All Episodes
Displaying 1 - 20 of 167 in total
Wheat vs Rice: How Two Grains Quietly Shaped Two Indias
Why does Punjab celebrate its new year in April with bonfires and a festival built around cut wheat, while Tamil Nadu celebrates its harvest festival in January, watch...
Chanakya's 40 Ways to Steal: How Ancient India's Most Dangerous Book Catalogued Every Way to Rob a Government, and How a Librarian Found It Again Eight Hundred Years After It Vanished
In 1905, a young Sanskrit scholar named Rudrapatna Shamasastry was working through a heap of palm leaf manuscripts in the Mysore Oriental Library, doing the kind of ro...
Panini: The World's First Programmer Wrote Code in Sanskrit, Twenty Five Centuries Before Computers Existed
In 1959 a computer scientist named John Backus invented a notation for describing the grammar of programming languages.It is called Backus Naur Form, and it is one of ...
The Building in Kolkata That Produced Six Scientists Who Changed the World
There is a building on College Street in Kolkata.It was built in 1875. Its architecture is the confident Victorian Gothic of a colonial institution that expected to la...
Mumbai to Pune Heritage Tour: The Extraordinary Victorian Railway That 42,000 Workers Built Through the Western Ghats and Changed India Forever
In 1854 a British engineer looked up at the Western Ghats and proposed building a railway through them.His superiors said no.He proposed it again. No. Again. No.For de...
Heisenberg Tagore Kolkata: When the Uncertainty Principle Met the Upanishads
On the afternoon of October 4 1929 a 28-year-old German physicist arrived at the house of a 68-year-old Indian poet in Kolkata.The physicist had two years earlier publ...
Ancient Karnataka Mathematicians: They Invented Calculus Before Europe Was Ready
Europe discovered calculus in the 17th century.A mathematician from Bijapur in Karnataka had described its foundational concepts five hundred years earlier.Europe deve...
Nilgiri Mountain Railway: The Victorian Toy Train Still Climbing Asia's Steepest Track Through India's Blue Mountains
In 1854 a British engineer looked up at the Nilgiri Hills and proposed building a railway to the top.His superiors said no.He proposed it again. No. A third time. No. ...
Baba Baidyanath Jyotirlinga: The Extraordinary Story of the Only Place in the World Where Shiva and Shakti Are United Forever
There are twelve Jyotirlingas in India.There are fifty-one Shakti Peethas.And there is only one place in the entire world where both exist simultaneously within the sa...
Ancient India Trade Routes: The 2000-Year-Old Document That Proves Vasco da Gama Did Not Discover India
In 1498 Vasco da Gama sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, crossed the Indian Ocean and arrived at the port of Calicut on the Kerala coast.Western history calls this t...
Channapatna Toys Tour From Bangalore: The Tiger King's Gift to the World That Michelle Obama Bought and Barack Obama Received
In the last decade of the 18th century, the most formidable military adversary the British East India Company ever faced in South India looked at a small town 60 kilom...
Bodhgaya Buddhist Pilgrimage Tour Blog
In the year 528 BCE, on the banks of a river in what is now the state of Bihar in India, a prince from Nepal sat beneath a fig tree and refused to move until he unders...
Ancient Goa Temples: Beyond the Beaches the Portuguese Could Never Destroy
Most people who visit Goa think its history began in 1510.That was the year the Portuguese arrived, defeated the Bijapur Sultanate and established the colony that woul...
Hampi Travel Guide: The Complete Guide to India's Most Extraordinary Ruined City
In 1500 AD Hampi was the second largest city in the world.Only Beijing was bigger.Its markets stretched for kilometres in every direction. Its temples were sheathed in...
Amrabad Tiger Reserve: The Hidden Tiger Safari From Hyderabad That Most of India Has Never Heard Of
Ask any wildlife enthusiast in India to name the country's tiger reserves and you will hear the same answers every time.Ranthambore. Kanha. Corbett. Bandhavgarh. Pench...
Gir Forest Lions: The Last 700 Asiatic Lions on Earth All Live in This One Forest in Gujarat
There is only one place on earth outside Africa where you can see lions in the wild.Not Kenya. Not Tanzania. Not Botswana or Zimbabwe or any of the African landscapes ...
Ahmedabad Heritage Walk: The Complete Guide to the Pols of India's First UNESCO World Heritage City
Six hundred years ago a sultan stood on the banks of the Sabarmati River and built a city.Not just any city. A city of extraordinary ambition and extraordinary intelli...
Varanasi Tour Guide: Why the World's Oldest Living City Changes Everyone Who Visits
There is a city in India that has been continuously inhabited for over three thousand years.Not ruins. Not archaeological remains. Not a restored heritage precinct wit...
Hoolock Gibbon Tour Assam: India's Only Ape Lives Here and Almost Nobody Knows It
Just before dawn in a forest surrounded by tea gardens in Assam, something extraordinary happens.A sound rises from the canopy that has no equivalent anywhere else in ...
Sowcarpet Food Walk: A Former Wrestler, a 60-Year-Old Jalebi Shop and the Sandwich That Exists Nowhere Else on Earth
Nobody told you about Dinesh Soni.He is not in the guidebooks. His lassi bar does not have a website. He was a professional wrestler for years, competing in the circui...
