We continue this season with another friend-of-the-pod Professor Indranil Dutta, as we discuss Megh's dissertation defense and thesis writing experience, and the value of a supportive research experience.

• Recommendations:

• Megh

• The Rosie Project

• Indranil

• TV show: Orbital

• Parts Unknown

• Kitchen Confidential

• Vatsal

• Anthony Bordain’s ‘No Reservation’

It's season 10 (Yes, we can't believe it either!) and the OG gang (Megh, Aditya, and Vatsal) gets together after a very long time to vent about all things academia.

In this episode of Desi "postdoctoral" podcast, we catch up with Aditya and discuss how academia has been treating him over the past year or so. We talk about what's going on in our lives, things plaguing academia, and much more!

Join us for this fun conversation!

Have you ever wondered what it's like to explain your research to an immigration and customs officer? Today, Manan and Sumaira join us to discuss their work on trans-continental poetry and periodicals respectively, what it means to study the history of Islamic communities and literary traditions in Western Academia, the different aims and focii of sociology, anthropology, literature, religious studies and Islamic studies, and what it means to impart all this knowledge and passion in college classrooms.

Recommendations

• Sumaira

• Idea of the Muslim World

• Ottoman History Podcast

• When only God can see: the Muslim Faith of Political Prisoners Walaa Quisay & Asim Qureshi

• The Writings of Sharjeel Imam, Gyanendra Pandey, Papihah Ghosh

• Adul Manān Bhat 

• Genealogies of Religion Talal Asad

• The Venture of Islam, Marshall Hodson

• Politics of Piety,Saba Mahmood

• What is Islam? Importance of being Islamic, Shahab Ahmed

• The work of Iqbal

• Megh

• Becoming Young Men in a New India, Shannon Philip

• After I Was Raped: The Untold Lives of Five Survivors Urmi Bhattacheryya

• Vatsal

• Ozarc, Netflix

We have a thought-provoking discussion on how to fight for research ethics with Dr. Achal Agarwal. We discuss different kinds of unethical behaviour in academic publishing, how retractions happen, and the institutional reform needed to uphold academic standards.

Learn more about the Indian Research Watch https://irw.co.in

• Recommendations

• Achal

• Freakonomics

• Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy

• Course: Calling Bullshit

• Vatsal

• Alzhimers’ paper retraction https://www.science.org/content/article/researchers-plan-retract-landmark-alzheimers-paper-containing-doctored-images

• Alzhimers’ paper data manupulation https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/cassava-alzheimers-trials-misconduct-scrutiny-matthew-schrag/728955/

• Megh

• The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics, Tim Harford

• Movie: Krippendorf’s Tribe

• Movie: Serious Men

Join us in this episode of DAP as we talk about the research of Professor Deepak Modi. Prof. Modi is an independent researcher at the ICMR National Institute for Research in Reproductive and Child Health.

To conclude this pride month, he gives us a masterclass on the biology and genetics of human reproduction and fertility. We talk about his cutting edge research that involves 'organs on a chip' to evaluate safety of drugs during pregnancy, molecular pathways he discovered that play an important role in fertility, doing 'wet-lab' research in India and much more!

• Recommendations

• Deepak

• Uterex, Biological basis of sexuality

• Emperor of all maladies, Siddhart Mukherjee

• The gene machine, Venky Ramakrishnan

• ‘Science is about doing what everyone has done, but seeing what no one has seen’

• Harsha

• The last lecture, Randy Post

• Vatsal

• War, Bob Woodward

• Megh

• Behind the graduate mental health crisis in science https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-024-02457-z

• what OnlyFans' billions reveal about the market value of male desire: https://maalvika.substack.com/p/what-onlyfans-billions-reveal-about

• Touch grass podcast

• Boring Bedtime stories

• In this episode of DAP, Megh, Harsha and Vatsal are joined by Dr. Shannon Philip. Dr. Philip is an Assistant Professor in the Sociology of Gender and Sexuality at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the relationship between masculinities, femininities and sexualities in cities of the Global South.

  
  

  In this riveting conversation, Dr. Philip takes us through his academic journey and while doing so, gives us a masterclass on his intersectional research. We talk about masculinity in global south and how to study this subject, ethnography, patriarchy, feminism and much more...Listen in!

  
  

  Dr. Philip's book title: Becoming Young Men in a New India: Masculinities, Gender Relations and Violence in the Postcolony 

  
  

  Recommendations

• Vatsal

• Conclave

• Harsha

• Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

• Sense of Style

• Shannon

• Living a feminist life, Nivedita Menon

• Badhai Do

• The great indian kitchen

• Thappad

• Megh

• Delhi a Novel, kushwant Singh

• Age of Vice,

• How to talk to your cat about gun violence

• Netflix relationship advice, Ananya Pandey

Its pride month 2025 and DAP is back with a new episode. In this episode we are joined by Dr. Ketaki Chaukhani. Dr. Chowkhani is an Assistant Professor at Manipal Centre for Humanities where she teaches India’s first ever course on Singles Studies. Join us in this riveting conversation where she explains what is single studies or "singleism" and her research that attempts to understand boyhood, sexuality and society.

Recommendations

Dr. Chaukhani's selected works:

1. https://www.theswaddle.com/marriage-is-letting-us-down-should-there-be-a-right-not-to-marry

2. Her book: The Limits of Sexuality EducationLove, Sex, and Adolescent Masculinities in Urban India

• Bella de Paulo

• Flop show

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/11/25/should-a-country-speak-a-single-language

In this episode, we are joined by Amit Kaushik, A PhD candidate in the Integrative Conservation and Anthropology, University of Georgia. We talk about his pre-doctoral experiences with wetland conservation in Delhi, GIS work in Ladakh, and human-tiger interactions in Madhya Pradesh. Amit tells us how he found himself in an interdisciplinary program, living his dream to work with wolves with a funding partnership with National Geographic. We discuss his school and college transition from commence to anthropology and conservation, and how art, theatre, people, and administrators contribute to his research work .

Recommendations:

• Amit

• Radhika Govindarajan, Animal Intimacies

• "Jatikaran: Caste, Rats, and the control of space at the Karni Mata Mandir" https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/25148486221094132

• Raghu Chandawat, The rise and fall of the emeraldsforest

• "Protecting India’s tigers and wolves through art, collaboration and conservation | Franklin College of Arts and Sciences" https://www.franklin.uga.edu/news/stories/2024/protecting-indias-tigers-and-wolves-through-art-collaboration-and-conservation

In this special episode, the hosts of Small India Radio (SIR) Podcast Group: Raj, Nishant, Megh, Vatsal, Richa, and MV; talk about their professional experiences in education and workplaces. We talk about how we got here: our degree choices and motivations, experiences growing up in different parts of India, exposure, and moving away from home.

We discuss the impact of Liberalisation and 2014, creating reliable knowledge sources and reading, visiting India, the thoughts of moving back, and the impact of education systems and degrees on our lives.

Check out our sister podcasts!

• Bharatiya Junta Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/3cEQfIblu88FzyHGdVCG0e
• PCCI podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6oGfaWZ5cbsc18sfeP8g3o

In this episode of DAP, Hassaan joins Megh and Vatsal. Hassaan is a Ph.D. student at the University at Albany, studying Theoretical Physics.

Specifically, he is working on problems in String Theory and Quantum Field Theory. Hassaan also has an amazing YouTube channel called "Phymaths," where he makes videos about all things related to theoretical physics and mathematics. In this episode, Hassaan takes us through his academic journey, what it takes to study theoretical physics, and the fascinating fundamentals of physics that make up his thesis work.

Hassaan's YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3nAENP4F5GKrGk9BLNFLvw

Recommendations:

• Hassaan

• Halliday Resnick, Crane

• University Physics

• Brief History of Time

• Derak belt trick

• KKLT

• Dine Seiberg problem

• Stephen Wineberg

• What we owe to the future

• What is Real, Adam Becker

• Theory and Reality

• Twilight of Democracy

• A Scout Mindset

• Puzzles to Unravel the Universe

• A very Short introduction series: game theory, religion

• Punjab ka Batwara

• Proofs

• Megh

• 4 Lions

• Race, Science, and the Continuing Education of Razib Khan https://undark.org/2017/02/28/race-science-razib-khan-racism/

• Yo Yo Honey Singh, Famous

• Vatsal

• Vlog brothers news letters: We are Here

• The Man Who Took LSD and Changed The World