Tobi Ruwase is a lifelong music enthusiast with a background in community outreach and early childhood education. As a graduate assistant in Texas, she supported grant-funded programs for migrant and underserved families and interned at the United Nations in New York. Raised in a non-religious home in Nigeria by Muslim and Christian parents, she understands firsthand the isolation of growing up without a secular community in a deeply religious society. Now a new mother, she joined Humanists Australia’s Altruistic label to help build the cultural infrastructure she wishes she’d had: humanist resources, music, and community for the next generation.
The Soundtrack: Conspiracy of One
Conspiracy of One is the stage name of Nathan Eggins — Brisbane-based songwriter and science communicator performing and releasing under the name Conspiracy of One.
For alt-rock 80s/90s fans, think Anthony Kiedis of Red Hot Chili Peppers meets Carl Sagan. The first time I heard “My name is Shuka…” from his track “We’re All Aliens, Baby” (2019), I was immediately reminded of Kiedis’ chant-like bridge in RHCP’s “By The Way” (2002).
If pop-rock-funk is outside your genre, optimise the experience by reading the lyrics as you listen — it grows on you lyrically.
Two tracks for sceptical readers:
“Just a Theory” — a satirical take on believing blindly, with lyrics such as “If you want it hard enough his hands will lift you up…” whereas he further notes that believing science “just hurts your mind.” And on a lighter note, no pun intended, musically something about the sustained vocal delivery of the chorus ‘fly’ reminds me of Steve Miller Band’s iconic “Fly Like An Eagle.”
“It MUST Be True!” — satire of conviction without evidence.
Somehow, my brain always replaces ‘baby’ in “We’re All Aliens, Baby” with ‘snowflakes,’ in the sense of an inflated sense of importance — perhaps a subconscious effect of living in the United States and consuming a lot of American media.
Same battle, different stage. As I write this, I’m reminded of Humanists International’s 2025 Young Humanist Grants winner, Freedom Centre Uganda, and its Enhancing Critical Thinking Skills project, which sought to address a longstanding challenge within Uganda’s education system: an overreliance on rote memorisation and examination-focused teaching.
It mirrors my experience in the Nigerian tertiary system, in a private university where certain teachers emphasised cramming. You weren’t allowed to challenge your lecturer’s view. My mum, who went for her first degree (Bachelor’s) in her fifties at a public university, was also victimised by her teacher because she wanted to engage in class discussions. Teachers want to be viewed as the authority.
For many of us international students from Africa who later studied in graduate school in the United States, it was a culture shock to learn that discussions were encouraged and marks were assigned for them. It wasn’t about whether you were right or wrong; it was about being able to engage and think critically. Many of us initially lost marks because we weren’t programmed to think outside the box.
It makes me wonder if there is a link with the colonial legacy and its educational system in Uganda, Nigeria — Sub-Saharan Africa in general. Was this ever a trend in the educational system of the Global North? Any links with colonial religion, Christianity? As Nathan puts it in Conspiracy of One’s “Why Change?”: “just follow the leader of your tribe so you don’t have to think on your own.”
And when we get the humanist message out there in the social media space, will the message be allowed to grow organically, or suppressed as I have been learning happens with certain content, while others are amplified based on agendas that transcend entertainment to political soft power? This has got me thinking that we may just need to expand beyond creating a humanist record label to launching a humanist social media platform… For better or for worse, at least one President found the need to.
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