Designing for Survival: Business, Babies, and What Keeps Us Human with Lexi Montee Busch

Stop Calling It Supremacy — It’s Terrorism | Part 4: Racism as the Operating System.

We'd love to hear from you. Send us your questions, comments, and suggestions. [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/fan_mail/new] In episode 4 of the series, Chisom turns to the operating system that white terrorism built: racism. The chapter opens with the precise distinction between racial prejudice and racism: prejudice is what individuals carry, racism is what happens when racial prejudice meets systemic power. The chapter traces the construction of race itself across the papal bulls, the Iberian casta system, the English colonial slave codes, the French Code Noir, and the nineteenth-century scientific racism whose biological dressing has been settled as fiction while the political category continues to operate. It marks the May 25, 2026 Pope Leo XIV encyclical apologising for the Holy See’s role in legitimizing slavery, names that Leo did the specific thing his predecessors refused to do, and notes that the bulls have still not been rescinded. It makes the case for anti-Black racism as the foundational case the operating system was built around through three arguments: the economic, the global export, and the intra-racial reproduction in colorism. It names the family of racisms (anti-Indigenous, anti-Arab, anti-Asian, anti-Jewish, anti-Roma) as variants of the same technology, each with its own history and present. It documents anti-Black racism in 2026 globally: Black maternal mortality in the U.S., in the U.K., in Norway; police violence disproportionately of Black Americans, Nahel Merzouk in France, U.K. stop-and-search disparities, and the 6,243 Brazilian police killings in 2024 with 82 percent of victims Black; the Mediterranean border regime and its more than 30,000 dead since 2014; the Dominican Republic’s mass deportations of Haitian-descended people, more than 276,000 in 2024 and more than 379,000 in 2025; and the post-2023 corporate DEI rollback. The episode names five predictable critiques, including the “we have moved on” deflection among many people across continents and racialised groups who claim we live in post-racial, post-sexist, post-homophobic, post-Islamophobic, post-colonial worlds we do not actually live in. The episode locates Chisom as a woman whose children will encounter the operating system in a different form than she did. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/support] ----------------------------------- On Overnight Wisdom, new solo episodes drop every Wednesday, with occasional guest conversations released on Sundays.  Streaming & Social Links Visit our website https://overnightwisdom.com/ [https://overnightwisdom.com/] YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze [https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze] Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz [https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz] Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544] Instagram https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/ [https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/] TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@overnight.wisdom [https://www.tiktok.com/@chisom_udeze] LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/] RSS Feed https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss [https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss] Connect with Chisom on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/]

On Our Shared Humanity, Leadership, & System’s Change — Logan McClure Davda, CEO of TED

We'd love to hear from you. Send us your questions, comments, and suggestions. [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/fan_mail/new] In this episode of Overnight Wisdom, Chisom sits down with Logan McClure Davda, CEO of TED, for a layered conversation on leadership, systems change, joy, motherhood, power, and what it means to remain human while building institutions that shape the world. Logan reflects on her path from mission-driven work in East Africa, to Palantir, the Obama Foundation, and eventually back to TED, where she now leads one of the world’s most influential platforms for ideas. Together, they explore what systems change actually requires, why real impact is rarely the work of one heroic individual, and how ideas travel differently when they are held in community. The conversation moves through the responsibility of platforming difficult perspectives, the need for nuance in a polarized world, the role of TED in climate and democracy work, and the challenge of building spaces where disagreement does not become dehumanization. Chisom and Logan also speak candidly about motherhood, caregiving, joy as resistance, privilege in birth, AI, imposter syndrome, and the discipline of staying grounded when the world feels overwhelming. At its core, this is a conversation about clarity, complexity, and responsibility. What does it mean to lead without losing your humanity? How do we build for the future when we may never sit under the shade of the trees we plant? And how do we keep choosing connection in a world that keeps rewarding division? Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/support] ----------------------------------- On Overnight Wisdom, new solo episodes drop every Wednesday, with occasional guest conversations released on Sundays.  Streaming & Social Links Visit our website https://overnightwisdom.com/ [https://overnightwisdom.com/] YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze [https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze] Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz [https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz] Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544] Instagram https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/ [https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/] TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@overnight.wisdom [https://www.tiktok.com/@chisom_udeze] LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/] RSS Feed https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss [https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss] Connect with Chisom on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/]

Stop Calling It Supremacy — It’s Terrorism | Part 3: The Settler Structure

We'd love to hear from you. Send us your questions, comments, and suggestions. [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/fan_mail/new] In Chapter 3 of the series, Chisom turns to the present tense. Settler colonialism is not a phase that European empires went through and emerged from. It is a structure that continues to operate, on every populated continent, in 2026. The chapter opens by naming the three forms of white terrorism’s modern operation: extractive colonialism, plantation slavery, named briefly and flagged for a future chapter; and settler colonialism, the focus of the rest of the episode.  Chisom walks through three live cases chosen to show the structure operating across its full register. Greenland under Denmark, where the Spiral Case is delivering individual compensation in 2026 while the colonial relationship continues, shows what the structure does to bodies. Indigenous nations in the United States, where the Doctrine of Discovery still operates in property law and where Indigenous women are murdered at more than ten times the national average, shows what the structure does to land and to law. Palestine, where the July 2024 ICJ ruling has been ignored, where the UN concluded in September 2025 that Israel committed genoc!de in Gaza, and where settler violence and settlement expansion in the West Bank reached unprecedented levels in 2025, shows what the structure does to both at once.  Chisom weaves the Doctrine of Discovery through the chapter as one variant of a global legal pattern of fictions that empty the land, alongside terra nullius in Australia, the Absentee Property Law in Israel, and state-land doctrines in the Nordics. She names directly that white terrorism, in the historical sense, is a system built by specific European institutions across specific centuries, now operated by multiple actors including the UAE, China, Russia, and corrupt African leaders, none of whom are the architects, all of whom are profiting from the architecture. She locates herself, as a Nigerian Black woman living in a country occupying Sami land. She closes with three principles for repair: restitution, sovereignty, truth.  Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/support] ----------------------------------- On Overnight Wisdom, new solo episodes drop every Wednesday, with occasional guest conversations released on Sundays.  Streaming & Social Links Visit our website https://overnightwisdom.com/ [https://overnightwisdom.com/] YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze [https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze] Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz [https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz] Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544] Instagram https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/ [https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/] TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@overnight.wisdom [https://www.tiktok.com/@chisom_udeze] LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/] RSS Feed https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss [https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss] Connect with Chisom on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/]

Stop Calling It Supremacy — It’s Terrorism | Part 2: From Bodies to Borders.

We'd love to hear from you. Send us your questions, comments, and suggestions. [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/fan_mail/new] In Part 2 of a series, Chisom traces the long history of white terrorism in Africa as one continuous story rather than a list of incidents. Twelve and a half million Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic between 1501 and 1866. Roughly 1.8 million died during the Middle Passage itself. The trade built Europe. Then it ended, between 1807 in Britain and 1888 in Brazil, and Europe pivoted. From taking Africans, to taking Africa.  From bodies, to borders. The Berlin Conference of November 1884, attended by fourteen Western powers and no Africans, formalized the rules for the territorial conquest of an entire continent in thirty-four years. Chisom walks through what Berlin produced: the Congo Free State and its eight to ten million dead, the Herero and Nama genocide and its direct documented institutional line to the Holocaust through the German anthropologist Eugen Fischer, British concentration camps in Mau Mau Kenya, the French settler colony of Algeria, and apartheid South Africa.  She handles the predictable critiques head-on, including the African kingdoms that participated in the slave trade and the post-independence African leaders who looted their own people. She implicates everyone, including the African leaders who continue to betray their people, and the African educational systems that still teach versions of history shaped for colonial purposes.  She closes with the receipts. The cobalt powering the device you are listening on. French uranium extracted from Niger. The British Museum still holding nine hundred looted Benin Bronzes. Climate displacement falling hardest on the continent that caused it least. Three principles for repair: restitution, sovereignty, truth. Africa is not a charity case. Africa is a creditor.  Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/support] ----------------------------------- On Overnight Wisdom, new solo episodes drop every Wednesday, with occasional guest conversations released on Sundays.  Streaming & Social Links Visit our website https://overnightwisdom.com/ [https://overnightwisdom.com/] YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze [https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze] Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz [https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz] Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544] Instagram https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/ [https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/] TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@overnight.wisdom [https://www.tiktok.com/@chisom_udeze] LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/] RSS Feed https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss [https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss] Connect with Chisom on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/]

Stop Calling It Supremacy — It’s Terrorism | Part 1: Language Change

We'd love to hear from you. Send us your questions, comments, and suggestions. [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/fan_mail/new] In Part 1 of a series, Chisom challenges the term “white supremacy” and proposes a language change: it is white terrorism. She traces the term to its 1824 origins, maps the papal bulls that gave genocide divine authority between 1452 and 1493, and shows how the Doctrine of Discovery is still embedded in U.S. and international law.  Using her Three Clarities Framework, Chisom reveals how white terrorism interlocks with patriarchy, capitalism, colonialism, and religion to create what bell hooks called “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” She handles the academic objections directly, addressing why “terrorism” rather than “racial capitalism” or “settler colonialism,” and acknowledges the lineage of Black freedom thinkers from Du Bois to Bell Hooks who used “white supremacy” descriptively for the system. She closes with the present. In April 2025, France acknowledged the injustice of Haiti’s independence debt and stopped short of reparations. Acknowledgment without restitution is the modern face of white terrorism. The crime is named. The wealth stays. Words shape reality. Let’s stop calling it supremacy. It’s terrorism. Part II - May 13. Overnight Wisdom is a weekly podcast, with new episodes every Wednesday. Support the show [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2464633/support] ----------------------------------- On Overnight Wisdom, new solo episodes drop every Wednesday, with occasional guest conversations released on Sundays.  Streaming & Social Links Visit our website https://overnightwisdom.com/ [https://overnightwisdom.com/] YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze [https://www.youtube.com/@Chisom-Udeze] Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz [https://open.spotify.com/show/5pD7OuPqWKDsd5ymoo7lSz] Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overnight-wisdom/id1804746544] Instagram https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/ [https://www.instagram.com/overnight.wisdom/] TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@overnight.wisdom [https://www.tiktok.com/@chisom_udeze] LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/ [https://www.linkedin.com/company/overnightwisdom/] RSS Feed https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss [https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2464633.rss] Connect with Chisom on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisomudeze/]