Podcasts about indus

Supreme Court justices from across the ideological spectrum appeared ready to side with a religious group seeking an unemployment tax exemption, in the first of three church-state disputes on tap in coming weeks. "I thought it was pretty fundamental that we don't treat some religions better than other religions," Justice Elena Kagan said. "And we certainly don't do it based on the content of the religious doctrine that those religions preach." Cases and Controversies hosts Kimberly Robinson and Lydia Wheeler break down arguments in Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor & Indus., and take a look of some of the court's recent opinions. Do you have feedback on this episode of Cases and Controversies? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

Fixing a time limit of one month, Sugriva dispatches Sushena and others to conduct a search for Sita in the western quarter.Recitation: 00:00 - 09:33Translation:09:37 - 22:33[ Chandrachitra = the modern district of MathuraBahlika = the modern BalkhKuksi = the modern Madhya PradeshThe river Sindhu = today's Indus]

Naseer Memon comes on The Pakistan Experience to discuss why Sindh is protesting the new Canal Project and why there should be no more new canals on Indus.On this deep dive podcast, we discuss the new six canals, the Cholistan Canal Projects, Water Availability, the Indus River System, Water Dispute with India, Karachi's issues, Mangroves, History of Resistance in Sindh, Kalabagh Dam, Sukkur barrage and more.Naseer Memon is a development professional and a consultant on climate change induced natural disasters, community resilience and public policy.Mr. Naseer Memon is the Chief Executive of Strengthening Participatory Organization (SPO) and the Chairperson of National Humanitarian Network (NHN). Mr. Memon is a renowned development professional, who has been working with prominent organizations in humanitarian and development sector, academia and corporate sector of Pakistan for more than 15 years. Mr. Memon has represented NHN on various important forums nationally and internationally i.e. Humanitarian Country Team (HCT), World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) Network of Southern NGOs etc. He has also remained a member of the Review Committee of Central Emergency Response Fund of UNOCHA. Mr. Memon remained as a Member on the Technical Group for the development of a Core Humanitarian Standard and coherent standards architecture. The Group is convened by HAP, People In Aid and the Sphere Project on the development of a Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) and a coherent standards architecture for the sector.The Pakistan Experience is an independently produced podcast looking to tell stories about Pakistan through conversations. Please consider supporting us on Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/thepakistanexperienceTo support the channel:Jazzcash/Easypaisa - 0325 -2982912Patreon.com/thepakistanexperienceAnd Please stay in touch:https://twitter.com/ThePakistanExp1https://www.facebook.com/thepakistanexperiencehttps://instagram.com/thepakistanexpeperienceThe podcast is hosted by comedian and writer, Shehzad Ghias Shaikh. Shehzad is a Fulbright scholar with a Masters in Theatre from Brooklyn College. He is also one of the foremost Stand-up comedians in Pakistan and frequently writes for numerous publications. Instagram.com/shehzadghiasshaikhFacebook.com/Shehzadghias/Twitter.com/shehzad89Chapters:0:00 Introduction1:30 What are the six canals?5:25 Understanding the Cholistan Canal Project7:48 Water availability10:00 Understanding the indus River System19:24 Water dispute with India24:20 Quality of Water and Manchar Lake31:48 Canals ka issue Karachi ka bhi issue hay42:00 Kya Pani Samandar mai Zaya hojata hay?47:09 Mangroves55:30 Why does the state not care about Sindh?1:00:05 Sindh Card wala propaganda kyon maan leyte hain log?1:06:00 Why is there such a history of resistance in Sindh?1:20:00 Zardari, PPP and the future of this canal project1:25:45 Political alternatives to PPP in Sindh1:28:00 Kalabagh dam1:33:00 Indus Water Treaty1:36:30 Potential Solutions and Alternatives1:42:00 Sukkur Barrage1:45:12 Audience QuestionsJoin this channel to get access to perks:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC44l9XMwecN5nSgIF2Dvivg/join

Caste and Varna System in Hindu Society: A Webinar for Indus University

A long time ago, there was a massive civilization in Illinois, way before Europeans ever arrived. It was called Cahokia, and at its peak, around 20,000 people lived there—making it bigger than London at the time! They built giant mounds, some as tall as a ten-story building, and had a complex society with trade, religion, and even sports. But then, something mysterious happened, and by the 1400s, the city was abandoned. Some say it was climate change, others think war or disease played a role, but no one knows for sure. Today, the mounds are still there, keeping the secrets of this lost civilization buried beneath them.

This episode we will finish up the travels of Xuanzang, who circumnavigated the Indian subcontinent while he was there, spending over a decade and a half travelings, visiting important Buddhist pilgrimage sites, and studying at the feet of learned monks of India, and in particular at Nalanda monastery--a true center of learning from this period. For more, check out our blogpost page:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-122 Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is episode 122:  Journey to the West, Part 3 The courtyard at Nalanda was quiet.  Although hundreds of people were crowded in, trying to hear what was being said, they were all doing their best to be silent and still.  Only the wind or an errant bird dared speak up.  The master's voice may not have been what it once was—he was definitely getting on in years—but Silabhadra's mind was as sharp as ever. At the front of the crowd was a relatively young face from a far off land.  Xuanzang had made it to the greatest center of learning in the world, and he had been accepted as a student of perhaps the greatest sage of his era.  Here he was, receiving lessons on some of the deepest teachings of the Mahayana Buddhist sect, the very thing he had come to learn and bring home. As he watched and listened with rapt attention, the ancient teacher began to speak….   For the last two episodes, and continuing with this one, we have been covering the travels of the monk Xuanzang in the early 7th century, starting around 629 and concluding in 645.  Born during the Sui dynasty, Xuanzang felt that the translations of the Buddhist sutras available in China were insufficient—many of them had been made long ago, and often were translations of translations.  Xuanzang decided to travel to India in the hopes of getting copies in the original language to provide more accurate translations of the sutras, particularly the Mahayana sutras.  His own accounts of his journeys, even if drawn from his memory years afterwards, provide some of our most detailed contemporary evidence of the Silk Road and the people and places along the way.  After he returned, he got to work on his translations, and became quite famous.  Several of the Japanese students of Buddhism who traveled to the Tang dynasty in the 650s studied under him directly and brought his teachings back to Japan with them.  His school of “Faxiang” Buddhism became known in Japan as the Hosso sect, and was quite popular during the 7th and 8th centuries.  Xuanzang himself, known as Genjou in Japan, would continue to be venerated as an important monk in the history of Buddhism, and his travels would eventually be popularized in fantastic ways across East Asia. Over the last couple of episodes we talked about Xuanzang's illegal and harrowing departure from the Tang empire, where he had to sneak across the border into the deserts of the Western Regions.  We then covered his time traveling from Gaochang, to Suyab, and down to Balkh, in modern Afghanistan.  This was all territory under the at least nominal control of the Gokturk empire.  From Balkh he traveled to Bamyan, and then on to Kapisa, north of modern Kabul, Afghanistan.  However, after Kapisa, Xuanzang was finally entering into the northern territories of what he knew as “India”, or “Tianzhu”. Here I would note that I'm using “India” to refer not to a single country, but to the entirety of the Indian subcontinent, and all of the various kingdoms there -- including areas now part of the modern countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.  The Sinitic characters used to denote this region are pronounced, today, as “Tianzhu”, with a rough meaning of “Center of Heaven”, but it is likely that these characters were originally pronounced in such a way that the name likely came from terms like “Sindhu” or “Induka”.  This is related to the name of the Sindh or Indus river, from which India gets its name.  Xuanzang's “Record of the Western Regions” notes that the proper pronunciation of the land should be “Indu”.  In Japan, this term was transmitted through the Sinitic characters, or kanji, and pronounced as “Tenjiku”.  Since it featured so prominently in the stories of the life of the Buddha and many of the Buddhist sutras, Tenjiku was known to the people of the Japanese archipelago as a far off place that was both real and fantastical. In the 12th century, over a thousand stories were captured for the “Konjaku Monogatarishu”, or the “Collection of Tales Old and New”, which is divided up into tales from Japan, China, and India.  In the famous 9th or 10th century story, “Taketori Monogatari”, or the “Bamboo-Cutter's Tale”, about princess Kaguya hime, one of the tasks the princess sets to her suitors is to go to India to find the begging bowl of the Buddha.  Records like those produced by Xuanzang and his fellow monks, along with the stories in the sutras, likely provided the majority of what people in the Japanese archipelago knew about India, at least to begin with. Xuanzang talks about the land of India as being divided into five distinct parts—roughly the north, south, east, west, and center.  He notes that three sides face the sea and that the Snow Mountains—aka the Himalayas—are in the north.  It is, he says, “Wide in the north and narrow in the south, in the shape of a crescent moon”.  Certainly the “Wide in the north and narrow in the south” fit the subcontinent accurately enough, and it is largely surrounded by the waters of what we know as the Indian Ocean to the west, the east, and the south.  The note about the Crescent Moon might be driven by Xuanzang's understanding of a false etymology for the term “Indus”, which he claims comes from the word for “moon”.  Rather, this term appears to refer to the Indus River, also known as the Sindh or Sindhus, which comes from an ancient word meaning something like “River” or “Stream”. Xuanzang also notes that the people of the land were divided into castes, with the Brahman caste at the top of the social hierarchy.    The land was further divided into approximately 70 different countries, according to his accounts.  This is known broadly as the Early Medieval period, in India, in which the region was divided into different kingdoms and empires that rose and fell across the subcontinent, with a total size roughly equivalent to that covered by the countries of the modern European Union.  Just like Europe, there were many different polities and different languages spoken across the land – but just as Latin was the common language in Europe, due to its use in Christianity, Sanskrit was the scholarly and religious language in much of India, and could also be used as a bridge language.  Presumably, Xuanzang understood Sanskrit to some extent as a Buddhist monk.  And, just a quick note, all of this was before the introduction of Islam, though there were other religions also practiced throughout the subcontinent, but Xuanzang was primarily focused on his Buddhist studies. Xuanzang describes India as having three distinct seasons—The hot season, the rainy season, and the cold season, in that order.  Each of these were four month long periods.  Even today, the cycle of the monsoon rains is a major impact on the life of people in South Asia.  During the rainy season, the monks themselves would retreat back to their monasteries and cease their wanderings about the countryside. This tradition, called “Vassa”, is still a central practice in many Theravada Buddhist societies such as Thailand and Laos today, where they likewise experience this kind of intensely wet monsoon season. Xuanzang goes on to give an in depth analysis of the people and customs of the Indian subcontinent, as he traveled from country to country. So, as we've done before, we'll follow his lead in describing the different locations he visited. The first country of India that Xuanzang came to was the country of Lampa, or Lamapaka, thought to be modern Laghman province in Afghanistan.  At the time it was a dependency of Kapisa.  The Snow Mountains, likely meaning the Hindu Kush, the western edge of the Himalayas, lay at its north, while the “Black Mountains” surrounded it on the other three sides.  Xuanzang mentions how the people of Lampa grow non-glutinous rice—likely something similar to basmati rice, which is more prevalent in South Asian cuisine, as compared to glutinous rice like more often used in East Asia. From Lampa he headed to Nagarahara, likely referring to a site near the Kabul River associated with the ruins of a stupa called Nagara Gundi, about 4 kilometers west of modern Jalalabad, Afghanistan.  This was another vassal city-state of Kapisa.  They were still Mahayana Buddhists, but there were other religions as well, which Xuanzang refers to as “heretical”, though I'm not entirely sure how that is meant in this context.  He does say that many of the stupas were dilapidated and in poor condition. Xuanzang was now entering areas where he likely believed the historical Buddha had once walked.  In fact, Lampa was perhaps the extent of historical Buddha's travels, according to the stories and the sutras, though this seems unlikely to have been true.  The most plausible locations for the Historical Buddha's pilgrimages were along the Ganges river, which was on the other side of the subcontinent, flowing east towards modern Kolkatta and the Bengal Bay.  However, as Buddhism spread, so, too, did stories of the Buddha's travels.  And so, as far as Xuanzang was concerned, he was following in the footsteps of the Buddha. Speaking of which, at Nagarahara, Xuanzang mentions “footprints” of the Buddha.  This is a Buddhist tradition found in many places.  Xuanzang claims that the Tathagatha, the Englightened One, or the Buddha, would fly, because when he walked the land itself shook.  Footprint shapes in rock could be said to be evidence of the Buddha's travels.  Today, in many Buddhist areas you can find footprints carved into rock conforming to stories about the Buddha, such as all the toes being of the same length, or other various signs.  These may have started out as natural depressions in the rock, or pieces of artwork, but they were believed by many to be the actual point at which the Buddha himself touched down.  There are famous examples of these footprints in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and China.  Of course there are also traditions of creating images of the footprint as an object of worship.  Images of footprints, similar to images of the Great Wheel of the Law, may have been some of the earliest images for veneration, as images of the Buddha himself did not appear until much later in the tradition.  One of the oldest such footprints in Japan is at Yakushiji temple, and dated to 753.  It was created based on a rubbing brought back by an envoy to the Tang court, while they were in Chang'an. Like Buddha footprints, there are many other images and stories that show up multiple times in different places, even in Xuanzang's own narrative.  For example, in Nagarahara Xuanzang also shares a story of a cave, where an image of the Buddha could be just barely made out on the wall – maybe maybe an old carving that had just worn away, or maybe an image that was deliberately placed in the darkness as a metaphor for finding the Buddha—finding enlightenment.  This is not an uncommon theme in Buddhism as a whole.  In any case, the story around this image was that it had been placed there to subdue a naga. Now a naga is a mythical snake-like being, and  we are told that this particular naga was the reincarnation of a man who had invoked a curse on the nearby kingdom, then threw himself from a cliff in order to become a naga and sow destruction.  As the story went, the man was indeed reborn, but before he could bring destruction, the Buddha showed up and subdued him, convincing him that this was not right.  And so the naga agreed to stay in the cave, where the Buddha left an image—a shadow—to remind the naga any time that its thoughts might turn to destruction. Later in his travels, at a place name Kausambi, Xuanzang mentions another cave where the Buddha had subdued a venomous dragon and left his shadow on the cave wall.  Allowing for the possibility that the Buddha just had a particular M.O. when dealing with destructive beings, we should also consider the possibility that the story developed in one region—probably closer to the early center of Buddhism, and then traveled outward, such that it was later adopted and adapted to local traditions.  From Nagarahara, Xuanzang continued to the country of Gandhara and its capital city of Purushapura, aka modern Peshwar.  This kingdom was also under vassalage to the Kapisan king.  Here and elsewhere in the journey, Xuanzang notes not only evidence of the historical Buddha, but also monasteries and stupas purported to have been built by King Kanishka and King Asoka.  These were important figures who were held in high regard for spreading Buddhism during their reign.  Continuing through the region of Gandhara, he also passed through Udakhand and the city of Salatura, known as the birthplace of the ancient Sanskrit grammarian, Daksiputra Panini, author of the Astadhyayi [Aestudjayi].  This work is the oldest surviving description of classical Sanskrit, and used grammatical and other concepts that wouldn't be introduced into Western linguistics for eons.  Daksiputra Panini thrived around the 5th or 4th century BCE, but was likely one of the reasons that Sanskrit continued to be used as a language of scholarship and learning even as it died out of usage as the day to day language of the common people.  His works and legacy would have been invaluable to translators like Xuanzang in understanding and translating from Sanskrit. Xuanzang continued on his journey to Kashmira, situated in the Kashmir Valley.  This valley sits between the modern states of Pakistan and India, and its ownership is actively disputed by each.  It is the namesake of the famous cashmere wool—wool from the winter coats of a type of goat that was bred in the mountainous regions.  The winter coat would be made of soft, downy fibers and would naturally fall out in the spring, which the goatherds harvested and made into an extremely fine wool.  In the 7th century and earlier, however, the region was known not as much for its wool, but as a center for Hindu and Buddhist studies.  Xuanzang ended up spending two years in Kashmira studying with teachers there.  Eventually, though, he continued on, passing through the country of Rajpura, and continuing on to Takka and the city of Sakala—modern day Sialkot in the Punjab region of modern Pakistan.  Leaving Sakala, he was traveling with a group when suddenly disaster struck and they were accosted by a group of bandits.  They took the clothes and money of Xuanzang and those with him and then they drove the group into a dry pond in an attempt to corral them while they figured out what they would do—presumably meaning kill them all.  Fortunately for the group, there was a water drain at the southern edge of the pond large enough for one man to pass through.  Xuanzang and one other went through the gap and they were able to escape to a nearby village.  Once they got there, they told the people what had happened, and the villagers quickly gathered weapons and ran out to confront the brigands, who saw a large group coming and ran away.  Thus they were able to rescue the rest of Xuanzang's traveling companions.  Xuanzang's companions were devastated, having lost all of their possessions.  However, Xuanzang comforted them.  After all, they still had their lives.  By this time, Xuanzang had certainly seen his fair share of life and death problems along the road.  They continued on, still in the country of Takka, to the next great city.  There they met a Brahman, and once they told him what had happened, he started marshalling the forces of the city on their behalf.  During Xuanzang's stay in Kashmira, he had built a reputation, and people knew of the quote-unquote “Chinese monk”.  And even though the people in this region were not necessarily Buddhist—many were “heretics” likely referring to those of Hindu faith—the people responded to this pre-Internet “GoFundMe” request with incredible generosity.  They brought Xuanzang food and cloth to make into suits of clothes.  Xuanzang distributed this to his travel companions, and ended up still having enough cloth for 50 suits of clothes himself.  He then stayed at that city a month. It is odd that they don't seem to mention the name of this location.  Perhaps there is something unspeakable about it?  Still, it seems that they were quite generous, even if they were “heretics” according to Xuanzang. From the country of Takka, he next proceeded to the kingdom of Cinabhukti, where he spent 14 months—just over a year—studying with the monks there.  Once he had learned what he could, he proceeded onwards, passing through several countries in northern India until he came to the headwaters of the sacred Ganges rivers.  The Indus and the Ganges rivers are in many ways similar to the Yellow River and Yangzi, at least in regards to their importance to the people of India.  However, whereas the Yellow River and Yangzi both flow east towards the Pacific Ocean, the Indus and Ganges flow in opposite directions.  The Indus flows southwest, from the Himalayas down through modern India into modern Pakistan, emptying into the western Indian Ocean.  The Ganges flows east along the base of the Himalayas and enters the eastern Indian Ocean at Kolkatta.   At the headwaters of the Ganges, Xuanzang found a Buddhist monk named Jayagupta and chose to spend the winter and half of the following spring listening to his sermons and learning at his feet. From there he continued his travels, and ended up being summoned by King Harshavardhana of Kanyakubja, known today as the modern city of Kannauj.  Harshavardhana ruled an immense state that covered much of the territory around the sacred Ganges river.  As word of this strange monk from a far off land reached him, the King wanted to see him for himself.  Xuanzang stayed in Kannauj for three months, completing his studies of the Vibhasha Shastra, aka the Abhidarmma Mahavibhasha Shastra, known in Japanese as the Abidatsuma Daibibasharon, or just as the Daibibasharon or the Basharon, with the latter two terms referring to the translations that Xuanzang performed.   This work is not a sutra, per se, but rather an encyclopedic work that attempted to speak on all of the various doctrinal issues of its day.  It is thought to have been authored around 150 CE, and was influential in the Buddhist teachings of Kashmira, when that was a center of Orthodoxy at the time.  This is what Xuanzang had started studying, and it seems that in Kannauj he was finally able to grasp everything he felt he needed to know about it in order to effectively translate it and teach it when he returned.  That said, his quest was not over.  And after his time in Kannauj, he decided to continue on. His next stop was at the city of Ayodhya.  This was—and is—a city of particular importance in Hindu traditions.  It is said to be the city mentioned in the epic tale known as the Ramayana, though many argue that it was simply named that later in honor of that ancient city.  It does appear to be a city that the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, visited and where he preached.  It was also the home of a famous monk from Gandhara who authored a number of Buddhist tomes and was considered, at least by Xuanzang, a proper Boddhisatva.  And so Xuanzang spent some time paying homage to the places where the Buddha and other holy figures had once walked. “Ayodhya” appears in many forms across Asia.  It is a major pilgrimage center, and the city of “Ayutthaya” in Thailand was named for it, evoking the Ramayana—known in Thai as the Ramakien—which they would adopt as their own national story.  In Silla, there is a story that queen Boju, aka Heo Hwang-ok, wife to the 2nd century King Suro of Geumgwan Gaya, traveled to the peninsula all the way from the foreign country of “Ayuta”, thought to mean Ayodhya.  Her story was written down in the Gaya histories and survives as a fragment found in the Samguk Yusa.  Members of the Gimhae Kim, Gimhae Heo, and Incheon Yi clans all trace their lineage back to her and King Suro. From Ayodhya, Xuanzang took a trip down the Ganges river.  The boat was packed to bursting with some 80 other travelers, and as they traveled towards a particularly heavily forested area, they were set upon by bandits, who rowed their ships out from hiding in the trees and forced the travelers to the shore.  There the bandits made all the travelers strip down and take off their clothing so that the bandits could search for gold or valuables.  According to Xuanzang's biography, these bandits were followers of Durga, a Hindu warrior-goddess, and it is said that each year they would look for someone of particularly handsome features to sacrifice to her.  With Xuanzang's foreign features, they chose him.  And so they took him to be killed.  Xuanzang mentioned that he was on a pilgrimage, and that by interrupting him before they finished he was worried it might be inauspicious for them, but he didn't put up a fight and merely asked to be given time to meditate and calm his mind and that they perform the execution quickly so that he wouldn't even notice. From there, according to the story, a series of miracles occurred that ended up with Xuanzang being released and the bandits worshipping at his feet.  It is times like this we must remember that this biography was being written by Xuanzang's students based on stories he told them about his travels.  While being accosted by bandits on the river strikes me as perfectly plausible, we don't necessarily have the most reliable narrators, so I'm going to have to wonder about the rest.  Speaking of unreliable narration, the exact route that Xuanzang traveled from here on is unclear to me, based on his stated goals and where he was going.  It is possible that he was wandering as opportunities presented themselves —I don't know that he had any kind of map or GPS, like we've said in the past.  And it may be that the routes from one place to another were not always straightforward.  Regardless, he seems to wander southeast for a period before turning again to the north and eventually reaching the city of Shravasti. Shravasti appeared in our discussion of the men of Tukhara in Episode 119.  With the men of Tukhara there was also mentioned a woman from Shravasti.  While it is unlikely that was actually the case—the names were probably about individuals from the Ryukyuan island chain rather than from India—it is probably worth nothing that Shravasti was a thriving place in ancient times.  It was at one time the capital city of the kingdom of Kosala, sharing that distinction with the city of Ayodhya, back in the 7th to 5th centuries BCE.  It is also where the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, was said to have spend many years of his life.  This latter fact would have no doubt made it a place of particular importance to Xuanzang on his journeys. From there he traveled east, ending up following the foothills of the Himalayas, and finally came to some of the most central pilgrimages sites for followers of the historical Buddha.  First, he reached Lumbini wood, in modern Nepal, said to have been the birthplace of Prince Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha.  And then he visited Kushinagara, the site where the Buddha ascended to nirvana—in other words, the place where he passed away.  From there, he traveled to Varanasi, and the deer park monastery, at the place where the Buddha is said to have given one of his most famous sermons.  He even visited the Bodhi tree, the tree under which Siddhartha Gautama is said to have attained enlightenment.  He spent eight or nine days there at Bodhgaya, and word must have spread about his arrival, because several monks from the eminent Nalanda Monastery called upon him and asked him to come to the monastery with them. Nalanda Monastery was about 80 km from Bodhgaya.  This was a grand monastery and center of learning—some say that it was, for a time, the greatest in the world.  It had been founded in the 5th century by the Gupta dynasty, and many of the Gupta rulers and others donated to support the monastery, which also acted as a university.  After the fall of the Gupta dynasty, the monastery was supported by King Harsha of Kannauj, whom Xuanzang had visited earlier.  It ultimately thrived for some 750 years, and is considered by some to be the oldest residential university—meaning that students would come to the temple complex and stay in residence for years at a time to study.  According to Xuanzang, Nalanda hosted some 10,000 monks. Including hosts and guests.  They didn't only study Buddhist teachings, but also logic, grammar, medicine, and divination.  Lectures were given at more than 100 separate places—or classrooms—every day.  It was at Nalanda, that Xuanzang would meet the teacher Silabhadra, who was known as the Right Dharma Store.  Xuanzang requested that he be allowed to study the Yogacharabhumi Shastra—the Yugashijiron, in Japanese.  This is the work that Xuanzang is said to have been most interested in, and one of the works that he is credited with bringing back in one of the first full translations to the Tang dynasty and then to others in East Asia.  It is an encyclopedic work dedicated to the various forms of Yogacara practice, which focuses on the mental disciplines, and includes yoga and meditation practices.  It has a huge influence on nearly all Mahayana schools, including things like the famous Zen and Pure Land schools of Buddhism.  The Yogacharabhumi Shastra is the earliest such encyclopedic work, compiled between the 3rd and 5th centuries—so even if the monk Faxian had brought portions of it back, it was probably not in the final form that Xuanzang was able to access. Silabhadra, for his part, was an ancient teacher—some put his age at 106 years, and his son was in his 70s.  He was one of the few at Nalandra who supposedly knew all of the various texts that they had at the monastery, including the Yogacarabhumi Shastra.  Xuanzang seems to have been quite pleased to study under him.  Xuanzang stayed at the house of Silabhadra's son, Buddhabhadra, and they welcomed him with entertainment that lasted seven days.  We are told that he was then given his own lodgings, a stipend of spices, incense, rice, oil, butter, and milk, along with a servant and a Brahman.  As a visiting monk, he was not responsible for the normal monastic duties, instead being expected to spend the time in study.  Going out, he was carried around by an elephant.   This was certainly the royal treatment. Xuanzang's life at Nalandra wasn't all books: south of the monastery was the city of Rajagrha, the old capital of the kingdom of Magadha, where the ancient Gupta kings had once lived, and on occasional breaks from his studies, Xuanzang would venture out to see the various holy sites.  This included the famous Mt. Grdhrakuta, or Vulture Peak, a location said to be favored by the historical Buddha and central to the Lotus Sutra, arguably the founding document of Mahayana Buddhist tradition. After all, “Mahayana” means “Greater Vehicle” and it is in the Lotus Sutra that we see the metaphor of using different vehicles to escape a burning house.   We've already talked a bit about how the image of Vulture Peak had already become important in Japanese Buddhism: In Episode 112 we talked about how in 648, Abe no Oho-omi had drums piled up at Shitennoji in the shape of Vulture Peak. But although the sightseeing definitely enhanced his experience, Xuanzang was first and foremost there to study.  He spent 15 months just listening to his teacher expound on the Yogacarabhumi Shastra, but he also heard expositions on various other teachings as well.  He ended up studying at Nalandra Monastery for 5 years, gaining a much better understanding of Sanskrit and the various texts, which would be critically important when it came to translating them, later. But, Xuanzang was not one to stay in any one place forever, and so after 5 years—some 8 years or more into his journey, he continued on, following the Ganges east, to modern Bangladesh.  Here he heard about various other lands, such as Dvarapati—possibly referring to Dvaravati, in modern Thailand, as well as Kamalanka and Isanapura.  The latter was in modern Cambodia, the capital of the ancient Chenla kingdom.  Then Mahacampa—possibly referring to the Champa region of Vietnam—and the country of Yamanadvipa.  But there was still more of India for Xuanzang to discover, and more teachings to uncover, and so Xuanzang decided instead to head southwest, following the coast.  He heard of the country of Sinhala, referring to the island of Sri Lanka, but he was urged not to go by ship, as the long journey was perilous.  Instead he could stay on relatively dry land and head down to the southern tip of the subcontinent and then make a quick hop from there across to the island.  He traveled a long distance, all the way down to Kancipuram, the seat of the Pallava dynasty, near modern day Chennai.  From the seaport near Kancipuram, it was only three days to Sinhala—that is to say Sri Lanka—but before he could set out, he met a group of monks who had just arrived.  They told him that the king of Sinhala had died , and there was a great famine and civil disturbances.  So they had fled with some 300 other monks. Xuanzang eventually decided not to make the journey, but he did talk with the monks and gathered information on the lands to the south, on Sri Lanka, and on the islands south of that, by which I suspect he may have meant the Maldives.  While Sri Lanka is an area important to Buddhist scholarship, particularly to the Theravada schools, this likely did not impress Xuanzang, and indeed he seemed to feel that his studies in Nalanda had more than provided him what he needed.  Sri Lanka, however, is the source of the Pali canon, one of the most complete early canons of Buddhism, which had a huge influence on Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. So Xuanzang took plenty of notes but decided to forego the ocean voyage and headed northwest, instead.  He traveled across the breadth of India to Gujarat, and then turned back east, returning to pay respects once more to his teacher in Nalanda.  While there he heard of another virtuous monk named Prajnabhadra at a nearby monastery.  And so he went to spend several months with him, as well.  He also studied with a layman, Sastrin Jayasena, at Stickwood Hill.  Jayasena was a ksatriya, or nobleman, by birth, and studied both Buddhist and non-Buddhist texts.  He was courted by kings, but had left to continue his studies.  Xuanzang studied with him for another couple of years. Xuanzang remained at Nalanda, learning and teaching, expounding on what he had learned and gathering many copies of the various documents that he wished to take back with him, though he wondered how he might do it.  In the meantime, he also acquired quite the reputation.  We are told that King Siladitya had asked Nalanda for monks who could refute Theravada teachings, and Xuanzang agreed to go.  It isn't clear, but it seems that “Siladitya” was a title, and likely referred to King Harsha of Kannauj, whom we mentioned earlier.  Since he was a foreigner, then there could be no trouble that was brought on Nalanda and the other monks if he did poorly.  While he was waiting to hear back from Siladitya's court, which was apparently taking time to arrange things, the king of Kamarupta reached out to Nalanda with a request that Xuanzang come visit them.  While Xuanzang was reluctant to be gone too long, he was eventually encouraged to go and assuage the king. Kamarupta was a kingdom around the modern Assam region, ruled by King Bhaskaravarman, also known as King Kumara, a royal title.  This kingdom included parts of Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal.  Bhaskaravarman, like so many other regents, seems to have been intrigued by the presence of this foreign monk, who had traveled all this way and who had studied at the famous Nalanda Monastery in Magadha. He invited Xuanzang to come to him.  Xuanzang's teacher, Silabhadra, had exhorted him to spread the right Dharma, and to even go to those non-Buddhists in hopes that they might be converted, or at least partially swayed. King Bhaskaravarman was quite taken with Xuanzang, wining and dining him while listening to him preach.  While there, Xuanzang learned about the country of Kamarupta.  He also learned about a path north, by which it was said it was a two month journey to arrive at the land of Shu, in the Sichuan Basin, on the upper reaches of the Yangzi – a kind of shortcut back to the Tang court.  However, the journey was treacherous—possibly even more treacherous than the journey to India had been. Eventually word reached the ears of King Siladitya that Xuanzang was at the court of King Bhaskaravarman, and Siladitya got quite upset.  Xuanzang had not yet come to *his* court, so Siladitya demanded that Bhaskaravarman send the monk to him immediately.  Bhaskaravarman refused, saying he'd rather give Siladitya his own head, which Siladitya said he would gladly accept.  Bhaskaravarman realized he may have miscalculated, and so he sailed up the Ganges with a host of men and Xuanzang to meet with Siladitya.  After a bit of posturing, Siladitya met with Xuanzang, who went with him, and eventually confronted the members of the Theravada sect in debate.  Apparently it almost got ugly, but for the King's intervention.  After a particularly devastating critique of the Theravada position, the Theravada monks are blamed for trying to use violence against Xuanzang and his fellow Mahayana monks from Nalanda, who were prepared to defend themselves.  The King had to step in and break it up before it went too far. Ultimately, Xuanzang was a celebrity at this point and both kings seem to have supported him, especially as he was realizing it was about time to head back to his own country.  Both kings was offered ships, should Xuanzang wish to sail south and then up the coast.  However, Xuanzang elected to take the northern route, hoping to go back through Gaochang, and see that city and its ruler again.  And so the Kings gave him money and valuables , along with wagons for all of the texts.  They also sent an army to protect all of the treasures, and even an elephant and more – sending him back in style with a huge send-off. So Xuanzang retraced his earlier steps, this time on an elephant.  He traveled back to Taxila, to Kashmir, and beyond.  He was invited to stay in Kashmira, but because of his retinue, he wasn't quite at leisure to just go where he wanted.  At one point, near Kapisa—modern Bagram, north of Kabul—they had to cross a river, and about 50 of the almost 700 documents were lost.  The King of Kapisa heard of this and had his own monks make copies to replace them based on their own schools.  The King of Kasmira, hearing that he was in Kapisa, also came to pay his respects. Xuanzang traveled with the King of Kapisa northwest for over a month and reached Lampaka, where he did take some time to visit the various holy sites before continuing northwest.  They had to cross the Snow Mountains—the outskirts of the Himalayas, and even though it wasn't the highest part of the range it was still challenging.  He had to dismount his elephant and travel on foot.  Finally, after going over the high mountains and coming down, he arrived back in the region of Tukhara, in the country of Khowst.  He then came to Kunduz, and paid his respects to the grandson of Yehu Khan.  He was given more guards to escort him eastward, traveling with some merchants.  This was back in Gokturk controlled lands, over a decade later than when he had last visited.  He continued east to Badakshan, stopping there for a month because of the cold weather and snow.  He eventually traveled through the regions of Tukhara and over the Pamir range.  He came down on the side of the Tarim Basin, and noted how the rivers on one side flowed west, while on the other side they flowed east.  The goings were treacherous, and at one point they were beset by bandits.  Though he and the documents were safe, his elephant panicked and fled into the river and drowned.  He eventually ended up in the country of Kashgar, in modern Xinjiang province, at the western edge of the Taklamakan desert. From there he had two options.  He could go north and hug the southern edge of the Tianshan mountains, or he could stay to the south, along the northern edge of the Himalayan range and the Tibetan plateau.  He chose to go south.  He traveled through Khotan, a land of wool and carpets.  This was a major trade kingdom, and they also grew mulberry trees for silkworms, and were known for their jade.  The king himself heard of Xuanzang and welcomed him, as many others had done.  While he was staying at the Khotanese capital, Xuanzang penned a letter to the Tang court, letting them know of his journey, and that he was returning.  He sent it with some merchants and a man of Gaochang to deliver it to the court. Remember, Xuanzang had left the Tang empire illegally.  Unless he wanted to sneak back in his best hope was that the court was willing to forgive and forget all of that, given everything that he was bringing back with him.  The wait was no doubt agonizing, but he did get a letter back.  It assured him that he was welcome back, and that all of the kingdoms from Khotan back to the governor of Dunhuang had been made aware and were ready to receive him. With such assurances, Xuanzang packed up and headed out.  The king of Khotan granted him more gifts to help see him on his way.  Nonetheless, there was still a perilous journey ahead.  Even knowing the way, the road went through miles and miles of desert, such that in some places you could only tell the trail by the bleached bones of horses and travelers who had not been so fortunate.  Eventually, however, Xuanzang made it to the Jumo River and then on to Dunhuang, from whence he was eventually escorted back to the capital city. It was now the year 645, the year of the Isshi Incident in Yamato and the death of Soga.  Xuanzang had been gone for approximately 16 years.  In that time, the Tang had defeated the Gokturks and taken Gaochang, expanding their control over the trade routes in the desert.  Xuanzang, for his part, was bringing back 657 scriptures, bound in 520 bundles carried by a train of some 20 horses.  He was given a hero's welcome, and eventually he would be set up in a monastery where he could begin the next part of his journey:  Translating all of these books. This was the work of a lifetime, but it is one that would have a profound impact on Buddhism across East Asia.  Xuanzang's translations would revolutionize the understanding of Mahayana Buddhist teachings, and students would come from as far away as the Yamato court to study under him and learn from the teacher who studied and taught at none other than Nalanda monastery itself.  His school would become popular in the Yamato capital, and the main school of several temples, at least for a time.  In addition, his accounts and his biography would introduce many people to the wider world of central and south Asia.  While I could go on, this has already been a story in three parts, and this is, after all, the Chronicles of Japan, so we should probably tune back into what is going on with Yamato.  Next episode, we'll look at one of the most detailed accounts we have of a mission to Chang'an. Until then, I hope that this has been enjoyable.  Xuanzang's story is one of those that isn't just about him, but about the interconnected nature of the entire world at the time.  While his journey is quite epic, there were many people traveling the roads, though most of them didn't write about it afterwards.  People, artifacts, and ideas traveled much greater distances than we often consider at this time, well before any kind of modern travel.  It was dangerous, but often lucrative, and it meant that various regions could have influence well beyond what one might expect. And so, thank you once again for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan

Exactly a month into his new term, President Donald Trump's latest major pick, Kash Patel, has been appointed as the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation after a grueling confirmation in the US Senate. Tulsi Gabbard had earlier been confirmed as the Director of National Intelligence. Both these are positive from India's point of view: they signal that the sinister Deep State may well be reined in, after decades of anti-India activism on its part.Over the last week or two, there have been revelations after revelations of bad faith on the part of the disgraced US establishment, most notably in the shadowy USAID agency, which, it appears, was the absolute “Heart of Darkness” of the Deep State, neck-deep in covert operations, election interference, and general mayhem all over the world, and certainly in India.Trump himself emphasized that $21 million in covert funds had gone towards affecting election outcomes in India. Presumably the reduced majority Modi got in 2024 could be traced back to this. Fortress AmericaThe general contours of Trump's foreign policy are beginning to emerge. I predicted a month ago, before Trump had taken over, in ‘Greenland, Canada, Panama: Chronicles of a Foreign Policy Foretold', that Western Europe, and the United Kingdom in particular, would find themselves treated as irrelevant to the new order to come. That has happened.In fact, things have gone beyond what I anticipated. In a nutshell, Trump is downgrading the Atlantic, and his focus will be on the Americas, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific. Which, from a historical perspective, makes sense: the world's economic center of gravity is moving towards Asia; trade flows in the Pacific and the Indian Oceans are increasingly more important than in the Atlantic; and a few centuries of European domination are pretty much over.Sorry Europe, Atlanticism is at an endTo put it bluntly, the vanity that Europe is a ‘continent' is now being exposed as hollow: to be precise, it is merely an appendage, an outpost, to vast Asia. Europe is at best a subcontinent, like India is; it should probably be renamed as ‘Northwest Asia'. The saga of ‘Guns, Germs and Steel' post the Industrial Revolution is winding down rapidly. There is some schadenfreude in that the UK becomes even more irrelevant: just a small, rainy island off NW Asia.The Putin-Trump dialog suggests that Ukraine, and even NATO, are now superfluous. Atlanticism has been a constant in US foreign policy, mostly pushed by two forces:* Eastern European-origin State Department officials who have inherited a blood-feud with Russia from their ancestors, eg. Brzezinski, Albright, Nuland, Blinken, Vindman* an ancient intra-Christian schism between the Eastern Orthodox Church and (for a change) an alliance of Roman Catholics and Western Protestants like Lutherans, Anglicans and Calvinists.It is time that the Americans realized they've been turned into cats'-paws by these forces, and turned their backs on these ancient animosities, which have almost no relevance today. In fact one could argue that a NATO-Russian alliance is the right solution in the medium term, because otherwise both could become puppets of China. Bringing the Ukraine war to an end is a start.The general tone of the Trump White House implies a Fortress America. In practice, this seems to mean that instead of being Globocop, the US focuses on a) the Americas, North and South, b) the Pacific Ocean, d) the Indian Ocean, in that order.A new Monroe Doctrine in the AmericasThe attention being paid to Canada and Mexico over and above the tariffs issues suggests that there is a plan to create a stronger and more unified North American entity; the noises about “Canada the 51st state” and “Gulf of America” suggest that maybe a new NAFTA-style agreement could be inked, especially now that the warming Arctic Ocean makes the thawing tundra of Canada more appealing.It is true that there is no immediate thrust for a Monroe Doctrine-style exclusive US ‘sphere of influence' in South America, but I suspect it is coming. Already, there have been positive vibes between Trump and Argentina's Milei, and Salvador's Bukele: the former for his DOGE-style chainsaw-wielding that's showing results, and the latter for his strong law enforcement.The Island Chains and other red lines in the PacificIn the Pacific, there has been pushback against China's moves on the Panama Canal: there are two Hong-Kong-based entities (read proxies of the Chinese government) controlling ports around it: Balboa on the Pacific side, and Cristobal on the Atlantic side.On the other hand, there is increasing global support (with the judicious use of Chinese carrots such as BRI) for the annexation of Taiwan by China, including, if necessary, by force. A Lowy Institute study (“Five One Chinas: The Contest to Define Taiwan”) suggests that some 119 UN member states accept the official Chinese position on ‘reunification'. Only 40 countries are not on board with China's claim of sovereignty over Taiwan.It is very likely that there will be a showdown between the US and China over Taiwan, within the next two years. It is said that Xi Jinping has given a timeframe of 2027 for all this. It will be interesting to see how many states that condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine will condemn China's future attack on Taiwan. Chances are that many will be strategically silent.Japan, Australia, South Korea and other friends of the US will have a hard time keeping the peace in the Pacific. The “Three Island Chains” act as increasingly critical red lines to contain an aggressive China. In fact, the Asia Maritime Initiative is speaking of five island chains (“China's Reach Has Grown, So Should the Island Chains”), including those in the Indian Ocean (remember the “String of Pearls” intended to tighten around India's throat).The three island chains: 1. Taiwan, Japan, Philippines; 2. Guam, Marianas; 3. Hawaii(Source: China is making waves in the Pacific, Alexandra Tirziu, Jan 2024 https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/china-pacific-conflict/)Meanwhile, in a show of aggression far from its shores, three Chinese warships indulged in “live firing” in international waters between Australia and New Zealand, and commercial aircraft were warned to keep away. This is a warning to Australia, which, thanks to AUKUS foolishness, cancelled French submarines and now await British submarines… in the 2040s.The increasing relevance of the Indian Ocean and the Middle EastMuch of the world's trade, including 75% of global maritime trade and 50% of its daily oil shipments, go through the Indian Ocean.The main issues will be the control of the Straits of Malacca and Hormuz, and the alternative routes being explored by China via the Isthmus of Kra in Thailand, possible use of Coco Islands and other Myanmarese ports including Sittwe and (a bit of a stretch for China) access to Chittagong. There are also troublesome pirates, including Houthis, that make for perilous journeys leading to the Suez Canal, the Gulf of Aden, and the Red Sea.Interestingly, the US is making moves in the Indian Ocean that will support both the IMEC (India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor) and I2U2, the India-Israel-UAE-US economic partnership. IMEC is the old Spice Route, revivified.There is also the proposed Ben-Gurion Canal through the Negev Desert in Israel that would benefit Saudi Arabia as well (its futuristic NEOM city is nearby), and this would be made feasible by Trump's proposed transformation of Gaza. It would be an alternative to Suez.Following up on the Abraham Accords, Trump 2.0 would like to bring the Gaza war to an end, and create an environment in the Middle East where Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE et al will form a counter and a buffer to the machinations of Iran and Turkey.The Indo-US joint communique is a statement of intentIt is in this global context that we need to analyze the joint communique between the US and India after the Trump-Modi summit. Both nations will be attempting to advance their own strategic doctrines. The US would like India to become a non-treaty ally. India would like to keep its multi-alignment policy going, along with Atmanirbharatha. These may make any bilateral progress a little rough but some give and take will work.There are a few specific areas of interest:* Defense* There is an effort by the US to wean India away from its dependency on Russia for weapons. The most evident carrot here is the F-35 advanced fighter jet, which has now been offered to India for the first time, along with other conventional weapons such as Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stryker infantry combat vehicles, as well as the P8i Poseidon anti-submarine patrol aircraft, and various drones* The P8i is already in service in India, and it would help keep an eye on the southern Bay of Bengal with its proximity to China's submarine pen on Hainan Island* The F-35 raises some questions. In the Bangalore Air Show it was pitted against the Russian Su-57, which is a lot less expensive. Also, the F-35 needs extraordinary levels of maintenance for its ‘stealth' coating. Finally, should India invest in building its own AMCA 5th-generation fighter jet rather than buying?* Even though there will be co-production agreements, the US is a whimsical supplier (remember Tarapur), and there will be little transfer of technology, so military procurement and cooperation must be carefully thought through by India* Trade and Investment* The goal is to reach $500 billion in bilateral trade by 2030, which would involve a doubling from current levels ($200 billion in 2023). Besides, the Trump doctrine of reciprocal tariffs and zero trade imbalance may make some of this difficult* Indian firms are planning to invest $7.35 billion in the US* Energy* India will now get access to US civil nuclear technology, but there's a small twist: the clauses invoking civil liability for nuclear damage will be deleted. This is reminiscent of Pfizer's covid-era contract with developing countries: Pfizer was assured of indemnity (with the local governments being liable) in case of injury or death caused by its vaccine. This sounds like a bad idea* India will increase its purchases of US oil and natural gas. This is a win-win: it will increase US imports to India, thus reducing the trade deficit, and India will be assured of additional supplies* Technology and Innovation* A whole raft of actions have been proposed, including a tie-up between the US National Science Foundation and the Anusandhan National Research Foundation in India, a program called TRUST, another called INDUS innovation, and one in the area of space collaboration, titled NISAR* Multilateral Cooperation* The Quad, IMEC and I2U2 figured in communique, but also something called the Indian Ocean Strategic Venture. I note this nomenclature progress with approval: there used to be the Asia-Pacific, then it was the Indo-Pacific, and now the Indian Ocean is being singled out* In the area of counter-terrorism, the communique explicitly named Pakistani entities such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Toiba, among others. This is a welcome change from the shadow-boxing indulged in by the Biden administration and others, whereby Pakistani terrorists were treated as ‘assets'* The extradition of Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistani-Canadian now in a Los Angeles jail, to India for investigation into his role supporting David Headley, in the 26/11/2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, is a welcome sign, after the curious Biden exertions in the Pannun case* People to people links* Indian parents are spending $8 billion a year to support 300,000 Indian students in the US. This amounts to a sort of ‘foreign aid', and also incidentally supplies a lot of especially STEM graduates to the US economy* Facilitating visas, which have become frustratingly difficult for Indian business and leisure travelers to the US. Last year, the wait for just a visa interview was 452 days in Chennai (as compared to 15 days in Beijing), which probably was the result ot the Biden State Department ‘punishing' India for refusing to toe their Ukraine sanctions line* The legal movement of students and professionals between the two countries is to be eased.Overall, this is a statement of intent: both Modi and Trump are laying their cards on the table, and they will both (as they should) bargain hard to benefit their own nations. But India is no longer being treated as a pariah as it was since the Pokhran blasts, the denial of cryogenic rocket engines (via, yes, the Biden Amendment), and so on.As Trump moves towards the inevitable multipolar world, he does not wish to leave Asia to eager hegemon China; as he wishes to move the US out of military entanglements in far-off places (for which he expects Europe and others to bear the burden of their own defense), it is natural for him to want India to punch its weight in Asia.A mutually beneficial relationship free of the supercilious lectures by previous Democratic administrations (eg Daleep Singh on Ukraine sanctions, and he was, ironically enough, the great-grand-nephew of Dalip Singh Saund) would be welcome from the Indian point of view. Having a counterweight to China, and a G3 instead of a G2, would likewise be useful from the US point of view. Thus, there are glimpses of a possible win-win situation.2222 words, 22-02-2025 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rajeevsrinivasan.substack.com/subscribe

A Time WarpBy FinalStand. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels.What follows is a diversion from the central storyline, but it is crucial to understanding why certain members of the supporting cast are behaving the way they are.808 BCE near Halab in what is today's Northern Syria:For me, Cael Nyilas, it was a return to last night's horrifying scene that engulfed me. The screams of dying horses and moribund men crying the pantheon of life's final regrets. Blood, piss, voided bowels and the stench of comingled sweat and leather filled my nostrils. The true cacophony of battle was all about. The battle shock faded into an innocuous background distraction.In my heart of hearts, I felt at ease, even content. We were cut off and surrounded yet hardly hopeless. Men, my brothers-in-arms and the younger noble sons of Assur and Nineveh combined to put a press of shields, armor and flesh encircling us. Those 'pampered' aristocrats stank with fear and well they should. Death was still possible before their relief arrived.I hurt, Shara (my deity?), I was wounded, but it meant nothing. I laughed; a primitive version of 'atheists and foxholes' passing through my mind. This body had lived through much worse. The closest man, her deceased husband's cousin, and I lifted the shattered wooden chariot off the person our circle was centered on. My arm was extended to her.She was glorious, fierce and half-drunk with battle lust. I could feel her talon-like fingers through the leather and 'parzillu' scales guarding my bicep. She half jumped and was half pulled to her feet. Her kinsman presented her 'misplaced' sword, hilt first. In her eyes, I saw the burning intensity of the Shamash (Sun God, consort of Aya?) at the height of the Burning Season.Her martial mirth exceeded any other noise as it passed her lips."You took your time getting here," Shammuramat taunted me, not a true reproach. "I was so bored, I decide to take a nap in the shade of my conveniently overturned chariot." She defied all fortunes that conspired toward her demise; her own breed of madness."You looked so peaceful in your sleep, I didn't want to wake you," I bantered back. Her 'kinsman' scowled at my familiarity with his monarch. My champions, more like brothers to me than any kin born of my blood, had carved a gory swath to her stranded bodyguard. Mounted on Median steeds, we had pressed back the entourages of two Aramean kings bent on her violent passing.A barricade of overturned, or unattended chariots gave us space to dismount and perform our very visible rescue mission. All the pieces were right where she wanted them; everything unfolding according to her plan. Focus the enemy in the center with her person and the banner of Assur while the rest of her chariots and all of her cavalry swept through an unguarded wadi and fell upon them from behind.Brilliant. Somewhat less brilliant when faced with the desperate energy of our enemies, but her victory was already a certainty. The allied Western Kings were sure my command was attempting to snatch the Queen back to the safety of her infantry. Those hardy, foot-bound souls were still holding their own against the greater mass of the enemy footmen.The children of rebellious nobles bent every bit of their remaining energy, squandered their last reserves to ensure Shammuramat didn't escape. If the positons were reversed, they would have eagerly abandoned their troops and sought safety to the rear. The idea of Shammuramat being overwrought with terror was absurd.Our opponents' bellows for our blood turned into wails of despair. The charging, plumaged steeds of Assyria had appeared behind them. Our enemies had nothing left to slow the new arrivals down, much less stop them. For those who dared defy Shammuramat, Queen of all the Akkadians, the slaughter was just beginning."Come 'Alal' (that was me); I promised 'Atarshumki' I would kick his head over his own city walls before sunset and I always keep my promises," she shoved one of my horse-holders aside and took one of my steeds. 'Alal' was not the name my father gave me. It meant destroyer and it was blasphemy to lay claim to it."Killing kings will cost you extra," was my impious response.Assyrians nobility barely tolerated mercenaries most of the time. My men and I didn't care. I hadn't taken up the killing business to make friends and my troops felt the same way. What mattered to us was that their coin was good and delivered on time. That was a good thing because whores and merchants were loath to advance 'our kind' anything on credit."I'll meet you half way," she grinned manically at me while my fighters and I raced for our mounts. (Saving the junior nobility wasn't what she were paying us for.) "I'll let you take any prince you capture as a hostage." I nodded. My men cheered hungrily, despite the choking dust. As long as I didn't get too greedy, the Kings would pay for their sons. Now we had to capture the bastards."Tūbātu," I reminded them. 'Goodwill'. It was a polite way of saying 'stop your chariot, rest your arms and your mother won't have to come begging for your corpse'. It was best to let opposing nobility keep their dignity in our business. Today's enemy might be tomorrow's paymaster.I blinked and things changed.Planting followed harvest and harvest followed planting. It had long ago become a blur. Shammuramat had grown older. Her first son became king when he was of age. I had long exceeded my welcome and my desire to stay. I was fixed to this small patch of the greater world by a rare emotion, empathy.It had come out of nowhere. We were campaigning against the Scythians raiding over the Zagros Mountains and followed them into Urartu. Night had fallen and I walked the camp as was my habit; being killed a few times in your sleep will make you err on the side of caution. Shammuramat was gazing out over the river Arkas."I though all the scouts have returned," I asked as I stepped to her side. A cool, early autumn breeze blew down the valley, tossing a few loose locks of her greying hair. She always had one patch shorn short which made her left-side braids prone to unwind."They have. We head back for Nineveh with the dawn," she murmured, her mind elsewhere."Do you ever dream of home?" she asked me out of the blue."No. I don't dream anymore. I rarely sleep and if I did, I would hope to dream of something less boring," I snorted in amusement. She had never talked about her home, to anyone as far as I knew."You will be going to Lydia when winter comes," she stated tensely."King Gyges needs someone with experience beating Cimmerians," I answered. The true reason was that I was no longer welcome on the Assyrian payroll because I insisted on recruiting only non-Assyrians into the ranks of my ferociously effective little band of one hundred; never more and rarely less."Shemtsu is a fool," she grumbled."That is unfair," I countered. My willingness to argue with her was one of my charms in her eyes. "He is an excellent Treasurer and he makes sure your vassals pay their tribute on time and in its full amount."The silence was hurtful to me because Shammuramat was never one to obfuscate her thoughts, especially around me. It was one of her charms, to my way of thinking."Salmu Eretu, the northern night sky has no answers for what ails you. Get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to start out cold before it bakes us." I called her 'Black Cloud' in Akkadian.I had first used that name twenty years ago to insult her, highlighting her tempestuous nature. In the Assyrian court, having just received recognition for my quick thinking, Shammuramat had belittled my accomplishment, throwing my body between her, her unborn child (the man who was now not-so-gently ushering me to the border) and a Kassite noble and his retainer bent on killing them both.Had my deed not been witnessed by half a dozen reliable sources, I wouldn't even have received that tawdry token."He sought glory without risk," she spat out her insult in a Hittite tongue alien to this court. Unfortunately for us both, I had worked for a Babylonian family for a few generations and they had been kind enough to turn me from an illiterate commoner to a man of some education.Ironically, they even taught me my native cuneiform long after my birthplace was barely a memory."Well aren't you a black cloud on an otherwise waste of a day," I replied somewhat bitterly. Her eyes widened, then narrowed and then I heard her laugh for the first time."Should I tell them what you said?" she mocked me and my predicament."But of course," I grunted in Akkadian. I'd screwed up. My inner thoughts were 'please not decapitation, please not decapitation' because getting my head on straight after that was a real bitch."You've been nothing but a black cloud bent on turning the choking dust at my feet into a grasping, muddy morass. Why stop now?" I announced loudly. If you are going to die, die well. Having died too many times to count, remembering my last words were all I had left to look forward to.The guards, familiar with the Queen's temper and stunned into inaction by me clearly embracing a long, messy death, stood around uselessly. Had I been allowed a weapon in the royal presence, I might have thought which one to kill first."I gift you, a lowborn man of the South (Sumerian), with honors and you respond by insulting my wife?" King, Shamshi Adad V growled as he rose from his throne."Husband," she stood to join him. I thought it was a pity she rarely smiled. "You asked that I too give a gift to my savior and the savior of our son (all unborn babies were sons back then until roughly half had the audacity to gender switch while exiting the womb). I have chosen." I was expecting my life for the moment and a day's head start to the border."It is your choice to make," the King allowed."From this day, until my passing, this man may always speak his mind in our lands," she demanded. She had a habit of fatally correcting anyone who saw her as less than co-ruler. The hesitation was deafening."As you will," Shamshi Adad V acquiesced to yet another of his wife's odd 'requests'. From that day forth we had been fast friends. She never asked about my immortality, where I was from, or how I ended up with my elite band of professional killers. I returned the favor. It was an unspoken understanding that in a few years, or decades, she would die and I would leave, not necessarily in that order. We had shared more years than I had given to any one person in quite some time."There is nothing left for me but ash," she declared with morbid certainty."Should any of us expect any better?" I did my best to offer words of comfort she would accept."Oh no," her noise was too bitter to be a laugh. "I had my own 'Life beyond Death' and it was stolen from me, along with my birthright.""We are chasing the thieves?" I asked."Yes and no," her face grew grim once more. "These were not the ones I was looking for. They share some bonds with some of the Scythian tribes who live on the far side of the Sea of Death (the Black Sea). These raiders weren't from those tribes.""Why are you turning back?" I questioned. "You know your Assyrians are loyal. They will follow wherever you lead. Your son won't begrudge you these few hundred. I'll come too.""Why?" she turned and looked into my eyes. She still had that blazing fire in her eyes. She was teasing me. If she asked, I too would follow and my men would follow me."The Scythians have been raiding the Lands of the Two Rivers from, well, before I graduated from 'spear for hire' to a 'seeker of a mastery of war'. The rich plunder of their camps will provide plenty of incentive for my men plus we can sell the horses when we come back," I stated."I do not have the years left to spend on such a campaign," she sighed. I had never heard a hint of defeat in her speech before. It was unsettling and rather tragic."I have squandered my years in marriage, being Queen and raising my boys. I tried to make Assyria my new family and I am revealed to be a fool. You had it right. We will always be outlanders. No matter how brave, loyal, just and smart, we would never be allowed in their sanctimonious circle," she said. "You. I should have ridden off with you after my first born was acknowledged (the present King Adad-nirari the 3rd).""We could have gathered up some more fighters, ridden over shattered Phrygia, to the narrows (Bosporus) and into the lands of the Thracians. There is a legend of a great river that pours out from the western shore of the Death Sea. What I seek is up that river.""How many would we face?" I grew equally serious."One," she coughed. "Me." My confusion was obvious. "I am not asking you to fight me, Alal. I want you to come back for me.""I can't. That is not how it works," I stated."How does it work then?" she looked into my eyes. The fire was there, but banked and waning. I didn't say anything. "I have never seen, or heard of you entering a temple.""Your men go. You do not stop them, but you have given up any pretense of worship," she pressed. "Do you not believe that anything exists beyond your senses?""I believe," I sighed. "I believe people are fools for giving offering, pledging their fidelity, pleading for mercy, or extending thanks to any deity. Those Shar-an (gnats) do as they will, unless it is to punish us for treating them like the spoiled children they are."Shammuramat regained her long-stilled laughter."I have always felt a kinship with you through our mutual bitterness.""Bitterness comes with familiarity," I snorted in amusement. Lovers had passion. We shared a simmering anger that came from being irredeemably wronged."I was born Baraqu, the first son of a potter in some city that no longer matters. I was a failure as a potter and an embarrassment to my house and my clan," I began a story I hadn't told another soul in, I couldn't recall. "In those days, the Priest-Kings declared wars and demanded each clan of the city give forth a certain number of males to fight. My family volunteered me and two rowdy cousins.Outside the gates, my clan elder gave each of us a cowhide shield and a spear with a small spindle of copper at the tip so we wouldn't think it was a staff. We marched, I forget which city we were fighting that time. Three days later we found the enemy behind a deep irrigation ditch that had dried out for the season. Our orders were simple, 'There they are. Attack!'My elder was at the back of our mob, making sure none of us ran away. My older cousin made it across the ditch first, but was speared twice; once in the right kidney, I can still remember my first sight of blood, and once, piercing the shield and lodging in his ribcage. My second cousin and I were pushed from behind into the fighting. I stabbed at one shield, doing no harm.Then my surviving cousin's morale broke and he tried to claw his way back into our ranks. He was stabbed in the back, his dying body tangling with mine and bearing us both to the ground. I saw this howling mad face over me. He was a commoner, like me, driven to violence by the terror of battle. His shoddily crafted spear plunged first into my right lung. The second stab found my heart. I died.From there, my spirit fell down toward the wretched dank caverns where all pitiful lowborn dregs are doomed to end up without hope of parole. Instead of endless misery, the Goddess Sarrat Irkalli appeared before me, barring my descent. With icy claws, she trisected my soul. I cannot begin to describe that agony. She snatched up my tattered bits and dragged me back into the world.Sarrat Irkalli is Goddess of the Netherworld, whispered a word that penetrated my brain through the left ear of my cooling corpse. It was an utterance so catastrophic to the fabric of the Veil I dare not repeat it even now.Baraqu? she blew a dark wind upon the first bit of my essence and it flew away.Cael, she whispered to the second portion and off it went in another direction. You are Baraqu no more. The second name was meaningless to me at the time but my name. Do you know that if you have your true name, your spirit can not find its way to your reward, no matter how foul, or pleasing? To the third part of my soul. I name you Alal, he who stands witness to the end of all he desires; their destroyer. Powerful yet powerless.}With that, she left me. My body was stiff from being dead so long. The next few hours were extremely painful. The Sun had set and the Moon was not in evidence. Jackals barked and hyenas laughed as they fought and feasted on the dead. I pushed the body of my cousin off me then crawled down into the ditch to hide. Hardly the reaction of a hero.""Not the actions of the man I know," Shammuramat smirked. "So, your name is Baraqu.""Was and I never much liked the name," I countered. "The priests gave it to me because right before my naming ceremony, a bolt of lightning from a spring storm struck the temple of Shara. So they named me Baraqu, which means 'struck by lightning'.""That sound likes a good name," the Queen Dowager regarded me."That is the noble meaning. The common meaning is less eloquent, it means 'idiot'."Another deep laugh from my treasured compatriot. So few had ever mattered so much to me."Struck by lightning, stricken dumb," she guffawed. "Still not the 'you' I know.""What does the other name mean?""I have no idea. In all my travels I have never found a people familiar with it," I shrugged. She looked out over the low waves lapping against the stony shore."No explanation?" she grudgingly inquired. She had wanted me to continue."No. I have never again come face to face with Sarrat Irkalli, been visited by a messenger, divine, or demonic, received an omen, or any otherworldly presence of any kind," I shrugged. I was long past any resentment. "After the battle I made my way back home, we'd lost, and resumed my life for a few years. My father took the excuse of me 'letting' my kinsmen die to place my younger brother over me.I didn't care. I always hated being a potter, so I ended up being a piddling nuisance all the time and a drunken brawler whenever I had wrangled some beer. I was always the first choice of my clan to send into battle. Despite my lack of training, I began surviving more battles than I died in. At some point, the priests began getting suspicious that I was still hanging around my great-grandnephew's house, so my house Elder suggested I leave the city.I was given a nice copper-headed mace that I had taken in a recent skirmish. Tradition dictated I offer it to the Elder, so he could give it back to me as a sign of my value to the clan. He had taken it for his own. Now he was giving it back out of fear that it held some part of my taint. I had no idea how to live on my own. Two days out, I was robbed and murdered for the first, but not last, time. That inaugural event, I got really angry and hunted those two farmers down.I got my mace back. I also relieved them of an onager, three slaves and a few ingots of silver. I guessed they had been rather successful robbers until they met me."

Iqbal Chand Malhotra is an Indian filmmaker, author, and expert on geopolitics. He studied Economics at Cambridge University and has produced over 500 hours of documentaries. As the Chairman of AIM Television, he focuses on topics like terrorism, geopolitics, and nuclear strategies. He has also been a juror for the International Emmy Awards. Malhotra has directed three award-winning documentaries: The Legend of Malerkotla, Subhas Chandra Bose: The Mystery, and Netaji Bose and the Lost Treasure. He co-wrote the bestseller Kashmir's Untold Story – Declassified and authored Red Fear – The China Threat. You Can buy his books here: https://www.amazon.in/Books-Iqbal-Chand-Malhotra/s?rh=n%3A976389031%2Cp_27%3AIqbal%2BChand%2BMalhotra You can check out his documentaries here: https://aimtelevision.com/ In this episode, Vinamre and Iqbal talk about: - How China weakened India's industries and how India can reduce its dependence on China - The future of India-U.S. ties and Starlink's role in India - China's dams on the Indus River and their impact - The British opium trade in China - Pakistan's role in the drug trade and how Pakistan created the Taliban - His experiences in Afghanistan and Turkmenistan with drug lords and renting an AK-47 - China's tricks in 1962 and the existence of “The Great Game”. Watch the episode to learn more about China's threat to India and the history of India-China relations. Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction 1:10 - Deindustrialization of India by China 10:30 - What can India do to disengage from the Chinese economy? 14:43 - Why is he so harsh towards China? 17:48 - India-U.S. relations and Starlink in India 20:28 - China is building dams on Indus rivers 23:20 - Opium trade in China by the British 24:36 - Pakistan is a narcotic state 28:18 - The Taliban was created by Pakistan, not America 31:05 - Traveling in different parts of Afghanistan 35:48 - The crazy dictator of Turkmenistan 39:13 - Renting an AK-47 44:00 - Meeting the drug lord of Afghanistan 50:08 - How did he end up in these places? 54:22 - Traveling to China and Kailash Mansarovar 59:00 - How China fooled us in 1962 war 1:11:00 - Does "The Great Game" still exist in the modern era? 1:13:20 - Conclusion ==================================================================== This is the official channel for Dostcast, a podcast by Vinamre Kasanaa. Connect with me LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinamre-kasanaa-b8524496/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vinamrekasanaa/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/VinamreKasanaa Dostcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dostcast/ Dostcast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dostcast Dostcast on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557567524054 ==================================================================== Contact Us For business inquiries: dostcast@egiplay.com

Did you know there were mega cities in history that were way ahead of their time? Take Mohenjo-Daro in ancient India—it had an advanced drainage system and grid-like streets 4,500 years ago! Or the Mayan city of Tikal, with its towering pyramids and complex water management systems hidden deep in the jungle. PBS / YouTube National Geographic / YouTube CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Indus river: by Avani Tanya, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Mine Action in Syria: by Mil.ru, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Monks Mound: by Skubasteve834, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Ilex vomitoria: by Luteus, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Mohenjodaro: by Saqib Qayyum, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Mohenjo-daro: by Saqib Qayyum, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Other side of Moenjodaro: by Usman.pg, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Kos castle: by kallerna, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Temple of Bel: by Zeledi, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Kos-harbour: by Chris Vlachos, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Indus Valley: by KennyOMG, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:In... Gate of Temple of Bel, CC BY-SA 2.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Palmyra, Syria: by James Gordon, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi..., https://www.flickr.com/photos/7913927... Odeon, Kos Town: by Michal Osmenda, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi..., https://flic.kr/p/9BCfR4 CC SA 1.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Mohenjodaro Sindh: by M.Imran, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Mohenjo-daro Priesterkönig: by Mamoon Mengal, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi..., http://www.world66.com/asia/southasia... Palmyre Vue Generale: by Eustache Diemert, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Zanskar rivers: by Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., CC BY-SA 2.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., CC BY-SA 1.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Temple of Bel: by Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., CC BY-SA 2.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., CC BY-SA 1.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... City of Tadmor: by Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., CC BY-SA 2.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., CC BY-SA 1.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Agora of Athens: by DerHexer, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., CC BY-SA 2.5 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., CC BY-SA 1.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Temple of Bel: by haitham alfalah, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Diocletian's camp: by Ulrich Waack, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., CC BY-SA 3.0 DE https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Greece kos city: by Arne Müseler / www.arne-mueseler.com, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Animation is created by Bright Side. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Neutral Expert has said that it has the 'competence' to decide on differences between India & Pakistan related to the design of 2 hydroelectric projects in J&K.  

Show Notes: In this episode of Unleashed, Will Bachman interviews Bart Sayer, an expert on the beauty industry. Bart worked for nine years at the Estée Lauder Companies, most recently as the International General Manager for one of its largest brands, Clinique, managing the $1B P&L. Previously, Bart was a partner at Booz & Company (now Strategy&, part of PwC), focused on strategy and commercial transformation in the Consumer & Retail sectors. The conversation focuses on understanding the structure of the beauty market and the main drivers of value creation.   The Beauty Industry Explained Bart explains that the beauty industry is divided into four main categories: skincare, makeup, hair, care, and body. The market is divided into luxury and mass segments, with luxury beauty expected to grow between six and 8% in the foreseeable future. Taking the example of the United States, mass brands are more likely to be found in drugstores, such as Walgreens and CVs. Premium brands are more available in department stores or specialty multi, such as Sephora and Ulta, and a third channel being direct to consumer. At Estee Lauder they believed that distribution defines your equity, so prestige brands are careful about where they appear, hence the careful consideration and strict conditions associated with entering a channel like Amazon. Looking beyond the NA market, Travel Retail has been an important growth vehicle for luxury beauty brands over the past decade, though this growth has tempered in the past few years. Future growth of the beauty industry will remain defined by its two largest markets, the United States and China, while up-and-coming middle market countries will also represent attractive opportunities (e.g., India, Mexico, Brazil).   Manufacturing, Testing and Ingredients The ingredients in mass and prestige products can differ in terms of the scarcity or rarity of the actives, including use of proprietary ingredients and formulations. Formulation philosophies vary widely across different entities. Many brands, for example, put extra protections in place to ensure product safety for sensitive skin and/or to conduct rigorous allergy testing. Bart discusses the importance of clinical testing in product and research development, highlighting that it is a high barrier to entry for indie brands. He also discusses the evolution of more nimble production models, including the prevalence of contract manufacturers that can manufacture the latest ingredients and bespoke formulations in quicker and more cost-effective ways than many of the brands themselves. This approach is not binary, as L'Oreal has over 40 different manufacturing facilities worldwide. Before leaving the manufacturing discussion, Bart quickly hit upon another topic, that of the evolution to more earned media-led marketing models, whereby companies seize organic market buzz before amplifying these messages with paid media. Local vs. Global Adaptation The concept of local versus global adaptation is crucial in the beauty industry. Brands must find a locally relevant articulation of their brand essence. Large media companies often have global ambassadors who can speak for the brand, but if a local face is not available, the brand may not get the traction needed. To succeed, brands must be more reactive to local market trends, deploying local influencers, tailored messaging and selecting locally relevant forums for generating PR, both online and offline.   Indie and Newer Brands The conversation turned to the shift towards indie and newer brands in the beauty retail industry. The reasons behind the growth of the indies include lower barriers to entry on social media channels, an agile marketing model, the wide availability of contract manufacturers, and channel partners like Sephora that are focused on curating exclusive collections of the next “it” beauty brands. Often for these indie brands, the problem is not the launch itself (recruitment), but the stickiness (retention). Many of these companies struggle with repeat purchases, which are the key to success.   Sales and Distribution in the Beauty Industry Bart discussed several high growth channels, including Sephora, a leading premium beauty retailer owned by the LVMH group, travel retailer and beauty e-tailers such as Zalando and Notino. Traditional points of distribution, such as department stores and perfumeries, have seen slower growth, especially in the West (and far less so in the East). Whatever the channel, the importance of constructing good “self-navigating experience” for prestige consumers is key. Across many of these newer retailers, clean beauty is a key theme, as is green and sustainable, free of parabens, sulfates, certain ingredients and fragrances. This raises the bar for brands to prove their bona fides in terms of ingredient publishing and sourcing. The conversation then pivoted to challenges in the supply chain, including shelf life of products (especially for consumers in the East) and SKU proliferation.   Demand Forecasting Robust demand forecasting is crucial for brands to succeed to avoid out-of-stock situations and, conversely, the proliferation of excess. This can be particularly problematic when trying to create buzz and excitement with limited edition collections such as those sold over the holidays. Given profit, brand equity and sustainability concerns, rands have increasingly tried to err on the side of caution in their forecasts (FOMO). SKU periphery proliferation is another issue that brands are constantly fighting, seeking a balance between getting new out there while staying consistent and building out their portfolio. Store Design and Staffing Models In department stores, cosmetics brands often have significant control over the design of their stores, including all signage, key visuals and other elements of visual merchandising (e.g., gondola design, planogram setup). Done correctly, these can be huge differentiators. Unsurprisingly, prestige beauty brands have armies of store design, visual merchandising and staff (beauty advisor) education teams. Cost sharing with retail partners – CAPEX, staffing, promo – vary by channel and partner, thus representing a critical point in commercial negotiations (along with other topics like trade margin).   The Lucrative Nature of the Beauty Industry  The cosmetics industry is a highly lucrative business with operating profits ranging from 10 to 25%. Gross margins can be 65% or more, depending on the brand and the type of product. Highest gross margin categories include skincare and luxury fragrances. However, there is no room for complacency, with many waging a constant war to lower the cost of goods through a combination of gross to net improvements, price increases, mix optimization, promo efficiencies and, of course, manufacturing savings. A hero-product focus is needed to get scale, thus providing ballast for marketing investments. Premiumization trade trends are continuing across categories and subcategories, with no sign of these trends abating.  Timestamps: 03:30: Structure of the Cosmetics Industry and Market Segments 05:26: Specialty Channels and Distribution Strategies  07:58: Differences Between Mass and Prestige Brands 10:06: Analyzing the Cosmetics Industry: Product and Research Development  13:44: Marketing and Consumer Insights 18:33: Sales and Distribution Channels 22:49: Operations and Supply Chain  31:57: Gross Margin Analysis and Financial Performance  Website Links: #1, Beauty Market Outlook: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/consumer-packaged-goods/our-insights/the-beauty-boom-and-beyond-can-the-industry-maintain-its-growth #2, FDA Regulations of Cosmetics: https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetics-science-research/product-testing-cosmetics #3, Risk of Indie Beauty Brands: https://cosmeticsbusiness.com/how-indie-beauty-brands-can-break-america#:~:text=Indie%20brands%20are%20greatly%20influencing,and%20most%20likely%20through%202025. #4, Beauty and Travel Retail: https://wwd.com/beauty-industry-news/beauty-features/tackling-beautys-travel-retail-conundrum-estee-lauder-loreal-clarins-bulgari-dfs-heinemann-1236682262/ #5, Green Beauty: https://www.forbes.com/sites/meimeifox/2023/12/22/green-glamour-12-clean-beauty-brands-leading-the-eco-revolution/ #6, Beauty & Supply Chain Challenges: https://www.voguebusiness.com/beauty/new-ingredients-higher-prices-reformulating-beauty-in-the-supply-crisis #7, QVC and Beauty: https://entm.ag/1wEfOci #8, Love, Indus (company referenced by Will and I during the discussion): https://loveindus.com/collections/shop?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAkJO8BhCGARIsAMkswyiVNdA36DRltbku4DqHeLj-dAbZxAfsVOWmkyEP6Ah9bsxaNi3L4g4aAqP4EALw_wcB Unleashed is produced by Umbrex, which has a mission of connecting independent management consultants with one another, creating opportunities for members to meet, build relationships, and share lessons learned. Learn more at www.umbrex.com.

Dans cet épisode de Super Docteur, nous plongeons dans les aspects juridiques cruciaux pour les médecins généralistes. Accompagné de Maître Kamar Eric Hadi, avocat dédié à la défense des professionnels de santé libéraux, nous explorons des situations fréquentes et les meilleures pratiques pour sécuriser votre activité.Points clés abordés :Indus CPAM : Décryptage des indus, leurs origines (contrôles administratifs ou médicaux), et les étapes à suivre après réception d'une notification.Premiers réflexes à adopter : Respect des délais, importance de bien structurer son recours et erreurs à éviter.Contentieux avec le Conseil de l'Ordre : Procédures disciplinaires et rôle de la conciliation.Préparation des entretiens face au Conseil de l'Ordre ou de la CPAM: Conseils pour structurer son dossier, maîtriser son discours et adopter une posture adaptée face aux agents ou lors d'audiences.

Dans cet épisode de Super Docteur, nous plongeons dans les aspects juridiques cruciaux pour les médecins généralistes. Accompagné de Maître Kamar Eric Hadi, avocat dédié à la défense des professionnels de santé libéraux, nous explorons des situations fréquentes et les meilleures pratiques pour sécuriser votre activité.Points clés abordés :Indus CPAM : Décryptage des indus, leurs origines (contrôles administratifs ou médicaux), et les étapes à suivre après réception d'une notification.Premiers réflexes à adopter : Respect des délais, importance de bien structurer son recours et erreurs à éviter.Contentieux avec le Conseil de l'Ordre : Procédures disciplinaires et rôle de la conciliation.Préparation des entretiens face au Conseil de l'Ordre ou de la CPAM: Conseils pour structurer son dossier, maîtriser son discours et adopter une posture adaptée face aux agents ou lors d'audiences.

Thanks to Elizabeth, Alexandra, Kimberly, Ezra, Eilee, Leon, and Simon for their suggestions this week! Further reading: New population of blue whales discovered in the western Indian Ocean An Endangered Dolphin Finds an Unlikely Savior--Fisherfolk The humpback whale: The gigantic blue whale: The tiny vaquita: The Indus river dolphin: The false killer whale: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I'm your host, Kate Shaw. This week we're going to have a big episode about various dolphins and whales! We've had lots of requests for these animals lately, so let's talk about a bunch of them. Thanks to Elizabeth, Alexandra, Kimberly, Ezra, Eilee, Leon, and Simon for their suggestions. We'll start with a quick overview about dolphins, porpoises, and whales, which are called cetaceans. All cetaceans alive today are carnivorous, meaning they eat other animals instead of plants. This includes the big baleen whales that filter feed, even though the animals they eat are tiny. Cetaceans are mammals that are fully aquatic, meaning they spend their entire lives in the water, and they have adaptations to life in the water that are simply astounding. All cetaceans alive today belong to either the baleen whale group, which filter feed, or the toothed whale group, which includes dolphins and porpoises. The two groups started evolving separately about 34 million years ago and are actually very different. Toothed whales are the ones that echolocate, while baleen whales are the ones that have extremely loud, often beautiful songs that they use to communicate with each other over long distances. It's possible that baleen whales also use a limited type of echolocation to navigate, but we don't know for sure. There's still a lot we don't know about cetaceans. Now let's talk about some specific whales. Ezra wanted to learn more about humpback and blue whales, so we'll start with those. Both are baleen whales, specifically rorquals. Rorquals are long, slender whales with throat pleats that allow them to expand their mouths when they gulp water in. After the whale fills its mouth with water, it closes its jaws, pushing its enormous tongue up, and forces all that water out through the baleen. Any tiny animals like krill, copepods, small squid, small fish, and so on, get trapped in the baleen. It can then swallow all that food and open its mouth to do it again. The humpback mostly eats tiny crustaceans called krill, and little fish. The humpback grows up to 56 feet long, or 17 meters, with females being a little larger than males on average. It's mostly black in color, with mottled white or gray markings underneath and on its flippers. Its flippers are long and narrow, which allows it to make sharp turns. The humpback is closely related to the blue whale, which is the largest animal ever known to have lived. It can grow up to 98 feet long, or 30 meters, and it's probable that individuals can grow even longer. It can weigh around 200 tons, and by comparison a really big male African elephant can weigh as much as 7 tons. Estimates of the weight of various of the largest sauropod dinosaurs, the largest land animal ever known to have lived, is only about 80 tons. So the blue whale is extremely large. The blue whale only eats krill and lots of it. To give you an example of how much water it can engulf in its enormous mouth in order to get enough krill to keep its massive body going, this is how the blue whale feeds. When it finds an area with a lot of krill floating around, it swims fast toward the krill and opens its giant mouth extremely wide. When its mouth is completely full, its weight—body and water together—has more than doubled. Its mouth can hold up to 220 tons of water. Since the whale is in the water, it doesn't feel the weight of the water in its mouth. Blue whales live throughout the world's oceans, but a few years ago scientists analyzing recordings of whale song from the we...

Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community. Today I'm in conversation with Rajesh Rao, a distinguished professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington, where he also co-directs the Center for Neurotechnology. Back in 1999, Raj and Dana Ballard published what became quite a famous paper, which proposed how predictive coding might be implemented in brains. What is predictive coding, you may be wondering? It's roughly the idea that your brain is constantly predicting incoming sensory signals, and it generates that prediction as a top-down signal that meets the bottom-up sensory signals. Then the brain computes a difference between the prediction and the actual sensory input, and that difference is sent back up to the "top" where the brain then updates its internal model to make better future predictions. So that was 25 years ago, and it was focused on how the brain handles sensory information. But Raj just recently published an update to the predictive coding framework, one that incorporates actions and perception, suggests how it might be implemented in the cortex - specifically which cortical layers do what - something he calls "Active predictive coding." So we discuss that new proposal, we also talk about his engineering work on brain-computer interface technologies, like BrainNet, which basically connects two brains together, and like neural co-processors, which use an artificial neural network as a prosthetic that can do things like enhance memories, optimize learning, and help restore brain function after strokes, for example. Finally, we discuss Raj's interest and work on deciphering an ancient Indian text, the mysterious Indus script. Raj's website. Related papers A sensory–motor theory of the neocortex. Brain co-processors: using AI to restore and augment brain function. Towards neural co-processors for the brain: combining decoding and encoding in brain–computer interfaces. BrainNet: A Multi-Person Brain-to-Brain Interface for Direct Collaboration Between Brains. Read the transcript. 0:00 - Intro 7:40 - Predictive coding origins 16:14 - Early appreciation of recurrence 17:08 - Prediction as a general theory of the brain 18:38 - Rao and Ballard 1999 26:32 - Prediction as a general theory of the brain 33:24 - Perception vs action 33:28 - Active predictive coding 45:04 - Evolving to augment our brains 53:03 - BrainNet 57:12 - Neural co-processors 1:11:19 - Decoding the Indus Script 1:20:18 - Transformer models relation to active predictive coding

W szóstym, ostatnim odcinku trzeciego sezonu Opowieści arabskich Jan Natkański opowie o wędrówce Arabów do Afryki. W historii tych podbojów kluczową rolę odegrało dążenie do krzewienia islamu. W ciągu stu lat od śmierci proroka Mahometa armie muzułmańskie zajęły obszary Pirenejów i Afryki Północnej na zachodzie do rzeki Indus, Azji Centralnej i pogranicza Chin na wschodzie. Była to kulminacja podbojów arabskich i jak wskazują arabscy historycy, w dziejach ludzkości imperium muzułmańskie dorównywało rozmiarami rosyjskiemu i brytyjskiemu. Zaprasza Agata Kasprolewicz. Gość: Jan Natkański Realizuje: Kris Wawrzak --------------------------------------------- Raport o stanie świata to audycja, która istnieje dzięki naszym Patronom, dołącz się do zbiórki ➡️ ⁠https://patronite.pl/DariuszRosiak⁠ Subskrybuj newsletter Raportu o stanie świata ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠➡️ ⁠https://dariuszrosiak.substack.com⁠ Koszulki i kubki Raportu ➡️ ⁠https://patronite-sklep.pl/kolekcja/raport-o-stanie-swiata/⁠ [Autopromocja]

pWotD Episode 2776: India Welcome to Popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.With 327,180 views on Saturday, 7 December 2024 our article of the day is India.India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country in the world by area and the most populous country. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia.Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago. Their long occupation, initially in varying forms of isolation as hunter-gatherers, has made the region highly diverse, second only to Africa in human genetic diversity. Settled life emerged on the subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus river basin 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE. By at least 1200 BCE, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest. Its evidence today is found in the hymns of the Rigveda. Preserved by an oral tradition that was resolutely vigilant, the Rigveda records the dawning of Hinduism in India. The Dravidian languages of India were supplanted in the northern and western regions. By 400 BCE, stratification and exclusion by caste had emerged within Hinduism, and Buddhism and Jainism had arisen, proclaiming social orders unlinked to heredity. Early political consolidations gave rise to the loose-knit Maurya and Gupta Empires based in the Ganges Basin. Their collective era was suffused with wide-ranging creativity, but also marked by the declining status of women, and the incorporation of untouchability into an organised system of belief. The Middle kingdoms exported the Indian influences, and religions of Hinduism and Buddhism to the Southeast Asia.In the early mediaeval era, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism became established on India's southern and western coasts. Muslim armies from Central Asia intermittently overran India's northern plains, eventually founding the Delhi Sultanate and drawing northern India into the cosmopolitan networks of mediaeval Islam. Under the Rajaraja I and his son Rajendra I, the Cholas of south India became the greatest Indian state of its era, and also led to the apex of Indian influence in Southeast Asia. In the 15th century, the Vijayanagara Empire created a long-lasting composite Hindu culture in south India. In the Punjab, Sikhism emerged, rejecting institutionalised religion. The Mughal Empire, in 1526, ushered in two centuries of relative peace, leaving a legacy of luminous architecture. Gradually expanding rule of the British East India Company followed, turning India into a colonial economy but also consolidating its sovereignty. British Crown rule began in 1858. The rights promised to Indians were granted slowly, but technological changes were introduced, and modern ideas of education and public life took root. A pioneering and influential nationalist movement emerged, which was noted for nonviolent resistance and became the major factor in ending British rule. In 1947, the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two independent dominions, a Hindu-majority dominion of India and a Muslim-majority dominion of Pakistan, amid large-scale loss of life and an unprecedented migration.India has been a federal republic since 1950, governed through a democratic parliamentary system, and has been the world's most populous democracy since the time of its independence in 1947. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society. India's nominal per capita income increased from US$64 annually in 1951 to US$2,601 in 2022, and its literacy rate from 16.6% to 74%. During the same time, its population grew from 361 million to almost 1.4 billion, and India became the most populous country in 2023. From being a comparatively destitute country in 1951, India has become a fast-growing major economy and a hub for information technology services, with an expanding middle class. India has a space programme with several planned or completed extraterrestrial missions. Indian movies, music, and spiritual teachings play an increasing role in global culture. India has substantially reduced its rate of poverty, though at the cost of increasing economic inequality. India is a nuclear-weapon state, which ranks high in military expenditure. It has disputes over Kashmir with its neighbours, Pakistan and China, unresolved since the mid-20th century. Among the socio-economic challenges India faces are gender inequality, child malnutrition, and rising levels of air pollution. India's land is megadiverse, with four biodiversity hotspots. Its forest cover comprises 21.7% of its area. India's wildlife, which has traditionally been viewed with tolerance in India's culture, is supported among these forests, and elsewhere, in protected habitats.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 02:00 UTC on Sunday, 8 December 2024.For the full current version of the article, see India on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm neural Kajal.

In this episode of Market Minutes, Neeshita Beura explores whether financial stocks can drive the market rally ahead. The podcast also highlights Vodafone's stake sale plans in Indus Towers, Bharat Forge's QIP launch, and the latest updates on L&T's strategic acquisitions. In the Voice of the Day segment, Amit Jain, Co-Founder of Ashika Global Family Office Services, shares his insights on PSU banks and their outlook. Market Minutes is a morning podcast, putting the spotlight on trending stocks, crucial data points, and evolving market trends.

Welcome to CNBC-TV18's Marketbuzz Podcast. Here are top news from around the world ahead of the trading session on December 5 -A quick recap: The Indian equity market gained for the fourth straight day, marking its longest winning streak in two months. The Nifty 50 shifted into consolidation on December 4 after a sustained up move over the past three trading sessions. While the index closed in the green, it ended off its intraday highs due to a tug of war between positive domestic factors and weak Asian cues. -Despite a largely positive tone during the session, profit-booking in select heavyweights limited the upside. Sectorally, the performance was mixed, with banking and realty outperforming, while energy, auto, and FMCG faced selling pressure. -Looking ahead, the market will closely monitor comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and the US jobs data, set to be released today. -As of this morning, GIFT Nifty was lower, trading at a discount of nearly 50 points from Nifty Futures Wednesday close, indicating a start in the red for the Indian market. -Stocks to track: Torrent Pharma, Indus Towers, IGL, Bharat Forge -Global cues: Shares in Asia rose while currency markets opened Thursday on a note of relative calm as traders digested the effects of political crises in France and South Korea. Equities in Japan and Australia climbed, while those in South Korea fell as the country's opposition party sought to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol after he briefly imposed martial law. Shares in Hong Kong fell, while those in China were little changed. -Overnight in the US, benchmark indices on Wall Street scaled new peaks after comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell ahead of the policy announcement on December 18. The Dow Jones closed above the mark of 45,000 for the first time, the S&P 500 added 0.6% to close near 6,100, while the Nasdaq Composite outperformed, gaining 1.3%. The tech-heavy index is now 1.3% away from the 20,000 mark. -In terms of commodities, oil steadied after a decline, with traders looking ahead to an OPEC+ meeting on Thursday that's expected to see the cartel again defer a move to revive output in an already well-supplied market. Brent crude traded above $72 a barrel after sliding by nearly 2% on Wednesday, with West Texas Intermediate below $69. Tune in to Marketbuzz Podcast for more news and cues

Our second episode on the Upanishads (c. 800-300 BCE), we look at some of the striking similarities between Greek mythology and philosophy and Indian mythology and philosophy, and walk through some of the evidence that shows how societies may have been far more interconnected than we thought in ancient times.Also, Alexander the Great asks a bunch of nude yogis to dinner. Want a transcript? Read it here. Don't forget to rate and review us! It helps others find this show (and so does sharing us on your socials). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The History Museum at the Castle shares more about a new exhibit on Afghan Refugees that just opened in collaboration with World Relief. We hear from Dustin and Farah, who wants her new neighbors in the Fox Valley to know more about her beloved Afghan homeland and its rich culture than what they see in the media.History Museum at the CastleWorld ReliefThe Appleton Public Library shares how they're helping kids understand the democratic process. We also learn about their upcoming Dinovember event. IndUs of the Fox Valley hosts their 24th IndUS Banquet "Festivals of India" on November 9th from 5:00-9:00 PM at the Hyatt Regency, Green Bay. IndUs of Fox Valley 

How to Scrap Indus Waters Treaty | History and Future | Aadi Achint with Sanjay Dixit

En este capítulo conversaremos con Gerardo García, presidente de la Cámara de la Indus­tria Química Farma­céutica (Cifarma).

The medicinal cannabis industry says changes to drug laws that have finally taken effect will be a game changer. 

Guy Adami is flying solo this morning and bringing you three things he is watching this week in markets. Get a quick primer on what to look out for, from more S&P 500 price target upgrades to crucial manufacturing data set to release.  After the break, Guy Adami and Kaitlin Malin, COO of iConnections, are joined by Jim Shannon, founding partner and CEO of Indus Capital, to discuss global market trends and investment strategies. Jim shares his extensive career background, from his time at Soros Fund Management to founding Indus Capital. The conversation covers the current state of the Japanese and Asian markets, focusing on Japan's corporate governance reforms and the influence of macroeconomic factors such as the yen and interest rates. Jim elaborates on Indus Capital's long-short equity approach, team structure, and regional focus. The discussion also touches on the geopolitical risks concerning China and Taiwan, the impact of upcoming U.S. elections on global markets, and emerging investment opportunities in countries like Korea and India. Learn More About Indus Capital: IndusCap.com Reach out to Jim: JShannon@induscap.com Learn More about iConnections & Its Partnership with MFA Subscribe to our newsletter: https://riskreversalmedia.beehiiv.com/subscribe — About the Show: On The Tape is a weekly podcast with CNBC Fast Money's Guy Adami, Dan Nathan and Danny Moses. They're offering takes on the biggest market-moving headlines of the week, trade ideas, in-depth analysis, tips and advice. Each episode, they are joined by prominent Wall Street participants to help viewers make smarter investment decisions. Bear market, bull market, recession, inflation or deflation… we're here to help guide your portfolio into the green. Risk Reversal brings you years of experience from former Wall Street insiders trading stocks to experts in the commodity market. — Check out our show notes here See what adding futures can do for you at cmegroup.com/onthetape. — Shoot us an email at OnTheTape@riskreversal.com with any feedback, suggestions, or questions for us to answer on the pod and follow us @OnTheTapePod on Twitter or @riskreversalmedia on Threads — We're on social: Follow @GuyAdami on Twitter Follow Danny Moses @DMoses34 on Twitter Follow Liz Young @LizYoungStrat on Twitter Follow us on Instagram @RiskReversalMedia Subscribe to our YouTube page The financial opinions expressed in Risk Reversal content are for information purposes only. The opinions expressed by the hosts and participants are not an attempt to influence specific trading behavior, investments, or strategies. Past performance does not necessarily predict future outcomes. No specific results or profits are assured when relying on Risk Reversal. Before making any investment or trade, evaluate its suitability for your circumstances and consider consulting your own financial or investment advisor. The financial products discussed in Risk Reversal carry a high level of risk and may not be appropriate for many investors. If you have uncertainties, it's advisable to seek professional advice. Remember that trading involves a risk to your capital, so only invest money that you can afford to lose. Derivatives are not suitable for all investors and involve the risk of losing more than the amount originally deposited and any profit you might have made. This communication is not a recommendation or offer to buy, sell or retain any specific investment or service.

CELÝ ROZHOVOR V DÉLCE 55 MIN. JEN NA HTTPS://HEROHERO.CO/CESTMIR Vodní slalomář a kajakář Vavřinec Hradilek ukončil před pár dny profesionální kariéru, a tak mě zajímalo, jaké to je, udělat po bezmála třiceti letech takové životní rozhodnutí. Přiznává, že o něm přemýšlel dlouho a snadné to nebylo, protože pádlovat ho pořád baví a od devíti let měl to štěstí, že denně chodil na vodu s úsměvem. Pozitivní vztah k ní ale neměl odjakživa, splývat neumí dodnes a dlouho se bál i plavat. Přestože je dvojnásobným mistrem světa v individuální kajakářské disciplíně a majitelem stříbrné olympijské medaile z Letních olympijských her v Londýně, obešel nejednu peřej, kterou jeho kamarádi dali. Přiznává, že v tu chvíli je těžké nenechat se strhnout skupinou a být jediným, kdo z lodi vyleze, ale to, že stát se může na vlně cokoli, pochopil už jako dítě, když měl jeho starší bratr Václav během soustředění juniorské reprezentace vážnou nehodu na kanále, při které málem přišel o život. A fakt, že v partě, se kterou divoké řeky jezdí, se už spousta lidí včetně jeho blízké kamarádky utopilo, to potvrzuje. A nejsou zřejmě poslední. Aby se dokázal vrátit na místa, kde k tragédiím došlo, opakuje si, že odešli při tom, co je bavilo a naplňovalo nejvíc. Vzdát se svého snu a sjet jeden z největších asijských veletoků Indus, který patří k extrémním vodáckým výzvám, nechce. Je přesvědčen, že blbá náhoda ho může potkat i na přechodu. Co dalšího mu stojí za to nedržet se při zemi, čeho v životě lituje, jaká píseň mu hrála v hlavě na olympijských stupních vítězů, co měl Mezinárodní olympijský výbor ruským sportovcům nabídnout, nebo jak vzpomíná na StarDance, si poslechněte v našem rozhovoru.

In today's episode for 27th April 2024, we explain the role of tower companies in the telecom industry.

Dr. Ritu Tannan President IndUS of Fox Valley indusfoxvalley@yahoo.com https://www.indusfoxvalley.org/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/appleton-engaged/message

DESCRIPTION: How is the science and technology relationship between the United States and India evolving? What can we do to increase U.S.-Indian defense industry cooperation? The India-U.S. Defense Acceleration Ecosystem, aka "INDUS-X", was established in June 2023 to deepen this national security collaboration and build a "defense innovation bridge" between the two countries. INDUS-X has led to a series of partnerships between U.S. and Indian government agencies, companies, and universities to date. To learn more about U.S.-Indian cooperation and INDUS-X, please join us for a conversation with Dr. Sameer Lalwani, a senior expert on South Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace and non-resident senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Read the most recent U.S. DoD fact sheet on INDUS-X: https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3682879/fact-sheet-india-us-defense-acceleration-ecosystem-indus-x/ Read Dr. Lalwani's analysis of INDUS-X for the U.S. Institute of Peace: https://www.usip.org/publications/2024/02/whats-deal-indus-x ETI's second annual Emerging Technologies for Defense Conference will take place August 7-9, 2024 at the Washington DC Convention Center.  To receive updates about the conference please join our mailing list here: https://www.emergingtechnologiesinstitute.org/sign-up http://emergingtechnologiesinstitute.org https://www.facebook.com/EmergingTechETI https://www.linkedin.com/company/ndia-eti-emerging-technologies-institute https://www.twitter.com/EmergingTechETI

Signed in 1960, the Indus Waters Treaty gives India control over the Ravi, Sutlej and Beas rivers, while Pakistan manages the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab. Now, as populations burgeon and climate control wreaks havoc on water resources, India says the treaty must be renegotiated. The Indus Basin aquifer is the second-most stressed in the world but on it rely millions of Indians and Pakistanis. It's their water security at stake as the two countries tussle over the agreement. Please listen to the latest episode of All Indians Matter.

कहते है न कि पब्लिक पॉलिसी में अक्सर पब्लिक ही गायब रहती है। इसलिए हमारी कोशिश रहती है कि किसी तरह लोगों की लोकनीति में रुचि बढ़ाई जाए । पुलियाबाज़ी भी उसी दिशा में एक कदम है। अब इस श्रृंखला में एक और कड़ी जुड़ चुकी है—ख्याति, प्रणय और अनुपम की नयी किताब ‘We, the Citizens' जो लोकनीति के मुश्किल पाठ चित्रों के द्वारा आसान भाषा में सीखाने की कोशिश करती है। आज की पुलियाबाज़ी इसी किताब और उसके पीछे की कहानी पर।  This week on Puliyabaazi, Khyati and Pranay share the story behind their new book ‘We, the Citizens'. What was the idea behind the book? What was the process to bring it to life? Also, Khyati shares her journey as a comic illustrator, from drawing short comics for introverts to a fully illustrated 180-pager on public policy.[Book] We, the Citizens: Strengthening the Indian RepublicKhyati's Tech-stack for creating comics:Drawing Tablet: Huion Kamvas 13, Software: Sketchbook, Layout: Adobe Indesign*****   more Puliyabaazi related to comics and animation  ****** सिंधु घाटी सभ्यता की परिचित-अपरिचित बातें। The People of the Indus ft. Nikhil Gulatihttps://puliyabaazi.substack.com/p/the-people-of-the-indus-ft-nikhil-6ea* कॉमिक्स और एनिमेशन ख़ालिस देसी अंदाज़ में। Comics and Animation in India ft. Sumit Kumarhttps://puliyabaazi.substack.com/p/comics-and-animation-in-india-ft-b01Write to us at puliyabaazi@gmail.com Hosts(Twitter handle): @saurabhchandra @pranaykotas @thescribblebeePuliyabaazi is on these platforms:Twitter: @puliyabaazi Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/puliyabaazi/Subscribe & listen to the podcast on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Castbox, AudioBoom, YouTube, Spotify or any other podcast app. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit puliyabaazi.substack.com

Milk Indus. Regulatory Office v. Ruiz Ruiz

Waleed Ziad — author of "Hidden Caliphate: Sufi Saints beyond the Oxus and Indus" — joins us on the afikra podcast to demystify Sufism. Ziad explains the mystical and scientific aspects of Sufism and its far reaching geographies that surpass today's "securitized" borders and colonial conceptions of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East as "reified zones". We also learn about the concept of sovereignty in the Islamic world and how modern day understandings of Sufism and abandonment of meditative practices differ from the realities of the pre-20th century Muslim world.Waleed Ziad is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of Hidden Caliphate: Sufi Saints beyond the Oxus and Indus" which won the Albert Hourani Prize. His research concerns the historical and philosophical foundations of Muslim revivalism and revivalist responses to internal political fragmentation and colonialism in the "Persiante" world.Connect with Waleed

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Shashi Triphati. They speak about the purposeful "design driven life", Shashi's personal struggles as an immigrant to the US, the growth and recognition as CIO and as entrepreneur. Learn more about his fund nurture.ventures and their work at TIE SoCal.  Shashi is a serial entrepreneur, investor, board member and advisor to several companies. His focus areas have been in technology, and healthcare. He has deep experience in healthcare working across hospital, clinics, health plans and life-sciences. He has been awarded CIO 100 by CIO Magazine, Best Patient Engagement Strategy and Medical Design Excellence awards. He is a founder of  nuture.ventures an early stage venture fund which focuses on a broad range of areas including health technology, cyber security, applied artificial intelligence & customer experience.   You can find out more about Shashi at: Linked IN Shashi Tripathi https://www.linkedin.com/company/nurtureventures/   Other resources on this episode include: TiE SoCal https://tiesocal.org/ February 12 Join TiE SoCal's event Venture Investment: Strategy and Tactics  Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem   Show transcription 00:04 Welcome back to the Founders Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host. The Founders Sandbox is now in its second season. It's a monthly podcast that reaches entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about   00:31 building resilient, scalable, and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. My mission with the Founder Sandbox is to assist entrepreneurs and some entrepreneurs in building those scalable, well-governed, and resilient businesses. And guests that come to the podcast are either founders, business owners, corporate directors, VCs, professional service providers, who like me want to use the power of the enterprise.   01:01 be it small, medium or large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with each one of my guests on topics that while discovering their own journey, we're gonna touch upon resilience, on purpose driven enterprises and sustainable growth. My goal is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build that better world through great corporate governance.   01:30 Today I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, Shashi Tripathi. Thank you Shashi for joining me today. Thank you, Brenda. Good morning. We were just saying that we're not morning people, but we'll do anything to help founders. Yes. Yes, so Shashi's joining the podcast today as founder of Nurture Ventures and board member of the chapter of the TIE SoCal organization.   01:59 He could speak to many, many things, but today we're going to hone in on actually purpose-driven design of life. Sashi has an incredible background. He's a serial entrepreneur. He's an investor, board member, and advisor to several companies. His focus areas have been in technology, healthcare. He has deep experience in healthcare.   02:27 working across the entire spectrum just blew me away, starting with actually med tech, then to move to hospitals, health plans. And he has been awarded CIO 100 by CIO magazine, best patient engagement strategy, and medical design excellence awards. So it's truly an honor   02:56 and incredible breadth as well as depth within the healthcare industry. So again, thank you. Thank you, Brenda. I appreciate it. You know, our paths crossed recently, we joined the SoCal, the TiE SoCals board, and we're in for a fun two years. You possess again, a unique broad and   03:22 deep understanding of the healthcare system in the United States. You worked primarily at, or when you first came to the United States in supply chain management, really addressing the large waste issue in the medical sector. You then went on to the hospital side, the payer side, and finally you ventured out and became an entrepreneur and founder where you built and sold   03:51 Follow My Health, which was a mobile enterprise patient engagement platform that connects millions of patients to their doctor in a whole new way. I think you said at one time you're touching over 20 million lives. Wow. Well, it's challenging to do you justice in this 40 minute podcast. Let me begin by thanking you again. And then again, I was blown away by your breadth and depth. And I am an avid reader. I Love   04:19 Ralph Waldo Emerson. And I thought of this quote that to describe your background, and you're going to share here with my guests today.  "To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch,   04:49 or a redeemed social condition, (I get all teared up) to know even when life has breathed easier because you live, this is to have succeeded. " So thank you again for joining me. How would you like, would you like to share your arrival to the US in 1999? As an immigrant, how did that inform your entrepreneurship journey? So first of all, Brenda, thank you. What an honor to be here with you, Brenda. You yourself.   05:19 are amazingly talented. And I was getting goosebumps by the way, when you were sharing that poem from Ralph, making the world or society a bit better. What a world that is, a bit better. So, coming back to your question, I grew up in India. I did my masters from IIT Bombay.   05:48 Immediately after that, I got a job through a company called I2 Technologies and I got to headquarters in Dallas. And I always had dreamed to come to US by the way. Here I am, my dream is getting fulfilled. I get a flight, land in Dallas Fort Worth airport and my manager then was supposed to pick me up and he forgot.   06:16 And I'm a 23 year old boy, afraid, nervous, excited internally, but now I'm nervous. What do I do? I had no choice, but just to wait at the airport. And after two and a half hours, he came and he took me to the apartment. Dallas, as we all know, is a big city and it's hard to walk.   06:46 I didn't have car, didn't have credit card. Many nights, Brenda, I had only bread and milk as my dinner. And so my company gave a month for this apartment and then after I have to find an apartment, no one will give me apartment. Because I have no credit history. So I went to a bank.   07:15 I gave the bank $500 as a restricted deposit, meaning I cannot spend more than $500 to build my history. Right. Slowly, I built my history. I didn't have cell phone. And I did not even know the proper English in the US. So I took a course on accent reduction.   07:42 I remember sitting in front of CNN and Fox. And in those days, we didn't have all this gadgets we have today. So I had a thick accent and I will pause and see the word. Wow. So to learn in a hard way about adjusting in US culture and US society. But in some ways, I'm glad it happened to me. Because that made me resilient.   08:12 and a strong person. And where I am today, I'm not afraid. And because I've seen the low, what is the lowest I can go, I didn't have a home. I didn't have food. And so it always has instilled in me to fight for it. And things are only going to look upwards. And I think you use the word perseverance and resilience, just one.   08:42 step at a time and in a very intentional way, Shashi. I mean, just going in, you know, when I came back, there was, I didn't have credit history. I was living in Europe. So it is the way, it's a difficult market to crack. And so that was 25 years ago. So what made you, what you have a huge passion for healthcare as I've shared with my listeners, starting with life science/med tech and    09:10 going into the hospitals and actually into the payers. It's quite extraordinary. What underlies this passion for healthcare? Thank you, Brenda. I mean, if I look back my childhood, my mom, my dad, and even at the childhood, Brenda, I always had passion to create things. Okay. And I would get immense pleasure if what I have created is used by someone.   09:40 And that someone can be a small group, it doesn't need to be big. So that at the childhood level. So when I came here to do my supply chain projects, I got into a company called Medtronic, it's a large medical device company. And then I got a really big exposure to healthcare, learned a lot, found that in US, we spend $2.3 trillion total per year. Out of that,   10:10 approximately $800 billion is waste. B. B, not M, is B. And this is per year, this is not one time. And in a very small way, I felt the products or solutions we are creating or designing, if we can make even a small difference in reducing that waste while making an impact to the human life.   10:40 why not? And that really solidified my career, my passion to remain in healthcare. And if I wanted to be in healthcare, I wanted to know the details of it and all the angles of healthcare. Right. So while working for Medtronic, I got a lot of exposure to hospitals and clinics.   11:04 So I felt if we are selling our product and services to hospital and clinic, I wanna work inside the hospital and clinic. And how did that go? So it went really well. So I joined a group called Facey Medical, which is part of Providence Health and Services and learned a lot by the way, how a patient operates, what's really important to the patient, what is really important to hospital. And   11:33 That gave me a lot of exposure and also the appreciation for patient care, by the way. Okay. Because at the end of day, anything we do in healthcare is really important to how it's impacting to the patient's care. Absolutely. Healthcare is the only industry Brenda, where if you improve the quality, you reduce the cost, that's the only industry. If you go in that again, say that again. That's very important.   12:01 If you go in hotel, for example, if you buy a five star, you pay more. Am I right? That's right. But in healthcare, you improve the quality. The cost goes down. That's the only industry by the way. It's very fascinating. So learn a lot about the wider side, which is the hospital clinic. And then I said, for all this, that someone is paying and yes, patients pay the portion in The US.   12:28 but the health plans are the one which are paying majority of our US healthcare cost. So I said, I need to go to the work for the health plan. And crack the code for CPT codes and all that. Exactly, ICD and CPT and claims. So I went to work for a company called New Century Health and there I learned a lot about risk contracts and how we manage the provider, what is really important to the claims.   12:58 how we do the utilization management. So I learned a lot about how the payment system in US healthcare works. So, and then of course the company Follow My Health, I got a lot of exposure about patient side. Right. Because at the end, whatever we are doing, either from life sciences or hospital clinic or health plan.   13:28 It's really impacting the patient in the end. So I feel privileged and somewhat lucky, to work in all the facets of health care systems. Affecting patients' lives one by one. Perhaps the most far removed is that of payers. And that was your last venture. And by creating Follow My Health, you create a new life.   13:55 removed a bit of that friction, I imagine, for patients and their providers. Right. Yep. Excellent. So when did you have time to do Follow My Health? If you're busy working in these large companies, cracking the code, what changed in your life, if anything, to abandon the helm?   14:21 of, you know, working in enterprises to create companies to then become a founder of a venture fund. So walk us through those purposeful decisions that help you design your life. Yeah. So as we look, as I shared with you that I love creating product. Okay. And I love   14:47 the product which we are creating is making a difference in human lives. So when I was the CIO at Springfield Clinic, working with Jim Hewitt, we created this platform back in 2011. And the idea was to make it simple to every stakeholder, to the physicians who are using it, to the patients who are going to be using it.   15:17   and if you make it simple and useful to the stakeholder, money will come. Um, and I remember a story, uh, when I was CIO at a Springfield clinic, uh, I used to walk around and, um, I would sometimes talk to the patient and I talked to a patient who was elderly, probably early seventies or maybe even late eighties, uh, uh, late seventies. Um,   15:46 And I asked him, what do you like about us? And he said, oh, I love this new product you guys have launched, Patient Portal. I said, what do you like about it? And he said, when I didn't have this, I go home and my wife will ask me what happened to you at the doctor's office. And I didn't remember all that and she would get mad. Now I've given my user ID and password to her and she knows everything about what happened. So I don't have to memorize it. So that probably gave you goosebumps as well.   16:15 Right. So these are the stories which give me extra energy to move forward. Same concept in merlin.net and the patient who has pacemaker or ICD is implanted. Okay. In those days they had to go see their cardiologist every quarter. Okay. So we felt was why don't we create external device.   16:44 which can communicate to the implanted device, takes the data, and then over the internet has that data and we build the whole web application for cardiologists and electrophysiologists to monitor the patient. So now patient can be anywhere in the world and they can be monitored. My sister-in-law, by the way, has that product and she often appreciate how beneficial   17:13 Merlin.net is because she can go travel anywhere in the world, not worry about her appointment with cardiologists and she is being followed. So these are the moments which makes me propel, gives me extra energy to keep pursuing and creating the products and services which makes a difference in human lives. And what was the, I guess,   17:41 point in which you decided to abandon those 16 and 17 hour days and, and you'd exited a few companies. You know, what led you to create nurture ventures and can you walk us through the thesis and does it go back to your passion? Right? Yep. So it always goes back to my passion, which is creating product and helping society and balancing life.   18:10 in the process. So I got married. I have two kids, my daughter is 13. My son,, he just turned seven actually on the weekend. We had a party. And we all know, by the way, entrepreneurship life is very hard. Yes. People see the success, they don't see what has happened behind the scene. Yes.   18:39 And for any entrepreneur, I mean, yes, there are some exceptions, but I would say majority of the entrepreneur, they work very hard. Um, I would say 16, 17 hours, um, per day is this hard. And so I have kids now and I have to balance my life. Um, but yet I still wanted to achieve my dreams and be associated with the entrepreneurs.   19:06 why don't I start investing? And I started very small by the way Brenda. My goal was not to go big really. But again, it goes back to simplicity and not with the goal of making money. So I designed my investment very, very LP friendly. LP is a partner who are investing with me into the companies. And because of that simplicity,   19:35 And also just happened to be, I would call it luck. Okay. I got lucky and we got an exit, um, carbon card, which gave us, uh, seven times return in 11 months, but it did happen to us and, uh, some of my LP got money back in their bank, um, so it put our name on pitch book and crunch base and   20:04 So we started growing. So we have now 45 limited partners. We have invested in total 31 companies now. We have a fund, we have an SPV. So it has been grown more than I expected. And I'm really happy because now again, I go back, I follow my passion about creating products and services.   20:34 which are helping society grow. And I'm doing not directly but indirectly because when we are supporting the founders and they are growing and their product and services are being used in society to make a difference, I feel privileged. Many of our portfolio companies, by the way, started small, $40,000 ARR per year. Now, they are six million ARR just in two years.   21:03 Wow. Happiness that we were a small part in making a difference in growing that company and in return, they are making a difference into the society. So that's how I got into this world. I love it, actually. And is the thesis only around healthcare technology companies or is it broader than healthcare? Your passion. So we started healthcare. But in order to make a difference.   21:31 You have to also see what is other things which are impacting and growing. And part of our early thesis was artificial intelligence, software as a service, and financial technologies in addition to healthcare are growing very rapidly and much needed into society and making a difference in human lives. So those are part of our thesis to invest in those four areas.   22:01 artificial intelligence, software as a service, healthcare, and fintech. Excellent. Now, you are also a member of the Angel Capital Association, ACA, and we recruited you from TIE SoCal to join our chapter in SoCal. You also have become a board member for the 2024-2025.   22:29 period, we both have joined the board after the effusive leadership of Gaurav Kumar.   22:38 What would you, I'm going to describe a little bit, TIE, as a nonprofit organization for my listeners. And then I'll get to the question of what your contributions are going to be and how it goes back to your passion. So the Indus Entrepreneurs, TIE T-I-E, was founded in 1992 in Silicon Valley by a group of successful entrepreneurs with roots in the Indus region with a mission to foster entrepreneurship.   23:07 globally through funding, mentoring, networking, and education. Today, the TIE ecosystem comprises over 25,000 startups and 15,000 members across 58 chapters in 12 countries. Within TIE, there is an angels organization for profit. It started in 2010, also in Silicon Valley, and has moved into another eight to 10 chapters.   23:36 representing groups of angel investors. And they're in actually 12 cities with over 3,000 accredited investors. Last year in PitchBook, actually TIE SoCal was among the top 10 in the number of companies that we had invested in. So what's it gonna be like with your presence on the board? And what have you been tasked to do, Shashi?   24:05 My God, what an incredible honor to join this group as you described how powerful the TIE is, but more than power, the impact it continues to make in society across those 50 chapters. As you pointed out, Gaurav Kumar, such a strong leader, and I'm beyond privileged to work with you and others   24:35 to take TIE SoCal to the new heights. Part of TIE SoCal, I have been tasked to lead what we call it TIE Angel Program. Okay. And it basically has three areas within the Angel side. Bring the companies to our members. Okay.   25:06 So they can choose to invest into those companies. The second vertical is we do events very focused on investment, venture capital, or angel investing. And third is having a fund which relates to the first one and take the fund and go invest into the companies.   25:35 catering the entrepreneurship journey and entrepreneurship society. Part of this, by the way, Brenda, we are hosting an event on February 12th, which is Monday, Hyatt at Long Beach, from 3.30 to 8.30. And it's a wonderful group of speakers which are coming and talking about venture capital   26:05 strategies and tactics. And then we have our flagship event, which is scheduled on Friday, April 26th, again in Hyatt Regency. It's a full day event, and will be roughly attended by 400 venture capital, angel investor, startup. If you are any one of those, this is not to miss the event.   26:34 And you do not have to be a member of the TIE SoCal organization. So anyone can attend either of those events, by the way. February 12, which is Monday, 3.30 to 8.30, and April 26, all day, big event, our flagship event, hosted by TIE, but anyone who belongs to those communities. So either investors, a startup,    27:03 or you're supporting any one of those. So you can be service providers. Do not miss any of these two events. I'm very excited to be part of TiE SOCAL and continue to work with intelligent minds like you and others to make a difference in our society. It's going to be an exciting next two years. And I...   27:31 want to share with my listeners, there's a lot of nuggets in the podcast today with Shashi. And so there'll be more information in the show notes with respect to Nurture Ventures, Shashi himself, TIE SoCal, and the upcoming events on February 12th and April 26th. So thank you for leading the charge there. Thank you, Brenda.   27:56 You know, 1999, we're in 2024. It's going to be your 25th anniversary, Shashi, in the United States. I was doing the math yesterday. I went, wow, that's a major, what are you going to do? You've done everything. All right. Oh my God. I'm getting goosebumps right now. My gosh. I'm now thinking about my day when I arrived in Dallas Fort Worth airport. Right.   28:25 I'm nervous. I didn't know where my life will be, but Brenda, I'm so, I'm really in debt of this country. This country is so powerful. If you're willing to work, that's the key word. If you're willing to work, this country is powerful. And there's so many good people. I often hear that, oh, people don't support and help. That's not the experience I have had here.   28:54 Nor has it been mine. I met some incredible people who have helped me to grow my career, who have helped me when people were saying, don't do that. You are crazy. Don't start a company. But there were at the same time, there were many who were there to support me. My family, of course, they endured me so much. All my craziness and.   29:21 all my travel across US and beyond. My parents, I remember my dad, by the way, who I lost here. Sorry. Thank you. He did not want me to come here. Oh my. His goal was that in India, there's a government job, I should go and work into that area. And I end up not. But when I came here, he was the biggest supporter.   29:51 my mom, my wife here, my two kids, and all those who have supported me throughout my career in the last 25 years. I am in debt to so many people I cannot name all of them here on this podcast. Well, thank you. Those are really beautiful words. And you continue to be that young child that wanted to create.   30:20 products that affect people's lives. That's quite laudable. You know, I like to do a round of questions with each one of my guests. I go back to the cornerstones of the consulting work I do at Next Act Advisors. I work with scaling companies on resilience, on sustainable growth.   30:47 purpose-driven. And I ask my guests, you know, what are the meanings of those three words? And that one guest has a similar definition. There's no right or wrong. It's just fascinating. And with your broad and deep expertise in the ecosystem of healthcare and also early stage companies and large, what would you consider? What would you define? What would be your definition of resilience Shashi?   31:15 So in my view, don't give up if you have a passion for something. You will encounter the reality of the life is you will encounter challenges. You will encounter problems. Do not give up on it. There is going to be people.   31:39 who will tell you, you are crazy, don't do that, this is wrong, but at the same time, there will be people who will support you and will root for you. And even if you don't, by the way, believe in you. Believe in you if you wanna do something and go change the world. That's what resiliency to me means. I often do this Brenda and I don't share much when I start to do something new.   32:08 I always plan a worst case plan in my brain. Okay. I always think, I'm going to create a company, for example, how low I can go. I lose my phone, lose my car. That's fine. I'll manage it. We've all been there. Yeah, exactly. So if you in your mind, if you have planned the worst case scenario, I'm not suggesting go do it, but just plan it to give a feeling in your head that that's the lowest possibility that always helps you.   32:38 So coming into challenges and problems, other thing I often say is when you hit the wall, go deep. And we all hit the wall in our personal life, in professional life. Don't give up, go deep. Find it out what elements, what detail elements which are letting you hit the wall.   33:07 And once you figure those details, you, our brains are so powerful. We just have to access those elements of our brain to go deep, find the solution. And I can say it with very high confidence. If you believe in you and try to find a problem, you will find the solution to the problem. And that's what it means. Powerful. Hit the wall. Go deep. You heard it here on The Founders.   33:37 Sandbox. What about purpose-driven enterprise? You have a purpose-driven design to your life. What about purpose-driven enterprises? Yeah, so I often say this also. When you are designing a product, solution, or enterprise, don't make money as your primary objective. And I'm not saying don't be financially conscious, by the way. Your primary goal should not be making money.   34:08 If your primary goal is to make a difference in human lives, if your primary goal is to make a product and services, which people will buy and will help improve their life or their experience or their feelings, believe me, money will come. That's true. So when you're designing product or running a company, think from those aspects. Who is your customer?   34:38 and what is making them to delight your customer. And if you take customer or consumer or your end user, trying to design your product and solution and business processes also, by the way, money will follow to you. And that's purpose to me because if you have that in mind, you will sustain on a long-term basis.    35:06 Which leads us to the definition for you of sustainable growth, right? Yeah, so to me, sustainable growth is how you are growing without adding the debt and liability in your company. So most people can go get a debt, get liability and not think too much about the long-term growth, not think too much about   35:34 improving the value into society, that will not be sustainable growth. Sustainable growth in my view is   35:44 the value you have created for society, the value you have created for your customers, for your end users, how they are driving you to grow. And if they are, money will come and there will be VCs and there will be investors who will give you money, but not just go acquire the money and start to grow, not other way around. Grow first. Take all those...   36:14 stakeholder into the mix first. Yes. And then go look for venture or money to grow the company. That's how sustainable you can be, in my view, Sinder. So self-funding until you do have product market fit and continue to innovate. And the money will come if you're addressing the needs. Correct. Yep. Excellent. Keep customer and end user in the mind. Society also sometimes.   36:43 enterprises think, oh, I'm spending this for the benefit of society and it's going into taking away from my Point of view. Not the case. I mean, if you add value to society, at the end of day, who is the user of your product and services society? Society. We all, we human beings, we are using your product and services. And if we see that   37:12 you care about me, believe me, I will spend money because I know that in return, you're going to care for me on a long-term basis. And if you can get into the hearts and parts of the people through your product and services, it's very hard to go back. You will grow. I will come to you asking, Hey, what is your next product? Because I believe in you.   37:41 Did you have fun in the sandbox today? I loved it. Brenda, thank you so much for having me here. It's just exciting and amazing. And what an incredible work you are doing, Brenda. Thank you. By inviting people to your show where we all can learn from each other. Yes. Seen some of your podcasts in the past, and I can learn. And hopefully, through this, someone can learn. And even if we can make a difference in   38:11 one human life. I think we have done our job. So thank you Brenda and the work you are doing is amazing. Any help I can do, I'll be happy to do so. I'll see you in the sandbox at the TIe Socals board soon. Busy year. Well, thank you. It's been an incredibly fun and insightful podcast. To my listeners. If you like this episode.   38:40 with Shashi Tripathi. Sign up for the monthly release where founders and business owners join me here in the sandbox to learn about how and share how to build strong governance in a resilient, scalable, and purpose-driven company to make profits for good. You can listen to this episode and more on any of the mainstream podcasts, platforms, and   39:10 I look forward to next month. Again, this is the monthly podcast. I'm signing off until next time. Thank you, Shashi.  

First, the Enforcement Directorate, has been attempting to summon Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren. But, both Chief Ministers have consistently refused to appear before the ED. To understand if individuals can simply refuse to appear before the ED, Indian Express' Deeptiman Tiwary joins us in this segment.Second, for nearly a century, debates have raged about the Indus valley Civilization's script's linguistic basis, the number of symbols it contains, and whether it is based on a language at all. To help us understand the challenges behind deciphering this script, Indian Express' Adrija Roychowdhury joins us in this segment.Lastly, a team at Mumbai's Tata Memorial Hospital has been developing an AI algorithm that specializes in detecting early-stage cancer. In this segment, The Indian Express' Rupsa Chakraborty joins us to talk about this new AI tool, and why we need it.Hosted by Rahel PhiliposeWritten and Produced by Shashank Bhargava, Niharika Nanda and Rahel PhiliposeEdited and Mixed by Suresh Pawar

Shah Zaman, the grandson of Ahmad Shah Abdali, who had been the scourge of the Punjab for decades crosses the Indus again. As the Sikhs prepare to abandon their cities in the face of the Afghan juggernaut, Sardarni Sada Kaur persuades them to dig their heels in and resist. The young Ranjit Singh, the grandson of the legendary Sikh warrior Sardar Charat Singh Shukerchakia, challenges the Afghan King to single combat. An ambitious new British Governor General arrives in Calcutta and lays out an aggressive, expansionist vision, which promises to have a profound impact on the powers jockeying for position in the remains of the crumbling Mughal Empire.

Happy New Year! This episode we take a look back at where we've come and talk about some of the broad themes and changes that we've experienced over the episodes in the past year. For a little more, including references for the year, check out:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-newyear2024 Rough Transcript Shinnen Akemashite!  Happy New Year and Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is the New Year's Recap episode for 2024 Every year I try to take a moment and look back at the material we covered.  In part, this is to remind us of the journey we've been on, but it is also to help look at some of the larger themes that we might otherwise miss when we are looking at more discreet topics.  This year we have not necessarily progressed through as much of the archipelago's history as in previous years—we started in the early 530s and have probably covered about 80 or 90 years, in contrast to 2022 and before where we covered multiple centuries in a year.  But there's a good reason for that: it has been an eventful period, or at least more of the events are getting written down.  However, there is a lot of important stuff going on.  We are seeing, more than anywhere else, the rise of powerful families, not just individuals, a process that began as a way to expand the power of the state, but which then took on a life of its own under what is known as the uji-kabane system—the system of families and family rank.  This is happening alongside of a reimagining of the state and of the royal family in particular.  Many of the 8th century cultural norms are starting to be set in this period.  In many ways, the people of Yamato are revising their cultural imaginary of themselves, often in reference to new ideas, concepts, and philosophies being imported from the continent.  This includes the arrival of Buddhism and its shake up of the way that the people of the archipelago viewed the world and their place in it. And so we're going to start with a recap of the various sovereigns, then go into some of the more particular aspects of what was going on, and try to cover some of those more overarching themes.  Hopefully this gives us a good base to move on into 2024. Now over the past year we've gone through seven sovereigns.  First was the short reign of Magari no Ohine, aka Ankan Tennou, around 531 to 536, back in episode 79, when we talked about the glass bowl attributed to his tomb.  He was followed by his brother Takewo Hirokunioshi Tate, or Senka Tennou, who reigned until his death in 539.  That was Episode 80, where we also kind of kicked off the Asuka period, which many see as starting around 538.  Next, in Episodes 81 through 86, was their half-brother, Amekunioshi Hiraki Hironiwa, or Kinmei Tennou, who ruled until about 571.  Amekunioshi was followed by his son, Nunakura Futodamashiki, known as Bidatsu Tennou, who ruled until 585—Episodes 88 and 89.  Bidatsu was followed, in episode 90, by our fifth sovereign in this year's line up, Tachibana no Toyohi, or Youmei Tennou, father of Prince Umayado, aka the famous Shotoku Taishi, who we talked quite a bit about for his legendary and historical importance.  Youmei Tennou passed away in 587, and after some conflict, Hasebe no Wakasasaki came to the throne, remembered as Sushun Tennou.  He was assasinated in 592, as we covered in Episode 92, and succeeded by Toyomike Kashikiya Hime, daughter of Amekunioshi, wife to Nunakura Futodamashiki, and known to most as Suiko Tennou.  That's where we are at present. We also have seen a succession of high officials.  We started off with Ohotomo no Kanamura and Mononobe no Arakahi as the two Ohomuraji, but we quickly saw the addition of Soga no Iname as Oho-omi.  This foreshadowed the fading of the Ohotomo family appear to have lost their status with their failures in peninsular dealings,   while the Mononobe and Soga continued to help lead the country.  Mononobe no Arakahi was succeeded in the position of Ohomuraji by Mononobe no Okoshi, and then Mononobe no Yugehi no Moriya.  Soga no Iname was succeeded to the position of Oho-omi by his son, Soga no Umako. Taken together with Prince Umayado, aka Shotoku Taishi, these are perhaps some of the main names in the Chronicles.  Let's recap what was most important about each of them. We started this year talking about the reign of Magari no Ohine, aka Ankan Tennou.  The official account says that he was the son of Wohodo, aka Keitai Tenno, and one of two of Wohodo's sons that were basically just keeping the seat warm for their half-brother, Amekunioshi, aka Kinmei Tennou.  In other words, they were kind of regents.  This story quickly falls apart, however, when you look at several factors.  First, based on some of the dates given for his birth, Amekunioshi would have been around 22 years old when their father, Wohodo, passed away—young, but old enough to take the throne without requiring any kind of regent.  In addition, neither of his two brothers gave up the throne to him when he finally came of age—whatever age that might have been.  Instead, each one died in the position.  That doesn't exactly scream that they were giving up power. Why this discrepancy?  The best explanation is that the Chroniclers were trying to keep things nice and tidy, and we are told that the tradition was for sovereigns to only come from lineages where both the male and female lines were considered royal—one sovereign and one royal princess, typically, who would be raised up as the Queen, and whose offspring would be eligible for the throne.  However, that was slightly disrupted by Amekunioshi, aka Kinmei Tennou, who seems to have taken the throne despite the fact that his two half-brothers and their offspring may have had the stronger claim.  Still, he was able to point to his mother's royal status.  In fact, she was even of the previous dynasty, sister to the last sovereign from that line, Wohatsuse Wakasazaki, aka Buretsu Tennou.  Or so we are told by the Chroniclers. .  And so only Amekunioshi's mother is considered to be the truly legitimate queen, while Magari no Ohine and the other so-called “regent” brother - Takewo Hiro Kunioshi Tate, aka Senka Tennou - must have been from a consort other than the Wohodo's main wife.  Their mother, Menoko, was instead linked to a prominent family, that of the Owari no Muraji, but it is unclear if they had the royal connections on her side—though I have little doubt that they could have been invented if they didn't already exist. I would point out that even given this explanation, both of the brothers were given the posthumous honors of “Tenno”, rather than being referred to as a regent, whereas the sovereign Okinaga no Tarashi Hime, aka Jingu Kougou, also ostensibly a regent, was never granted that honor, at least by the Chroniclers.  We discussed this a bit in Episodes 41 and 42, and how that may have been due to the Chroniclers' misogynistic tendencies as much as anything.  There is a suggestion that in reality, these two brothers may have been rival claimants, and there may have even been competing courts, as different family members rallied support to their side.And all of that perfectly helps illustrate just how we think things might have looked around this time.  Succession to the royal throne hardly appears to have been cut and dry.  Even before this period, we saw times where there were multiple claimants , regents, etc.  There is no clear pattern by which we can deduce who would succeed any given sovereign: it might be a brother, or any of their sons, or even a daughter.  And without a clear system of succession, every time the sovereign passed away, there was a competition for the throne.    You might recall that the mutual father of these three sovereigns, Wohodo, was himself said to have been the first in a new dynasty-- the previous dynasty died out with Wohodo's predecessor, Wohatsuse no Wakasazaki, aka Buretsu Tennou.  There are a lot of questions around this transition, but even the Chroniclers couldn't immediately connect Wohodo to the previous lineage without having to go all the way back to Homuda Wake, aka Oujin Tennou, on his father's side, and to Ikume Iribiko, aka Suinin Tennou, on his mother's side, but there are still plenty of questions about those ties and how real they were.        When it comes to the complications of succession, one thing to factor in is that this was still in the time when every sovereign moved into a new palace.  There are various thoughts on why this was —one of them being that the move prevented spiritual pollution associated with a dead body.  I also wonder if it wasn't practical as the new sovereign may have already had their own base of power, or perhaps by building new it was a way to ensure that the buildings were always fresh and free of any problems, as I believe these early buildings were largely built of fresh, untreated wood.  Whatever the reason, moving to a new palace each time also means that there wasn't an actual, physical throne to fight over.  Rival sovereigns could set themselves up in different areas in and around the Nara basin, Kawachi, et cetera, and gather supporters to their court.  Those supporters, no doubt individuals with some power and clout in their region who saw benefit in allying themselves with an even bigger name, would eventually become the heads of various corporate families, further extending their power and influence.  There is plenty of reason to believe that the family systems we see on the archipelago were not necessarily indigenous creations.  Early on people were associated with a place, perhaps, and of course you would know your line of descent, possibly even going back into myth and legend.  The concept of “family” as simply a matter of descent and relationship no doubt existed—after all, everyone has a mother and a father.  However, the idea of families with wide ranging control over a particular industry, administrative function, or even court ritual were likely imported from the continent as a way to group people together.  In fact, these are often referred to more as “clans”—groups of individuals who claimed shared descent, whether real or imagined, often from some legendary figure.  The new concept of these families not only grouped people based on things like their occupation or common ethnicity, if they came from the peninsula, but it also added a layer of administration that was then tied into the concept of the Yamato court, making it an extension of the government.  In turn, the government classified these families through a system of rank and titles—the kabane.   This system had people being known as much or even more by their family name as they were by the common name they went by as individuals.  Originally we see individuals working in similar professions organized into groups that used the term “-Be” in the name, but later we get the “uji”, or familial clans, that were more like administrators and extensions of the court.  Of note, there would continue to be many people who were not formally part of a particular -Be or Uji or even Ie, or “house”.  These were mostly individuals of the common agricultural class or similar, and long lineages might have no actual family name until the Meiji period, when everyone was expected to take on a family name as part of the efforts to modernize the country.  Until then, having a family name meant that you actually were already a part of the upper crust of society, even if you were only on the bottommost rung of that particular social ladder. In addition, a family name allowed someone to take on the family kabane, or title.  While there were some titles that appear to be given to the individual, these kabane titles, such as Suguri, Kishi, Atahe, Kimi, Muraji, and Omi, designated entire families.  These terms themselves appear to come from earlier job positions, indicating different types of leadership, from a local headmaster up to rulers of countries, and high ministers of the court.  For example, the title of “Omi” was originally a job description, indicating one of the many functionaries that made the court run, but as a kabane, any member of a given family would be able to use the term, whether they were actually in a ministerial position or not.   At this point, these important families were essentially an extension of the state—a way to decentralize control so that the Yamato state could function at an expanded level.  Some families appear to have been set up around local administration, including making local chieftains and the like part of their own family unit that was then granted control of the area by the court.  During the period we've covered this past year, we see that approach of absorbing regional families mature and grow, and those families taking on greater roles: initially with stories of the Ohotomo and Mononobe families, culminating in the powerful Soga family.  For the Ohotomo and the Mononobe, the family name likely tells us part of what and who they were.  The Ohotomo were the Great Tomo, or the Great Tomo no Miyatsuko.  These Tomo no Miyatsuko are some of the earliest court nobles, and it would make sense that the Ohotomo were at their head—which would also explain their position as the Oho-omi in the 5th and early 6th centuries.  Next to this family were the Mononobe, the Be (occupational group) of the Warriors, or Mononofu.  Together these families represented the early concepts of administration and military might.  However, as the families continued to evolve, they became independent from the roles they were originally created to hold.  The Ohotomo would eventually fall from power, and in their place would rise up the Mononobe.  However, the Mononobe would also find themselves on the outs, especially in the tumultuous period following Amekunioshi's death.  It was at this time that a new family would rise up to take their place:  the Soga, which we've heard a lot about this year.  The head of the Soga, Soga no Iname, had positioned his family in part through carefully marrying his daughters into the royal line.  While this had been done in the past, it wasn't to the extent or success that the Soga were able to achieve: In only a single generation, Iname saw Soga descended sovereigns on the throne.  This took place, of course, with not a small amount of maneuvering and the eradication of rival lineages.  It was their own Game of Thrones playing out, with the families created to serve the state and the royal family grabbing for themselves more power.  This would seem to be an unexpected consequence of a concept that had initially helped expand the royal authority, and we'll only continue to see more of it in the coming decades and centuries. At the same time that all of this was playing out on the archipelago, things on the continent were also changing.  First and foremost, in that it was closest to home for Yamato, was the rising power of Silla on the Korean peninsula. Up to this point, most of the Korean peninsula appears to have been a collection of small, regional polities, with occasional alliances between them.  There were two or three kingdoms of note.  In the north was Goryeo, a shortened version of the original name, Goguryeo, which is how we generally refer to it today to distinguish it from the 10th century state of the same name.  It was the oldest of the various kingdoms, and claimed descent from the northern Buyeo kingdom, centered in modern Manchuria. In the southwest of the peninsula was the kingdom of Baekje.  They, too, claimed descent from the nobility of Buyeo, and they were made up of many of the various polities collectively referred to as Mahan.  While Goguryeo was ruling up in the north, Baekje was one of the first kingdoms to set up shop in the southern end of the peninsula. Then there was Silla.  Originally a confederation of six polities in the area known as the Jinhan, they eventually became a kingdom and started pushing against the other polities in the region.  This includes the fledgling kingdom of Kara, mostly known as a confederation of smaller polities from the old Byeonhan region.  There are royal style tombs in the area, but before they could really get going Kara and the other polities fell under the control of the kingdom of Silla.  This included groups like Ara and the controversial polity of Nimna.  This set Baekje and Silla in direct confrontation, as Silla's land grab eliminated much of the buffer territory between the two of them. Nimna appears to have been of particular concern to Yamato, and appears to have been one of Yamato's allies, along with Baekje.  While Baekje appears to have been the stronger of the two, Nimna may have had a special place for Yamato, especially as it may have been an important port for Yamato ships traveling to trade with the rest of the continent.  Nimna being under Silla rule would have made this trade much more risky, as the Silla-Yamato relationship was often a rocky one.  Yamato attempted to move Nimna out from under Silla control, both through an alliance with Baekje, in concert with some of the other polities, as well as through attempts to take the country by force—most of which excursions were called off for one reason or another. At the same time, Baekje had been in decline, generally speaking.  They moved their capital farther south after being defeated by Goguryeo.  They were rebuilding, and still a powerful force, but not quite at the height of their power. Farther on the mainland, between the Yellow and Yangzi rivers, the period of the Northern and Southern Courts was coming to a close, and the Sui dynasty would eventually rule much of the Middle Kingdom, what is today modern China.  They would bring a stability to the region and embark on public works projects that would forever change the face of East Asia. As all of this was happening, influences were coming from the west.  We mentioned the Sassanian glass bowl and similar wares that made their way from the Middle East all the way to Japan—though whether as part of a sovereign's burial or not might still be up for debate.  Nonetheless, we know that the overland trade routes were booming, even if the occasional instability might disrupt them now and again.  The whole of Asia was more connected than we often give it credit for. Along this road came not only material goods, but new ideas.  Greek culture had reached at least as far as Gandhara, modern Pakistan and Afghanistan, and from east of the Indus came a new religion:  Buddhism.  It spread along the silk road, eventually finding a home in China, where it flourished, and continued to spread to the Korean peninsula and then, in the 6th century, to the archipelago of Japan. Buddhism came hand in hand with other mainland texts, exploring a variety of science and philosophy.  We discussed how the mainstream story of the introduction of Buddhism is likely not entirely correct.  That story sets up a conflict between the foreign religion of Buddhism and the worship of local kami—the practices that would become Shinto.  So, resistance to Buddhism is initially depicted as a resistance to foreign influence and the need to continue to support indigenous belief.  The reality, however, is much more complex. First is the role of kami worship in the expansion and exercise of State power.  The archaeological record demonstrates some expansion of Yamato ritual in the spread of various kofun styles —especially the royal keyhole shaped kofun, which were clearly adopted by others, demonstrating Yamato's influence.  More subtly, we see the spread of Yamato ritualists to various parts of the archipelago, and eventually the spread of various beliefs—though it may be somewhat difficult to say just when belief in any particular kami started at this period.  Remember, though, the way that powerful physical icons of the kami, such as mirrors and swords, had been taken by the Yamato sovereign and held by the court.  We touched on this back in Episode 20, where we discussed on Yamato took on “guardianship” for various relics, almost like they were taking sacred hostages.  Worship of the kami was intertwined with statecraft, and spiritual power and political power were both a part of the mix along with actual military power.  If you could perform a ritual that people felt was effectual, that was seen as on par with actual governance.  We also see this in the way that various families identified with different kami, such as the Mononobe and their link to the deity of Isonokami shrine, and the Royal family with the deity of Mt. Miwa.  Worship, however, was already starting to take on a continental tinge, as we see in stories about various deities, and the practice of worship.  This was no doubt influenced by immigrants from the Korean peninsula, who brought their own stories and beliefs.  Furthermore, whenever nothing else seemed to be working, bringing in new and exotic ritual practices from across the sea was likely seen as New and Shiny.  It was, after all, the latest in spiritual technology, and that foreign-ness and lack of local understanding would have led not only to its also having a somewhat mysterious quality, but also in the power that comes with being the only ones to quote-unquote “understand” the power of it and how to translate it.  If you were a 5th or 6th century ritualist family, if you could get hold of things that seemed to be ancient practices from the continent that nobody else really knew or understood, you were automatically the local subject matter expert. Furthermore, there wasn't necessarily a single, unified concept of how the kami worked, either.  Kami worship was often localized, and then later would spread as others heard about particularly powerful kami and rituals.  But there was no single concept of “Shinto”—there's no evidence that Izumo, Yamato, and Kibi all had the same origin stories, and, in fact, the many different stories that make up the Age of the Gods in the Chronicles speaks to the idea that there were many different stories, depending on who you asked.  In many ways, this is even true today.  While there are general themes that most Shinto shrines and practitioners follow, ritual practices from place to place may vary wildly.  This is less so in places that were part of more unified systems, such as the shrines connected to the royal family or those regulated by State Shinto in the Meiji period through World War II, but even today you can find a variety of differing beliefs and rituals in Shinto, even as most things appear to be the same on the outside.  A shrine's teachings may have local meaning or local rituals that are not practiced elsewhere, though many will fall into a recognizable cultural milieu that tends to make them more standardized.  As a small, but visible example, different shrines may have different omamori—protection amulets—that they offer.  While most offer amulets against sickness, disaster, or for attaining goals, some may have specific amulets for the martial arts, while others may have more specific amulets about love and marriage.  These will often be based on those things which the shrine and its kami are most associated with. In many ways, the Soga clan's acceptance of and use of Buddhism early on emphasizes this kind of spiritual borrowing, but to an extent that went well beyond what anyone else had done.  Most groups or families seem to have borrowed bits and pieces from the continent and then applied them to their local customs, but the Soga appear to have taken on Buddhism wholesale.  The benefit was that Buddhism wasn't just a few new practices—it was an entire corpus of material, with a rich written tradition.  Of course the writing was primarily in Sinic script, which was not exactly accessible to most people.  And early attempts at building temples and holding worship demonstrate a clear lack of understanding of Buddhist rites and rituals – indeed they are described much more like what one might expect to see in kami worship, with an emphasis on Buddhist “feasts”.  This may have been an attempt to make these new practices more accessible, but I believe that it is more likely that these early attempts at Buddhism were trying to treat the Buddha as another kami, through which the Soga family could control access to rites and rituals and thus gain political power through their perceived spiritual power.  It didn't hurt that, when they finally did build some temples, they were in the continental style, even further illustrating the Soga family's connection with all of these new fangled ideas coming over from across the sea. This was likely facilitated by the Soga family's connections to the immigrant community, particularly to various people from Baekje whom they sponsored and who, in turn, would be able to assist them in various ways.  These included people like Shiba Tattou and his family, who were regularly assisting Soga no Iname and Soga no Umako in their endeavors.  This may in part explain why early Buddhist images were coming over from Baekje, Yamato's ally at the time, though that may have been coincidental or even a catalyst—it isn't entirely clear. It is also intriguing to me that I have not seen a clear reference to a Soga family shrine.  Perhaps the Soga themselves were from the continent, originally—that may explain some of the earlier Soga names that appear to reference the peninsula and even Goguryeo.  Then again, it is hard to say—it may be that the Soga family shrine was never of as much import as their eventual attachment to Buddhist institutions. For those in power who could see how the Soga family was using this new religion, it is little wonder that they pushed back against it.  They had no particular reason to see Buddhism as anything particularly special, but they no doubt knew that the Soga would use it as a platform to further enhance their position.  And the powers-that-be succeeded several times, it would seem, in resisting Soga attempts to found a new ritual center. The Soga, however, had already gained considerable power outside of Buddhism.  Much of their rise is not entirely catalogued, but by the time of Soga no Iname, things were looking good.  The Ohotomo family was on the decline, which likely created something of a power vacuum that Soga no Iname was able to exploit.  By the way, there is a thought that early on the position of “Muraji” was actually superior to that of “Omi”, and it may be that the “Oho-omi” position was not quite as prestigious as that of Ohomuraji.  This is obscured by the fact that by the time of the Chronicles, the Oho-omi position clearly eclipsed the position of Ohomuraji, and that is projected back into the distant past by the Chroniclers.  This would speak to the idea that the Soga family was actually ranked behind the Ohotomo and the Mononobe, originally, but their Omi family was on the rise, and eventually their position as Oho-omi, the Great Omi, became the most influential position at court. This may go along with the fact that Soga no Iname is also given the personal kabane of Sukune in the Chronicles, which is described as the highest personal title that could be bestowed on an individual.That also speaks to his personal power and influence at court.  Of course, he is described by these terms from early on, even though he likely received them later in his career, and so it can be difficult to track just when he came to the peak of his effectiveness.  There is also the possibility that some of it is projected back on him because of his offspring, though even then he was still likely someone of consequence to be able to have those familial connections with the royal family in the first place. I suspect that much of Iname's position was likely derived from his access to Baekje and other immigrants and their access to reading, writing, and the new technologies that the court was hungering for.  Iname then parlayed that position into strategic marriages with the royal house.  Several consorts were from the Soga lineage, daughters of Soga no Iname.  Their sons and daughters, while royal princes and princesses, would also be connected to their Soga relatives.  This was a not uncommon ploy, as we've seen it in many other cases as well.  However, then something happened that would disrupt the apple cart.  Remember hwo we talked about how a sovereign was supposed to be be descended from the royal family through both their paternal and maternal lines? Amekunioshi was succeeded by his son Nunakura Futodamashiki, aka Bidatsu Tennou.  His mother had been Ishi Hime, son of Amekunioshi's half-brother, Takewo Hiro Kunioshi Tate, aka Senka Tennou.  But when he died, his son, Hikobito, was not made sovereign.  Instead, the throne passed to his half-brother, Tachibana no Toyohi, aka Youmei Tennou, a son of Amekunioshi and a daughter of Soga no Iname—so royal blood on only half of the family's side.  Following him, we see a bloody fight for the throne, largely personified by the military forces of the Mononobe v. those of the Soga.  Remember, the Mononobe had started as the Be of the warriors.  They were expected to be the armies of the court, at least in Yamato and the archipelago.  In previous reigns they had been the ones to mete out punishment and to be given charge of places like the Yamato government's outpost in Kyushu, from which point armies would be launched against the continent.    They did not, however, have a monopoly on military power.  Many families participated in raids against the peninsula, so we can assume that there were many who had their own, private forces.  While the Mononobe may have been the court's warriors, they had also branched out into other areas of administration, as well as maintaining the ritual site of Isonokami. The Soga versus Mononobe fight also saw various royal princes pitted against each other, and many would-be sovereigns were killed.  Prince Hikohito, whom one might think as the eldest son of Nunakura was the heir presumptive, was killed, and the Mononobe ended up supporting Prince Anahobe against the Soga's candidate, Prince Hasebe.  However, both of these candidates were descended from daughters of Soga no Iname—nobody was putting up a candidate that truly had royal blood on both sides. In the end, the Soga were victorious, and they destroyed the Mononobe—though not entirely.  The Mononobe were certainly out of power, but they would continue to exist in a more minor role.  The Soga candidate, Hasebe, was then placed on the throne as Sushun Tenno, while Soga no Umako enjoyed unparalleled power as Oho-omi.  However, despite his Soga lineage, and the fact that Soga no Umako had helped put him on the throne, Hasebe was not necessarily going to let himself be controlled.  And so Soga no Umako resorted, we are told, to assassination, to clear the throne for someone else.  And that someone else was none other than Toyomike Kashikiya Hime, aka Suiko Tennou.  She is something of an enigma.  She is the first woman to be granted the title of “Tennou” by the Chroniclers, and several accounts make her seem like she was a shrewd operator.  She had been the second wife of her half-brother, Nunakura Futodamashiki, and she'd been in or near the halls of power since his reign.  And yet some believe her to be little more than a puppet for Soga no Umako, while others believe she was a consensus candidate who was largely inoffensive to the majority of the court.  This is further complicated by the fact that she didn't even name her own offspring as Crown Prince, designated to succeed her.  Rather, that position went to none other than her nephew, the Prince of the Upper Palace, Kamitsumiya, aka the Prince of the Stable Door, Umayado, more popularly known today as Prince Shotoku Taishi. Shotoku Taishi is a mytho-historical figure by all accounts.  While many believe that an actual prince existed, he is given credit for almost anything good that happened.  Although the Soga family was clearly responsible for bringing in Buddhism, it is Shotoku Taishi who is credited with spreading the holy religion.  He is also said to have written the first constitution for the state, and set up a court rank system similar to the continent, though still unique to Yamato.  He is said to have ruled jointly with his aunt, and is treated in later stories as a dharma king, even though he never took on the actual mantle of sovereign.  Of course, Soga no Umako also exerted a huge influence, and in the end it is hard to say exactly who held the real power amongst the three:  Kashikiya Hime, Prince Umayado, or Soga no Umako. Umayado was the first to pass away, however—which may have also contributed to his holy status as any problems could be passed off as belonging to his aunt or, even better, to his grand-uncle, Soga no Umako, who would follow Umayado in death a few years later, and then, finally, Kashikiya Hime herself would succumb to time.  They all passed away within a decade of each other, but Kashikiya Hime would manage to outlast them all. Through this reign, for all of the fighting and politics, many of the foundations were laid for a reimagining of the Yamato state, the sovereign, and the vehicles of power.  The court had spread their control through ritual, through the familial system, and through the establishment of Miyake—government outposts designed to control rice land and send tribute back in the form of tax.  However, now they were formalizing that structure and in so doing they were putting a legal framework around it.  Built around a continental model, the throne became the source of rank for the individual, not just the family, and that rank could be given out across the archipelago.  This set up some of what was needed to start to move towards a more bureaucratic state in the continental model. Certainly, we see that Yamato power had expanded.  Further out from Yamato, we see the round, keyhole shaped tombs becoming popular, while closer to the Nara basin, they actually began to die out.  In part this can be seen as a possible sign of Yamato control, since the local elites were no longer being represented as rulers, but in a lesser capacity.  However, it then takes a real turn as even the sovereigns—or at least the Soga descended sovereigns—are no longer buried in keyhole shaped tombs, either, and these tombs become smaller.  This may be, at least in part, because resources to build tombs were being redirected into the new temple building craze.  For whatever reason, Buddhism had caught on, at least amongst the elites.  If the Soga family had hoped to control Buddhism, they appear to have failed.  Numerous temples started up, tied to different families, most of them connected, in some way, with various immigrant groups in the archipelago.  Where this would go, we'll have to see. And that largely catches us up.  I skipped over a few things, but it is worth recalling the Haruna eruptions that we covered back in episode 87, which reminds us that the Chronicles really only give us a narrow view of everything that was going on.  Much of the history of the archipelago remains unrecorded, and is only understood through the archaeological record.  While a lot was happening in Yamato, there was plenty going on elsewhere, but we only see it when it touches on Yamato and their politics. And so we learn a little more about the creation of the Dazaifu, and we hear about natural disasters, such as earthquakes and floods, but only if they affect the Nara basin.  There are some hints in the fudoki, the local gazetteers that were compiled in the 8th century to catalog the local stories and histories, but we only have so much, and even then the stories aren't always easy to place in a truly chronological context.  Still, we can see some general themes running throughout this period. As we start into 2024, we'll finish up with the reign of Kashikiya Hime.   Before her reign ends, we'll also see the rise of the Tang dynasty on the continent—a new inspiration for Yamato, but also a new threat, especially as they ally with Silla.  Also, with Prince Umayado gone, who will next take the reins of power?  And what will happen with the Soga family?  Will Umako's children prove as formidable as he was?  There is plenty more to look forward to. Until then, Happy New Year!  As usual, thank you for listening and for all of your support.  Thanks also to my lovely wife, Ellen, for her continued work at helping to edit these episodes! Remember, if you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to Tweet at us at @SengokuPodcast, or reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  

In this episode of Product Thinking, Indus Khaitan, CEO and Founder of Quolum, joins Melissa Perri to share his experiences as a serial SaaS entrepreneur. They delve into startup funding and team member-building strategies, as well as how to find a co-founder that will complement your skills.

Seasoned scholar Asko Parpola discusses his Indological career, from how it began in the 1960s to what he's working on now. Key themes include his longstanding work on Sāmaveda Jaiminīya texts, the Indus valley script, and the ancient Indo-European Aryans. Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

00:00 オープニング 00:51『スーパーマリオブラザーズ ワンダー』 19:41 『Tchia』 29:37 『SANABI』 37:10 『Fishbowl』 37:56 『Sojourn past』 38:47 『Winds of Arcana』 40:09 『Indus』 40:34 『The Palace on the Hill』 41:41 『Aldian of Ancients』 ■出演 ロブソン・ダニエル クラベ・エスラ 各務都心（シナリオライター） IGN JAPAN編集部のスタッフが、最近遊んだゲームについて話す番組 ■「しゃべりすぎGAMER」の再生リストはこちら https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5dP0ylcT42dJXN_5KJECJ8cI9hK690_e ■ポッドキャスト版 iTunes　https://podcasts.apple.com/jp/podcast/ign-japan-%E3%81%97%E3%82%83%E3%81%B9%E3%82%8A%E3%81%99%E3%81%8Egamer-%E3%83%9D%E3%83%83%E3%83%89%E3%82%AD%E3%83%A3%E3%82%B9%E3%83%88/id1258418439 Spotify　https://open.spotify.com/show/4AKK4MIlRk3Zfj8my703D8?si=x1_N0RZnTWiagXspsoIUkA ■一部使用楽曲 MusMus：http://musmus.main.jp/

इस हफ़्ते सिंधु घाटी सभ्यता की सैर लेखक और कलाकार निखिल गुलाटी के साथ जो हमें इस सभ्यता की कई परिचित-अपरिचित बातों से वाकिफ कराते है।  This week, a delightful conversation with writer-illustrator Nikhil Gulati aka Oddball Comics, who takes us through the many fascinating aspects of the Indus Valley Civilization through his graphic novel ‘The People of the Indus'.  The People of the Indus by Nikhil Gulati with Jonathan Mark Kenoyer https://amzn.eu/d/8VsMDkp Oddball Comics https://www.oddballcomics.in/ *****   related Puliyabaazi  ***** #99 सच की खोज: एक Archaeologist से मुलाक़ात ft. Disha Ahluwalia https://puliyabaazi.in/video/99-sc-kii-khoj-ek-archaeologist-se-mulaaqaat-ft-disha-ahluwalia सभी का ख़ून है शामिल यहाँ की मिट्टी में. We are all foreigners. https://puliyabaazi.in/episode/sbhii-kaa-khhuun-hai-shaamil-yhaa-kii-mittttii-me-we-are-all-foreigners भारतीय भाषाओँ में हमारे अतीत के सुराग़. Clues to our past in Indian languages. https://puliyabaazi.in/episode/bhaartiiy-bhaassaao-me-hmaare-atiit-ke-suraaghh-clues-to-our-past-in-indian-languages ***************** Website: https://puliyabaazi.in Write to us at puliyabaazi@gmail.com  Hosts: @saurabhchandra @pranaykotas @thescribblebee  Puliyabaazi is on these platforms: Twitter: @puliyabaazi  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/puliyabaazi/ Subscribe & listen to the podcast on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Castbox, AudioBoom, YouTube, Spotify or any other podcast appSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Susan welcomes a dynamic and accomplished tech entrepreneur, Indus Khaitan, the CEO of Quolum. With a diverse career spanning enterprise marketing, product management, VC portfolio advising, and serving as a growth officer, Indus has a wealth of experience. Today, he's dedicated to developing Quolum, an all-in-one SaaS management and security platform catering to the needs of Finance, IT, and Procurement teams in tech-savvy organizations.   Join Susan and her guest as they dive deep into the entrepreneurial journey, discussing topics such as being acquired by a tech giant, the evolution of micro-lending, the impact of emotional ratings in today's world, and the changing landscape of venture funding. Indus shares insights on building a startup, navigating the Silicon Valley ecosystem, and the importance of networking.   Discover the myths and realities of Silicon Valley, as Indus Khaitan unveils the true nature of this innovative hub. You'll also gain valuable advice on product-market fit, resilience, and the critical choice between building a better banana or a completely new fruit in the entrepreneurial world.  Don't miss this episode, packed with valuable lessons and thought-provoking discussions!   About Indus Khaitan:  Indus is a dynamic and accomplished tech entrepreneur. Throughout his career, he has assumed diverse roles including enterprise marketing, product management, VC portfolio advisor, and growth officer. Presently, he serves as the CEO at Quolum. His prior venture in cloud mobile security was acquired by Oracle. Currently, Indus is dedicated to developing Quolum, an all-in-one SaaS Management and Security platform catering to the SaaS requirements of Finance, IT, and Procurement teams within tech-savvy organizations.   Connect with Indus: Website https://quolum.com/ Linkedin @quolum Linkedin @khaitan X @1ndus X @QuolumHQ   About Susan Sly: Susan Sly is a Tech Co-founder and Co-CEO, a tech investor, best-selling author, keynote speaker, entrepreneur, and host of the highly acclaimed podcast – Raw and Real Entrepreneurship. Susan has appeared on CNN, CNBC, Fox, Lifetime Television, The CBN, The Morning Show in Australia and been quoted in MarketWatch, Yahoo Finance, Forbes, and more. She holds Certificates in Management and Leadership, Technology and Operations, and Strategy and Innovation from MIT. Susan is the author of 7 books. Her book project with NY Times Best Selling Author, Jack Canfield, made six Amazon Best Selling lists.   Connect With Susan: Twitter @Susanslylive Twitter @rawandrealentr1 LinkedIn @susansly Facebook @susanslylive Website https://susansly.com/   Join the Raw and Real Entrepreneurship Community https://www.facebook.com/groups/rawandrealentrepreneurs   Join Susan's Insider's List   https://susansly.com/insider/      

Evolving from an obscure ancient ruler to a contemporary national icon, Chandragupta Maurya's story is finally being told. However, despite tales of leading empires and defeating the successors of Alexander the Great, there is no official record of his events- only moments taken from Greek authors here and there remain. So, how can we decipher fact from fiction, and how have recent reappraisals helped shape Chandragupta's story, and more importantly - a national Indian identity?In this episode, Tristan welcomes Dr Sushma Jansari, author of 'Chandragupta Maurya,' to the podcast to delve into the art, sources, and stories surrounding Chandragupta's life. Together they examine the role Greek diplomats played in crossing the Indus, the creation of a mighty empire, and his fall into obscurity followed by a subsequent return to fame in the 20th century. So who is Chandragupta, and how has he helped define Indian identity in the 21st century?Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here.For more Ancient's content, subscribe to our Ancient's newsletter here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Indus Valley civilization was one of the largest, most advanced civilizations in the ancient world. But we barely know anything about them, in large part because we haven't been able to decipher the cryptic symbols they left behind. For more, go to http://vox.com/unexplainable It's a great place to view show transcripts and read more about the topics on our show. Also, email us! unexplainable@vox.com We read every email. Support Unexplainable by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's wrestling news, including...What Happened After Raw Went Off Air Last Night?Backstage Reaction To Last Night's Raw Revealed!Update On WWE's Plans For Indus Sher!Vince McMahon Is At It Again?!ENJOY!Follow us on Twitter:@AdamWilbourn@AndyHMurray@WhatCultureWWE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jinder Mahal joins Corey Graves and Kevin Patrick to talk about teaming up with Indus Sheer, representing India in WWE, and what it takes to be a champion. Corey and Kevin also give their final thoughts on WWE Night of Champions and predict who will win the World Heavyweight Championship! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Adam and The Dadley Boyz preview tonight's Monday Night RAW and discuss...Cody Rhodes responds to Brock's challenge!Gunther's Raw DEBUT!Becky Lynch addresses Trish Stratus!Shinsuke Nakamura vs. The Miz!Indus Sher are coming?!ENJOY!Follow us on Twitter:@AdamWilbourn@MichaelHamflett@MSidgwick@WhatCultureWWEFor more awesome content, check out: whatculture.com/wwe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greg Jenner is joined by guests Dr Danika Parikh and comedian Ahir Shah in the Bronze Age to explore the ancient Indus civilisation. They take a close look at the terracotta, toilets and even the unicorns of this vast civilisation which was in existence some 2,000 years before Pompeii. Research by Aimee Hinds Scott Written by Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Aimee Hinds Scott and Greg Jenner Produced by Emma Nagouse and Greg Jenner Assistant Producer: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow Project Management: Isla Matthews Audio Producer: Steve Hankey You're Dead To Me is a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4.