Author: Razib Khan

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…). Would appreciate more positive reviews.

Today we talk to Jeffery Long, a professor of religious studies at Elizabethtown College. A practitioner of Vedanta, he is also the author of Historical Dictionary of Hinduism, Jainism: An Introduction, and A Vision for Hinduism: Beyond Hindu Nationalism. Dr. Long is also an editor of Buddhism and Jainism.

We discussed a variety of topics, from the nature of Hindu philosophy, the interaction with Islam, the distinction between astika and nastika schools, as well as Dr. Long’s impressions of Tulsi Gabbard (someone who he actually met at some point).

Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes 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…). Would appreciate more positive reviews.

This week we have a conversation with Thomas Chatterton Williams, a writer based in Paris. He is the author of Losing My Cool: Love, Literature, and a Black Man’s Escape from the Crowd and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine.

The discussion was wide-ranging, as we discussed being a writer, cosmopolitanism, race and identity, the nation-state, and finally the prospects for France in the 21st century. Really hard to summarize, so I have to just recommend for you to listen.

Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes 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…). Would appreciate more positive reviews.

In this episode, I had a conversation with a middle-class Dalit who lives in Gujarat. For me, Dalits are people who are reported on, written on, people who I hear about spoken of (usually sympathetically). But I wanted to talk to a Dalit who was a university educated middle-class person, to zero in on the essential aspect of being SC in India today. At least urban India.

One interesting observation is that his own experience in India is filled with slights, but not day to day oppression. It doesn’t seem the lot of Dalits in urban India is anything like that of black Americans during Jim Crow. He seemed to assume that America had solved much of its race problem and that that’s what Dalits should aspire to. Curiously, Americans at this point, at least on the Left, perceive our racial problems as dire.

Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes 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…). Would appreciate more positive reviews.

Nearly 20 episodes in, I thought it would be useful to gain some perspective. Here are the traffic trends:

In the next month or so I will be recording a podcast with Thomas Chatterton Williams and Shadi Hamid. The podcast explores what we’re interested in, but I have to be honest that I doubt this would have ever happened without reader feedback.

On this episode, I have a wide-ranging discussion about globalization, globalism, and being Steven Pinker’s bulldog with my friend Saloni. A graduate student in behavior genetics at KCL, Saloni grew up in Hong Kong, carries an Indian passport, and is a hanger-on in the neoliberal shill conspiracy. Somehow she became an “internet person.”