Writer/director Shaina Ghuraya jokes that she is a triple threat - she’s a wheelchair-user, Punjabi, and a woman, and she doesn’t shy away from tackling issues of disability, race, and gender in fierce films that compel us to rethink limiting beliefs and reimagine a more compassionate world. “When I was four, a person in my family said, ‘We should just leave her in a room and throw away the key.’” --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. ...

Ethnographer, ethnopoet, and criminal investigator Vítor da Silva speaks about human rights violations endangering indigenous peoples and our earth, and the ways they continue to resist and revitalize their communities. "Storytelling was and continues to be a form of resistance against cultural, linguistic, and identity loss." --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Rajiv Bhateja, co-founder of They See Blue, a national organization to mobilize South Asians in America, and Anu Banerjee of They See Blue’s Georgia Team, speak about inspiring, educating, and activating South Asians across the nation to help win the U.S. presidential election and flip the Georgia Senate in one of the most-watched election seasons in history. "We just got to work. We knew what needed to be done. we chased every single vote." --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The...

Electronic Bhakti Music pioneers Aks and Lakshmi of Eclipse Nirvana create powerful spiritual experiences for their audiences while presenting the peace, love and pluralistic vision of poets such as Adi Shankara, Kabir, Mirabai, and Surdas. In 2013, their music and media company Eclipse Nirvana released “The Bhakti Movement”, a project that modernized traditional songs and was distributed worldwide by Sony Music. "These are stories about ultimate love, ultimate surrender, holding onto...

Licensed MFT, a Buddhist practitioner for over 30 years, and founder of MET(T)A Protocol, a design for mental health agency treatment currently being utilized in trauma and addiction treatment centers across the country, Dr. Stephen Dansiger speaks to us about his own journey of healing from trauma and addiction, and how Buddhist teachings can inform a modern-day trauma-centered approach to therapy. After years of addiction, he describes how his "fever broke" twenty-one days into his...

Founder and Executive Director of Climate Healers, Dr. Sailesh Rao, shows us how - through the study of ancient texts - we can transform ourselves from the voracious consumers we’ve evolved to as homo sapiens into our next evolution as “homo ahimsa,” catalysts and caretakers of a sustainable planet. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

"At what cost are you going to keep going with these old ways of thinking?" Licensed Professional Counselor Sandhya Sharma speaks about mental health and recovery of the self. As South Asians in America and in other communities in the West, how do systemic inequalities, racism, micro-aggressions, and white idealism impact our perceptions of ourselves, our mental health, our families and their values, and ultimately how we define our worth? This episode features special guest Devi Kumar, who...

Canadian filmmaker and television personality Asis Sethi and Canadian Crown Prosecutor and writer/producer Armin Sethi speak about the often-hushed issues of menstruation, stillbirth, and postpartum depression. Their live-action short film on menstruation titled ‘A Bloody Mess’ won a REMI Award at the 53rd WorldFest – Houston International Film Festival and is being screened at over 24 film festivals worldwide.  --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a...

International speaker, mentor, author, healer, and creator of the Healing Parents Knowledge, Hannah Pilnick shares the Ten Pillars of Healing and the Seven Secrets of Healing: deep knowledge and practical tools you can take into your life today to heal yourself and those you love. “The solution for children’s suffering is hidden in their parents,” Hannah says, meaning that we hold the key to our children’s healing as well as to our own. Join me for a lesson in unlocking your human powers.

TV producer, founder of South Asian Women in Entertainment, co-founder of South Asians in Entertainment, Bhavani Rao spills the tea on the importance of creating family and on building community amongst a global network of artists, activists, and industry leaders. "Run with the pack that you vibrate with; run with the pack that you want to vibrate with." 

Singer-songwriter-actress-poet Monica Dogra has been labeled one of the “50 most influential Women” by Elle Magazine for her work in defining the independent music scene in India and her power as a woman, creator, and truth-teller. She has toured the world with her band Shaa’ir and Func, and now as a solo artist, she is charting a bold, new path. She speaks about embracing life with a "secret sauce" -  the title of Monica's latest hit song and also what she describes as “someone whose blood...

Internationally-award-winning humanitarian and recording artist Emmanuel Jal was recruited as a child soldier at age 8 to fight a war in Sudan. He  now speaks and performs around the world, spreading a message of peace, reconciliation, and self-empowerment through his program My Life Is Art. “I turn my eyes into me,” Emmanuel Jal says of his journey to wholeness, joy, and life of miracles. Turn your eyes into you, and find your way too.

Tony-winning Broadway financier/producer of Mel Brooks' The Producers, A Raisin in the Sun, The Addams Family, Green Day's American Idiot, and currently a production based on Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill, and also NYT’s bestselling author of “The Fifth Beatle,” Vivek Tiwary talks about finding a passion, working for yourself, and reframing the idea of failure. "No dream is too impossible, and no person too unlikely to realize that dream."

Musician Vijay Iyer was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album in 2010 for his album, Historicity. His 2017 album, Far From Over, was cited by Rolling Stone as “2017’s jazz album to beat.” He is a MacArthur Fellow and professor at Harvard University. Iyer, however, does not call himself a jazz musician but a creative musician, a term he says that, “has been in circulation for more than fifty years” and was “made up by Black musicians...[who] have resisted the racial tag...

Twenty years ago, Urmi Basu walked into the red-light district of Kolkata, India, witnessing the plight of the most vulnerable members of our society, the children of women trapped in the sex industry, the transgendered community, and the children of the Dalit community. Starting with nothing but $200 in her pocket and a desire to change the injustices she saw, she has brought her courageous light to an entire community. This is her story, and the story of New Light in India. "What I told...

Singer-songwriter Siva Kaneswaran, who reached international fame as a member of the British boy band, The Wanted, speaks about stepping off the pedestal of fame and fortune and into his own as a solo artist and activist.  “’Breathe In’ is an introduction to who I am as a person now years later, and the reason why I focused on the breath is because it is one of the most important keys in unlocking your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing.”

Mental Health Advocate and suicide survivor Pooja Mehta has struggled with schizoid anxiety for over a decade, an illness that has caused her to attempt suicide three times. She is also a survivor of her brother’s suicide this past March. “When I hear the voices, when they get really bad, I’m not thinking to myself, “Wow, I wish I could just die,” like I don’t want to be here anymore, all I’m thinking is, “I want to make this stop, make the pain go away,"…It feels like an out-of-body...

Winner of Canada’s Juno for Best World Music Album of the Year, Kiran Ahluwalia talks about contemporary South Asian poetry and music that brings light to what exists inside us as humans, what binds us, what we yearn for, and what ultimately can free us. “There’s seven billion of us on the planet, and there’s seven billion ways of doing things.”

Dr. Vikram Paralkar, physical-scientist-author, discuses his 2020 novel, NIGHT THEATER, a fantastical story set in s small rural medical clinic in India, about a surgeon’s ethical dilemmas in bringing back a dead family to life, exploring the fraught space between life and death, and our very human yearning for what has been lost. “Is it possible to have meaning and Is it possible to be of use to another human being in moments of radical uncertainty and ambiguity? I hope the answer is yes.”

Patricia Danaher, Masters in Mythological Studies, talks about ritual and mourning surrounding the unborn – babies who are lost to miscarriage, stillbirth, abortion, and unsuccessful IVF – and the ways we can heal from those deep, and oftentimes silent, losses. “The richness of ritual and ceremony…is incredibly healing and calming for us as humans. It’s the metaphor that touches the invisible part of ourselves - our psyche, our spirit, our soul.”

Dr. Puri, Medical Director of the Palliative Medicine and Support Care Service at USC’s Keck Hospital and Norris Cancer Center, and author of “That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour," talks about life, letting go, and the human spirit. “Death and dying are not medical problems; they’re human predicaments. Medicine can’t solve mortality; it’s the humanity and spirituality that we bring to bear on our passages and our loved ones’ passages that is far mightier than medicine...

Rabbi Shergill, Punjabi singer, songwriter, and guitarist, hailed internationally as the “King of Sufi rock” and a pioneer of Delhi’s rock music scene, speaks about art that catalyzes social change and making music that travels from his heart into the world.

Best-selling author of twelve books, Sweta Vikram talks about how we can change our patterns of thinking, believing, and living to awaken our best lives.

Chiropractor and spiritual medium, Dr. Daniel Ryan, speaks about the realm beyond this mortal one and how attuning ourselves to it can elevate and transform our lives: “There comes a point where you trust the unseen more than the seen. When you’re in that place, you’re free.”

Actor-writer-director-composer Shishir Kurup talks about being the audio book voice of Deepak Chopra and the Dalai Lama, reimagining Shakespeare, and writing libretto for the LA Opera. Join us as we talk about the epic journey of storytelling.