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In this episode, Raj Balkaran speaks with Karen Pechilis, Jarrod Whitaker, and Valerie Stoker about A Cultural History of Hinduism (Bloomsbury, 2024), a landmark six-volume series that traces Hindu traditions from the ancient world to the …
Guest: Karen Pechilis, Jarrod Whitaker and Valerie Stoker
Date: 10/9/2025
India's Nonviolent Freedom Struggle focuses on the Thomas Christians, a group of Christians in South India who waged a nonviolent struggle against European colonization during the politically volatile period of 1599-1799. India's …
Guest: Clara A. B. Joseph
Date: 10/2/2025
This open access book, Yoga and Animal Ethics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) offers a comprehensive understanding of yoga theory and practice as it bears on several dimensions of animal-related ethical reflection and action. "Yoga" has become …
Guest: Kenneth Valpey
Date: 9/25/2025
This conversation examines the newly published translation of the Varāha Upaniṣad, a lesser-known but deeply transformative scripture from the Kṛṣṇa‑Yajurveda, composed between the 13th and 16th centuries CE and spanning 249 verses.
Guest: Ruth Perini
Date: 9/4/2025
In this episode, Dr. Raj Balkaran speaks with art historian and curator Alisa Lozhkina about her groundbreaking Ukrainian translation of the Devī Māhātmya—the first ever in the language. They explore the inspiration behind this bold …
Guest: Alisa Lozhkina
Date: 8/28/2025
Gandhi, Truth, and Nonviolence: The Politics of Engagement in Post-Truth Times (Oxford UP, 2025) presents a diverse array of essays delving into Gandhi's political activities, ethical beliefs, and philosophical stance. Distinguished …
Guest: Vinay Lal
Date: 8/21/2025
The book, the third volume to emerge from the enterprise known as 'The Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics', attempts to further the collective's ambition to put into question the certitudes of conventional social science …
Date: 8/14/2025
The Krama School of the Trika Saivism of Kashmir, more familiar as Kalikrama in the contemporary parlance, has turned out to be the most crucial among the monistic Saiva traditions of medieval Kashmir after the Pratyabhijna school, a …
Guest: Navjivan Rastogi
Date: 8/7/2025
Invisible Fire (ELIPSA, 2021) by Joanna Jurewicz explores early Hindu philosophy through the Manusmṛti, Bhagavadgītā, and Mokṣadharma, showing that reality is a single cognitive field manifesting through subject-object perception. Drawing …
Guest: Joanna Jurewicz
Date: 7/31/2025
Claiming Citizenship: Race, Religion, and Political Mobilization Among New Americans (Oxford UP, 2025) looks at Indian Americans, currently the second-largest group of immigrants in the United States, and a group that has seen significant …
Guest: Prema Kurien
Date: 6/19/2025