Bigger Than Me

December 7, 2025·1 hr·4 clips

Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti turns her back so 10,000 women can quietly leave, and not one of them moves.

The episode starts with a warning. The host says the unbleeped version has strong language, then turns to a story many listeners may already know. Six Democrats appear in a video. They are veterans of the U.S. military or intelligence communities, speaking to people in uniform about illegal orders. The wording lands hard. The host connects that warning to current uses of power, including boats destroyed off the coast of Venezuela and National Guard orders aimed at American cities. Then the story moves to another continent. Wartime Africa is the scene, with soldiers in Abeokuta and colonial officials trying to feed the Allied war effort. Rice becomes the fight. British authorities try to force more from local people, and market women take the pressure first. Tax collectors come into the markets. They are native collectors working under British colonial officers, and the women see them as servants of white district officers. The demands are harsh. Sellers are pushed to give up potatoes and rice for a third of their asking price, or risk having goods seized. The pressure keeps spreading. New fines arrive, prices are fixed, and women selling at night can be caught and dragged into court. Jail becomes part of doing business. Some women get hard labor. Some are imprisoned outside Abeokuta, beyond their families' reach. The story stays close to the ground: a literacy meeting, an old woman standing, and Wole Soyinka's memory of wartime life.

As heard by us

Illegal orders, colonial pressure, and the women who knew what obedience could cost.

The episode works by putting refusal and pressure side by side. Six Democrats with military or intelligence backgrounds, including Senators Mark Kelly and Alyssa Slotkin and Congressman Chris DiLuzio, release a video telling people in uniform that illegal orders can and must be…

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Why you'd press play

Two acts of refusal, set far apart in time and place, assembled around the same quiet question.

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