Can you meta point? Do you celebrate objectivity? Is there a lot happening that is ‘undocumentable’? Are facts and values entangled? Are several valuable things tangible but not measurable? Are we ourselves instruments? Can ‘fact’ have variations? How is truth different from truism? Must Truth be recognizable? Does mathematics ‘change’ over time? Can experience invalidate mathematical statements? Is the metaphysical always mystical? Is the artistic metaphorical? Are the three (Penrose) worlds – platonic, mental &amp; physical – distinct? Is there a ready-made world? Do you always look for ‘another way’ to experience the world? Does great architecture present the immeasurable? Can built spaces be conducive to certain values? Can one reflect while in action, such that use and contemplation co-exist? Where do concepts come from? Is analyticity an undefinable notion? Can you hear the voice of the table without existing in a ‘certain way’? When is threat visible? Is there normative desire in the world to both donate and take blood? Could one be at peace when one loses voice? &amp;, would our consciousness, in the future, be both vibrant and participatory? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using ideas and concepts from architecture (Prem Chandavarkar, CnT Architects, Bangalore), philosophy (Prof. Amitabha Das Gupta, ex-University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad), &amp; art/film-making (Amar Kanwar, New Delhi). Listen in...

#TWATA (The Witness And The Analyst) --- SynTalk

Can one become English? What does this have to do with the Suez Canal? Are you white? Are we free? Is it good to be obedient? Is the Other always an enemy? Or, could it be a reference group? Did everyday defiance (say, by the peasants) play a role in India’s struggle against the British Empire? Is nationalism necessarily anti colonial? How is Indianness linked to the Aryan Invasion Theory? Was the British conquest of India always partial? Are Gandhi, Gandhism, &amp; Gandhi-ites the same thing? Had Tagore read Marx? Why does dissent take time? How do wild elephants live within the market economy? Do rivers have their own unruly ‘erratic’ lives? Are forest fires often an act of defiance? How/why do we defy Nature’s will? Does geography change the way we think? Is Assam Bengal? Can the seemingly peaceful bear a lot of conflicts within? Was Tibet seduced differently from the other colonies? Does assimilation/citizenship always follow acculturation/subjecthood? What happens to Sutlej in Nathpa Jhakri? Will there always be defiance? How can one learn from dissent/friction? &amp;, might modern democracy survive because of defiance? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using ideas and concepts from literary/post-colonial studies (Dr. Sayan Chattopadhyay, IIT Kanpur, Kanpur), philosophy (Dr. Bharati Puri, IIT Delhi, New Delhi), &amp; history (Prof. Arupjyoti Saikia, IIT Guwahati, Guwahati). Listen in...

#TBOD (The Biography Of Defiance) - - - SynTalk

Who are you? Would you like to have a new name? Were there many Kalidasas? Have you ever been with a mountain? Does your family have recorded history? Why are authors often anonymous in ancient Indian texts? Is the desire to be known akin to the desire for immortality? What is the name for India in Sanskrit? When do names of specific individuals begin to emerge in archaeological artefacts? Did the devadasis lead creative lives? Do (only) dominant elites name and judge the anonymous non-elites? Which communities are anonymous in the history books? Does language constrain our inner lives? Did the British hunt differently from the indigenous people? Can material fragments or memory be tangible sources for history? Are all collectives eventually a part of Nature or the Divine? Is there something beyond the Self and the Other? When do anthropology and history intersect? Why do we sometimes surrender to become anonymous? Is the contemporary idea of fame temporally short sighted? Is Bangalore Nagarathnamma here now? Is it time to de-anonymize animals and other non-humans? &amp;, can there be an archaeology of life where both ordinary and the extraordinary meet? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using ideas and concepts from anthropology &amp; philosophy (Prof. Ananta Kumar Giri, MIDS, Chennai), &amp; history (Prof. Aloka Parasher-Sen, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad). Listen in...

#TSOTA (The Stories Of The Anonymous) - - - SynTalk

Why do we reify? When are you able to read others' minds? Is this a pedestrian? Are sensation and perception tied together? How are new mental templates formed? Are priors 'necessary' for categorization? How do we know, in a badly lit place, if something is a wire or a snake? Are mental images ‘sharp’? Should stochastic processes (also) be understood via their higher-order moments? How are interiors of opaque objects (metal spheres to stars) pictured? Do you internally ‘model’ various parts of your own body? Does our mechanical body ‘produce’ words? Do virtual worlds also need a degree of veridicality? Do verbal and visual systems interact during encoding? How were gravitational waves detected? Is reification language dependent? Does brute force of computation help? When does (sub-symbolic) chairness become a (symbolic) chair? Is the notion of an ‘object’ generalizable across domains/languages? Can stars’ magnetic fields be plotted as precisely as the HR diagram? ‘Are sun-like stars like the Sun’? Do we need the body to conceptualize? Will computer systems need bodies? Are eyes like cameras? How do shrooms work? &amp;, will ’everything’ tie up? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from astrophysics &amp; machine learning (Dr. Shravan Hanasoge, TIFR,  Mumbai), computational linguistics (Dr. Inderjeet Mani, Hua Hin) &amp; cognitive psychology (Dr. Varsha Singh, IIT Delhi). Listen in...

#TROO (The Reification Of Objects) - - - SynTalk

Are you a romantic genius? Are artists incapable of understanding their own creations? Where does inspiration come from? Is Nature divine? Can art divide? When/why does a creation become property? Are you the owner of your own Self? When does one have the right to copy? Do you copy yourself? Did print technology create the individuated author? Do you know what an author is? Which language do you create in? Is listening/reading re-creating? Does repetition create difference? What is the difference between art and commodity? Is the process of creation a dance between the Apollonian and the Dionysian? Did ancient Greeks have a creator God? Does music need to be human? Could technology cause autoamputation of human organs? Is the relationship between the original and the copy always hierarchical? Is originality a necessary myth? Were you born with a purpose? Are books made up of other books? How do you whip yourself into a frenzy? Do you sense life in rocks? Could AI diminish, homogenize, and dominate us? Can the inanimate (dolls, puppets) help us think about machines (&amp; ourselves)? &amp;, will/should there be artificially intelligent non-human creative geniuses in the future? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from philosophy (Dr. Arun Iyer, IIT Bombay,  Mumbai), law (Prof. Lawrence Liang, Ambedkar University, New Delhi) &amp; music (Rabbi Shergill, Delhi NCR). Listen in...

#TCATC (The Creator And The Created) - - - SynTalk

Are you expected to reproduce? Where is hell? Should patriarchy be ‘smashed’? Are brains masculine or feminine? Are biological and social factors deeply enmeshed, &amp; is the body also socialized? Is Nature mutable? Is sex different from gender? What does this distinction have to do with the colonial encounter? Is the personal realm both public and private? Can there be non-binaries without binaries? What can we be besides what we are? Can gender be merely agentive? Isn’t everything outside of cisgender ‘incorrect’? Is even biological sex only chromosomal? Are early (~6-8 weeks old) gonads bipotential? Do all (wo)men behave and feel the same way? What is innate; is innateness (if?) fixed? Has history progressed linearly from less- to more-? Does science look for truth or facts? How do homosexual penguins reproduce? Can attempts to bring order to polyphonic chaos often lead to unintended outcomes? Where does sexual desire come from? Are several domains (legal, medical, …) rightly binary? Are you prone to cardiac arrest? Are all human diseases sex-neutral? What does XX and XY chromosomes folding differently cause? &amp;, is everything entangled? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from developmental biology &amp; genetics (Dr. Deepak Modi, ICMR-NIRRCH), gender studies &amp; anthropology (Dr. Svati Shah, UMass, Amherst) &amp; film-making (Paromita Vohra, Mumbai). Listen in...

#TIBB (The In Between Binaries) - - - SynTalk

Do you respect the bones of your forefathers? Are your hands free? Were the hunter gatherers happier? Are nomads now likely to be criminals? Are you a willful nomad? Why don’t we live on trees anymore? How did ‘I-ness’ emerge? What is ‘I’? Is our thinking capacity more unconstrained than our bodily capacities? Does the Mind have an upper hand over the Body? Is the Self always embodied? Or, can there be a Self without an ‘I’ or a body? Are biology and culture mutually dependent on each other? Did wealth accumulation come only with settled ‘storage’ economy? &amp; with it rigid hierarchies, newer diseases/food, spatial organization, property, &amp; norms? Is only the present real? Is Self endlessly layered? Can there be a core Self? Do freedom and constraint go hand in hand? Have you experienced absolute freedom? Is being mobile fundamental to being human? Are you free to travel anywhere (but only in a manner that is permissible)? Will cultural selection over-determine evolution going forward? Might we become racially uniform in the future? Would that also imply uniformity in identity/thinking/action? &amp;, what would happen to people who no one wants? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from literary studies (Dr. Avishek Ray, NIT Silchar, Silchar), philosophy (Dr. Manidipa Sen, JNU, New Delhi) &amp; paleoanthropology (Dr. Subhash Walimbe, ex-Deccan College, Pune). Listen in...

#TLWW (The Leashes We Wear) --- SynTalk

Is the past ‘all over the place’? Is it the stories that keep buildings and communities alive? Are stories mental artefacts of the past? Did H.M. have expectations? Is understanding the past a process of comparing the unknown and the known? Is the surprising, strange, &amp; non-normative, therefore, informative? How do archaeological artefacts carry traces of human behaviour? Are there patterns in culture? What gets demolished? Can lost languages be revitalized? Is the past always changing? Is the brain always predicting? How old is professional History? How/when do our beliefs or emotions revise what we perceive from our other senses? Might two historians see two very different things? Does multilingualism delay dementia? Are all stories political? How are they so effective? How does the past guide our behaviour today? What leads to the ‘resting state’? Is understanding both diachronic and synchronic? When is the past invoked? How do stories sometimes go haywire? Who has blond hair and blue eyes? Is Self = Individual? Are the pasts (&amp; not the present) the gateways to the futures? How would we judge the current present? &amp;, will we go to formal schools to master disciplines and seek Truth? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from neuroscience (Dr. Arpan Banerjee, NBRC, Manesar), anthropology (Dr. Abhijeet Paul, UC Berkeley, Berkeley) &amp; history (Dr. Pushkar Sohoni, IISER, Pune). Listen in...

#TPLB (The Past Laid Bare) --- SynTalk

Are you a middle-roader? Is Jai Santoshi Maa a mainstream film? Are you exposed to world cinema? ‘What’ is popular? Are dialects non-standard? Does writing / scripting / printing legitimize the process of standardization? Are scripts discrete, but language continuous? Can sociopolitics ever be subtracted from language? How is time tapped? Are film scenes cut ‘in’ time (i.e., temporally, rather than visually)? Is the notion of mainstream always market driven? Where does power emerge from? Do the best art films take the maximum (personal) risk? Don’t all films crave commercial success? Are all films dependent? How has English become the language of the world? Is Gujarati one language? Who speaks Hindi? Do languages need a script? Do scripts become the identity of language, just as languages become the identity of people? Is identity dynamic? Why did the early scholarship on Sholay come from the west? Who makes / finances / exhibits films? Why do we divide Spaces? Why do we know merely the name of Panini, but not his frameworks? Is Uski Roti inaccessible? How does ‘realistic’ cinema achieve abstraction? Do binaries always remain? &amp;, what is the long term future of visuality, materialism, time, use cases &amp; ‘the unknown’ in cinema (&amp; the world)? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from film studies (Amrit Gangar, Mumbai), &amp; linguistics (Prof. Rajesh Kumar, IIT Madras, Chennai). Listen in...

#TNMS (The Non Main Stream) --- SynTalk

Many sorts of things don't happen. Plans are made and deferred. Films are left undeveloped. Subjects are avoided. Dreams are un-dreamt. Planes take off empty. Priests are marked absent. Building floors get skipped, and boats go missing. Turn Seven is just one of them. And #TATS (The Absent Turn Seven) pretends like nothing ever happened. You hear the voices, in order of disappearance. But order does not matter. Birds and brooks sing in no order. The middle never ends for those that remain.

#TATS (The Absent Turn Seven) - - - SynTalk

f(q) = What gets demolished? (#TPLB)SynTalk is a freewheeling interdisciplinary talk show with a philosophical approach to understanding the world from a long term perspective.

The Ultimate Galaxy Brain Podcast

f(q) = What gets demolished? (#TPLB)<br><br>SynTalk is a freewheeling interdisciplinary talk show with a philosophical approach to understanding the world from a long term perspective.

SynTalk

Is 2+2 inevitably 4? Is it grue? Is it true? Is it true that facts do not live on their own? What is The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages? How logic chases truth up the tree of grammar? Is truth the same across languages? If we used different languages would the facts be different? What comes first: truth or meaning? Is every sentence true or false? Does truth always have the IF-THEN structure? What can computers not prove, &amp; why? What the nature of logic and probabilities does to the notion of truth, &amp; how there need not be one logic? Can there be heuristics of ‘interestingness’ when forward chaining for a proof? Might all mathematics be done by proof checkers and Automated Theorem Provers (ATPs)? What is a candidate for a conjecture? Why is logical contradiction the ultimate no-no? Why is stock market news more difficult to write than Shakespeare, for a ‘Bayesian-monkey’? ‘Tell me what you are interested in, and I will tell you what the truth consists in’. Do (?) counterfactuals change the world by a very small amount of information? Or, does nature provide the regularities, and we provide the causal theories? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from philosophy (Prof. Simon Blackburn, ex-University of Cambridge, Cambridge), computer science (Prof. Paritosh K. Pandya, TIFR, Mumbai), and mathematics (Prof. Rajat Tandon, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad). Listen in....

#TSOT (The Structure Of Truth) --- SynTalk

Are you able to realize your potential? Is your country under-developed? Is development a kind of gradual unfurling? Could it then be an infinite, deliberate, process? Is urbanization industrialization? Is industrialization development? Is development, only, economic growth? Does urbanization ‘cause’ development? Did the moral values of ‘improvement’ come from religion? Does Science help make progress material by unlocking the mind of God? How did Development take off post WW2 as a new ontology? Is a society getting richer the same as people becoming less poor? Does development have an urban bias? Does the countryside, also, need urbanization? Do cities &amp; nations compete in the global marketplace? Why did several early theorists of development come from Eastern Europe? Why is some of the most expensive real estate in developing countries? Does development need (say) education, health, environment, and morals, &amp; not just money? Do you expect to eat asparagus in every month of the year? How might the meaning of development change in the years to come? Would it become more cosmological? &amp;, for it, would we have to go back to the future? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from urban studies (Prof. Tridib Banerjee, USC, Los Angeles), development studies (Prof. John Harriss, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver), &amp; science studies (Prof. Kapil Raj, EHESS, Paris). Listen in...

#TCCD (The Change Called Development) - - - SynTalk

Is Nature logical? Is uncertainty hardwired into Nature? Where do the paradoxes or aporia lie? Might paradoxes exist in the object (&amp; not in the thinking)? What is the ontological status of mathematical objects? Are laws of Nature really written in the language of mathematics? Is mathematics a form of philosophical speculation? Did mechanization precede mathematization? Are axioms more pragmatic than theoretical? Can all mathematics be reduced to (but not derived from) logic? 'How' is mathematics able to explain reality? Can the quantum or the cosmological scales be visualized using Euclidean geometry? Does theoretical physics sometimes invent its own mathematics to make progress? Can (sub/un-conscious) thoughts or dreams be concretized? Is pure mathematics an extension of deductive logic, &amp; always incomplete? Can mathematics be semi empirical (as: axioms + data)? Is a causal explanation always necessary? Is it possible to have a theory of everything for anything? What is the future of the limits (&amp; uncertainties) of mathematics? Would large scale collaboration and computation help push the limits? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from theoretical physics &amp; mathematics (Prof. Rajesh Gopakumar, ICTS-TIFR, Bangalore), statistics (Prof. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, ex-University of Calcutta, Kolkata), &amp; philosophy (Prof. Babu Thaliath, JNU, New Delhi). Listen in....

#TLOM (The Limits Of Mathematics) - - - SynTalk

Are ‘things’ (truly) suppressed? What does it mean to act? (How?) is the fan in your computer doing something to you? Are there many kinds of intentionalities in the world? Do animals and machines also act? Are language, metaphysics, politics, agency – all – reserved only for us? Could politicization of the material world be thought of as depoliticization of the human society? What cannot interact? Is mediation a sub-species of action? Are definitions also actions? Is a detailed description identical to an explanation? Is there a depth dimension to Reality? Are things contained in space, or does space exist ‘because’ things exist? Does the form of ‘spacing out’, then, lead to the possibilities of voluntary or involuntary actions? Does the subject always contain the predicate? Is your worldview dualistic? What is hidden within ourselves? Might action be caused by disembodied intention? What makes crowds mobs? Does the material non-human world permeate our social lives via (say) language and behaviour? Is social change, therefore, not so easy? Is capital the real actor? &amp;, are the possibilities of the future a given, or can the world be acted upon (endlessly)? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from anthropology (Prof. Arjun Appadurai, NYU, New York), philosophy (Dr. Enakshi Ray Mitra, University of Delhi, New Delhi), &amp; East Asian studies (Dr. Christian Uhl, Ghent University, Ghent). Listen in...

#TMAA (The Mediators And Actors) --- SynTalk

How old are passports? Are you a resident citizen? Are nations primeval or modern? Were the colonizers, such as England, the first nations? Are all countries multi-ethnic/multi-religious? Are there phases, then, in the process of the abstract negotiating with ground realities? How do nations reproduce, as some are born, some emerge, some mimic, &amp; some are just put together? When are borders drawn? Why did Czechoslovakia split? Must nations be unitary? How central is ethnicity to national identity? What kinds of countries make patriotic films? Is there too much of suffering in Russian war movies? Do you know of French film ‘stars’? Do psychology and pedagogy together create a citizenry? Why do nations sometimes lose out to (say) regions and religions as the object of loyalty? Is your nationality merely an administrative reality? What moves you? What happened to classical ‘Hindustani’ music after Indian partition? What can nations share (&amp; not share)? Is most of politics economics? Will economic globalization redefine the abstract notion of nations (&amp; nationalism)? Or, will nations – with multiple converging rationale –  keep going strong…? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from social anthropology (Prof. John Clammer, O. P. Jindal Global University, Delhi NCR), film criticism (M. K. Raghavendra, Bangalore), &amp; history (Prof. Lakshmi Subramanian, BITS Pilani, Goa). Listen in...

#TFON (The Formation Of Nations) --- SynTalk

What’s posterity ever done for you? What survives in the long run? How did (public) museums come to be from private collections? Who owns the past? Do we transact with the invisible sacral world via these accumulations? How is the integrity of (say) sounds preserved and meanings imbued in them? What makes chants memorable? Can objects be looked at as mere postulations? Are ‘art’ objects pointers to a certain moment in time in the artist’s life? How stable are museums – do objects sometimes end up in a bonfire there? Can art survive only by including the possibility of its own change (&amp; even death)? Does making something also allow one to move forward? What is not heritage? Do narratives precede collection? What do we look past? How does a proverb work? Why do non-Brahmins chant? How are histories localized? What happens outside museums and galleries, &amp; how is that taken ‘in’? Are devotion and detachment different? Does the present need the past; &amp; is the past always ‘here’? Are we worried about forgetting? Will we keep traveling from the particular to the universal? How can you postpone somebody else’s death? What is the future of the past? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from folklore studies (Dr. M. D. Muthukumaraswamy, National Folklore Support Centre, Chennai), art (Sudarshan Shetty, Mumbai), &amp; art history (Prof. Kavita Singh, JNU, New Delhi). Listen in...

#TSTP (The Survival To Posterity) --- SynTalk

Do you trust your translator? How can ‘worlds’ be translated? Where is Tamil when a novelist writes in English about Tamil speaking characters? Are all translations interpretations (judgment?)? Can one ‘read’ Nature? Can mathematics be translated into (natural language) prose? Is translation prior to language, &amp; (therefore) is it in the nature of languages to be translatable? How then are languages different from one another? Can the forces of translation be located within one language itself? How are scientific texts different? Is symbolization a form of translation? Is science a form of storytelling? Are both equations and poetry essential &amp; point-like? Do you read poetry with footnotes? Must the translated text do all the work on its own? Could a 20-page commentary on a 2-line sutra be considered a faithful translation? Does the specific history of interpretative communities always matter? Can Quran be translated and read as Ovi Marathi poetry? Did colonization happen via translation? But, is all translation violent? Will the ideas of interpretation, translation, &amp; language always exist in the future? Will language die (?), but translation live? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from poetry (Prof. Mustansir Dalvi, Sir JJ School of Architecture, Mumbai), philosophy (Prof. Sundar Sarukkai, NIAS, Bangalore), &amp; translation studies (Prof. S. Shankar, University of Hawai’i, Honolulu). Listen in....

#TFOT (The Fantasy Of Translation) --- SynTalk

Are you proud of your buckets and combs? Is a cup culture-specific? What's typical? Are objects a part of your identity? Can empathy be created? Can buildings foster (multidimensional) equity? What is bad design? Do the best designs (try to) do many things simultaneously? Does a challenging design problem always involve trade-offs and incentive conflicts? How do evolving needs, preferences, and available resources lead to new categories? Why do non information intensive products (such as debt) catering to perennial needs stay central for a very long time? How sharp or fuzzy are the boundaries between different products? Why don't we have labels for everything? Do we reduce the complexity of the world by creating affordances and categories? Is design always particular to a context? Are the best designs aware of the context of the context? What makes designs robust? Are income tax systems also influenced by norms of culture and identity? Are markets culturally neutral? Can designs enable transitions? Will we (even) be designing for particular needs in the future? How can self-regulating non-manipulative infrastructure be created; would community formation play a key role? Is the future of design ecological? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from design (Prof. Uday Athavankar, IIT Bombay, Mumbai), mechanism design (Prof. Praveen Kumar, University of Houston, Texas), &amp; architecture (Prof. Rahul Mehrotra, Harvard University, Massachusetts). Listen in…

#TAOD (The Agency Of Design) --- SynTalk

Of what womb are you born? Are there good &amp; bad animals? ‘Where’ is there no Law? Are the outlawed animal-like? Who gets to be a citizen of the polis? Are Pandavas princes in the forest? Are the freer nobler? Does the wolf look down upon the dog? Are animals truly in the open? Are humans, in a sense, the most abandoned? Is the jungle still within us? Did our ability to exchange (&amp; imagine) enable us to curb our animal instincts and establish ‘humanity’? Where do Gods and demons come from? Is divinity empathy? What exactly is tiger-man? Does hunger lead to evil? Is empathy required in the jungle? Did peasantry play a role in reconfiguring human-animal relationships? Can (all) animals be sacrificed for humans? Do animals have to be attributed with a Being? What do they have in common with us? How do we turn Other humans into animals? Why are inter-species social relationships possible? Do you understand how insects suffer (or, how larvae wait to be captured)? Are we overwhelmingly anthropomorphic? Must species barriers be blurred? Would we, in the future, have everything we desire? Are the werewolves here to stay? &amp;, would the repressed always return? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from comparative literature (Prof. Peter Arnds, Trinity College, Dublin), philosophy (Dr. Prasenjit Biswas, NEHU, Shillong), &amp; mythology (Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik, Mumbai). Listen in...

#TAIU (The Animals In Us) --- SynTalk

Are you addicted to snake poison? Or gambling? Are you an alcoholic? Have you quit smoking? Why are cigarettes so popular? Why are slot machines more addictive than games of skill? Why are we addicted to anything? Is there a threshold? Are some of us (genetically) more vulnerable than others? Is an addict always aware that she is an addict? Does addiction always have both ‘loss of control’ as well as ‘potential to harm’ components? Can we be mistaken about the (subjective) experience of our own bodily sensations? Is addiction always a desire for certain kinds of sensations? What precedes the craving? Are addicts price sensitive, &amp; do they respond to financial rewards? Does tobacco tax work? What if the substance is not available? Is it always irrational to be an addict? Can one avoid severe depression via addiction? Are hardcore addicts different? Is their ethical vision deeply skewed? Might brown sugar and alcohol addicts look down upon each other? Why does relapse happen? Is it tough being an addict? Is our concept of addiction going to expand in the future? Will addiction always be there, or does it depend largely on the environment? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from behavioral economics &amp; philosophy (Prof. Harold Kincaid, University of Cape Town, South Africa), psychiatry (Prof. Shubhangi Parkar, Seth G.S.M.C &amp; KEM Hospital, Mumbai), &amp; philosophy (Dr. Kranti Saran, Ashoka University, Delhi). Listen in....

#TMAG (The Many Addiction Games) --- SynTalk

What are tigers worth? Why is diamond more valuable than water? What is Nature’s role in economic value? Is non-use value also a part of total value? Is valuation always the same as measurement in terms of money? Is value fundamentally a (human) welfare concept? What is the implication of Nature not being ‘in the market’? Does Nature include the moon? How did water and land come to be commoditized? Would it be a mistake to give a value to (say) Sundarbans? What is Nature, &amp; how have our interrelationships changed historically? What does conservation involve? Is nature conservation just a small part of environmentalism? Are both preservation as well as resource management a possibility? Can bringing in the future continuously into our conception help correct the use of resources? Might a time return when water might not have a market? Do we (always) ‘Bring out number, weight, &amp; measure in a year of dearth’? Must the economy (once again) become a subset of society? Is ‘man the measure of all things’? Are we capable of something much greater than anthropocentrism? Should we be optimistic? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from economics (Prof. A. K. Enamul Haque, East West University, Dhaka, Bangladesh), conservation studies (Dr. Ullas Karanth, Wildlife Conservation Society, Bangalore), &amp; philosophy and economics (Dr. Aseem Shrivastava, New Delhi). Listen in....

#TRON (The Revaluation Of Nature) --- SynTalk

Do you hate beggars? Can one think of the above-below topography using both perspective as well as relationality? Is there an invisibilisation and dispersal of the hegemons? What does it mean to be at the very bottom? Is there a social responsibility of capital? Why does the below always have a hidden character, &amp; why is there no giving of dignity to a full corporeal person? Why does a musahar woman own a broken-up dis-assembled bicycle? Are we as a society actively at war against the destitute – why? Are we actively creating destitution (&amp; dispossession)? Is there always a dialectic unity between prosperity and misery? Who is the primary client of the state? How do you view taxes? Do we need to identify with the below? Is it possible to lose the above below through a new imaginary? What are the limits of solidarity? Is solidarity expensive? Why do moral arguments have so little traction? What is the universe of those with whom we are willing to share? Why are there The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas? It’s all the same people, right? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions, about destitution in a general sense, using concepts from human rights (Harsh Mander, New Delhi), social anthropology (Prof. Shalini Randeria, The Graduate Institute, Geneva), and social theory &amp; literature (Prof. Kumkum Sangari, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee). Listen in....

#TVFB (The View From Below) --- SynTalk

Imagine taking a step forward, then a step to the right, &amp; then a step back – where are you now? Do you have to reason for this, &amp; how ‘far’ can you go? How are diagrammatic reasoning and representation different? Are diagrams for domains that can be represented spatially? Are mental images an internal perceptual representation shared by both internal and external inputs? Do (explicit) symbols make cognition possible? Is our cognitive architecture multi-modal? Can the blind use diagrams? How do we know what is extraneous in diagrams? Are diagrams often socially constructed? Do shapes lie somewhere between speech and scripts? Can a child learn to ‘read’ spontaneously? Are scripts arbitrary? However, are diagrams always homomorphic with ‘reality’? Are there links between the evolutions of geometry, logic, &amp; diagrams? Can we make a diagram of ‘yesterday’? Or ‘not raining’? Can the absence of non-existent objects be represented? What if diagrams didn’t ‘exist’? Does language mimic diagrams? Would diagrams be significantly more used for proofs in the future? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from artificial intelligence &amp; cognitive science (Prof. B. Chandrasekaran, ex-The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio), philosophy of logic (Prof. Lopamudra Choudhury, Jadavpur University, Kolkata), &amp; psychology (Prof. Prakash Padakannaya, University of Mysore, Mysore). Listen in...

#TCOD (The Constraints Of Diagrams) --- SynTalk

Do villages grow up to be cities? Do you have piped water? Is your city your home? Do you feel free? Or, abandoned? Or, anonymous? Why do people come together and cohabit in large numbers? Does this itself create new possibilities (&amp; externalities)? How ‘natural’ is a city? Can there be villages within a city unit? What is called urban? Are cities heterogeneous and diverse, but also internally hierarchical? Why do ghettoes, slums, &amp; suburbs emerge and persist? Do cities mirror the modern nation state or the medieval empires? Can cities transform agricultural practices? Can a city sustain itself even as it destroys the river (say) on which it was set up? Are homeless poor people capable of looking after themselves? Can cities ever be taken over by slums? How large can they get? Is a lot of urban planning (paradoxically) ‘anti-urban’? Can the Market or the State fulfill peoples’ dreams? Are urban (efficiency-driven) and rural (productivity-driven) properties very differently organized? Is the future of agriculture going to drive the future of cities? Is the ‘soft’ city as real as the concrete city? Would several cities get regionally disembedded? Must the urban imagination also include the hills and the seas…? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from urban geography (Dr. Anant Maringanti, Hyderabad Urban Lab, Hyderabad), &amp; urban history (Dr. Awadhendra Sharan, CSDS, New Delhi). Listen in...

#TMOC (The Matter Of Cities) --- SynTalk

What’s your kill count? Do cats and dogs play to win? Do you like running and racing? Does play express freedom while pushing at the boundaries of reality, materials, &amp; rules? Does normal life lend solidity to games, even though they may be interrupted by reality? Are literature and games both forms of cultural simulation? Would a Martian visiting Earth be able to distinguish work from play? Why can games only be enacted (&amp; not narrated) in real time by the player? Must players be aware of their effects on each other for a situation to be a game? How does nature make its moves? Are the rules of a game arbitrary though not irrational? Can legal moves be illogical and/or unethical? How ‘large’ games can be, &amp; must they be conclusive? Can several mathematical proofs be thought of as (systemic and/or narrative) turn-based games? Are all perfect information games winnable? How are games with imperfect or incomplete information different? Can anything be learnt via play? Why doesn’t game-play develop as fast as the simulation of spaces? Could games be used for ‘serious’ purposes in the future? Would leisure stay free? Or, might games cease to be play even as we bet everything on it? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from literature (Prof. Supriya Chaudhuri, Jadavpur University, Kolkata), logic (Dr. Sujata Ghosh, ISI, Chennai), &amp; game design (Dhruv Jani, Studio Oleomingus, Vapi). Listen in...

#TJAG (The Just Almost Games) --- SynTalk

Do cheaters survive? Do you find joy in competing (&amp; cooperating)? Are teams mechanisms or organisms? How do teams coordinate layers of emotions, energies, and purposes to acquire a coherent ‘personality’? What, then, keeps teams together? Is there scarcity of common purposes in the world? Is teaming essential for bacteria? Might teams, across scales, be both emergent as well as designed systems? How are cost-benefit analyses performed when group and individual goals diverge? Is your  life on the spot market? Might individual liberties be compromised when teams form? In what way are all team members equal; &amp; not? Is it better to lose playing beautifully, than to win an ugly game? Why are only certain parts of economic supply chains formalized? Conversely, why are certain ’formal’ rules just ignored? Does unemployment rate fall with increasing education? Are ‘practice’ and ‘rehearsal’ games different? How is ‘arms-race’ style evolution different? Do all teams need models? When is governance necessary? Would problem solving depend more and more upon complex teams in the future? &amp;, how would individuals remain important? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from philosophy (Prof. Daniel G. Campos, Brooklyn College (CUNY), New York), economic sociology (Prof. Bino Paul, TISS, Mumbai), &amp; evolutionary biology (Prof. Milind Watve, Dinanath Mangeshkar Hospital, Pune). Listen in...

#TATT (The Attempts To Team) --- SynTalk

Is it nonsensical to think that suffering is a part of the ‘human condition’? Are you a passive victim? Can you easily be more or less of yourself? Who suffers? Do we suffer because we are highly (self) conscious creatures? Are you forced to engage with the everyday? Does suffering have a duration, and can we live purely (&amp; independently) in the present? Is violence inevitable in all lives? Can one voluntarily incur suffering? Does being a victim have any moral consequences? Can sacrifice be practised narcissistically? Is sacrifice a way of taking violence, and turning it inwards? Does everyone have something to sacrifice? Do those who do not suffer lead shallow lives? Do human beings differ in the amounts they suffer? Do you decide generically? Can the underprivileged be moral heroes, &amp; when? Why does fasting-unto-death sometimes work? Are language and suffering very closely connected? How can one suffer better? Is vulnerability (or the performance of it) potentially a political force? Is a moral life fearless? Why do people with no hope of survival fight and die for everyone else? &amp;, must one learn to die ‘appropriately’? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from history (Prof. Faisal Devji, University of Oxford, Oxford), sociology (Prof. Pushpesh Kumar, University of Hyderabad (UoH), Hyderabad), &amp; philosophy (Prof. David Weberman, Central European University (CEU), Budapest). Listen in...

#TFOS (The Faculty Of Suffering) --- SynTalk

How does your tongue taste? What do you take for granted? Can you create randomness? Do you act in the continuum? Can you then reason about racing a tortoise ahead of you? Is there something common to most paradoxes? Can all paradoxes be ‘stated’? Do paradoxes owe something to the nature of Reality? Are dilemma, doubt, disbelief, paradoxes, &amp; contradictions in the same class? Do we necessarily need faith before reasoning? Is there a reasoning process that does not lead to paradoxes? Why isn't Gödel's Theorem a Law? Are all paradoxes connected to language? Can a logic be complete but undecidable? Is uncomputability a consequence of self reference? Can discrete cardinality be higher than real numbers’? How did quantum probability uncover the hidden assumptions behind the quantum paradoxes? Is the quantum collapse (still) a physical phenomenon? What is computing? Are paradoxes pictures? Is a paradox free conception of the world possible? What is common knowledge? Are all paradoxes counterintuitive, &amp; will we always keep running into them? Is there likely to be a ‘Law of Reasoning’ in the future? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from mathematics (Prof. Luigi Accardi, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy), computer science (Prof. Supratik Chakraborty, IIT Bombay, Mumbai), &amp; philosophy (Prof. Navjyoti Singh, IIIT, Hyderabad). Listen in....

#TPAC (The Paradoxes And Contradictions) --- SynTalk

Is Earth one system? How stable is New York? What sort of a person are you? How does the structure of your networks change the way you behave? How do you find out if something is good? Are societies with (Royal Family-like) strong hubs bad for social learning? Can atmosphere be thought of in terms of networks? Are unstable solutions more likely to become strong? Is it coincidental that strong El Niño and weak Monsoon often go together? Why/when did Krishna have to show his large magnificent form? Is strength always a transient (contingent) ‘solution’? Is democracy the rule of the weak (the ruled…)? Could weak ties produce solidarity? Are States and Markets substitutes? Do both of these, however, needs ‘lots of’ Society (i.e. social ties)? Do you need to have friends to succeed in a competitive market? How are couplings made stronger? Can synchronization be lost after strengthening? How do dynamics and structure of networks influence each other? Can a tornado destroy the whole earth? Could seeking extreme efficiency be risky? Would there be no trade-offs in the future? &amp;, would the world keep becoming more ‘superfluid’ (and superfluous)? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from dynamical systems (Dr. Amit Apte, ICTS-TIFR, Bangalore), political theory &amp; poetry (Prof. Ashwani Kumar, TISS, Mumbai), &amp; economics (Prof. Sanjeev Goyal, University of Cambridge, Cambridge). Listen in...

#TSAWM (The Strong And Weak Modes) --- SynTalk

Can the ocean be boiled? Is the aquarium a closed system? Is the Universe an open system? Are all systems conceptual (&amp; arbitrary?)? Do systems always have components? Can an individual body have a temperature? Why does the temperature not change ‘during’ the process of freezing? What describes volume? Might we have closed (idealized) theories to understand otherwise open systems? How do bodies ‘turn’ inactive? Is openness always a question of degree given (say) the strength of interactions and/or the dimensional scale? Is classical theory an approximation of quantum theory? What would your little protest do? Can closed societies stay closed forever? Do dynamics of interactions matter? Can phase transitions happen in closed systems? Can living cells become inert (yet viable) spores? Does atom-ness exist? Are we, as human beings, components of systems? How do political systems take shape? Is it possible for ideas to be closed? Does our changing knowledge keep even the past unclosed? Is anything closed at all? Are closed models necessary and helpful? &amp;, will we continue to open the world up this way? SynTalk thinks about these &amp; more questions using concepts from philosophy (Dr. Anirban Mukherjee, University of North Bengal, Siliguri), electrical engineering &amp; systems biology (Dr. Shaunak Sen, IIT Delhi, New Delhi), &amp; mathematics (Prof. K. B. Sinha, JNCASR, Bangalore). Listen in...

#TCAOS (The Closed And Open Systems) --- SynTalk

The Best Multi-Part Documentaries, with documentaries on Obama, Federer vs Nadal, the making of Star Wars, Netflix vs Blockbuster and more. Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!

Best Multi-Part Documentaries

The best podcast episodes on Startups. For anyone working in a startup, or anyone interested in the incredible stories behind how people built companies like Instagram, and Facebook. Offering both practical advice and insights, as well as the stories for how many of the biggest startups got to where they are today. Add episodes you're interested into your queue below!