tradition. I’m in conversation with Melz Owusu, Marai Larasi and Yomi Sode. Melz is the Founder of the Free Black University and a PhD researcher at the University of Cambridge. Marai is a feminist advocate, community organiser and consultant who has worked in social justice for over twenty-seven years. And Yomi is an award-winning writer and the recipient of the 2019 Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship. This conversation was recorded at Rehearsing Freedoms, a festival of community health, healing, movement building, arts and culture created and curated by Healing Justice London. And together we explore how the Black radical imagination helps shift us out of oppressive landscapes and times, and towards just and dignifying worlds that affirm Black aliveness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  The Magic and Black Genius of Jazz — Julian Joseph OBE 28.10.2023 50min

  Julian Joseph is acclaimed as one of the finest jazz musicians to emerge this side of the Atlantic and his career has been characterised by many ground-breaking advances: he was the first Black British jazz musician to host a series of concerts at London’s Wigmore Hall and the first to headline a late-night televised performance at the BBC Proms. We explore how jazz and life are both animated by the art of improvisation, the methodology that undergirds the educative offering of the Julian Joseph Jazz Academy, the instruments and symphonies that enchant him, the artists and composers he recommends to inspire us to adventure, and his message to those who feel like they have music within them, but aren’t quite sure how to get it out. If you enjoyed this conversation, you'll enjoy the ⁠⁠Black Marvellous⁠⁠: a growing collection of conversations that adventure into Black imaginative vigour—in art, attitude and life. Thank you: If this conversation resonates with you, here are three ways you can show your love: leave a comment, rating, or review; share this conversation on social media; or ⁠contribute towards production costs⁠. The song 'Busy Being Black' was created for the show and in collaboration with Lazarus Lynch and Joshua Pleeter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices