Stuff You Should Know - How Afrofuturism Works

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

Black sci-fi writers were shut out of their genre in the 20th century so they created their own vision of the future. That sentiment spread to music and film and today it’s so engrained in pop culture it doesn't need its own label. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey everybody, we're coming to your town so you better get ready, put on your best duds and come out and see us, but first buy some tickets. That's right, we are finishing up. These are the last shows of our 2023 tour. We're going to be in Orlando, Florida on August 12th, Nashville, Tennessee on September 6th, and wind it all up here in Atlanta on September 9th. Yes, and you can get all the info you need and links to tickets which are on sale now at our website, stuffyshadknow.com on our tour page, or you can go to link tree slash

sysk. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff You Should Know. No, no, no. Yes, yes, yes. You should have said this, COA and welcome to the podcast. All right.

Because I want to issue a COA on this one. Okay. This is one of those that is so broad and dense and awesome that like I almost feel bad doing it as a, you know, 45-ish minute episode of podcast. Yeah. Because after a futurism is so vast, it's like, it's hard for sometimes these to not feel like we'll explain what it is and then just like list a bunch of awesome people. Yeah. You know, but this, you know, this one is of all of our episodes. This one is meant to wet the appetite more than most, I think, as an introduction to

it Afro-futurism is, so you can go check out lots and lots of stuff yourself, because that's all I've been doing. Yeah, we should title it Afro-futurism 101. Maybe not even what's what's below 101? 99. Okay, 99. I can't remember. There's actually a number for it. It's like remedial college courses that you have to take to catch up.

Man, I can't remember, but what we'll look it up and maybe that'll be. Yeah, because we will get email saying, how could you not mention so and so? How could you not mention so and so's other thing, even though you mentioned them. Right. It's just one of those things. There's just too much, but hopefully this will just introduce people to this idea and this concept of this cultural aesthetic and philosophy. Yeah, and this is definitely one of those episodes that we should try to define what we're talking about first, which by the way, we took Guff for not telling people in depth who Millie Vanilli were. I was so taken aback by that. Like, what? It just didn't

even occur to me that we needed to like go further into defining Millie Vanilli from the outset. I know. I thought even our younger listeners, I thought that was such a big cultural thing that, you know, like I know about things before I was born. Nope. Nope. Well, this is not Millie Vanillie. This is what we're talking about, Afro-futurism. And Afro-futurism, like you said, it's a huge, big thing that has a lot of different

definitions. But probably the most succinct way I can define it, and this is me defining it, is that it is the visions of the future, or fantasy worlds, or alternate realities, which all funded, fall under the umbrella of speculative fiction or speculative literature. Through African-American lens, right? Yeah, and I'll just drill down a little bit and say that incorporates obviously literature, but music and dance and every kind of art you can think of, movies, obviously in television, really kind of anything that has this cool sort of sci-fi bent through the lens of African Americans. We'll get into more definitions because it's one of those things that people can really pick apart

as far as what counts and what doesn't. And then after it's around for a while, like should we even be calling it this now and shouldn't be calling it this? And we'll get into all that. But suffice it to say that like all of this stuff is just really cool and awesome and serves and has a title because it is serving people that has been underserved

when it comes to science fiction. Yeah, so it's kind of evolved in parallel as its own thing, but it grew out of originally science fiction writing. So when most people think of Afrofeuturism, they think of sci-fi novels essentially. But once you start to look into Afro-futurism and start to understand what it is, you see it popping up all over the place. Like it was right there in plain sight for me and I never really realized what I was looking at. I was just kind of taking all of it as like individual, like artistic things rather than a part of a collective. So it's cool to see that there is one giant movement that it's a part of.

But like I said, it does definitely have its roots in science fiction, which is pretty appropriate because as far as any literary genre goes, science fiction has explored the themes of race and racism and otherness and alienness more than any other, I would say. Yeah, and I have a little stat to sort of drive home my underserved point.

And this was from 2016 in Vox, so it's a little dated and things have gotten better since then for sure, but 8% at the time, 8% of the top grossing sci-fi films of all time featured black protagonists. Wow. And 4% of those were Will Smith. Oh, wow. So, aside from Will Smith, 4% of movies. And then, of course, if you look at, you know, the big two star trek and star wars,

you know, the star wars got a lot better now, but the original trilogy had one black character, of course, Lando. And then Star Trek, which I know nothing about, and I'm sure things have changed since then as well. But at the time, I think only had, and all of the Star Trek properties had, it said less than 12 black characters, and I'm not sure what that means. Why didn't you say 11, unless one was on the fence, I have no idea. I don't know, yeah, that is an odd way to put it for sure.

I bet a trek he could explain it though. I'm speaking of every time I read or research about Star Trek, or it just comes up, I have to go watch that William Shatton or Siren Act live appearance from the news. Oh, yeah, get a lie. We're speaking of a Star Trek convention. It's just priceless every single time.

If you've never seen that, just look up William Shatner, Star Trek convention Saturday night live and you won't be disappointed. Yeah, and for our younger listeners, William Shatner is an actor from before you were born. And acting is where you perform something that you're actually not on screen, any screen. That's right.

So that 8% is actually progress compared to the early 20th century. And most people don't think that there were any Black sci-fi writers if you think about that kind of thing at all until the 60s really when a guy named Samuel Delaney came along. He's often credited as the first Black sci-fi writer. about that kind of thing at all until the 60s really went a guy named Samuel Delaney came along. He's often credited as the first black sci-fi writer. He made a huge splash in the 60s, almost single-handedly taking the genre of sci-fi out of the realm of Martians are invading an earth outpost to explore sexual irritation, gender fluidity, race, and really like high-handed manner,

and was producing books that were over 800 pages long in some cases. But he really moved things along. So not only was he one of the first African-American sci-fi writers, he was one of the first to take sci-fi into much deeper directions. Yeah, for sure, but he's also a guy that when you see interviews with him, and I watch quite a few super cool guy, but he's one of the first ones to say, no, no, no, I had people before me. Right. It just, it never became hugely popular, probably for obvious reasons, but there was a guy in 1857,

popular, probably for obvious reasons, but there was a guy in 1857 named Martin Delaney, who was kind of a jack of all trades. He was a doctor and a journalist and an author and abolitionist. He wrote a book, a novel called Blake, or The Huts of America, which was, as a lot of these are alternate histories, that kind of suppose like what would life be like had either slavery not happened, or slavery happened in a different way, or what if, you know, the white people were enslaved, and black people were on top, and it's just sort of looking at kind of a lot of things through the lens of the diaspora. And, you know, I'm not into-fi books, I never have, but a lot of this stuff, it made me want to read sci-fi for the first time just because it sounds so cool because I love alternate history. Yeah, for sure. That's definitely a part of speculative fiction, alternate history,

in general. But yeah, Martin Delaney's Blake or the Huts of America was written in 1857, and it wasn't until, I mean, I think that another couple decades, things would come out sporadically, but there was a guy named Edward Johnson who wrote, light ahead for the Negro in 1901. And he imagined a black man who was transported to a socialist version of the United States in 2006 where things were much, much better.

So these ideas, these alternate histories are kind of coming out little by little, but they are very, very clearly under what you would call now speculative fiction umbrella. And they were written by African Americans much, much earlier than Samuel Delaney, long before he was even born, this stuff was happening. It just was happening like almost in a vacuum, like a black author or a black leader would have a great idea to get his point across by writing an alternate history. And that was it. There wasn't like a genre, there wasn't a movement or anything like that. Yeah. And Delaney also points out that the, like the old pulp rags, a lot of those were written anonymously. And it kind of was an area of literature where people of color,

women who, you know, couldn't get published, published as readily at the time, they could write under these pseudonyms and get their stories out in these pulp magazine articles and stuff and stories. And he's like, you know, who knows how many, you know, African Americans were writing this kind of stuff? Yeah, because you did the whole thing through the mail. And apparently at the time, you were more likely than not to be using a pseudonym for that stuff. Cause that was just like keeping the electricity

on kind of writing, you know what I mean? Yeah. So that's a really great point. But I think the underlying thing here is the reason that there weren't more black authors of sci-fi. In part was because it was just writing in general, literature in general, there was like a general push to keep African-Americans out of things like that as much as possible.

And then as African-Americans became more and more integrated into American society, the thing that kept African-Americans out of sci-fi writing actually came down to one guy, who was named John W. Campbell Jr. and it's just slightly hyperbolic to say he was the glass ceiling that are the gatekeeper that kept sci-fi white for decades. Yeah, he was definitely one of the one of the gatekeepers. He was an editor of I think back then it was called astounding science fiction. It went by a bunch of other names and now it's around astounding science fiction. It went by a bunch of other names, and now it's around as analog science fiction. In fact, yeah, in fact. Yeah.

I'd said that with a comma, but in fact, it's a period. Actually, there's no period. But he was the editor, and like you said, he was a guy that, you know, he wrote a bunch of essays in the 1960s that supported segregation. At one point he called slavery a useful educational system.

And because of guys like him that were gatekeepers, these stories didn't get through in people like Delaney and Octavia Butler who were going to talk about a lot more. She talked about being in school and even her teachers saying things like, you know,'s like really necessary for the plot like you shouldn't have a black protagonist unless it's like for a reason or You know if you're gonna talk about race In a way, you know in science fiction Maybe like make them extra terrestrial instead of black is sort of like a metaphor Because it's kind of too heavy for people to, you know, to really take.

Right. Octavia Butler wrote a really great essay in 1980 called The Lost Races of Science Fiction. And she took on that excuse for why there wasn't more black people in science fiction works. And she zeroed it on Star Wars as an example, the first one. And she said, war, okay, planet-wide destruction, okay. Kidnapping, okay, but the sight of a minority person, too heavy, too real. So she's pointing out that like, there's plenty of real world stuff that you could consider pretty horrible. Yeah.

That is just fine in science fiction, but race is too distracting. And that was like just kind of the drum that was beaten by guys like John W. Campbell. And the reason why they were so powerful was because at the time, if you wanted to get your novel published, basically the most direct route was to have it serialized first in one of those magazines that guys like John W. Campbell edited. Yeah. And then if you keep Black authors out of Black sci-fi, you also largely keep Black readers out of sci-fi too. And just by preventing people like Samuel Delaney from getting his stories serialized, Black

sci-fi writers were basically kept out and is Genetting who won Best New Writer of 2019 for science fiction writing. I Can't remember which award. I think it was actually maybe that same award from analog science fiction in fact. Mm-hmm. She said that's weird title for me. It really is. She said that John W. Campbell had kept science fiction, stale, sterile, male, white, exalting of imperial aspirations, colonialism, settlement, and industrialism. And she was basically just, I mean, we're not gonna harp on this the whole episode,

but there was a huge block in this particular genre, and it was just a handful of people who everybody else went along with, it seems like. For sure. I think that's a great initial 15 minute overview. Yeah. And we'll come back and talk just about the term itself and where it came from right after this.

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It was coined by a white writer named Mark Derry in the early 90s, in 1993, and a piece called Black to the Future. And in that piece, he interviewed a few writers, Delaney, a music writer named Gregory Tate, and Trisha Rose, who's a sociologist. And basically, the whole point of the essay was, why are there so few working novelists, African-American novelican novelist working in this genre what happened to get us here why are there more now and what can we do about it to change this in the future and and he's like especially like science fiction seems to specially suited for people of color because and this is a great quote he said in a very real sense, uh, there the descendants of alien abductees. And like when you think of it like that, it makes a lot of sense that sci-fi would kind

of be, you know, uh, something that really fits. Yeah, and he was right. It turned out to be a great fit for, um, African American sci-fi writers, but still at the time there were basically four that he could think of, including, um, Samuel Delaney in Octavia Butler, then also a guy named Steve Barnes, who's written basically everything that has anything to do with science fiction, and then another fantasy author named Charles Saunders. And that was basically it, and this was the mid-90s that this guy was writing this essay and doing these interviews. But he hit it right on the head that it is a really great basis or springboard for black

writers to kind of explore the past and the future. But he defined it as a speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th century technoculture. And basically, he took what was already happening and firmly labeled it and put a lot of constraints on it when he coined the term Afro-futurism and then defined it like that. Yeah, and that's where there is some, I guess, debate over whether or not

it should be strictly limited through the lens of African Americans and the diaspora or just black culture worldwide as a whole. And I think at the end we'll talk about some of the other more inclusive names that kind of encompass all kind of worldwide black culture. But there are people that kind of are on both sides of the fence. And I mean, I guess for me, you know, I just I just think it's all great. So nitpicking about, you know, the exact definition is not for me, but we have to point

it out that it's out there. And then there is a debate. Yeah. And one of the big things is whether it's specifically African-American, because there's a lot more black communities out there than just African-Americans. There's one of many. You've got the entire continent of Africa and all of its various groups. You've got the diaspora, like you said, African-American descendants, or African descendants living

in Europe, and Asia, and all around the world. Then there's even subtypes as well. Like the African-American diaspora is made up of people whose ancestors were enslaved in America, and then once they were free, moved out of America into Mexico, Canada, wherever. So there's a lot of different groups and what Mark Derry did was situate exclusively in the realm of African-Americans. That's a big point of debate still today.

The other thing, Wilmaq points out in that book, which is very easy for a middle-aged white guy to overlook is the fact that these Afro-futurist themes are a way of, she talked about a method of self-aliberation, self-healing. So, to imagine a future for your race is a hopeful thing. So, if you're in a hostile world, it's probably very easy to have a very bleak depiction of the future of your people. And these stories, like they're sure it's science fiction and science fiction is always

just sort of not light. It's actually very heavy in a lot of cases, but maybe not to be taken seriously by some people, but I don't think it's like that. I think that it can offer very heavy commentaries and it can offer hope to people that like, hey, if we can write about ourselves in the future, that means we can imagine ourselves like thriving in the future. Yeah, and similarly, it's a way for African-Americans and people of African descent in general to stake a claim of the future too, right? Because if you think about the future, and I think Mark Dairy made the point,

like if you look at Tomorrowland from a Disney World and Disney Land, it's super white. And the future in general is just white. It's like a projection of current times. And Afro futurism says, nope, there's a different way of looking at it too. And this was the one that kind of triggered understanding for me. The distinction between Afro-futurism and just any other kind of, say, sci-fi that features like a black character is that you're not just taking like an African American and making him or her them an astronaut in the structure of the current imagined future, which again is super white. The basis of Afro-futurism is completely reimagining the future, completely reimagining the past through a black lens, kind of like if black people were in charge of producing the future,

this is a vision of what it could be like, kind of thing. Rather than just following along the current trajectory that we've been on all this time in America, which is a super white trajectory that includes other people, but the basis of everything, the structure of everything is through the white lens. This is taking it through a black lens, and I saw it put as defamiliarizing what we think of as the future. I like that term.

I thought you would. That makes sense. There's one guy who we have to mention who's a complicated guy to say the least, There's one guy who we have to mention who is you know Complicated guy to say the least and that is one of the first sort of 20th century Afro futurist writers who was George Skylar and He wrote generally for black publications, but he wrote all these books

He wrote novels and essays and short stories and things He wrote all these books. He wrote novels and essays and short stories and things Sometimes there were pulp stories and they were exactly what we've been talking about There was one in the 30s these serialized pulp stories about a global black uprising Against white colonialism But he wrote these under pseudonyms the pseudonym Samuel I Brooks and Skylar himself in IRL would write essays kind of slamming stories that he wrote as Brooks. He wrote, he said it was Hochum and Hackwork in the Purse vein and was a very conservative guy in his real life and like backed Joseph McCarthy's campaign against a communist and he was sort of opponent of the civil rights movement and it's just, man, I need to dive into this guy a little more and see that's some serious complication right there, you know?

For sure, he is, but he wrote that book Black No More where you could visit a machine, pay $50 and after a three-day process be turned from black to white and it completely upends society and civilization both in the white community and the black community. And he wrote that as George Skyler, the conservative guy. But he's considered one of the first progenitors of the Afro-futurism in the 20th century. And then simultaneously Chuck, as guys like Skylar are writing and Samuel I Brooks, who is the same guy, is there writing Afro-futurism, a musical form of Afro-futurism is kind of developing too. And if you look back in the past, it was just a few people popping up

and doing something that eventually, a couple of decades later, you could say, I'll fall into the same general category. Yeah, I mean, these are all sort of in the cases of Skylar and the guys we're about to talk about is all these are all like retroactive titles. Right. Because that term wasn't around back then.

But you can't talk about Afro-futurism without talking about George Clinton and Sunra on the music side. And I spent the basically all day listening to a Sunra playlist. And it is, you know, I have to be in the mood for this kind of jazz. It is, it's tough, it's very free form. It's very odd and it's not like, this very melodic, super-listenable kind of thing. It's challenging music and Sun Rao

was a really interesting guy. He was born in Birmingham in 1914 as Herman Blount. And he moved to Chicago in the 40s and played a little more traditional type jazz. But in the 60s, he went to New York and things really, he really freed himself up of what the idea of jazz or just composed music could be. He was out there cat in all the right ways for sure and he made more than 150 albums with his Orchestra and the whole premise of it was that he was essentially kind of like a The the profit returned from Saturn to help lead Humanity if not just African-Americans, off of Earth because things like slavery

had ruined Earth. And he had this whole mythos. This wasn't just like a concept album that he put. This is his whole career. It's a cancer career, yeah. Yeah, for decades, this is how he lived. And he inspired a lot of people. And I'm with you, that kind of jazz is hard for me

to listen to, no matter who's playing it. But he had an album from 1957 that I think is super easy to listen to called supersonic jazz. I think it's technically before, yeah, it's before he moved to New York and really set up the orchestra. But it's clearly Sunra, like you can tell. So if you want to try out Sunra and you tried some of his later stuff, you're like, I'm not ready for this. Listen to Supersonic Jazz, that album first and see what you think. Yeah, that's good. Don't leave them down that that that confusing. So so confusion jazz. Yeah, much more accessible as

George Clinton and Parliament Funkadel, right? Yeah, I'm a is George Clinton and parliament funka dellik, right? Yeah I'm a big fan I always have been Attend to lean more toward the funka dellik records than the parliament even though I love the parliament stuff, too But he is someone I've seen a few times in live and I'm going to see him again next month where at symphony hall where we're performing Oh neat. I just like to share the same stage, not at the same time obviously, but just to be on the same stage that George Clinton will be on, or had been on is pretty cool. Yeah. We're not worthy. But always a great show. His band is awesome. I mean, it's all it's very space age. She used to have the mothership that would come down on the stage and he would enter the

mothership. It's just a great sort of feast for the eyes and ears. Hey, that reminds me of before you go on, I'm sorry to interrupt, but just coincidentally, the main exhibit right now at the National Museum of African American History in DC is Afro-futurism. Oh, cool. And one of the cool things they have on display is a replica of the UFO that George Clinton would come on to stage in. And the mothership there?

Yeah, is it like life size? Yes, yeah, it's like an exact replica because apparently somebody threw away the one that he used in the 70s and in the 90s when they started touring again They made a replica and I think that's the exact one that's in the Smithsonian Yeah, well the first time I saw him was when he started up again and he was on that Lala Paloza tour And he played a show I saw him at the Lala Paloza, but I saw him the night before at the center stage theater Hey, we also played there actually man at the center stage theater. Hey, we also played there actually. Man, that's a small joint. He did the show at the center stage and you know, he was getting up there in

age at the time back then. I imagine when I see him next month, like, he's an older guy now, but he was, he was still getting down back then and he had the, the BC boys came out at the end and because they were playing Lollapaloo's in sort of like this all-star thing. It was pretty great. But Clinton was a kid who listened, I'm sorry, who watched Star Trek and Buck Rogers and was into sci-fi. And it was just, again, it was one of those things where he didn't see any representation. He just knew what he liked. Apparently took acid later on and watched 2001's Space Odyssey in Fantasia when he took LSD for the first time and that, you know, that's some pretty

profound impacts. So one of the things that I didn't realize, because, you know, we're living in the post-parliament era. But one of the things that parliament did was unite a generally fractured black community after the MLK assassination. Apparently there was a lot of just fracturing in the black community. A few years later George Clinton came along and kind of tried to bring people together by throwing a party for the African-American community in the United States and the world really. And so the whole premise was that George Clinton and the rest of the P funk All-Sars, who include like Bernie Warhol or Bernie Warhol and Bootsie Collins, they were aliens who'd

come to earth to teach everybody how to party. They were, this is a quote, Afro-ronauts capable of funcotizing galaxies. Yeah. I mean, it's so cool. One I quickly mentioned local Atlanta guy, Lonnie Holley, as well. Lonnie, you remember Matt Arnett, our friend who, uh, well, we know Matt through a lot of different ways here in Atlanta, but big supporter of the arts and Matt is Lonnie's kind of friend. And I guess he's a tour manager and manager, but Lonnie Holley is a modern representation

of sort of what Afro futurism is and still plays these small shows and his stuff is really, really good and just soulful and like intense and weird. is really really good. Oh yeah. Just soulful and like intense and weird. It's really cool. Yeah, it's super cool. I've never heard his stuff, but I'm going to check it out now. Yeah, if you can see him live because that's when it gets really kind of awesome. Well, take me to a show. Well, he doesn't play a lot.

It's how he played in New York recently because Michael's type of course was there. You can finally up to New York, what's your problem? I saw Matt in court the other day. So we were only able to text from across the courtroom. There's got to be a story there. We were both fighting the man. You know, we were both right and basically just the bureaucracy of Atlanta had kept us down and find us for various things. Hashtag hero. Yeah, I can get into it later, but both of us were like, this is such BS. So, yeah, so the whole parliament mythos that kind of developed, it actually did help bring people

together quite a bit. And it was just kind of a point where not just black people, but white people and people of all color who were into funk could really just come together and agree on that. Which is, like if you just kind of look at it like that, it's like yeah, they had a band and a lot of people like them. But if you just kind of scratch just one level down, that's really significant to make something on purpose to purposefully bring people together and not to talk about problems, not to

hammer, issue, or anything like that, but just to kind of give everybody a place to kind of breathe and chill together and get away from the rest of the issues and just kind of come together. That's what parliament did. And I think that's pretty neat. And they're not the only group that ever did that, but it seems that George Clinton's express purpose was doing that from what I can tell. Yeah. And he put his own like cool psychedelic futuristic spin on it, you know. And another just real quick side thing, another musician that's often overlooked, but sometimes cited as Afrofuturist is Lee Scratch Perry, who created Dubrae Gay.

And he did do some kind of far out stuff. He was a far out due to apparently, but like just his music alone has like a spacey vibe to it that you're just, you're vibe to it that you just you're overlooking it if you don't include it in Afro futurism. Yeah, for sure. We have to talk about art a little bit. I mean, all of this is art obviously, but John Michelle Basquiat, one of the great artists in our history here in North America. He is one of the first Afro futurists of in the fine

art world and he was a guy that was listening to funk edelican parliament and groups like that and hip-hop culture informed his art. There was this graffiti artist and more name rammelzy who I looked into this guy man I had never heard of him. He died in 2010, but he was a sculptor and a writer and a performance artist and graffiti artist. And his stuff looks really, really cool and he was definitely one of these guys that was, you know, dressing up as like this futuristic show gun. He was blending cultures and genres and, a basket out was buddies with him. So all these people were doing this stuff, you know, it wasn't like, oh, I'm going to seek fame and fortune as a graffiti artist to dress us up like a futuristic samurai. Right. They were doing this stuff because it was like what moved them and it stands out because there weren't a lot of black people doing this kind of thing.

Right. That's the that's the initiation of a movement. That's where it starts. Right. Totally. Octavia Butler is also, I mean, she was a hallmark, a founder of Black science fiction writing and also Afro-futurism. But just like you were talking about Ramelsy and Basquiat, like she wasn't trying to create like a place for black people to write in science fiction. This is just what she did to escape her own life and her own self-consciousness. She wrote sci-fi stories like that's where she went and she was really good at it. There's a really great kind of biography on her called the spectacular life of Octavia Butler. That was in Vulture. That's worth reading. It really dives into her life and her career.

She was a really exceptional person, but she just kind of started slow, was very much underpaid and overlooked and just kept at it and kept at it. And finally in the 90s, people really started to recognize her and went back and looked at some of her past work and said, this writer's pretty amazing.

Yeah, she was the first sci-fi writer to get a MacArthur genius grant. And there's a TV show last year, the year before, from her book, Kindred, from 1979, which I didn't see. I saw the FX cancel that after one season, but that was about, the premise looked really cool. It was about a modern black woman who time travels to meet her and the people who enslaved her. And I remember seeing the trailers and stuff at the time. I was like, this looks really good, but I didn't realize that it was an Octavia butler book. So I just learned that like today or yesterday. Yeah, that was just one book, Kindred.

She also had a series called the Xeno Janisa series from the 80s. Parable of the Sower was the beginning of a series that she wrote. And I think it came out in 1993. And that was the one that got everybody's attention. And then they went back and were like, Oh, good. This lady has a whole can and that we get to read now. But yeah, she was she was pretty neat. I strongly recommend going and reading the spectacular life of Octavia Butler. Yeah.

Should we take another break? Yes. Okay, we'll take another break. We'll talk about kind of where things stands now. And also just talk about a lot of other great artists right after this. There's a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Does the US government really have alien technology? And what about the future of artificial intelligence, AI?

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to NFL cheerleaders, to extreme sports legends, to New York City firefighters, who survived 9-11. Listen to the good stuff on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So Chuck, things really started to change where Afro Futurism went from this cool thing that kind of existed sporadically into being defined by a white journalist in the mid-90s, into becoming mainstream, starting in the mid 90s into becoming mainstream starting in the late 90s. Thanks in large part and I didn't really realize this until you said it to Will Smith getting roles like men in black, Independence Day, I am legend, like just tons of movies. I never really realized it before,

He's been in tons of sci-fi movies. I never really realized it before, but he was a huge kind of glass ceiling breaker for African Americans in sci-fi because up to that point, it was like if you saw a black person in a sci-fi movie or a horror movie, you just knew that they were one of the first ones to die. That's just like this long standing kind of trope. Yeah. And it started to change in the 90s where they're like, oh, actually, we can use a black protagonist and they can actually carry the movie.

At least if you get Will Smith in there, who else can we give a chance to? Wesley Snipes. Yeah. He was in Blade. The Matrix, of course, featured not in the lead, but they featured people of color in their trilogy.

I think more and more in the second and third movies, even. And then, you know, today I was like, is Jordan Peel and Afro Futurist filmmaker? And I read some stuff and like, he's, he dabbles in it. It's not like straight up Afro Futurism in the traditional sense that you might think of, but there are certainly elements of it in everything he's done, especially this last one and note. That was so cool. Yeah, I mean, no spoilers there, but that movie was not the movie.

I thought it was. It was way more sci-fi and way less horror. For sure. But I think he's kind of, you know, carrying that torch along in his own way and a way that's kind of dabbles in Afro-futurism that is way more mainstream, which is a valuable thing, you know? Yes, that is a great example of what I was talking about earlier, where I didn't really realize,

I'd heard the term Afro-futurism before, obviously, but I'd never really looked into it until we started researching this, but when I did, I realized like, it just pops up all over the place and that's a really good example of his Jordan Peel's movies. Like, they're not necessarily like the whole point as Afrofeaturism.

It's just shows up. It's like an influence. It's a part of the whole thing. And there's a Colson Whitehead's another good example of that too. He is like one of the gleaming beacons of literature right now. And in his very realistic novels, fantastic stuff can happen. And that's, that's Afro Futurism popping its head up as well.

Again, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the future, but it falls under speculative fiction or speculative literature in some way, shape or form. Yeah. I guess we can talk about music a little more. Yeah, let's, because again, just like in movies in the late 90s, things, even starting in the early mid 90s, things really started to take an aphorofuturistic turn in music. Yeah. And by way of hip hop, if you look at the history of hip hop, the DNA of Eiffrofuturism is kind of woven throughout it. Earlier groups, groups that I really like, like, digable planets, and I don't know if you

ever listened to any cool-key stuff, but cool-key's had a character and a concept album he did called Dr. Octagon That was very weird and awesome. I Won't give away He's kind of weird. He's a he's a time traveling gynecologist, right? So I guess I did kind of give it away, but it's really good Wu Tang and of course specifically Risa with Bobby digital And then when I was looking at, you know, like Beyonce uses kind of Afro-futuristic aesthetics

and a lot of her videos and stage shows. And so Lange does too. But when I was kind of reading about them and Janelle Monet, who's certainly really represents Afro-futurism, I was like, Missy Elliott. Like why aren't we talking about missy Elliott cuz she was before all of them and was could really get out there as far as you know talking about writing around spaceships and stuff yeah all of your videos are super after a future is that even when she's sitting there in front of the camera like like rap and like she's doing weird stuff or she's in outer space or she's in virtual reality or something like that. Yeah, she's definitely at least influenced, if not in influencer, of Afro-futurism. Another one I saw that I

hadn't considered, but I'm like, oh yeah, totally, indigable planets, especially their first album. They were from outer space, they were insects from outer space who'd come to help the world out. And I just never thought about that before. Yeah, that's all that, well, I got a side story. I'll tell you all fair, but I saw them in college and Athens and then. And you saw them in court last week.

And then the only other time I saw them was on their reunion tour a couple of years ago. Oh, yeah, cool. So the big break in between, but it was great. But their second album, I think, was on their reunion tour a couple of years ago. Oh, yeah. Cool. So the big break in between, but it was great. But they're second album, I think, was really awesome. And it wasn't after futuristic. No, but it is one of the greatest albums of all time. So good.

Well, we can't talk about all of the people, but we'll talk about a couple of more because I wanted to mention John Jennings and Stacey Robinson, who are, they are in the comic book world and they work under the name Black Kirby, which is obviously a riff on the great comic book artist, Jack Kirby. And they reimagine sort of Kirby stuff through the African American lens and things like the unkillable buck instead of the incredible hull and stuff like that. It's really cool looking. And then they are I think influenced by one of the first African American comic book writers was Larry Fuller

in the late 60s. He created a character named Iban, EBON, which I think was the first black superhero or at least among the first. Yeah, I saw one of the black Kirby characters as Major San Cofa or San Cofa. I'm not quite sure how you say it, but it's sanctifies like a, it means like the spirit of going looking backward into the past and taking what's good there and moving it into the future.

And it was Major San Cofa instead of Captain America. And it's a, it's just cool. I like that whole concept for sure. Yeah, and if we're going to talk comics, we have to shout out Stanley and Jack Kirby because they created Black Panther. And that is sort of maybe the biggest, most mainstream example of Afro futurism on the big screen that we've ever seen. These Black Panther movies are huge. They're wildly successful They're award-winning and they are after a futuristic like to a tee. Yeah, and apparently we have Chadwick Boseman to thank for

Keeping all of the African characters from having British accents. Yeah, man Can you imagine like colonization a ho, like all these people have British accents. So he insisted that they speak with a South African accent, not the British kind, but the hosta. I did it. That dialect, that's the accent they were speaking with the hosta, close. Yeah, I did it. I got a three times. That was pretty good. But I think it's Haasa. No, oh, it's not not anymore. Okay Well Trevor knows as it different. It's a hard thing to do. It's that the Zulu

You know, I click language for lack of a better term, but it's um it's hard to do it because you have to click at the same time that you're saying something Yeah, it's right. It I practiced it and I was like, I can't do it. So I wasn't gonna try, but that's off to you, sir. So, Kasa, Kasa? Kasa? That's how Trevor Noah said it. And of course, he was on this, now nevermind. Well, he's from South Africa, so I'll defer to him.

Yeah. So where are we now with Afro futurism? We are in a better place than we've ever been as far as just more and more stuff. It's becoming more mainstream, not as just sort of different and other than it used to be. But this is where we've gotten to the point where people start to drill down on the term. Some people say, is it just too broad of a thing to call sort of all this stuff afro, man, keep messing that up, afro futurism. When it, you know,

there are people, like I said at the beginning, that said, no, it should always, I believe his name was, he's a science fiction fantasy writer, Nigerian American name, Tochi Onyabuchi, said this should always be addressing, or at least allegorizing black suffering, otherwise it shouldn't count. And so people have formed other words like, astro-blackness, that's a pretty cool one. Yeah, that's no gothic, that one's neat. I like that one too.

The black fantastic magical realism. There's another, another Nigerian American science fiction writer named Indie Okora for, I think I'm pronouncing that right. And she coined the term African futurist. And was like, you know, these African American stories are great. But like, I also like to tell the stories through the lens say, you know, these African American stories are great, but like I also like to tell the stories through the lens of, you know, Africans. And so African futurism is rooted in all these cultures. Yeah. African futurists and African jujus to for fantasy kind of stuff.

But yeah, that was that debate I was talking about earlier. It's like, is it just through the lens of African Americans or what? Yeah. Yeah. So you said it, it's gone mainstream. And we've reached the point where it's becoming so mainstream that it's just part of pop culture. It's not like a separate tangential or additional part of pop culture. It's infused in the pop culture. And so you get to the point where you do even need a name for this anymore.

Right. It is what it is. And if that's the case, then people like Samuel Delaney and all the people who came before him, Octavia Butler, Sun, Ra, George Clinton were fully successful. Even if they didn't intend to create something like that, they were still successful in their own way.

Yeah, oh, absolutely. I think it's so mainstream now, there are for sure studio executives that are like, we need to black people in space things. Netflix has theirs, why don't we have ours? It's exactly right. And that means mainstream. Yeah, that means that everybody needs to figure out

a new artistic path to blaze. That's right. And I don't feel bad making fun of the studio execs because they are. They don't want to pay their artist fair wages. And that's why the writers on strike. Just real quick, a couple more people. Man's El Bowman is a graphic designer. He does amazing stuff.

Lena Iris Victor, an amazing painter. Kamasi Washington, kind of carrying on the vibe of Sunraw, but way, way more melodic. And then like you said, Janelle Monet, she's the poster child of Afrofeaturism right now. She's with her concept album, Dury Computer, and a book set in the same world memory library. And she's just totally going nuts on it. And you mean by the way, just loves her. Has a crush on her, she said. Well, she, I was just about to say she's also my celebrity crush, so you mean I share that. Pretty great. Yeah, it's hard not to. I got to keep you and you mean in Janelle Monet out of the same room. That's good. That dirty computer man. What a great record.

And I'm going to see Beyonce later this year. And I've never been to a big pop show like that in my life. And I just, I like having, you know, I'm not even, I'm not even the hugeest Beyonce fan just because it's not something I listen to much. But it's like, you know, I want to go to one of these big pop shows and like, who else should I go to? I'm not going to go see Taylor Swift. I'll go to Beyonce.

Hi, nice. Well, I mean, I'm sure the Taylor Swift show was great too, but yeah, Beyonce's looks like, I don't know, more at my speed. Taylor Swift, her show like this tours apparently three hours long. Yeah, it's supposed to be amazing. My mom went actually. She got free tickets through a friend and doesn't go to stuff like that and like big concerts and stuff and isn't even a big Taylor Swift person and she was just

like, it was so great. Well, I think we all knew at the beginning of this episode that there was a hundred percent chance Taylor Swift was gonna come up. I saw that coming. Well, if you want to know more about Afrofuturism, you can do a lot worse than go on to Instagram and search for that hashtag and start looking. Just look all over the internet and you will find a whole new world of pretty cool stuff, including some stuff you already knew about that you never really thought about. Okay?

I agreed. Since Chuck said agreed it's time for Listener Mail. Okay, I'm going to call this brown fat. Oh yeah, delicious. Yeah, what we talked about that in our... Oh gosh, why am I blanking now? Yeah, I think it was our intermittent fasting episode. Oh yeah, yeah, I thought it was our tailor's with deputant.

Uh, hey guys, just finished listening to intermittent fasting. And was so excited when brown fat was mentioned. I learned about brown fat this past year in school in my biochemistry class, and it's more amazing than what Josh was even guessing in the episode. You were guessing? No, I was speaking. You were speaking some facts. Brown Fat's main biological purpose is to release heat to keep the body temperature

stable. I think I said that actually. To do this, it actually breaks down white fat in a way that allows for more heat to be released per fat molecule, burned, than if regular cells were breaking down the white fat. Because this helps keep body temperature stable, people who live in cold environments adapt to living there by having more brown fat cells than people who do not. Babies are also born with high brown fat levels and helps them adapt to life outside the womb for the first few days. Also born with high brown fat levels and keeps them help some adapt to life outside the womb

for the first few days. Just really want to thank you guys for everything you've done for me over the years. Started listening in 2018 in high school, just graduated with my bachelor's in chemical engineering from the University of Tennessee. Oh, congratulations, who's that? Go balls.

And that is from Sarah Betten. Thanks, Sarah. Thank you very much. And thanks to Brown Fat 2 for being so great that Sarah wrote a listen or mail about it. Yeah, I mean that's a band name. I don't need to get recognized at the time as such. Brown Fat, yeah. Like one of those albums where the name of the band, the first song and the album are all the same. You know, I can't think of one right now but it's definitely out there.

Okay well uh this whole conversation is petered out so if you want to get in touch with us and let us know you graduated college we say congratulations in advance. You can send us email to stuffpodcast.it-heartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. So, there is a ton of stuff they don't want you to know. Yeah, like does the US government really have alien technology? Or what about the future of AI?

What happens when computers actually learn to think? Could there be a serial killer in your town? From UFOs to psychic powers and government cover-ups, from unsolved crimes to the bleeding edge of science, history is riddled with unexplained events. Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Hi, I'm Deli Wilde, and I want to invite you to listen to my newest podcast. We are starting up in the sense that the atoms that make up our bodies are already existed

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