In this episode, I talk to India's legendary actor Naseerudding Shah about his relationship with theatre and cinema and the relationship between these two mediums.

In this episode, I talk with Amitava Kumar about his 2024 novel My Beloved Life, an absorbing, exceptionally moving novel that traces the arc of a man’s life, an ordinary life made exceptional by the fact that he has loved and has been loved in turn.

In this episode, I talk to the award-winning writer Yashica Dutt about her book "Coming Out as Dalit." The book exposes the blurred lines between caste and race, for both are fabrications meant to preserve the power of a few and require the ideological purchase of the many. And for women, for whom 'purity' is a measure of status and value, the traps of caste are even more sinister, even deadly.

In this episode, I talk with four highly accomplished and widely published, US-based South Asian scholars, professors, creative writers, and performance artists - Dr. Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Dr. Shreerekha Pillai Subramanian, Dr. Shoba Rajgopal, and Dr. Pramila Venkateswaran - about their contribution to the June 2022 special double issue of the Journal of International Women’s Studies and WAGADU (A transnational journal of women’s and gender studies).

In this episode, I talk with the Indian filmmaker, Shaunak Sen, about his Academy Award-nominated best Documentary film "All That Breathes," which tells the story of two brothers who've devoted their lives to protecting and rehabilitating birds in northern Delhi.

In this episode, I interview Mohsin Hamid, the award-winning British Pakistani novelist about his latest 2022 novel The Last White Man. Set in an unspecified city and country, this magic realist novel is about a white man who wakes up one morning to find himself changed to a darker skin color and a different, unfamiliar appearance.

In this episode, I talk with the award-winning Hindi language writer Geetanjali Shree, about her latest novel Tomb of Sand which won the 2022 International Booker Prize.

In this episode, I talk with India's acclaimed and award-winning actress, writer, and painter Deepti Naval about her memoir "A Country Called Childhood" where she talks about growing up in Amritsar, India, her life as a student of art in New York, her return to India as an actor, a career which she combines with poetry and painting.

In this episode, I talk with Dr. Tanmeet Sethi, an integrative family medicine physician, and clinical associate professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Our conversation focused on her debut book, Joy is My Justice, which explores cultivating and practicing joy in the face of oppression and day-to-day hardships.

In this episode, I speak with the award-winning film director Kanu Behl, about his film Agra, his second feature film, which had its world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Director’s Fortnight. Written by Behl and Atika Chouhan, Agra is an exploration of sexual dynamics within a family and the deep dystopian fractures created in modern India fast shrinking into pigeon-holed spaces. Kanu's first feature film Titli was screened at the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival.

In this episode, I talk to the award-winning novelist and professor at UC Berkeley, Vikram Chandra, about his critically-acclaimed mystery/thriller novel Sacred Games. Winner of the Hutch Crossword Award for English Fiction, and finalist of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Sacred Games is now the first original television series from India on Netflix.

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Lamia Karim, a professor at the University of Oregon, about her new book, Castoffs Of Capital: Work and Love among Garment Workers in Bangladesh, a book that dispels stereotypes about garment workers in the global apparel industry. It draws on fieldwork in Bangladesh to examine how female garment workers experience their work and personal lives within the stranglehold of global capital. Anthropologist Lamia Karim focuses on relations among work, gender, and...

In this episode, I talk with Barkha Dutt, India's most well-known and leading broadcast journalist, about her 2022 book "To Hell and Back: Humans of Covid"

In this episode I talk with Zainab Fasiki, Morocco’s most radical and disruptive feminist who transgresses the taboo on sexuality and the female body through graphic activism. We also talk about her 2019 graphic novel entitled Hshouma (Shame).

Beautifully written and deeply personal, Sonora Jha's memoir follows the struggles and triumphs of one single, immigrant mother of color to raise an American feminist son. From teaching consent to counteracting problematic messages from the media, well-meaning family, and the culture at large, Sonora offers an empowering, imperfect feminism, brimming with honest insight and actionable advice.

In this episode I talk with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni about her latest novel "The Last Queen," which is the story of the spectacular rise of the beautiful Jindan Kaur. Starting out as the daughter of the royal kennel keeper, she went on become Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s youngest and last queen; his favorite. And when her six-years-old son Dalip Singh unexpectedly inherited the throne, Jindan Kaur became Queen Regent of Punjab.

In this episode, I talk with Dr. Geetha Jayaraman, a former journalist and a filmmaker who teaches film practice at the Culture Lab, Newcastle University, UK. Geetha’s debut feature film "Run Kalyani" won the Special Jury Award at the Kolkata International Film Festival and got awards in the Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor categories at several international film festivals including Trichur, New York, and Montreal. As a director, script writer and producer of a range of...

In this episode, I talk with Sultana Siddiqui, a Pakistani media mogul, and television producer and director, who is celebrated for her widely successful TV drama Zindagi Gulzar Hai. As the founder of Hum Network Limited, she is the first woman in Pakistan to establish a TV station.

In this episode I talk with Sameer Pandya about his debut novel "Members Only," where, when accused of reverse racism by white members of a posh tennis club, the novel's central character Raj Bhatt's life falls apart. Along the way, he wonders: where does he, a brown man, belong in America? Sameer Pandya is the author of the story collection The Blind Writer, which was long listed for the PEN/Open Book Award. He is also the recipient of the PEN/Civitella Fellowship. His fiction, commentary,...

In this episode, I speak with Prof. Ramin Bahrani, director of his latest film The White Tiger based on Aravind Adiga's 2008 Booker-prize winner novel by the same name. The film stars Bollywood actors Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Rajkumar Rai, and in his debut role, the new actor Adarsh Gaurav.

In this episode, I interview Fowzia Karimi, an award-winning author of her illustrated debut novel, "Above Us the Milky Way." Fowzia Karimi was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. She immigrated to the US in 1980, after the Soviet invasion of the country. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, California. Her work explores the correspondence on the page between the written and the visual arts.She is a recipient of The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and has illustrated The...

In this episode, I talk to Vijay Seshadri about his latest book "That Was Now, This is Then." As a winner of the Pulitzer prize in poetry, Seshadri has three other collections of poetry: Wild Kingdom (1996), The Long Meadow (2003), and 3 Sections (2013), which won him the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Seshadri has an MFA from Columbia University and teaches poetry and nonfiction-writing at Sarah Lawrence College.

In this podcast I interview Nitasha Kaul, a London based academic, writer and poet, about her new book "Future Tense". In addition to fiction, she writes and speaks about topics that cover the political economy, Bhutan, Kashmir, nationalism in India, gender and identity. Nitasha's first novel "Residue" was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. "Future Tense" is her second novel.

For this episode I had the pleasure of interviewing Indian American novelist Avni Doshi about her debut novel "Burnt Sugar" (also known as "Girl in White Cotton"). Born in New Jersey, Doshi received a BA in Art History from Barnard College in New York, and a master's degree in History of Art from University College London. "Burnt Sugar" has been shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize.