Tuckered Out with Ami Thakkar

Dr. Tanaya Narendra is an internationally trained medical doctor, author, embryologist, and scientist, who is passionate about medical education.

For her ground breaking work in medical education, Tanaya has been awarded Sexual Health Influencer of the Year 2020 by SH24 - the online sexual health partner of the NHS, Top 25 Disruptors of India 2021 by Cosmopolitan Magazine, and Health Influencer Of The Year by the IHW Council, supported by the Niti Ayog and Ayushman Bharat.

She is now the most popular medical professional on social media in India. 

Dr. Tanaya runs @Dr_Cuterus, which has garnered over one million followers on instagram and over 50 million views on Youtube. She uses fairytales, mannequins, fun GIFs, and hilariously relatable examples to talk jargon-free and scientifically about complex medical and sexual education topics, all wrapped up with an inclusive and gender-neutral bow.

Establishing the medical content creation niche in India, Tanaya has built a thriving community that provides a safe place where no topic is too taboo to talk about!

Rohit is the Founder and Chief Trend Curator of the Non-Obvious Company and is widely considered one of the most entertaining and original speakers on trends and marketing in the world.

Rohit believes the world needs more Non-Obvious thinking. He helps leaders and professionals to be more open minded, see what others miss and learn to anticipate the future. He is the author of seven popular business books, including his signature Non-Obvious Megatrends which has been read or shared by more than 1 million people and was a #1 WSJ bestseller + USA Today bestseller earlier this year.

Outside of speaking and consulting, Rohit is also the co-founder of Ideapress Publishing - a fast growing independent publisher that specializes in working with top authors to publish beautiful business books.

We talk about what a Futurist does, why he is the trend  guy, what the Human Mode trend is and why it's here to stay, how starting a publishing company kept him from becoming an a&&hole, and the reasons he wanted to start supporting the South Asian community.

It's a reunion!  

Twenty years after being his production assistant on a film set in Austin, TX, Kal Penn and I get a chance to sit down and catch up about it all.

Kal Penn, is an American actor, author, academic lecturer and former White House staff member in the Barack Obama administration. You may know him from television shows such as House, Designated Survivor, Sunnyside, and How I Met Your Mother. He is also recognized for his performance in the film The Namesake and of course the Harold and Kumar series (I personally still love Taj Mahal Badalandabad). Penn has taught at the University of Pennsylvania in the Cinema Studies Program as a visiting lecturer

We talk about it all from our first impressions, to those fantastic middle school years, to his job as a farmhand right before he went to UCLA. He talks about the meaning behind the Brown Catch-22, his journey with stereotyping in Hollywood, his experience going to India with President Barack Obama, and why he needed a mini-fridge in the White House.

We of course bust out with some Gujarati (our native Indian language) which Kal definitely schools me on.

His new memoir, You Can’t Be Serious, is out and it’s a fantastic read! There just wasn't enough time to give a shout out to all the uncles and aunties we loved growing up.....

Nish Acharya is a Senior Fellow, Inclusive Economic Growth at the Clinton Foundation. He is also one of the OG Indian-Americans who has worked with two different presidents during his career.

Nish leads Equal Innovation, which advises some of the world’s leading universities, governments, foundations and companies to assist them with innovation, entrepreneurship and globalization strategies. The Clinton Foundation is becoming a platform for new voices, emerging communities and finding economic development models to include in international policy discussions.

We talk about all the work that CGI (Clinton Global Initiative) is doing and what it was like to bring the band back together this year, his takeaways from working with President Clinton and Obama, how Diwali has become mainstream, and he shares some pivotal middle school moments that defined his identity as Indian-American.

S. Mitra Kalita is a veteran journalist, media executive, prolific commentator and author of two books. 

She is the co-founder/ CEO of URL Media, a network of Black and Brown community news outlets that share content and revenue. Mitra is also the co-founder and publisher of Epicenter-NYC, a newsletter to help New Yorkers get through the pandemic, and an inaugural member of the URL Media network.

We discuss the impetus for launching URL Media, how Jackson Heights (her hometown) became ground zero during the pandemic,  what she realized about national news outlets, and how first serving her community led to the launching a company.

I ask Mitra if people are truly interested in Black and Brown stories, why she would love to work with Byron Allen, and what she would put up on her very own billboard.

Not many people can say that they are part of building the audio reflection of the ENTIRE country. Rahul Sabnis can. 

Rahul is the Chief Creative Officer of iHeartMedia, an American mass media company that currently reaches 9 out of 10 Americans every month. 9 out of 10.  Let that sink in.

Rahul explains how the role of Chief Creative Officer not only means being a champion of the audio medium, but also means being the bridge that gives diverse voices a platform. He also breaks down of the iHeartMedia family tree, democratizing content, and the amazing new projects they are working on in the Metaverse (which he kindly tried to explain to me).

He recalls the night he called his father to let him know he would no longer be  pursuing his engineering degree (one of the many “good Indian boy” career paths), what it means to discover that you’re Indian-American, our relationship to both cultures and the fact that we’re definitely NOT confused desis (Indians), packing peanut butter in suitcases for his trips to India, and his epic version of the “big fat Indian wedding”.

Puja Shah is a visionary poet who shares her voice through written and spoken word, guided meditations, and teaching. 

Born in Queens, New York, to immigrant parents, she defied teachers who questioned her English skills by winning countless poetry and short story awards in her youth. 

With over 10 years of nonprofit experience and a long public health career, she has created a campaign aligned with girl trafficking awareness causes for her upcoming debut novel, For My Sister, which launches on October 18th 2022.

We talk about our relationship to our culture as adults and parents to daughters, how there was always an undertone of some traditional expectations growing up, why she wanted to work in public health, and her eye-opening experiences in Uganda and India.

She talks to me about what drove her to write her debut novel, why other South Asians still  have a hard time supporting one another, how her online community, Chai Mommas, was built, and our mutual love for Zarna Garg and Alka Joshi. 

We also agreed that thepla (spicy Indian roti) is the best food ever.  Even on planes.

It's always nice to interview someone who has nicer equipment than you.

Today I talk to fellow podcaster, Ginni Saraswati. She is Founder and CEO of Ginni Media, a podcast production company whose motto is, “Made Offbeat”- which I can relate to. She is also a contributor to Entrepreneur Media and Rolling Stone Magazine.

We talk about everything podcasting, her thoughts on the industry, and where she sees it going in the next 5 years. She also talks about growing up brown in Australia, coming out to her family, and what she would like to be known for at the end of her career.

Most importantly, we figure out who the OG influencer really is and I talk about the time I shook Madonna's hand, which can be a whole other podcast episode.

Today I talk to the co-founder of India Rising, Gautam Kapur.

India Rising is the home for brown athletes. It is a media platform designed to develop Indian basketball, showcase next-level talent, and compete in professional tournaments around the world.

We talk about whether our genes allow Indian people to be true athletes, the impetus for starting India Rising, the highs and lows of building a very new start-up in the "brown space", and what they hope to accomplish in the next 5 years.

Gautam tells me about how they assembled their team by looking at over 60 competitive pros around the world,  how they had 7 days to create a unified team chemistry before playing in the TBT- The Basketball Tournament, and when they will start working with brown female athletes.

We talk about our college days and why joining an Indian dance team seemed to be the only way to show your "brownness" and he tells me more about the work he's doing with NBA's Asian Professional Exchange (APEX).

https://www.indiarising.co/

Welcome back Tuckered Outers!

As many of you know, India just celebrated her 75th year of independence. Our fall season begins with one of India's most renowned authors, Suketu Metha. Suketu  is the New York-based author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, which was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. The book was based off of two years of research and was an account of his personal experiences living in Bombay.

He talks to me about his latest article in which he shares his concern about the future of India, why it is crucial that India remains a democracy for all its citizens and the world, and the two biggest threats facing India today.

He gives me an update on his close friend, Salman Rushdie, tells me why storytellers are more powerful than we think, and how he handles our volatile environment as a writer. I ask him what Bombay and New York City mean to him, what his favorite memories were growing up in Bombay, and about his current project that he refers to as a love letter to NYC.

His latest book This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto, was published in June 2019 under a 2007 Guggenheim fellowship.