Category: Podcast

Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes, Spotify,  and Stitcher. Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe at one of the links above.

You can also support the podcast as a patron. The primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone else. I am toying with the idea of doing a patron Youtube Livestream chat, if people are interested, in the next few weeks.

Would appreciate more positive reviews!

This episode we talked to  Pratik Chougle, a conservative and a proud globalist. From being on Trump’s policy team, Chougle has become a critic and envisions a future conservatism sharply at odds with parochial nationalism.

Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes, Spotify,  and Stitcher. Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe at one of the links above.

You can also support the podcast as a patron. The primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone else. I am toying with the idea of doing a patron Youtube Livestream chat, if people are interested, in the next few weeks.

Would appreciate more positive reviews!

This episode we talked to Justin Murphy. A very online “post-academic,” Murphy was until recently a political scientist in the UK. Today he has a popular YouTube channel and has relocated to the USA (where he’s from).

We talked about being an academic-without-institution, the recent embracing of his Roman Catholic background, and the general trends in culture, online and offline.

Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes, Spotify,  and Stitcher. Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe at one of the links above.

You can also support the podcast as a patron. The primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone else. I am toying with the idea of doing a patron Youtube Livestream chat, if people are interested, in the next few weeks.

Would appreciate more positive reviews!

This episode is a conversation with Zack Ajmal, a Pakistani American who recently visited Pakistan. Zack and I have known each other since 2002, and he was behind the Harappa DNA Project.

Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes, Spotify,  and Stitcher. Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe at one of the links above.

You can also support the podcast as a patron. The primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone else. I am toying with the idea of doing a patron Youtube Livestream chat, if people are interested, in the next few weeks.

Would appreciate more positive reviews!

This episode is a conversation with Lisa Mahapatra. We talk about her being a non-woke global human, being an ethnic Oriya, and being a dark-skinned woman. It was a fun conversation because to be frank Lisa is the type of person I’m often friends with. Heterodox, “gives no fucks”, and frank.

Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes, Spotify,  and Stitcher. Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe at one of the links above.

You can also support the podcast as a patron. The primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone else. I am toying with the idea of doing a patron Youtube Livestream chat, if people are interested, in the next few weeks.

Would appreciate more positive reviews!

On this episode, I talked to Suhag Shulka. I appreciate the readers who provided questions since honestly, I didn’t have strong priors. Suhag is a good talker, and I don’t have much personal experience with Hinduism (I’ve never been in a Hindu temple, and the only Hindu religious I’ve seen in real life was at the party of a family friend when I was six and a side room was devoted to prayer and such).

I know that some people have strong opinions on the HAF…my own suspicion after talking to Suhag is that it is in some ways a less political Hindu variant of AIPAC. On the American scene, Hindus are firmly within the Democratic party and the center to Left. This is clear in terms of politicians, but also when you look at survey data as well. But in terms of international affairs, these sorts of alignments are not as clear, and that seems to be where HAF gets in trouble with “social justice” types.

Update: The podcast was recorded yesterday. So I edited it today, so if you are a patron you can already listen.

I’ll be interviewing Suhag Shukla of the Hindu Amerian Foundation for the BrownCast. I have some questions I’m going to ask, but this is a podcast where I am willing to take suggestions.

So if you have questions, put them in the comments (note that I’m not going to be the only person on the podcast, so I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to get to your question).

Back in the 2000s, when blogging was a thing, I was at a party and someone mentioned offhand that I had a blog. Someone else blurted out, “Oh, me too!” We left it at that. But a friend asked me why I didn’t let on that my blog got hundreds of thousands of visitors per month, or that millions of people had read me over the years. The point is that there were people who had blogs, and other people who had blogs.

I was reminded of that by this piece in Have We Hit Peak Podcast?. I first heard about podcasting in the middle of the 2000s. I started listening to podcasts around 2008 or so, on my old iPod shuffle. It wasn’t until 2016 that I actually started contributing to my own podcast (on genetics and evolution).

About ten months later we started the Browncast. I’ve now done 67 podcasts for The Insight. I’ve been on the majority of the 50+ podcasts for the Browncast.

So let me quote from The New York Times piece:

But six episodes in, when neither Casper mattresses nor MeUndies had come knocking, the friends quit. Today, Ms. Mandriota says the same D.I.Y. spirit that made having a podcast “alluring” is precisely what doomed the project. “You can talk about the trees outside as much as you want, but if you’re not going to serve listeners and do it in a way that’s engaging, your chances of going viral are low,” she said, calling her show “the most makeshift podcast, with mediocre advice.”

An advice podcast from randoms? On the Browncast you can listen to Shadi Hamid, one of the world’s “top 50 thinkers”, or a conversation with an Indian American getting an arranged marriage. You can listen to discussions about the internecine conflicts in American conservative politics, or a first-person recollection of partition.

The reason there are 50+ episodes of the Browncast is that we have something to say. It’s “peak podcast” for those who don’t have something to say.