Grin

Dr. Abdus Salam is Pakistan’s first Noble laureate, a scientist of global repute. But he was ostracised and denounced as a heretic in his homeland. This tragic story forms the backdrop of Pureland, a beautiful allegorical book by the New York-based author Zarrar Said. In this podcast Said talks about belief, fundamentalism and simplifying the idea of the divine.

The renowned Swiss teacher of meditation and scripture Acharya Vidyabhaskar talks about the enduring and eternal message of the Gita, the beloved book of sermon that has inspired people around the world including Mahatma Gandhi. What should we do about choice? How do we handle pain? What can we do about war? The Gita tries to answer all this and more.

Nirupama Menon Rao was the Indian Foreign Secretary and held some of the most important positions in Indian diplomacy around the world. She is now the innovative founder of the first South Asian Symphony Orchestra that aims to use music to bridge nations in a troubled region.

In this episode Prof. Lavanya Vemsani, Vice President of the Ohio Academy of History and Distinguished Professor of History at Shawnee State University, talks about the different approaches of feminism in the East and West and about India's magnificent, legendary feminists spanning many epics and thousands of years.

What connects research on artificial intelligence, the study of consciousness and the search for god with award winning scientist Prof. Subhas Kak.

India and Pakistan, the two nuclear-armed neighbours in South Asia, are at war again. But something has changed over the last few years in India’s strategic doctrine. Historian and best-selling author Hindol Sengupta explains why the Shishupala Principle helps us understand this change.

Author Bridgitte Jackson-Buckley from Los Angeles talks about how financial failure made her homeless and devastated until she found ‘radical gratitude’ and god consciousness through meditation. She is the author of a lovely new book The Gift of Crisis: How I Used Meditation To Go From Financial Failure To A Life Of Purpose.

The Mahabharata is one of the world’s oldest and longest epics. At the heart of it is a dramatic and apocalyptic war, and a rousing philosophy of morality. In this podcast we talk about why this epic has never been studied, and why it should be studied, for its immense impact on strategic thought. (This podcast has a very slightly abrupt ending due to technical reasons but none of the content is missing or hampered in any way.)

Dr. Gautam Sen taught political economy and strategy for more than two decades at the London School of Economics. He has been an advisor to the government of India. He talks about his lifelong research interest - understanding how to make peace against the backdrop of the threat of nuclear warfare.

Trained in medicine at Cornell and Harvard, Dr. Bhaswati Bhattacharya turned to Ayurveda which changed her life. She went on to do a PhD in Ayurveda and talks about how the ancient system of medicine can change the way we look at health and how it taught her to be unafraid of cancer.