"While we must read histories produced by historians who have different perspectives on the past, it is very important not to get trapped in any particular ideological framework. For me, it is important to move beyond them" - Upinder Singh, author, 'A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India', talks to Manjula Narayan on the Books & Authors podcast on everything from the implausibility of the Aryan invasion theory and the place of forests and their inhabitants in the political history of ancient India to the Harappan script, war elephants, the faulty periodization of Indian history and more.

"Strangers matter online. We tend to put a lot of weight on reviews. But it is difficult to tell which ones are fake and which are not. Computer scientists are still working on it. But they have figured out certain characteristics of fake reviews – like the use of lots of exclamation marks and quotation marks" - Abhishek Borah, author, Mine Your Language, talks to Manjula Narayan about the influence of language on business, how to tell if an individual is a potential loan defaulter just from the words he uses, the communication patterns of charismatic leaders, how corporates should deal with social media firestorms, and the surprising impact of expletives in online reviews, among other interesting things!

I'm not an expert but I am a connoisseur and most of the carpets in this book are part of my collection. Carpets harbour a lot of stories but we seldom read about them because books on carpets usually focus on things like the knots used and how they were made. My idea was to keep the stories" - Jon Westborg, author, 'Of Carpets and Carpetwallahs' talks to Manjula Narayan about talims and carpet designs, the history of carpet weaving in the subcontinent, which, apparently, stretches back to 2C BCE, jail carpets in the colonial period, the carpet of a Norwegian who served as a policeman in Belgaum in colonial India, and the genius Kashmiri carpetwallah, the late Sayeed Ali, who could tell the age and province of origin just by looking at a Persian carpet

"Every culture's sexual values get imbued into all parts of their thinking, not just into how they think about the bedroom. Under patriarchy, mothers are given this special role of restricting their daughters as sexuality is tied up with the sense of social pride or izzat – the mother's value as a mother, within the family, is partly judged on her daughter's gender performance. I don't blame mothers for doing this because, in their minds, their sense of identity is dependent on their daughters' behaviour. So they groom their daughters accordingly. There is also envy between women of different generations."

-Amrita Narayanan, psychoanalyst and author, 'Women's Sexuality and Modern India; In a Rapture of Distress' talks to Manjula Narayan about rejecting victimhood, the universal nature of women's sexual oppression, the difficulty in understanding different sexual tastes, endurance as a virtue, and identifying with myths, among other things

"AI doesn't create; it reproduces. AI doesn't know what is good or bad; even in art, it doesn't know. People want to know whether we'll reach a level where AI is as smart as we are. The kids are always asking me that. We won't reach that level the way we 're going because the intuition is just not there" - Appupen, co-author of the graphic novel, 'Dream Machine; AI and the REAL World' talks to Manjula Narayan about collaborating on this book with French scientist and CEO of an AI start-up, Laurent Daudet, AI's huge energy needs, how, since all the big tech is owned by corporates instead of colleges, labs or government set-ups, the focus is just about making profit and not scientific advancement, and how vast quantities of our information is going towards training AI.

Crime fiction seems to have a steady presence because of the way in which it is able to address contemporary issues of law and order relating also to the absence of justice, which is a key problem we all face. The attempt is to make amends, sometimes even outside the system, and to deliver justice. That's why, perhaps, the figure of the detective continues to fascinate" - Tarun K Saint, editor, 'The Hachette Book of Indian Detective Fiction Vols 1 & 2' talks to Manjula Narayan about curating anthologies, the emergence of detective fiction informed by feminist consciousness, how writers from the Indian subcontinent contextualise the methods of the classic whodunit and take it beyond the formulaic.

"The thrill of the hunt is what fuels all collecting probably and it's certainly so for book collecting. But here the interest is bibliographical so there's a scholarly component to it as well. It's a very thrilling experience to see that you are a part of a long tradition of book collecting and of a tradition of transactions between dealers and collectors that's been going on for three or four centuries." - Pradeep Sebastian, author, An Inky Parade; Tales for Bibliophiles, talks to Manjula Narayan about his passion for collecting antiquarian books, the passions that drive the international trade, and the great collectors and their obsessions

Like the pizza, momos are traditional, ethnic, and are loved worldwide" - Rohini Rana, author, 'The Nepal Cookbook; 108 Regional Recipes', talks to Manjula Narayan about the magic of eating with your fingers, the humble potato, magical momos in their many avatars, the flavours of fermentation and smoking, and the subtility and great range of Nepal's cuisine.

"Dr Salim Ali told me, if you're not a scientist, don't show off your secondhand scientific knowledge. Just write simply and share that. So that's what I've done" - Bulbul Sharma, author, 'Sunbirds in the Morning, Grey Hornbills at Dusk' talks to Manjula Narayan about the variety of birds and trees and the dramatic change of the seasons in the capital city.

"I've heard its changed but when I was first in Tibetan regions, it was illegal to have a photo of the Dalai Lama. There's a lot of propaganda against the Dalai Lama and other lamas in China and I've actually heard Tibetan people there parroting that propaganda. There's also tremendous ecological damage through mining, the building of large dams and other forms of destructive resource extraction. It's not happening only in Tibet. I am trying to communicate a template of what we seem to be witnessing all across the world. I did feel at times that I was physically being pummeled by what I was observing" - Scott Ezell, author, 'Journey to the End of the Empire; In China Along the Edge of Tibet' talks to Manjula Narayan about travelling through Tibet, the vast changes taking place there, the world's move towards uniformity and extreme ecological degradation in the Anthropocene and how we are all implicated.