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  • Homage to the fruit of the gods

    Homage to the fruit of the gods
    2025/08/08
    "In India, in the Philippines, and in the Caribbean, in places where the mango grows, it's viewed with universal adoration. We Americans are good at thinking that we have the best of everything; but not mangoes! We get these mangoes that look really good but they're more like an apple! It was a real aha! moment when we realised that we don't have the best mangoes!" Constance L Kirker and Mary Newman, authors, Mango; A Global History talk to Manjula Narayan about everything from Harappan mango curry and the fantastically expensive Miyazaki mangoes of Japan to the Gujarati dentist who ships Alphonso mangoes out to the Indian diaspora in the US, and how Americans generally think that unless mangoes are red, they aren't ripe enough to be eaten! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 4 分
  • Awe-inspiring ophiolatry

    Awe-inspiring ophiolatry
    2025/08/01
    "If you look at primordial deities, they are serpents, eggs, the sun and the moon - early humans associated divinity with these things that they could see. So, serpent worship existed everywhere across the world. In India, you see a common pattern whether it's in the south, or in Uttarakhand and Kashmir and even further north in Tibet - there are elements and iconography that's similar. Scholars believe serpent worship was the original form of worship, that it was pre-Dravidian, and that the Nagas themselves were pre Aryan and pre Dravidian people. We can only speculate. Perhaps what it tells us is that gods fade but whatever culture is preserved will remain. As with all kinds of belief and faith, there's no way to "prove" anything, and it's easy to disprove" -- K Hari Kumar, author, Naaga; Discovering the Extraordinary World of Serpent Worship talks to Manjula Narayan about ophiolatry in general, Naaga iconography in Indic religions, the figure of the naagin, stories of Ulupi and Iravan in myth and folk belief, the sacred serpent groves of Tulunad and Kerala, vyalimukhams across the country, and the challenges that emerge while documenting folklore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 8 分
  • The Hymn to Nikkal, Einstein's violin, musical space odysseys and beyond

    The Hymn to Nikkal, Einstein's violin, musical space odysseys and beyond
    2025/07/25
    "Music connects us with something deeper. We know there's stuff around us that science cannot explain. Consciousness, for example, is hard to explain through science alone. Music seems to connect you somehow with what this other thing is. The emotional impact that music has and how it connects people together is also very profound. Music was absolutely central to Einstein too and if he got stuck in something when he was theorising, he would go away and play his violin and that would transport him into a different world and give him ideas. He likened music to science and scientific discovery. Musicians, he believed, didn't create music; they received it. I believe that as well. The music is out there and you act as an aerial/valve/funnel. Einstein believed that about scientific discovery too -- it's not like you create these theories; you receive them. So, by playing music by composers he loved -- like Bach -- who he believed received music, it put him in that frame of mind for discovery. Other great scientists like Max Planck, who were also good musicians, have said that as well. Science, music and mathematics have been woven throughout history. It's natural because, what is music? It is sound. Sound is a physical phenomenon and it's got mathematical rules. There is something unique about music, something different from anything else, and that's' what makes it so fascinating!" -- David Darling, author, A Perfect Harmony; Music, Mathematics and Science talks to Manjula Narayan about everything from Mesopotamian music from 1400 BCE, the Bull-Headed Lyre of Ur, and the compositions of the Abbess Hildegard of Bingen to dementia choirs and the tannerin used by the Beach Boys Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    52 分
  • Of promises broken over centuries

    Of promises broken over centuries
    2025/07/17
    Pastoral and indigenous communities in Nagarhole, Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal, and the Van Gujjars in Uttarakhand are the ones who are protecting forests. They have a relationship with it. It's a sense of ecology that has to be looked at for solutions to the many big questions that we are grappling with at the moment. Since colonialism, the agenda has been to keep these people from being the righful owners of the land or to have a voice. Much of urban India is not in touch with the reality of the country. But people like the Van Gujjars and Taungyas are clearer and sharper about what's going on. Indian comics are very good at voicing what mainstream art and culture may not have space for. I love it when I can create comics that give me a sense of the story but also makes readers join the dots."- Ita Mehrotra, author, Uprooted; A Graphic Account of the Struggle for Forest Rights, talks to Manjula Narayan about the struggles of communities displaced from the forests that have always been their home, life in resettlement colonies, the increasingly precarious existence of semi nomadic pastoralists, their relationship with their buffaloes and about being influenced by Joe Sacco, Orijit Sen and comics like Rachita Taneja's Sanitary Panels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 4 分
  • Of anda halwa, taar gosht and more

    Of anda halwa, taar gosht and more
    2025/07/10
    "Being able to experience the love of a grandparent is one of the most special things I've had in my life. It's the only selfless love you'll ever experience. Food was my Ammi's love language and my family formed a special relationship with food because of her. My grandmother passed away in her 90s in 2019 and one of my biggest regrets is not releasing this book in her lifetime - because she deserved that. The recipes in this book are our family recipes that we still cook to this day. We've put in the most popular dishes and the ones that are most symbolic of Rampur. Rampur has influences from UP and Awadhi cuisine but at the same time, because Rampur was a princely state, there were a lot of people passing through, and there are Afghani and Persian influences in the food as well. The cuisine has taken a few things from a few places and it's become its own kind of unique offering. There's a big difference between Mughalai and Awadhi food and Rampuri food. Unlike with those cuisines, here the flavours, textures and richness is not really dependent on cream and fat. With this book I almost feel like I'm becoming the brand ambassador of Rampur! I think Ammi would be proud"- Pernia Qureshi, author, Ammi's Kitchen; Heirloom Recipes from Rampur talks to Manjula Narayan about everything from anda halwa, taar gosht and kathal kababs to outdoor cooking, what her family typically serves at formal dinners, the difference between khichdi and khichda, and her grandmother's busy dalan in Rampur. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    47 分
  • Only connect

    Only connect
    2025/07/03
    "I wanted to make the case that here is a system that we all created together that allows for our exploitation through the prism of services that we actually do get some benefit from. Everybody involved in the system gets some benefit from it - the CEOs of these companies and also us as users. I wanted to investigate that complicity" - Vauhini Vara, author, Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age talks to Manjula Narayan about her book that uses her Google searches dating back to the early aughts, Amazon reviews, long conversations with AI, memories of her sister who died of cancer in her teens and insights gleaned during her years as a technology journalist to understand how tech has become so enmeshed in our lives, and grasp the sinister aspects of that while also understanding that no single trajectory is inevitable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    51 分
  • Much food for thought

    Much food for thought
    2025/06/27
    "Our food has completely changed in the last 30 years. This has totally changed our gut physiology, our gut microbiome, and has caused silent inflammation in the gut. Issues like reflux and bloating are caused by a gut that isn't functioning well. Also, if you don't eat the right type of food, your body is incapable of making the neurological chemicals called neurotransmitters that are required for stable mental health. That correlation is not discussed in modern medicine though it is the cause, many times, of these mental health issues. Adding a drug is just symptomatically managing it. Instead of just depending on drugs and therapy, people can go back and connect it to what is wrong with what they are eating. When you trade nourishing food for, say, burgers and junk food and even things that aren't considered junk like white rice and wheat, you are nutritionally depleted. That's why people are unable to have robust systems physically and psychologically. The reason we are now seeing so many autoimmune diseases is because 70 percent of the immune system sits in the gut. If you're eating the wrong food, you're telling the immune system to keep its guns always at the ready. And so, the poor guy is always hyperactive and always creating a reaction instead of only being activated when there's a fungal or a bacterial infection. Food has a real connection to conditions like ADHD, Alzhiemers and bipolar disorders. All forms of mental health conditions are dependent on what you're eating. There is absolutely no denying that correlation." - Manjari Chandra, author, Brainwashed by your Gut talks to Manjula Narayan about everything from mindful eating and toxic foods to the uptick in PCOS among Indian women and the urgent need for the nation to fight conditions like diabetes and cancer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    54 分
  • The original mother of many tongues

    The original mother of many tongues
    2025/06/21
    "One thing that's become abundantly clear from the ancient DNA revolution of the last 10 years is how important migration has been in the history of our species. So, of course, there has been hybridisation, cultural, genetic, linguistic. There is no such thing as a pure people, pure culture, pure language. Genes, culture and language do not map neatly onto each other. This book was a huge amount of work because the only way you can tell the story of Proto Indo European [the ancestor of Latin and Sanskrit and their daughter languages including English, German, Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi and many, many others] is by combing the fields of linguistics, archeology and genetics. It's very fast moving and the point of writing the story now is that it's had this huge impetus from genetics" - Laura Spinney, author, Proto; How One Ancient Language Went Global talks to Manjula Narayan about the ancestor of the Indo European family of languages, the Yamnayas, the birth and death of languages, the great migrations out of the Steppes, the Harappan script, multiethnolects and why AI might be great for predicting language change Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    56 分