Join host Ayana Zaire Cotton where they reflect on worldbuilding and interdisciplinary practice with occasional guests. "For The Worldbuilders" is presented by Seeda School which hosts a 9-week retreat helping you seed, deepen or return to an interdisciplinary practice, release a creative offer and develop a cohesive narrative through the framework of worldbuilding.
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April 6, 2026Episode 9245 min
092. Erotic Engineering Principle 002: Invite Your Fear
Our fear invites us into the rites of passage, experiential learning, and embodied pedagogical opportunities unique to our current needs and life journey.The question is, what does fear want to teach us?We embrace fear and reasonable doubt because it teaches us WHERE and HOW we long to be RESOURCED — no matter the season of life we’re navigating.You might want to get a pen and paper. Inside this episode I’ll teach you how to use Erotic Engineering to collaborate with fear to actualize your desire in 3 steps.ResourcesApply To The Powerhouse Portal for 1:1 Erotic Engineering Support: https://www.seedaschool.com/phTune into my “Off The Grid” conversation with Amelia Hruby: https://offthegrid.fun/shownotes/ayana-zaire-cotton-ai-shameSubscribe to the Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Cover Art: Carrie Mae Weems, “Portrait of a Woman Who Has Fallen from Grace and into the Hands of Evil” (1988)
March 16, 202628 min
091. Erotic Engineering Principle 001: Make A Decision
Make a daily decision to commit to your dream.Make a daily decision to commit to your truth.Make a daily decision to commit to your power.We can decide we already belong at any time.That daily decision is the practice of aligning your desire with your capacity.This practice is what I like to call, Erotic Engineering.ResourcesApply To The Powerhouse Portal for 1:1 Erotic Engineering Support: https://inhodj7ezvc.typeform.com/to/s0Si8w6E Subscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Cover Art: Kodachrome image of Zora Neale Hurston taken 1946 July 18 by Carl Van Vechten (Source: Yale Collections)
February 27, 2026Episode 9059 min
090. Transmuting AI Shame Into Erotic Self-Respect
I’m seeing a lot of folks call for the public shaming of AI-users and AI-defenders. While that gets a lot of social media engagement and while I understand the righteous rage, the frustration, the moral outrage…I also know shame doesn’t work. It’s sticky but not effective. Shame induces silence, but self-respect induces power. What we need right now is to ground down and root in our collective power. Our worker power. That’s why I recorded this episode. ResourcesJoin Us In The Laboratory of Erotic Engineering: https://www.seedaschool.com/labSubscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzacoFollow Ayana on Threads: @ayzacoFollow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschoolFollow Seeda School on TikTok: @seedaschoolCitationsCover Art: Jack Whitten, Dead Reckoning I (1980) “In 1980, starting with Dead Reckoning, it was the first time I stood up to do a painting in ten years. It felt good. It felt good to come up off the floor and stand straight…Dead Reckoning is a term I had first heard when I was at Tuskegee, when I was with the Air Force ROTC. It deals with navigation. I remember the instructor explaining, at a certain point, as he put it, “If some shit happens,” [laughs] he says, “you have to make a decision.” Which is your best chance for survival? Do you continue on your present course? Or do you turn around and go back? That was the first time I’d heard that term, “dead reckoning.” Another version is that you throw away all your navigational tools. Get rid of all your tools. Learn to plot, to navigate, no tools. Just go by your heart, go by your feeling. It’s a rich term.” — Jack Whitten (Source: MoMA)
December 22, 2025Episode 8946 min
089. You’re More Powerful Than You Allowed Yourself To Imagine, Now What?
My intention inside this episode is to honor all the work you’ve done this year by offering a Winter Solstice spell, inviting you to get curious about the somatic architecture you’re dreaming from inside your next season. But above all, in this episode I want to celebrate you. Over the past 5 years you have held the overlapping grief of witnessing public lynchings by the hands of the police, a global pandemic we’re still inside of, wildfires and other continuous climate crises and witnessing genocide and humanitarian crises from Palestine to Sudan — not to name the domestic and relational ruptures you’ve tended to on more intimate scales, the new cities moved to, the new homes and communities you’ve had to build. And look at you, still choosing vulnerability, still choosing relation, still choosing love, still choosing to believe in yourself and your values and by extension — still choosing to believe in us. For that I am recording this episode to say thank you. This is my offering of gratitude.ResourcesLearn More and Apply The Powerhouse Portal to Work Together 1:1: https://www.seedaschool.com/phEnroll Into The Laboratory of Erotic Engineering Membership: https://www.seedaschool.com/labSubscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzacoFollow Ayana on Threads: @ayzacoFollow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschoolFollow Seeda School on TikTok: @seedaschoolCitations“Switching Houses From Scared Child House To Erotic Power House: How Corporal Punishment in Childhood Impacts Desire” by Ayana Zaire CottonSeed A World Retreat Alumni nènè myriam konaté invited us to imagine our existence as the offer in one of Seeda School's Open Studio sessions and that has been our grounding north star ever since. Check out their, clap back manifest(o), a 9-week personal excavation offer in service of fugitive practice(s).“Tend to the scared child first” post by Sonya Renee Taylor“Because I Love You” by Lex MarieCover Art: Betye Saar, Black Girl’s Window (1969) Saar has acknowledged the self-referential nature of the assemblage: “Even at the time, I knew it was autobiographical,” she has said. “We’d had the Watts Riots and the Black revolution. Also that was the year of my divorce. So in addition to the occult subject matter there was political and also personal content.” (Source: MoMA)
December 2, 2025Episode 8813 min
088. Why You Don’t Have What You Want
Read full newsletter: Why You Don’t Have What You Want — The Missing Link In The Be, Do, Have FrameworkRegister for free Discovery Workshop: Seed A Sales System Rooted In The Truth Of Your Desired IncomeYour cosmic desire steadies the ground as it shifts beneath your feet inside the work of transforming the stories you identify with — providing a much needed update to the “Be ➡️ Do ➡️ Have” framework into “Desire ➡️ Be ➡️ Do ➡️ Have”. As with everything we must ground inside desire first, so let’s start there.What’s your cosmic desire?How will it help hold the identity shifting work you’re being called into in this season of your business and worldbuilding practice?How do we practice remembering knowing what we want isn’t nearly as powerful as knowing why we want it?Reflecting on these questions is the Worldbuilder’s Way. These are the exact questions we answer inside the new Seeda School discovery workshop, “Seed A Sales System Rooted In The Truth Of Your Desired Income”. Register today to join us.
October 13, 2025Episode 8739 min
087. Carving Out SPACE for Creative Ceremony
This podcast episode is about integration. How do we go forward with all the colonial code, bumping up against the remembrance of our ancestral code? How do we integrate the concrete and the care? The cop in our head and the kid in our heart? How do we invite our fear and our spirit to the table? How might we act as the compassionate mediator? How might that compassionate mediation facilitate a practice of making art? My intention behind recording this episode is to wade inside of some of these questions with you.ResourcesLearn more and enroll into The Laboratory of Erotic Engineering: https://www.seedaschool.com/labLearn more and book a free Desire Discovery Call for 1:1 Erotic Engineering: https://www.seedaschool.com/engineerSubscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzacoFollow Ayana on Threads: @ayzacoFollow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschoolCitationsMexican artist Pedro Reyes believes in art’s functionality...“Truth, Lee and Elaw practiced what Phyllis Mack calls “spiritual theatre.” — Jayna Brown writing about Sojourner Truth in “Along the Psychic Highway: Black Women Mystics and Utopias of the Ecstatic”, Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds, pg. 28 (2021)The Flesh of the Matter: A Critical Forum on Hortense Spillers (2024) edited by Margo Natalie Crawford and C. Riley Snorton“Moving On Down the Line: Variations on the African-American Sermon” by Hortense J. SpillersBeloved (1987) by Toni MorrisonVictor Strecher talks about his SPACE framework inside the “Love 2.0: How to Fix Your Marriage, Part 2” Hidden Brain episode published October 6, 2025Cover Art: Simone Leigh (b. 1967, Chicago), Georgia Mae (2017), Medium: Salt-glazed stoneware, porcelain, and resin, Dimensions: 34 1/4 × 14 3/4 × 15 inches (87 × 37.5 × 38.1 cm) Source: Guggenheim Museum
September 16, 2025Episode 8644 min
086. Retreating Inside Agency Inspiring Desire Instead of Paralyzing Fear
My intention inside this episode is to invite us to re-calibrate inside our desire. As we search for safety, predictability and control, we can find ourselves impulsively grabbing for the tools of white supremacy culture in an attempt to catch our breath and find our footing once more. We extend deep compassion to ourselves for this reflex, with fascism, state sanctioned violence and the question of survival riding the air, it is no surprise that we may breathe in fear with our latest inhale. Inside this episode we exhale, remembering the tools of white supremacy culture are incompatible with the worlds we are building. The classrooms we’re spinning up in mid air, the apothecaries getting their start in our gardens growing into neighborhood pharmacies, the basements we’re turning into movie theaters streaming love, love, love. And before we know it, we’re impulsively picking up tools of a different kind. Tools for tending to a culture of care, where black life is sacred and shared vulnerability is more appealing than isolating in fear.ResourcesRegister for free to the brand new workshop, “Erotically Engineer Your Paid Creative Offering”: https://www.seedaschool.com/offerSubscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzacoFollow Ayana on Threads: @ayzacoFollow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschoolCitations“White Supremacy Culture” by Tema OkunThe Nap Ministry Post on Threads“The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.” — Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching GodCover Art: Love Jones Film Still (1997)
September 8, 2025Episode 8535 min
085. Erotically Engineer Your Paid Creative Offering
My intention inside this episode is invite you to consider how you might create an additional stream of income using the erotic skills already alive in your creative practice. This episode is for you if you are currently relying on income from one of three sources: 1) Artist Grants, 2) A College or University or 3) Full-time or part-time work with an organization (be it an institution, non-profit, or otherwise). Maybe you’re relying on income from a mix of all 3 but want to introduce a stream of income that you control. A stream of income in alignment with your Zone of Desire and the creative work you must do anyway. Whether you are an artist, academic or facilitator, you have developed a tolerance for creative improvisation, creative resourcefulness and even creative risk. What might it look and feel like to apply those creative skills to developing a paid offer as an additional income stream whose faucet you can turn on and off at any time? My intention inside today’s episode is to explore that question with you.ResourcesRegister for free to the brand new workshop, “Erotically Engineer Your Paid Creative Offering”: https://www.seedaschool.com/offerSubscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzacoFollow Ayana on Threads: @ayzacoFollow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschoolCitationsCover Art: Basket-maker Martha Cayetano. Source: “Exquisite Gullah-Geechee Baskets Are Now on Etsy” published on Hyperallergic
August 29, 2025Episode 8429 min
084. Create It, Not In The Future, But Now
My intention inside this episode is to remind you of that big, juicy, audacious creative vision that is all your own. That desire commensurate with the expanse of your power. That idea, project or offer that only feels intimidating because it is a threat to colonial order and the colonized part of us might be sacred of it. As it should be, but let’s rest in the fact that this is natural and impermanent. Just like fear is an indication of desire, so is the avoidance of our own audacity. Avoidance is different than procrastination. We procrastinate on certain tasks, because the stakes are usually low. We avoid our audacity, because the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been. Sometimes we avoid answering the call of our audacious desire because we know it will demand the sort of transformation that changes everything and perhaps that is entirely the point.ResourcesLearn More and Enroll Into the Laboratory of Erotic Engineering to Join Us Inside the Upcoming Workshop, "Create It, Not In The Future, But Now": https://www.seedaschool.com/labSubscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzacoFollow Ayana on Threads: @ayzacoFollow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschoolCitations“In the context of such enormous structural violence, how was it possible to imagine that a beautiful life is possible? Even more unthinkable was the idea that one might create it, not in the future, but now.” — Saidiya Hartman (Source: Regard for One Another: A Conversation Between Rizvana Bradley and Saidiya Hartman published via the Los Angeles Review of Books on October 8, 2019)Cover Art: Stills from Oscar Micheaux, Swing! (1938) (Library of Congress) (Source: “A Book of Necessary, Speculative Narratives for the Anonymous Black Women of History” by Sarah Rose Sharp, published via Hyperallergic on April 15th, 2019)
August 7, 2025Episode 8333 min
083. Use Erotic Engineering To Create A Life Rooted In Your Desire
Erotic Engineering is a wild field of study and practice that uses the erotic as power to design a life rooted in desire. Inside this practice the desire we center is both personal and collective. Erotic Engineering pulls from the work of black feminist poetry, literature and worldbuilding which provides the material we use to create new belief systems that scaffold lives in deeper alignment with our values. It is a method for actualizing desire and putting language to the longings of our interior worlds in order to transform our material world.ResourcesRegister for the Erotic Engineering Workshop, “Discover The Daily Habits Aligned With Your Zone of Desire” happening Tuesday, August 19th at 12pm EST: https://www.seedaschool.com/erotic-workshopSubscribe to the Seeda School Substack: https://seedaschool.substack.com/Follow Ayana on Instagram: @ayzacoFollow Ayana on Threads: @ayzacoFollow Seeda School on Instagram: @seedaschoolCitationsAudre Lorde, "Uses of the Erotic, The Erotic As Power" (1978)Stack OverflowCover Art: Barbara Chase-Riboud, La Musica Red Parkway / Josephine Red (2007), materials: bronze with red patina and silk dimensions: 73 x 49 x 19 inches (185 x 124 x 48 cm). American artist, novelist, and poet Barbara Chase-Riboud (b. 1939) creates abstract, fluid metal forms that, combined with fibers, comprise a unique visual language. (Source: Glenstone)
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