Podcast with Catherine Menon, author of “Fragile Monsters”
The year is 1985. Durga is visiting her grandmother Mary in rural Malaysia. It’s not a particularly happy occasion: Mary is tough and sharp-tongued, and “home” sparks bad memories for Durga.
Podcast with Emei Burell, author and illustrator of “We Served The People: My Mother’s Stories”
During the Cultural Revolution, many young Chinese in the cities were encouraged—if not ordered—to move to the countryside. Millions of young Chinese in high school and university moved to rural China ostensibly to “receive re-education from the poorest lower and middle peasants to understand what China really is” (to quote Mao Zedong, at the time)….
Podcast with Mehr Afshan Farooqi, author of “Ghalib: A Wilderness at My Doorstep”
Mirza Ghalib is one of the most celebrated poets in the Urdu literary canon. Yet, at the time, Ghalib was prolific in both Urdu and Persian.
Podcast with Jenny White, author of “Turkish Kaleidoscope”
The scene is Turkey in the mid-to-late 70s. A young male college student hops onto a bus. He sits next to a cute female student from his class, but before they can strike up a conversation, they see a right-wing passenger, walk up to another passenger and hit him on the head with a hammer….
Podcast with Amit Chaudhuri, author of “Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music”
Dismissal, in fact, is the default response to khayal (the preeminent genre of North Indian classical music), well before we get to know what khayal is, and vaguely term its strangeness “classical music”. Those who later become acquainted with its extraordinary melodiousness forget that on the initial encounter it had sounded unmelodious.
Podcast with Razeen Sally, author of “Return to Sri Lanka: Travels in a Paradoxical Island”
Return to Sri Lanka: Travels is a Paradoxical Island, the latest book by Razeen Sally, describes the country with the following words: There are shelf-loads of recent books about bigger and better-known countries, not least on Sri Lanka’s giant northern neighbour. But little Sri Lanka hardly pops up on the world’s radar screen. When…
Podcast with Raza Mir, author of “Murder in the Mushaira”
May 1857. The Indian city of Shahjahanabad, today called Delhi, is tense. British officers are worried about rumors of insubordination and rebellion elsewhere in India, while the local residents both await and fear a coming storm of revolutionary fervor.
Podcast with Jonathan Chatwin, author of “Long Peace Street: A walk in modern China”
Changan Jie, or Long Peace Street, stretches across central Beijing. Along it are several critical historical sites, including Zhongnanhai, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City: all important to Beijing’s history as the center of Imperial, Republican and then Communist China.
Podcast with Timon Screech, author of “Tokyo Before Tokyo: Power and Magic in the Shogun’s City of Edo”
In 1800, the Shogun’s chief minister wrote the following about the city of Edo: Someone said that if Edo did not have frequent fires, then people would be more showy and flash. In the capital or in Osaka they do everything with lavish elegance: people hang up paintings in their homes or put out…
Podcast with Eugenia Cheng, author of “x + y: A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender”
From its more mainstream, business-focused and business-friendly “Lean In” variants, to more radical, critical and intersectional understandings of feminism, the past decade has seen a flourishing of discussion from those proposing and critiquing different schools of thought for the way we think about gender in society.
Podcast with Janet M Hartley, author of “The Volga: A History of Russia’s Greatest River”
“The Volga! There is a mystery, a charm in all mighty rivers, which has ever made us gaze upon them with an interest beyond that inspired by other great and glorious sights; but to look on the largest of the European rivers gave a thrill of joy surpassing all former pleasure of the kind.”
Podcast with Te-Ping Chen, author of “Land of Big Numbers”
An old farmer, trying to build a plane in his village. A young man that gambles everything on the roaring stock market. A community transformed by a magical fruit that evokes vivid memories. A Chinese woman unable to understand her American partner. People stuck in a train station, waiting for a train that never comes.
Podcast with Julia Lovell, translator of “Monkey King: Journey to the West”
Journey to the West, and especially the character of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, is beloved by readers across China, East Asia, and beyond. The story and its characters have been written and rewritten in books, comics, graphic novels, movies, television shows, and video games. In many ways, Journey to the West and Son Wukong…
Podcast with Priya Basil, author of “Be My Guest: Reflections on Food, Community, and the Meaning of Generosity”
The French philosopher Jacques Derrida once described his idea of absolute hospitality as follows: Absolute hospitality requires that I open up my home and that I give not only the foreigner, but to the absolute, unknown, anonymous other, and that I give place to them, that I let them come, that I let them…
Podcast with Debashree Mukherjee, author of “Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City”
In 1935, the writer Baburao Patel wrote the following about Bombay’s film industry: In India, with financing conditions still precarious, the professional film distributor thrives… He comes with a fortune made in share and cotton gambling, advances money to the producer at a killing rate of interest plus a big slice of royalty and…
