Scrolls & Leaves: World History Podcast

From the deep mines of South America, tons of silver travel to Mughal India to fill the coffers of emperors with precious coins

South Asian immigrants in the U.S. adopted a predominantly Black and Puerto Rican form of music in the late 1990s to express their identity. It moved with these immigrants across the world. Today, Desi Hip Hop is a global phenomenon.

On July 1, 1800, the appearance of a pair of severed breasts on Don Cayetano’s windowsill leads to a twisting journey into the history of crime and policing in Guatemala City.

At the turn of the 20th century, the British took Indian indentured labourers to sugar plantations in Fiji. There, Indian women would sing “bidesia” -- laments for a lost homeland. In this Chatroom, acclaimed Fijian poet-philosopher Sudesh Mishra speaks of bidesia, and also about Fijian indigenous knowledge systems that place humans as part of the planetary assemblage.

The "epic clash" of traditional medicine vs. Western medicine is really anything but when it comes to treatment. In reality, medical systems have always influenced each other to change and evolve. In this episode, we look at the influence of technology on Ayurveda. It’s a little window into the transformation of India’s indigenous medical system, beginning in the 1860s.

We are increasingly sharing space with predators and wild animals, with deadly consequences... for the animals, that is... not so much the humans.. or, at least that was the case until the pandemic.. Covid is the result of a breaching of ecological boundaries. In this episode, we learn how to co-exist with our fellow animals from Nayanika Mathur

When your village, city or the world are affected by disease, medical treatment is just one intervention. Another is rituals and spiritual practices. Every culture has them. In India, a rich tradition of Disease Goddesses assigned a female deity to each illness. From Hariti and Shitala for smallpox to Ola bibi and Ola devi for cholera -- and Corona devi for our current pandemic -- the goddess was believed both to cause the disease and to protect those who prayed to her. Sometimes the rituals went beyond prayers and pujas to a practice called scapegoating -- symbolically capturing the disease in an object, animal or person and removing them to another location. David Arnold, professor emeritus at the University of Warwick in the U.K., has been studying the history of disease and medicine in South Asia for many years, and explains the phenomenon of the Disease Goddess.

We follow British scientist Ronald Ross as he tries to stop a cholera outbreak. At first he's stumped. The disease shows up in one place and then jumps to the other end of town. And how to get his hands on a microscope when there's only one in all of South India? Like a good detective, Ross puts the clues together -- quite literally -- into a handmade map and it helps him solve the mystery.

Atreya, the renowned teacher of Ayurveda, is walking with his pupils on the banks of the river Ganga in Kampilya. Ominous signs of an epidemic shadow the grandeur of the ancient kingdom. Atreya explains to his students how an epidemic arises from degraded environmental conditions. And he points to their cause: the unrighteous actions of a specific group of citizens. Sanskrit scholar Dominik Wujastyk of the University of Alberta in Canada, narrates this compelling tale from one of the oldest Ayurvedic texts. It’s a story of surprising resonance with our current global situation.

Time Markers (mins:sec)

0:34 Two major encyclopedias of Ayurveda

1:23 Learning Sanskrit from eminent pandit in Pune

2:30 Reciting first part of story in Sanskrit

3:41 How Ayurveda views the human body

4:30 The Charaka samhita

4:55 Atreya’s story

6:58 How Ayurveda explains an epidemic

7:20 Descriptions of corrupted environmental conditions

8:26 Atreya’s story continues

8:50 What causes environmental corruption

9:44 Greed and the environment

10:24 Ancient texts are based on observation

10:53 A golden opportunity

Disaster brings change. We discuss surveillance and public health during Covid-19. These days, it’s not only governments capturing raw data about us; rather, a public health vacuum left by governments over decades is being filled by tech companies, which have stepped up surveillance, says Martin French, a sociologist and surveillance expert at the University of Concordia in Montreal.