Desi Academia Podcast

In this episode of DAP, we are joined by Dhruti, a long-time listener and a friend of the pod. She takes us through her academic journey, studying botany and zoology as part of her undergrad program in Bangalore to researching microbial populations of the soils in Australia for her PhD studies.

We talk about her love of birds and spiders and how that contributed to her scientific journey, documenting 'soppus' in local communities, her dissertation work about understanding microbial ecology of soil in Australia, and much more! Join in!!!

RECOMMENDATIONS:

• Megh

• Like: A History of the World's Most Hated (and Misunderstood) Word – An Informative and Engaging Look at Language, Women, and Society, Megan C. Reynolds

• Should Scientists and Engineers Run Society? Dr Fatima

• Shows: Narcos, The Pitt

• Vatsal

• Tapeworm Spreads Deadly Cancer to Human | Scientific American

• ‘All authors agree’ to retraction of Nature article linking microbial DNA to cancer

• Dhruti

• Merlin Sheldrake’s works (https://www.merlinsheldrake.com/)

• Jake Robinson (https://www.jakemrobinson.com/books)

  Amitav Ghosh: Ghost Eye

This is Desi Academia Podcast's Golden Jubilee, and we are so glad you have been with us on this journey! For this special episode, we bring on friend of the podcast Saurabh, and talk to him about his academic journey as a mathematician. He takes us through his remarkable journey as a researcher in Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Israel, and Switzerland.

Saurabh tells us about what it mean to “encounter infinity” through mathematics, what is it like to understand the world by asking ‘if this certainty was weakened, would the theorem still hold true’, and what it's like to ask great questions without thinking about applications.

We talk about how Saurabh found his passion for teaching, his pivot to industry, his experiences with the political realities of all the places he inhabited, and how he finds joy in his work.

Recommendations:

• Saurabh

• Book: Everybody Loves a Good Drought

• The Wire

• Powder

• Capernaum

• El secreto de sus ojos

• Argentina 1985

• “AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself”

• “AI may upend online studies critical to social science”

• Vatsal

• What Noam Chomsky’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein says about progressive politics

• Megh

• Pleurebis

• Ted Lasso

• Humans in the Loop

• Murtagh

We are joined again by Harsha, to discuss the difficult reality of life in the sciences and how to pivot when the academia and funding the system fails. Harsha shares his learnings from his experience being asked to 'master out' of his PhD program, how he reconciled with academia, found a community to do impactful work, and how he views 'science for the sake of science’.

We discuss the short-term and long-term next steps, navigating the immigration system, building communities and using our knowledge for the good, and keeping the faith in science.

Recommendations

• Megh

• The Wire
• "The War on Science'", Youtube video by Shaun
• "OpenAI is huge in India. Its models are steeped in caste bias", MIT Technology Review

• Vatsal

• Lancet article: Estimating the effect of annual PM2·5 exposure on mortality in India: a difference-in-differences approach - The Lancet Planetary Health

• Harsha

• Braiding Sweetgrass Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

In this episode of DAP, Vatsal and Megh are joined by a friend of the pod, Dr. Rituparna Patgiri. She shares her experiences teaching sociology to STEM graduates. Most importantly, she shares her teaching and mentorship philosophy. We discuss the different roles of a teacher, what it takes to teach sociology, and how to distinguish between opinions and empirical studies.

Recommendations:

• Recommendations:

• Megh

• Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language by Adam Aleksic

• TV show: Boots, Netflix

• Rituparna

• TV show: The social dilemma

• Rituparna's co-edited book: Food, Culture and Society in India: Social, Political, Economic and Cultural Perspectives

• The Attention Economy Arushi Bhandari

• Vatsal

• Karen Hao- interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8enXRDlWguU

• Superboys of Malegaon

Aditya, Megh, and Vatsal are back to discuss their major life changes in 2025. Vatsal shares his shift from non-alcoholic fatty liver disease to fibrosis, the scientific and ethical training needed to work with live human doner tissue, and the challenges navigating the visa system in Canada.

We also discuss the challenges of postdoc onboarding, HR in academia (or the lack thereof), 9-5 life after the PhD,  'dry lab privilege vs wet lab reality', the impact of being gym-pilled on intellectual labor, and navigating postdocs in non-English speaking countries.

We end with a question- has your PhD given you the training to build a career not just outside Western Academia, but in the Global South?

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