Indicast - All Podcasts

Jon Fasman knows what it takes to be a New York Times best selling author. His book, Geographer's Library published in 2005 has been released into more than a dozen languages and his more recent novel, The Unpossessed City is a major hit. At The Economist, he covers a diverse range of subjects like food, music, chopsticks, politics, Tiger Woods, Dominique Strauss Kahn, global warming and a lot more. In this podcast, talks about American politics, drugs and Atlanta. Incidentally, Jon was working in a building close to the twin towers on September 11, 2001 and he shares his thoughts about where USA stands today, in the midst of very high unemployment rates and terror strikes. For the ones interested to know more about drugs, skip to the 12th minute to hear this father of two young kids having a refreshingly liberal attitude towards solving the problem of drug abuse which plagues not just America, but many other nations.

Ten years ago, on this day, two planes scorched the twin towers. More than 3000 people were killed and the world economy was impaired. In this podcast, we talk about where we stand today in the wake of bigger crises that the bankers have brought upon us. Continuing on the subject, Indian business and tourism has suffered gravely due to the series of bomb blasts. In other news, Yahoo CEO, Carol Bartz has been sacked rather unceremoniously. Closer home, Archies, a company known for selling gifts and greeting cards has tied up with UNICEF and plans to expand to Rs. 400 crores in the next few years. And in the last few minutes, Ritika gives us a snapshot of her sojourn in Bali.

In this episode - Manan & I talk about the topic that may well turn out to be the biggest tech story of 2011 - Steve Jobs announcing his retirement. While there cant be a replacement, the succession plan has been well planned. The other stories discussed include Google's Motorola purchase, Samsung Annoucing ChatON, Reliance's 3G Tab, MapMyIndia's Carpad and we had almost forgotten HP's big announcement.

After being missing in action for over a month, we are glad to be back. The recent has had some big ticket happenings in India including Lokpal bill and India losing its #1 test ranking spot. Given the significance of the event, we spent most of the time talking about Anna Hazare's movement against corruption and discussed the key points only. Even that took about 20 minutes to cover. The other topics include India's test drubbing by England and 2011 sports awards.

Warren Brennan, the man behind the Hot Spot technology used in the India England series joins us to talk about his invention, challenges and the controversies surrounding Dravids dismissal in the last test and of course, VVS Laxmans Vaseline non incident.

Brendan Greeley joins us after a long time to talk about his feature story in BusinessWeek on Spotify entering the United States. In this podcast, he talks about how Spotify cracked the long standing question. How do we make something so much more convenient than piracy that we get people to pay for it. He also talks about his recent article on the US debt crisis and explains the standoff between the Democrats and the Republicans through the concept of game theory.

Combating its menace will be one of the biggest challenges of this decade. And for most part nations like India have failed to stifle the growth of terrorism. Perhaps we still havent developed a robust understanding of its root causes and also an effective toolkit to deal with it. Thats why we requested Sundeep Waslekar, president of Strategic Foresight Group, a leading think tank which advises governments around the world, to focus on that question. He and his team have studied every major terrorist group across the world and their practices over several decades.India is at the crossroads in its war on terror. Waslekars essay is a wake-up call for those who believe success lies in simply fighting terror with terror. And that doesnt necessarily make us a soft state.

Mumbai went through another series of blasts leading to another pointless discussion on Indicast about it. Frankly, we are tired of talking about terrorism in India, especially Mumbai. We try to bring up several points about the blasts and not talk about the usual things. Minal, who is part of Indicast Sport podcast, joined us int his episode to tell her about us experience of being at Lords Cricket Stadium on Day 1 of India vs England Test. needless to say, we dragged her into things she wasnt prepared for but handled herself quiet well.

E-commerce in India has risen from the dead. The moneymen are back and entrepreneurs are thinking big once more. So whats changed? There are some fundamental reasons why ecommerce is set to take off in India.

We decided to start this episode by running through the top stories during our absence and then come to this weeks newsmakers. The talking points this week include the treasure found at Sri Padmanbhaswamy Temple and its interesting legal aspects. We then moved on to talk about Ghulam Nabi Azad and his panache for getting into verbal trouble, Rahul Gandhis PR Padyatra and Indicasts Mobile apps.