Grounded

Iman AbdoulKarim
  • 5.0 (4)
  • Espiritualidad

Each week, we answer a big question, finding grounding somewhere between the spiritual and the intellectual. I’m Dr. Iman, your professor-friend who turns to my work as a scholar of religion, spirituality, and Black intellectual history to think through questions big and small about how we make sense of our lives. Some weeks, that means digging into Black thought, religion, spirituality, and culture. Other weeks, I’m thinking out loud about something I’m researching, teaching, reading, or finding grounding in. And sometimes I’m joined by scholars, creators, friends, and listeners who give us something new to think about. Wherever the question takes us, the goal is the same: to think together about the ideas, people, and traditions that might help us see ourselves and our world a little differently. Let’s get grounded.

  1. hace 8 h

    Ep. 26: What'd I Learn From Seeing 5 GLP-1 Ads a Day?

    Is it my manifest destiny to lose 40 pounds in 3 weeks? I started keeping track. And on average, I get 5 GLP-1 ads DAILY. When I started really paying attention to them, I noticed that what they were selling me wasn’t just the normal skinny = health = beauty formula. A formula Sabrina Strings’ research shows has been used to racialize Black bodies for centuries. Instead, its promise to me was: You’ll finally be who you’ve always been meant to be. And that is where my scholar of religion brain starts kicking in. Because whenever you start talking about destiny and who someone has always been meant to be, you’re talking about religion, especially American religion. This week, I’m thinking through three things that being inundated with GLP-1 advertising has taught me: what these ads reveal about our ideas of becoming and the self and why Serena William’s as the face of Ro is diabolically genius, why its feels spiritually unsettling to my own sense of self + embodied knowledge when the same platforms used to learn+connect are constantly telling me not to trust my body, and how GLP-1 marketing has hard launched an entire genre of social media content organized around being your final form (5 Things I Did To Be XYZ), rather than life as a continual process of becoming. AND IT’S SO BORING. Chapters 00:00 — Teaser: What Are GLP-1 Ads Actually Selling? 00:31 — Welcome to Grounded 01:28 — Finding Grounding: Learning How to Be Unstressed 03:36 — What I Learned From Seeing 5 GLP-1 Ads a Day 07:45 — Why GLP-1 Marketing Feels Different From Earlier Weight-Loss Marketing 17:50— You Go Looking For Info, And Are Told Not To Trust Your Body 22:24 — GLP-1 Marketing Has Become Its Own Content Genre & ITS BORING References Strings, Sabrina. "How the use of BMI fetishizes white embodiment and racializes fat phobia." AMA Journal of Ethics 25, no. 7 (2023): 535-539. Strings, Sabrina. Fearing The Black Body. New York University Press, 2020. About Grounded Grounded with Dr. Iman is a podcast for people who like their big questions grounded in research. Each week, Dr. Iman AbdoulKarim, professor and scholar of religion and spirituality, takes on a question about this human experience we’re all having, finding grounding somewhere between the spiritual and the intellectual. Expect religion, spirituality, Black thought, culture, history, and whatever else the question requires. New episodes every Monday.

  2. 24 ago

    Ep. 25: Why Does Reading Someone Feel So Intellectual and Spiritual? | Jools Lebron vs. Jeffree Star

    Why does hearing somebody get read for filth feel so intellectually and spiritually satisfying? This week, I’m thinking through Jools Lebron’s read of Jeffree Star and asking what a read actually does. What distinguishes it from a reaction, insult, belittling someone, etc.? Because to me, those are their own things, separate from the kind of speaking-truth-to-power, punching up, and critical analysis that makes a read *a read.* I also think about how there is something spiritual happening here too. We get into the read as catharsis and collective processing, the flow state of reading someone down, and what it might mean to understand that flow as a form of channeling memory, experience, and a part of Black history long before there was a term for it. Chapters 00:00 Teaser 00:27 Welcome to Grounded 01:03 Finding Grounding: Back in Atlanta 02:20 Jools Lebron vs. Jeffree Star 07:38 What Makes a Read a Read? 11:07 A Read Is Intellectual 15:22 Why a Read Feels Spiritual Works Referenced W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903). bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (1989). Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?” (1851). Malcolm X, “Message to the Grass Roots” (1963). Jools Leabron @joolslebron — Grounded with Dr. Iman is a podcast for people who like their big questions grounded in research. Each week, Dr. Iman AbdoulKarim, professor and scholar of religion and spirituality, takes on a question about this human experience we're all having, finding grounding somewhere between the spiritual and the intellectual. Expect religion, spirituality, Black thought, culture, history, and whatever else the question requires.

  3. 17 ago

    Ep. 24: How Do You Actually Get Into a PhD Program?

    This, I’m answering a question I get every year: How do you actually get into a PhD program? PhD applications, especially in the humanities, can feel like a behind closed doors process. So, I’m sharing the advice people were generous enought to share with me when was applying and what I’ve learned from helping others through the process. We (me, myself, I, and you) get into how to identify programs that are actually a good intellectual fit, why I strongly recommend looking for fully funded programs, and why undergraduate reputations don’t necessarily translate to the strongest PhD program in your field. I also talk about navigating interdisciplinarity and figuring out whether a department really supports the kind of scholar you want to become. Then we get into the MAKE OR BREAK part: you have to reach out to people. Cold emailing current graduate students and potential faculty advisors can completely change your application process. Finally, we talk personal and research statements, including why you do not need to know exactly what your dissertation will be. What you do need is a clear research question, a sense of where you might look for answers, and an ability to explain why that particular program and its faculty can help you pursue it. Basically, this is the PhD application primer I wish everyone got before application season. Chapters: 00:00 — Teaser: How to Get Into a PhD Program 00:42 — What I’m Finding Grounding In: Intellectual Play 06:29 — How TF Do You Get Into Grad School? 08:37 — How to Identify the Right PhD Program 14:56 — How Interdisciplinarity Works in Grad School 20:08 — You HAVE to Cold Email 25:23 — Writing Your Personal + Research Statement

  4. 10 ago

    Ep. 23: What I Learned From Student Evaluations as a First-Year Professor

    What did my students teach me about teaching? This week, I’m reflecting on my first semester as a full-time professor and what I learned from finally reading my student evaluations. Can you tell the semester is fast approaching? I’m talking about why teaching really is an art, why my students wanted less lecturing and more hands-on learning, how they somehow ended up wanting *more* assignments, and I’m still committed to high expectations while meeting students where they are. And how that is NOT the same as lowering expectations (especially in an AI reality). Chapters 00:00 — Teaser: Why I’m Tired of the “Students Just Use AI” Conversation 00:22 — Where I’m Finding Grounding 03:35 — What I Learned From My First Teaching Evaluations 08:50 — Students Don’t Want to Just Be Talked At 12:35 — They Asked for MORE Work??? 18:30 — Where Students Wanted Me to Ease Up: Attendance & Hard Readings

  5. 3 ago

    Ep. 22: What is Secularism?

    It's one of those words people use all the time, thinking they mean the same thing, when that isn’t always the case! As a scholar of religion who teaches about secularism, I’ve realized the best place to start is by talking about assumptions. This week, I draw on my own journey as a Black Muslim scholar of religion to walk through the kinds of assumptions I encountered throughout college, graduate school, and becoming a professor, and how those assumptions reveal what secularism is and how it functions. The takeaway is that rather than treating secularism as simply the separation of church and state, it is best understood by paying attention to the "common sense" assumptions that organize our lives and determine whose knowledge really counts. This conversation is just the start, but one that has deeply reshaped how I understand scholarship, Black thought, and the relationship between spirituality and intellectual life. Chapters 00:00 — Teaser: Secularism Was Never Meant for Me 00:30 — Grounding in Traveling with the Girls 03:06 — This Week's Question: What Is Secularism? 10:37 — Assumption #1: Outsiders Are Experts, Insiders Know Less 14:55 — Assumption #2: People Want You to Tell Familiar Stories 20:36 — Assumption #3: There Is No Separation Between the Spiritual and the Intellectual

  6. 20 jul

    Ep. 21: How to Strengthen Your Intuition?

    This week, we're answering the question: How do you strengthen your intuition? Over the past few weeks, we've explored intuition through philosophy, Black thought, and management studies. This week, I wanted to do something different and answer that question through my own life. I share the three practices that have most transformed my relationship to intuition over the past five years: developing a relationship with myself via journaling, learning to distinguish what I want from what other people want for me, and embracing the conflict that comes from actually acting on what my intuition tells me. Along the way, I reflect on journaling, therapy, prayer, graduate school, learning to trust myself as a scholar of Black Muslim thought, and why I want all my women and femmes to leave behind the idea that there is redemption in our suffering (which is a huge barrier to developing clear intuition).

  7. 13 jul

    Ep. 20: Is Intuition a Sign of Expertise?

    This week, we're answering the question: Is intuition a sign of expertise? Building on last week's conversation about intuition as evidence in psychology, I turn to another field that has spent decades studying intuition: management and organizational learning. I explore an argument I found really compelling: that intuition is often the outcome of expertise. In other words, the people we think of as "intuitive" are frequently drawing on years of disciplined observation, tacit knowledge, and experience. But as a scholar of religion and Black intellectual history, I’m also interested in where that understanding falls short. What happens when intuition is understood only as something that comes out of experience + expertise… and not forms of knowledge beyond the self? Like higher powers, ancestors, the unseen, Allah, the divine, etc. Chapters 00:00 — Grounding in Knowing Who You Are When Things Go Left 10:58 — This Week's Question: Is Intuition a Sign of Expertise? 13:09 — Intuition as Creative Insight 16:42 — Intuition as an Outcome of Expertise 27:40 — What's Missing? Spirituality and Intuition 32:30 — Prof in the Park Announcement RSVP for Prof in the Park 7/30 @ Prospect Park: https://partiful.com/e/PEwdmeIc0rwTtByx9tHH?c=OZ0f4dpM Reference Dörfler, Viktor, and Fran Ackermann. "Understanding intuition: The case for two forms of intuition." Management learning 43, no. 5 (2012): 545-564.

  8. 6 jul

    Ep. 19: What Are Two Ways of Understanding Intuition?

    This week we're answering the question: What are two ways of understanding intuition? As I begin writing a book chapter on intuition, I am getting right on how different fields actually define the term. Drawing on philosophy, Black feminist thought, and religious studies, I explore two distinct understandings of intuition I’ve encountered so far. First, I introduce a philosophical conversation that understands intuition as *evidence* or a form of perceptual knowledge that helps explain how we arrive at beliefs before we have empirical proof. Then, I turn to Black thought, where intuition becomes something much more than evidence. Through thinkers like Audre Lorde, Patricia Hill Collins, Louise Little, and Alea Lovely, I argue that intuition is also a method: a disciplined practice, a cultivated mode of knowing, and a way of making decisions in a world where dominant ideas of evidence have often been used to deny Black people's realities of things (and justify their dehumanization). At the heart of this episode is a bigger question: What happens when intuition isn't just something you have, but something you practice and develop? Chapters 00:00 Teaser 0:12 - Grounded in Navigating Adult Friendships 9:15 - Two Different Ways of Understanding Intuition 12:28 - Intuition As Evidence Conversation in Philosophy 15:09 - Intuition as Perceptual Knowledge 20:41 - Intuition as Method References Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2000). Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1984). Wilfred Little, "Our Family From the Inside: Growing Up with Malcolm X." Contributions in Black Studies 13, no. 1 (1995): 7–47. (Originally delivered as a lecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on April 18, 1995.) https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cibs/vol13/iss1/2/ Mark Moffett, "Intuition as Evidence: An Introduction," in The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Evidence, edited by Maria Lasonen-Aarnio and Clayton Littlejohn (New York: Routledge, 2021). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Intuition": https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2024/entries/intuition/ Alea Lovely, Spiritual Shit podcast: https://www.thelovelyalea.com/

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Each week, we answer a big question, finding grounding somewhere between the spiritual and the intellectual. I’m Dr. Iman, your professor-friend who turns to my work as a scholar of religion, spirituality, and Black intellectual history to think through questions big and small about how we make sense of our lives. Some weeks, that means digging into Black thought, religion, spirituality, and culture. Other weeks, I’m thinking out loud about something I’m researching, teaching, reading, or finding grounding in. And sometimes I’m joined by scholars, creators, friends, and listeners who give us something new to think about. Wherever the question takes us, the goal is the same: to think together about the ideas, people, and traditions that might help us see ourselves and our world a little differently. Let’s get grounded.

Información

  • Creador
    Iman AbdoulKarim
  • Años de actividad
    2026
  • Episodios
    27
  • Clasificación
    Apto
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 Iman AbdoulKarim
  • Mostrar sitio web
    Grounded

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