Unboxed Podcast

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Anyone else out there puzzled by the rise of vinyl in this era of lossless and spatial audio? In Episode 3 of the Croma Unboxed Podcast, music journalist, selector and vinyl enthusiast @bhanujkappal makes the case for a needle drop in a one-tap world, explaining the technology and economics of the vinyl subculture, and also unearthing some fascinating links from India’s music recording and production history—from Kolkata as a regional pressing hub to how courtesans built India’s early recorded-music culture. Friction-maxxers will relate. Plus: pro tips on how to set up your own deck at home.

Bhanuj Kappal is a music journalist with a passion for punk, indie and underground music. His work has been published in leading Indian and international publications, including GQ and Pitchfork. He can be found behind the decks most nights at Idoru, Bandra.

The Croma Unboxed Podcast looks at how technology shapes the way we live, build and belong. Each episode follows a tool, craft or technology as it evolves and the people who change with it—asking what we gain, what we lose and what quietly stays the same.

Host: Abhishek Mande Bhot (@manicmande )

Creative Director: Nidhi Gupta (@niddee )

Producer: David Gupta (@david.guptaa )

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

From the sign painter’s brush to the vector curve to AI-generated fonts, every tool leaves its fingerprint on the letters we make. In this episode of the Croma Unboxed Podcast, we talk to Mumbai-based typographer and type designer Tanya George about how the tools at our disposal shape the way we write, and what changes when we move from analogue to digital.

Tanya trained at the JJ School of Art and holds an MA in Typeface Design from the University of Reading. She designs letterforms for brand identities and fonts across Indian scripts, writes about type, and is a docent for the Letterform Archive. Since 2018 she has also led Typewalks through Mumbai’s heritage districts, teaching people to read the city’s signboards.

In this conversation we cover the history of printing technology and font evolution, India’s type histories, how screens and the internet changed typography (or didn’t), what makes a typeface feel trustworthy or luxurious, and what happens to hand-painted lettering as the city changes.

The Croma Unboxed Podcast is about technology at the intersection of culture and society, and the lives it shapes. In every episode, we find the story hiding behind the technology few notice. Plug in.

Host: Abhishek Mande Bhot

Creative Director: Nidhi Gupta

Producer: David Gupta

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

How do you photograph a city that refuses to stay still long enough for your camera to catch up? Chirodeep Chaudhuri (@chirodeepchaudhuri) has notes from 30 years of walking the streets of Mumbai.

Welcome to the Croma Unboxed Podcast, where we explore how technology shapes the way we live, build and belong. We look at technology through the lens of culture, habit, and human behaviour.

Chirodeep is a Mumbai-based documentary and street photographer, author, and educator, whose three-decade body of work is one of the most quietly remarkable records of how technology reshapes city life. From coin-operated payphones and crumbling public clocks to candid portraits of strangers on Mumbai's local trains, Chaudhuri has spent thirty years photographing the city at the exact moment things change.

His projects span the full arc of the city’s technological evolution—from the telecom revolution of the 1980s to the doom-scrolling epidemic of today. His books include A Village in Bengal and the co-authored With Great Truth and Regard: The History of the Typewriter in India, and his street photography and documentary work is held in major museum collections across the US and Japan, including the Peabody Essex Museum and the Museum of Photographic Arts, Houston

The Croma Unboxed Podcast is about technology at the intersection of culture and society, and the lives it shapes. In every episode, we find the story hiding behind the technology few notice. Plug in.

Host: Abhishek Mande Bhot (@manicmande)

Creative Director: Nidhi Gupta (@niddee)

Producer: David Gupta (@david.guptaa)