Podcasts about indus valley

Brandon Weichert, geopolitical analyst and best-selling author of "A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine" and other books, on the crisis in the Indus Valley, and two wars that could lie ahead. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

भारत में हर चार कोस पर एक नई भाषा मिल जाती है. अनेक भाषाएं होने की वजह से देश में एक तरह की लैंग्वेज वॉर शुरू हो गई है. और तमिल भाषा इस लैंग्वेज वॉर का केंद्र बन चुकी है. तमिल भाषा को लेकर लोग दावा करते रहे हैं कि ये भारत की सबसे पुरानी भाषा है. तो क्या तमिल असलियत में भारत की सबसे पुरानी भाषा है? आज के ज्ञान ध्यान में तमिल भाषा के इतिहास और समृद्धि के बारे में जानकारी देंगे। आपको बताएंगे कि तमिल भाषा कितनी प्राचीन है, इसका इंडस वैली सभ्यता से क्या संबंध है और तमिल ब्राह्मी लिपि की खोज से क्या नई जानकारियां मिली हैं? रिसर्च: माज़ सिद्दीक़ी साउंड मिक्सिंग: रोहन भारती

Illustrators Samya Arif and Sana Nasir come on TPE to discuss the world of design, illustration, art, Indus Valley School, Feminism, Social Media and AI.Sana Nasir is an international award winning Illustrator and a record label Art Director. Sana's work is rooted in illustration told through local folklore, mythology and fantasy that she uniquely incorporates into the field of music, event and festival design as well as activism. Amongst her recent achievements Sana created the visual identity for the global event series, Boiler Room for itʼs historic debut in Pakistan and was part of the team that received the coveted British Council New Perspectives Grant in 2022 for which she was invited to speak at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Nasirʼs talk ʻDesign in the Name of Loveʼ was debuted at the National Digital Design Conference (ND2C) in 2018 and her talk, ʻCulture Alt Deleteʼ was featured on Islamabadʼs first PechaKucha 20x20. Her work is inspired from folklore and mythology combined with technology and pop-culture and has been acclaimed and featured on platforms such as World Illustration Awards, Communication Arts Awards, Vice, Pen America, Oxford University Press, Border Movement and several local publications including Herald magazine.Sana currently lives and works between Karachi and Kathmandu as an illustrator and multi-disciplinary artist and as Art Director at an ethical record label that she and her partner co-run called Cape Monze Records.sananasir.coSamya Arif is a Pakistani visual artist, illustrator, and graphic designer whose work has been featured internationally. Her artistry is focused on female perspectives and observations of social and cultural paradigms, often exploring the themes of women and the spaces they inhabit.After earning her degree in Communication Design from the Indus Valley School of Art & Architecture, Samya has built a diverse portfolio that includes creating visuals for publications, editorials, book covers, and film posters. Additionally, she has been actively involved as an artist, designer, and DJ in Karachi's budding underground electronic and indie music scene.She has been featured in several prestigious publications such as The New York Times, BBC, Vice, CBC, The Fader, and Pitchfork. Samya has also collaborated on a variety of international projects, such as the Mumbai-based Taxi Fabric, for which her designs were featured in the music video of the British band Coldplay. Her client list includes Penguin Books, HarperCollins, Al Jazeera, the US Embassy in Nepal, British Council, NPR, and Google. Her illustrations were regularly published in Pakistan's renowned, now defunct Herald magazine.Samya's work has been exhibited in numerous countries, including Pakistan, India, UAE, England, US, Belgium, and Spain. She currently resides and works in Karachi, Pakistan and serves as a part-time professor at her alma mater.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/thepakistanexperienceChapters:0:00 Introduction2:00 Difference between Graphic Design and Illustration8:30 Indus Valley10:00 Choosing Design and Love for Music13:30 Is it innate or can you learn Art?16:00 Parents and living as Artists20:00 Herald27:30 Do you care about what people think?30:30 Paving the way and Woke Culture33:00 Being trolled online35:00 Saying something through Art40:00 Progress across Generations43:00 Feminism of our mothers48:00 Putting yourself in your Art51:30 Creative Process and Finding yourself55:00 Would you rather be in your 20s?57:00 Delusion is a super power1:02:00 The world of Social Media1:10:30 Watermelon symbol and the Power of an Image1:17:00 Local Context is very important1:25:00 Making your own art1:30:40 What is Pakistani culture and Getting inspired1:39:40 AI and Art1:58:40 Audience Questions

This episode we continue to follow the monk Xuanzang on his path along the silk road.  From Gaochang, he traveled through the Tarim Basin, up over the Tianshan Mountains, to the heart of the Western Gokturk Qaghanate.  From there, he traveled south, through the region of Transoxania to Bactria and the land of Tukhara.  He pushed on into the Hindu Kush, witnessing the stone Buddha statues of Bamiyan, and eventually made his way to the land of Kapisa, near modern Kabul, Afghanistan.  From there he would prepare to enter the Indian subcontinent: the home of the historical Buddha. For more discussion and some photos of the areas along this journey, check out our podcast blog at https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-121   Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 121: Journey to the West, Part 2   The cold winds blew through the travelers' doubled up clothing and thick furs.  Cold, wet ground meant that even two sets of boots were not necessarily enough after several days.  The frozen mist would often obscure everything except for the path immediately in front, hiding the peaks and making the sky a uniform white. In many places, the path would be blocked by rock, ice, or snow—the remnants of an avalanche, which could easily take an unsuspecting traveler.  And there was the elevation.  Hiking through the mountains, it was easy enough to reach heights of a mile or higher, and for those not accustomed to that elevation the thin air could take a surprising toll, especially if you were pushing yourself.  And the road was no less kind to the animals that would be hauling said travelers and their gear. And yet, this was the path that Xuanzang had agreed to.  He would continue to push through, despite the various deprivations that he would be subjected to.  No doubt he often wondered if it was worth it.  Then again, returning was just as dangerous a trip, so why not push on?   Last episode we introduced the monk Xuanzang, who traveled the Silk Road to India in the 7th century and returned to China.  He brought back numerous sutras to translate, and ended up founding a new school, known as the Faxian school—or the Hossou school in Japan.   As we mentioned last time, Xuanzang during his lifetime met with students from the archipelago when they visited the continent.  The records of his travels—including his biography and travelogue—are some of the best information we have on what life was like on the silk road around this time. In the last episode, we talked about Xuanzang: how he set out on his travels, his illegal departure from the Tang empire, and his perilous journey across the desert, ending up in Gaochang.  There, King Qu Wentai had tried to get him to stay, but he was determined to head out.  This episode we are going to cover his trip to Agni, Kucha, and Baluka—modern Aksu—and up to the Western Gokturk Qaghanate's capital of Suyab.  From there, we'll follow his footsteps through the Turkic controlled regions of Transoxania and into Tukhara, in modern Afghanistan.  Finally, we'll cover the last parts of his journey before he reached the start of his goal:  India. From Gaochang, Xuanzang continued on, through the towns he names as Wuban and Dujin, and into the country of Agni—known today as the area of Yanqi—which may also have been known as Wuqi.  The route was well-enough known, but it wasn't necessarily safe.  At one point, Xuanzang's caravan met with bandits, whom they were fortunately able to pay off.  The following night they encamped on a river bank with some merchants who also happened to be traveling the road.  The merchants, though, got up at midnight and headed out, hoping to get to the city early so that they could be the first ones to the market.  They only made it a few miles down the road, however, before they encountered more bandits, who slaughtered them and took their goods.  The following day, Xuanzang and his retinue came upon the merchants' remains lying in the road and saw the aftermath of the massacre. This was an unforgiving land, and the road was truly dangerous, even for those who traveled it regularly.  And yet Xuanzang was planning to travel its entire length until he reached India. So with little alternative, they carried on to the royal city of Agni. Agni, or Yanqi, sits on the southwestern edge of the basin, west of Bositeng lake, on the border between the Turfan basin and the larger Tarim Basin.  The name is thought to be a Tocharian—or Turfanian—name for the city, which is also known as Karashr. According to the biography by Huili, Xuanzang and his party didn't stay long in Agni.  Apparently Agni and Gaochang were not exactly on friendly terms, and even though the King of Agni and his ministers reportedly came out to greet Xuanzang and welcome him to their city, they refused to provide any horses.  They spent a single night and moved on. That said, Agni still made an impression on Xuanzang.  He noted how the capital was surrounded by hills on four sides, making it naturally defensible.  As for the people, he praises them as honest and straightforward.  They wore clothing of felt and hemp cloth, and cut their hair short, without hats or any kind of headwear.  Even the climate was pleasant, at least for the short time he was there.  He also notes that they used a script based on India—likely referring to the Brahmic script, which we find in the Tarim basin. However, as for the local lord, the King of Agni, he is a little less charitable.  Xuanzang claimed he was brave but “lacked resourcefulness” and he was a bit of a braggart.  Furthermore, the country had “no guiding principles or discipline and government orders are imperfect and not seriously implemented.”  He also mentioned the state of Buddhism in the country, noting that they were followers of Sarvastivada school, a Theravada sect popular along the Silk Road at the time.  Xuanzang was apparently not too pleased with the fact that they were not strict vegetarians, including the “three kinds of pure meat”.  From Agni, Xuanzang continued southwest, heading for the kingdom of Kucha.  He seems to have bypassed the nearby kingdom of Korla, south of Agni, and headed some 60 or 70 miles, climbing over a ridge and crossing two large rivers, and then proceeding another 200 miles or so to the land of Kucha. Kucha was a kingdom with over one hundred monasteries and five thousand monks following a form of Theravada Buddhism.  Here, Xuanzang was welcomed in by the king, Suvarnadeva, described as having red hair and blue eyes.  While Xuanzang was staying in Kucha, it is suspected that he probably visited the nearby Kizil grotto and the Buddhist caves, there, which include a painting of King Suvarnadeva's father, King Suvarnapuspa, and his three sons. You can still visit Kucha and the Kizil grottos today, although getting there is quite a trek, to be sure.  The ancient Kuchean capital is mostly ruins, but in the Kizil caves, protected from the outside elements, you can find vivid paintings ranging from roughly the 4th to the 8th century, when the site was abandoned.  Hundreds of caves were painted, and many still demonstrate vibrant colors.  The arid conditions protect them from mold and mildew, while the cave itself reduces the natural bleaching effect of sunlight.  The paintings are in numerous styles, and were commissioned by various individuals and groups over the years.  They also give us some inkling of how vibrant the city and similar structures must have been, back when the Kuchean kingdom was in its heyday. The people of Kucha are still something of a mystery.  We know that at least some of them spoke an Indo-European language, related to a language found in Agni, and both of these languages are often called Tocharian, which we discussed last episode.  Xuanzang himself noted that they used Indian writing, possibly referring to the Brahmi script, or perhaps the fact that they seem to have used Sanskrit for official purposes, such as the inscription on the cave painting at Kizil giving the name of King Suvarnapuspa.  The Kucheans also were clothed in ornamental garments of silk and embroidery.  They kept their hair cut, wearing a flowing covering over their heads—and we see some of that in the paintings. Xuanzang also notes that though we may think of this area as a desert, it was a place where rice and grains, as well as fruit like grapes, pomegranates, plums, pears, peaches, and almonds were grown.  Even today, modern Xinjiang grows some absolutely fantastic fruit, including grapes, which are often dried into raisins. Another point of interest for Xuanzang may have been that Kucha is known as the hometown of none other than Kumarajiva.  We first mentioned Kumarajiva back in episode 84.  Kumarajiva was one of the first people we know of who translated many of the sutras from India that were then more widely disseminated throughout the Yellow River and Yangzi river basins.  His father was from India and his mother was a Kuchean princess.  In the middle of the 4th century, when he was still quite young, he traveled to India and back with his mother on a Buddhist pilgrimage.  Later he would start a massive translation project in Chang'an.  His translations are credited with revolutionizing Chinese Buddhism. Xuanzang was initially welcomed by the king, his ministers, and the revered monk, Moksagupta.  They were accompanied by several thousand monks who set up tents outside the eastern gate, with portable Buddha images, which they worshipped, and then Xuanzang was taken to monastery after monastery until sunset.  At one of the monasteries, in the southeast of the city, there were several tens of monks who originally came from Gaochang, and since Xuanzang had come from there, they invited him to stay with them. The next day he met and feasted with the King, politely declining any meat, and then went to the monastery in the northwest to meet with the famous monk: Moksagupta.  Moksagupta himself had made the journey to India, and had spent 20 years there himself.  It seems like this would have been the perfect person for Xuanzang to talk to about his plans, but instead, the two butted heads.  Moksagupta seems to have seen Xuanzang's Mahayana faith as heretical.  He saw no reason for Xuanzang to travel all the way to India when he had all the sutras that anyone needed there in Kucha, along with Moksagupta himself.   Xuanzang's response seems to have been the Tang dynasty Buddhist version of “Okay, Boomer”, and then he went ahead and tore apart Moksagupta's understanding of his own sutras—or so Xuanzang relayed to his biographers.  We don't exactly have Moksagupta's side, and, let's face it, Xuanzang and his biographers are not necessarily reliable narrators.  After all, they followed Mahayana teachings, which they considered the “Greater Vehicle”, and they referred to the Theravada teachings as the “Hinayana” or “Lesser Vehicle”.  Meanwhile, Theravada Buddhists likely saw many of the Mahayana texts as extraneous, even heretical, not believing them to actually be the teachings of the Buddha. It must have been winter time, as the passes through the mountains on the road ahead were still closed, and so Xuanzang stayed in Kucha, spending his time sightseeing and meeting with various people.  He even went back to see Moksagupta, but the older monk shunned him, and would get up and exit the room rather than engaging with him, so they had no more conversations. Eventually, Xuanzang continued on his way west, following along the northern rim of the Tarim basin.  Two days out from Kucha, disaster struck.  Some two thousand or so Turkish bandits suddenly appeared—I doubt Xuanzang was counting, so it may have been more or less.  I imagine that memories of what had happened to the merchants near Agni must have gone through Xuanzang's mind.   Fortunately, for him, they were fighting over loot that they had pillaged from various travelers, and since they couldn't share it equally, they fell to fighting each other and eventually dispersed. He travelled for almost 200 miles after that, stopping only for a night at the Kingdom of Baluka, aka Gumo—the modern city of Aksu.  This was another Theravada Buddhist kingdom.  Xuanzang noted tens of Buddhist temples, and over 1000 Buddhist monks.  The country was not large—about 200 miles east to west and 100 miles north to south.  For reference that means it was probably comparable in size with Kyushu, in terms of overall area, or maybe the size of Denmark—excluding Greenland—or maybe the US state of Maryland.  Xuanzang described the country as similar to Kucha in just about every way, including the written language and law, but the spoken language was different, though we don't get many more details. From Baluka, he crossed northward through the Tianshan mountains, which are classified as an extension of the Pamirs known as the Ice Mountains.  Had he continued southwest, he would have hit Kashgar and crossed over between the Pamir and Tian Shan ranges into the Ferghana valley, but instead he turned north. We don't know exactly why he took this perilous option, but the route that may have been popular at the time as it was one of the most direct routes to the seat of the Western Gokturk Empire, which he was currently traveling through. The Tian Shan mountains were a dangerous journey.  Avalanches could block the road—or worse.  Xuanzang describes the permanent ice fields—indeed, it is the ice fields and glaciers of the Tian Shan that melt in the summer and provide the oasis towns of the Tarim Basin with water, even to this day.  In Xuanzang's day, those glaciers were likely even more prevalent than today, especially as they have been recorded as rapidly disappearing since 1961.  And where you weren't on snow and ice, the ground was probably wet and damp from the melt.  To keep warm, you would wear shoes over your shoes, along with heavy fur coats, all designed to reduce exposure. Xuanzang claims that 3 or 4 of every 10 people didn't survive the crossing—and that horses and oxen fared even worse.  Even if these numbers are an exaggeration, the message is clear:  This was a dangerous journey. After about seven days, Xuanzang came out of the mountains to the “Great Pure Lake”, the “Da Qing Hai”, also known as the Hot Sea or the Salt Sea, which likely refers to Issyk Kul.  The salt content, along with the great volume of water it possesses, means that the lake rarely freezes over, which is likely why it is seen as “hot” since it doesn't freeze when the fresh water nearby does.  This lake is the second largest mountain lake in the world, and the second deepest saltwater lake.  Traveling past the lake, he continued to Suyab, near modern Tokmok, in Kyrgyzstan, just west of the modern capital of Bishkek.  This was an old Sogdian settlement, and had since become the capital of the Western Gokturks.  Sogdians—like Xuanzang's guide, Vandak—were integral to the Gokturk kingdom. Their language was the lingua franca of the Silk Road, and at the time of the Gokturk Khaganate, it was also the official court language, and so when Xuanzang appeared at the court of the Great Khagan of the Western Gokturks, it was likely the language of diplomacy. When we think of Turkic people, many in the English speaking world think of Turkiye, and perhaps of the mighty Ottoman empire.  Some may think of Turkmenistan, Kazhakstan, Kyrgyzstan, or Uzbekistan, among others.  And of course, there are the Uyghur people in Xinjiang.  All of these people claim roots in the ancestral Turkic homeland in the Altai mountains, which sit largely in western Mongolia, north of China's Xinjiang region.  Much like the Xiongnu and the Mongols, they were pastoral nomads, moving their herds across the steppes, often covering great distances.  They would regularly move through different regions, perhaps returning each season, though sometimes not returning for years at a time.  They were often seen as barbarians by settled people living in cities, and yet their goods and horses were highly prized. Nomad and sedentary lifestyles would often collide.  Farmers would turn pastureland into fields, and when the nomadic people returned on their circuits, they would find walls and fences where there was once open land, and the people there would claim to “own” the land, a concept often foreign to people who were always on the move.  Nomadic people, such as the Gokturks, were not necessarily keeping vast libraries of records about themselves and their histories, and so much of what we get comes from external sources, which do not always have incredibly reliable narrators.  To many of the settled agriculturalists, groups like the Turks were marauders who raided their villages and farms.  They were a great bogeyman of the steppes, which required the firm hand of strong defenses to keep out—or so their opponents would want people to think. While they were known for their warfare, which incorporated their mobility, but they were keenly interested in trade, as well.  They understood the value of the trade routes and the various cities and states that they included in their empire.  Thus, the Sogdians and the Gokturks seem a natural fit: the Sogdians were more settled, but not entirely so, as demonstrated by their vast trade networks.  And the Sogdians also were part of the greater central Eurasian steppe culture, so the two cultures understood each other, to a degree.  They are even depicted similarly in art, with slight differences, such as long hair that was often associated with Turks over the Sogdians.  In some areas of the Gokturk empire, Sogdians would run the cities, while the Gokturks provided military aid and protection. Xuanzang's description of the people of Suyab, or the “City of Suye River”, doesn't pick out anyone in particular, and he even says that it was a place where traders of the Hu, or foreign, tribes from different countries mingle their abodes.  He mentions the people here as being called Suli, which is also the name given to the language—this may refer to “Sogdian” in general.  They write with an alphabet that is written vertically rather than horizontally—this may refer to a few scripts that were written this way, possibly based off Syriac or Aramaic alphabets that were adapted to Sogdian and other Iranian languages, but it isn't clear. We are told that the people dressed in felt and hemp clothing, with fur and “cotton” garments.  Their clothes fit tightly, and they kept their hair cut short, exposing the top of their heads—though sometimes they shaved it completely, tying a colored silk band around the forehead. He goes on to describe these people as greedy liars, possibly a reference to the mercantile nature of many of the people at the time. Something to note: The Turks of this time had not yet encountered Islam, which was just now starting to rise up in the Middle East.  The Prophet Muhammad is said to have been born around the end of the 6th century CE and was preaching in the early 7th century, though his teachings would begin to spread outward soon enough.  But that means that the Gokturks were not an Islamic empire.  Rather, their own traditions seem to have focused on the worship of Tengri, an Altaic personification of the universe, often simplified as a “sky god”.  Tengrism can be found amongst the Xiongnu, Mongols, and others, and it was the national religion of the Gokturks themselves, but there were many who also adopted other religions that they encountered, including Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Manichaeism, and Buddhism.  In fact, Xuanzang notes that the Turks he met in Suyab would not sleep or sit on beds made of wood because wood was thought to contain the spirit of fire, which he says they worshipped.  That sounds similar to Zoroastrian beliefs, where fire is associated with Ahura Mazda, who is also worshipped as a sky god.  These may have been beliefs inherited from their Eastern Iranian Sogdian partners. In Xuanzang's biography, we are given more details about his visit to Suyab.  Apparently, as he was headed to the city, he met a hunting party, which we are told was the retinue of Yehu Khan.  Hunting was an important part of life on the steppes, and it continued to be a favorite sport of the Gokturk nobility. Yehu Khan—possibly Yagbhu Khan, though that is up for some debate—is described as being dressed in a green silk robe, with his hair exposed, and wearing  a turban of white silk about ten feet long that wrapped his forehead and hung behind his back.  His “hunting” expedition wasn't just a couple of the guys.  It included about 200 officials, all with plaited hair and dressed in brocade robes—they weren't exactly out there roughing it.  He also had his soldiers, dressed in furs, felt, or fine woolen clothes, and there were so many cavalry that they stretched out of sight.  The Khan seemed pleased to meet Xuanzang, but his hunt was expected to last another couple of days, at least, so he sent an attendant named Dharmaja to take Xuanzang back to wait for the Khan to return. Three days later, Xuanzang was given an audience.  The khan was seated in a large yurt.  Xuanzang noted the seeming incongruity between the khan, sitting there in the tent, decorated with golden flowers, with the officials dressed in magnificent brocade garments sitting in two long rows in front of him and the armed guards behind him, compared to the simple felt walls of the tent. A ”yurt” is a common feature of nomadic life on the steppes.  It wasn't exactly a single person operation to haul them around, but they can be taken down and put up with relative ease.  And while yurts could be relatively simple, there are examples of much more elaborate structures.  There is little reason they couldn't be made larger, perhaps with some extra support.  In later centuries, there are examples of giant yurts that seem like real construction projects.  Use of tents, even in a city, where they had permanent palace buildings, was likely a means of retaining the nomadic steppe traditions, even while enjoying the benefits of city life. Whom exactly Xuanzang met with is a matter of debate.  His records seem to indicate that it was Tong Yabghu Qaghan of the Western Gokturk Khaganate, but other sources say that Tong Yabghu Qaghan died in 628, and the earliest Xuanzang could have been meeting with him was 630, two years later, so if that is the case, he must have met with Tong Yabghu's son, Si Yabghu Qaghan.  It is likely that Xuanzang, who was dictating his accounts years after, mentioned the Qaghan and then, when they looked up who it was, they simply made a mistake.  Remember, Xuanzang would have had everything translated through one or two languages.  He did know what he saw, however, and he recounted what he remembered. Tong Yabghu Qaghan oversaw the height of the Gokturk Qaghanate, and appears to have favored the Buddhist religion, though there were many different religions active in their territories at the time.  They oversaw an extremely cosmopolitan empire covering huge swaths of central Eurasia, including the lucrative silk road.  Xuanzang notes that at the court there were individuals from Gaochang and even a messenger from the Han—which is to say the Tang Empire.  One wonders if Xuanzang—or anyone at that time—realized just how tenuous the Khan'sposition was.  After Tong Yabghu's death, the Qaghanate would decline, and less than a decade later it would fall to the Tang dynasty, who took Suyab and made it their western outpost.  In fact, Suyab is thought to have been the birthplace, over a century later, of a young boy who would find a love of poetry.  That boy's name was Li Bai, or Ri Haku, in Japanese. He would become one of the most famous poets in Chinese history, and his poems were even known and studied in Japan.  And it was largely through Japanese study of Li Bai's poems that his works came to the English speaking world: first through Ernest Fenollosa, who had studied in Japan, and then by the celebrated Ezra Pound, who had used Ernest's notes to help with his own translations of the poems. This was, though, as I said, over a century after Xuanzang's journey.  At the time of our story, the Qaghan was throwing a feast, including Xuanzang and all of the foreign envoys.  Xuanzang comments on the food and drink—his hosts provided grape juice in lieu of wine, and cooked a special vegetarian feast just for him, while the other guests ate a feast of meat, such as veal, lamb, fish, and the like.  There was also the music of various regions along the Silk Road, which Xuanzang found to be catchy, but of course not as refined as the music he was used to, of course.  After dinner Xuanzang was asked to expound upon the Darma, largely about the basic principle that you should be kind to one another—I doubt he was getting into the deep mysteries of Buddhist philosophy. Xuanzang stuck around the court for three more days, during which time the Qaghan tried to get him to stay, but Xuanzang insisted that he had to make it to India.  And so the Qaghan relented.  He found men in his army who could translate for Xuanzang along his journey, and had letters of introduction written to at least as far as the state of Kapisa, in modern Afghanistan. And so, armed with the Qaghan's blessing and a fresh translator, Xuanzang struck out again.  They headed westward for over one hundred miles, eventually reaching Bingyul, aka the Thousand Springs.  This is the area where the Qaghan and his court would spend his summers, and the deer in the area were protected under his orders, so that they were not afraid of humans—which sounds similar to the situation with the deer in Nara.  Continuing on another fifty miles or so—the distances are approximate as Xuanzang's primary duty was not exactly to map all of this out—Xuanzang arrived at the city of Taras, in modern Kazakhstan, another place where the cultures of the Silk Road mixed and mingled.  Xuanzang didn't have much to say about Taraz, apparently, though it is one of the oldest cities in Transoxania, founded near the beginning of the Common Era.  A few miles south of there, Xuanzang reportedly found a village of re-settled ethnic Han that had been captured by the Gokturks and settled here.  They had adopted the dress and customs of the Turkic people, but continued to speak a version of Chinese. Southwest of that he reached the City of White Water, likely referring to Aksukent.  This is the same “Aksu” as the city in Xinjiang, both of which mean “White Water” in Turkic, but this one is in the south of Kazakhstan.  Xuanzang found the climate and products an improvement over what he had experienced in Taras.  Beyond that, he next arrived at the city of Gongyu, and then south again to Nujkend, and then traveling westward to the country of Chach, aka Tashkent.  Both Nujkend and Chach were large cities in nations of smaller, mostly autonomous city-states, which made up a lot of the political geography of Transoxania. I would note that Xuanzang's notes here are much more sparse than previously.  This may be because these were outside of the Tarim basin and therefore of less interest to individuals in the Tang empire.  Or perhaps he was just making his way more quickly and not stopping at every kingdom along the way. From Tashkent, he continued southeast to the Ferghana valley—the country of Feihan.  Oddly, this country doesn't appear in Xuanzang's biography, even though the Ferghana Valley seems to have been fairly well known back in the Tang Empire—it was known as the home of some of the best horses, which were one of its first major exports.  In fact, the Han dynasty even mounted a military expedition to travel to Ferghana just to obtain horses.  Xuanzang is oddly silent on this; however, he does talk about the fertile nature of the land.  He mentions that their language here is different from the lands he had been traveling through up to this point, and also points out that the people of the Ferghana valley were also visibly different from others in the area. From the Ferghana valley, Xuanzang headed west for about 300 miles or more to the land of Sutrushana—perhaps referring to the area of Ushrusana, with its capital of Bunjikat.  This country was also largely Sogdian, and described as similar to Tashkent.  From there, he traveled west through a great desert, passing skeletons, which were the only marker of the trail other than a view of the far off mountains.  Finally, they reached Samarkand, known as the country of “Kang” in Chinese, which was also the term used to mark Sogdians who claimed descent from the people of Samarkand. Samarkand is another of the ancient cities of Central Asia, and even today is the third largest city in modern Uzbekistan.  Human activity in the region goes back to the paleolithic era, and the city was probably founded between the 8th and 7th centuries BCE.  Samarkand was conquered by Alexander the Great, and during the Achaemenid Empire it was the capital of Sogdiana.  During Xuanzang's visit, Samarkand was described as an impenetrable fortress with a large population. For all of his travel, Samarkand was the first place Xuanzang notes as specifically not a Buddhist land.  In fact, there were two monasteries, suggesting that there had been Buddhists, but if any monks tried to stay there then the locals would chase them out with fire.  Instead, they worshipped fire—likely meaning Ahura Mazda and Zoroastrianism.  This leads to a story that I have to wonder about, given the reliability of our narrators. It is said that Xuanzang was met by the King with arrogance, but after staying the night Xuanzang was able to tell the King about Buddhism and its merits.  The king was intrigued, and asked to observe the Precepts, and treated Xuanzang with hospitality and respect.  So when two of Xuanzang's attendants went to the monasteries to worship, they were chased out with fire.  When the king heard about this, he had the people arrested and ordered their hands to be cut off.  Xuanzang could not bear to witness such suffering, however, and he intervened to have them spared.  So instead the king had them flogged and banished from the city.  Ever since then, all the people believed in Buddhism. Some parts of this strike true.  It was likely that the king would entertain this strange wanderer who had arrived with letters from the great Qaghan—that may have even explained why Xuanzang had been encouraged to make the dangerous journey to Suyab in the first place, so that he could obtain such permission.  And it would not be strange for the king to listen to his teachings.  If Xuanzang's attendants were attacked, that would have been a huge breach of hospitality, and however the King felt about it, he no doubt had to do something about it.  And so all of that sounds somewhat believable.  Does that mean everyone suddenly converted to Buddhism?  I don't know that I'm quite willing to go that far.  It is also likely that there were Buddhists there already, even if the majority religion was Zoroastrianism. From Samarkand, Xuanzang traveled farther southwest, to the country of Kasanna, which seems to have been the edge of what we might call Sogdiana.   According to his biographers, however, there was a little more to all of this.  Rather, he headed west to Kusanika.  Then he traveled to  Khargan, and further on to the country of Bukhara, and then to Vadi.  All of these were “An” in Chinese, which was the name element used for Sogdians from this region.  He then continued west to the country of Horismika, on the other side of the Amu Darya, aka the Oxus River of Transoxanian fame. From there he traveled further southwest, entering into the mountains.  The path here was often such that they had to travel single-file, and there was no food or water other than what you brought with you.  Eventually they came to a set of doors, known as the Iron Gate.  This was a Turkic fortress.  It was no doubt fortuitous that he had come from his meeting with the Qaghan, and likely had permission to pass through.  From there, they entered the country of Tukhara. As we noted in Episode 119, Tukhara was in the region of Bactria.  It was bordered by the Pamir range in the east, and the Persian empire in the west.  There were also the Great Snow Mountains in the south, likely referencing the Hindu Kush. Tukhara had been conquered by the Gokturks just within the past couple of decades, and Xuanzang notes that the country had been split into largely autonomous city-states as the local royalty had died without an heir many years before.  With the Gokturk conquest, it was now administered by Tardu Shad, the son of Tong Yabghu Qaghan.  “Shad” in this case was a local title. Here, Xuanzang's narrative gets a little dicey, especially between his biography and his records.  The records of the Western Regions denotes various countries in this area.  It is unclear if he traveled to all of them or is just recounting them from records he obtained.  He does give us at least an overview of the people and the region.  I would also note that this is one of the regions he visited, again, on his return trip, and so may have been more familiar with the region than those areas he had passed through from Suyab on down. For one thing, he notes that the language of the region was different from that of the “Suli”, which appears to refer to the Sogdians.  This was the old territory of the Kushan empire, and they largely spoke Bactrian.  Like Sogdian, it was another Eastern Iranian language, and they used an alphabet based largely on Greek, and written horizontally rather than vertically.  They also had their own coins. This region had plenty of Buddhist communities, and Xuanzang describes the cities and how many monasteries they had, though, again, it isn't clear if he actually visited all of them or not.  These are countries that Li Rongji translates as “Tirmidh”, “Sahaaniyan”, “Kharuun”, “Shuumaan”, etc. It does seem that Xuanzang made it to the capital city, the modern city Kunduz, Afghanistan. Xuanzang actually had something specific for the local Gokturk ruler, Tardu Shad.  Tardu Shad's wife was the younger sister of King Qu Wentai of Gaochang, whom we met last episode.  Qu Wentai had provided Xuanzang a letter for his younger sister and her husband.  Unfortunately, Xuanzang arrived to learn that the princess of Gaochang had passed away, and Tardu Shad's health was failing.  It does seem that Tardu Shad was aware of Xuanzang, however—a letter had already come from Qu Wentai to let them know that Xuanzang was on his way.  As I mentioned last episode, letters were an important part of how communities stayed tied together.  Of course, given the perils of the road, one assumes that multiple letters likely had to be sent just in case they didn't make it.  The US Postal Service this was not. Tardu Shad, though not feeling well, granted an interview with Xuanzang.  He suggested that Xuanzang should stick around.  Then, once the Shad had recovered from his illness, he would accompany Xuanzang personally on his trip to India.  Unfortunately, that was not to be.  While Xuanzang was staying there, he was witness to deadly drama.  Tardu Shad was recovering, which was attributed to the recitations by an Indian monk who was also there.  This outcome was not exactly what some in the court had wanted.  One of the Shad's own sons, known as the Tagin prince, plotted with the Shad's current wife, the young Khatun, and she poisoned her husband.  With the Shad dead, the throne might have gone to the son of the Gaochang princess, but he was still too young.  As such, the Tagin Prince was able to usurp the throne himself, and he married his stepmother, the young Khatun.  The funeral services for the late Tardu Shad meant that Xuanzang was obliged to stay at Ghor for over a month. During that time, Xuanzang had a seemingly pleasant interaction with an Indian monk.  And when he finally got ready to go, he asked the new Shad for a guide and horses.  He agreed, but also made the suggestion that Xuanzang should then head to Balkh.  This may have meant a bit of backtracking, but the Shad suggested that it would be worth it, as Balkh had a flourishing Buddhist community. Fortunately, there was a group of Buddhist monks from Balkh who happened to be in Kunduz to express their condolences at the passing of Tardu Shad, and they agreed to accompany Xuanzang back to their hometown, lest he end up getting lost and taking the long way there. The city of Balkh is also known as “Baktra”, as in “Bactria”, another name of this region.  A settlement has been there since at least 500 BCE , and it was already an important city when it was captured by Alexander the Great.  It sits at the confluence of several major trade routes, which no doubt were a big part of its success.  Xuanzang's biography notes that it was a massive city, though it was relatively sparsely populated—probably due to the relatively recent conquest by the Gokturks, which had occurred in the last couple of decades.  That said, there were still thousands of monks residing at a hundred monasteries in and around the city.  They are all characterized as monks of Theravada schools.  Southwest of the city was a monastery known as Navasamgharama, aka Nava Vihara, or “New Monastery”.  Despite its name, the monastery may have actually been much older, going back to the Kushan emperor Kaniska, in the 2nd century CE.  Ruins identified as this “New Monastery” are still visible south of Balkh, today. The monastery is described as being beautifully decorated, and it seems that it had a relic—one of the Buddha's teeth.  There are also various utensils that the Buddha is said to have used, as well.  The objects would be displayed on festival days.  North of the monastery there was a stupa more than 200 feet in height.  South of the monastery was a hermitage.  Each monk who studied there and passed away would have a stupa erected for them, as well.  Xuanzang notes that there were at around 700 memorial stupas, such that they had to be crammed together, base to base. It was here that Xuanzang met a young monk named Prajnaakara, who was already somewhat famous in India, and well-studied.  When questioned about certain aspects of Buddhism, Xuanzang was impressed by the monk's answers, and so stayed there a month studying with the young monk. Eventually, Xuanzang was ready to continue on his journey.  He departed Balkh towards the south, accompanying the teacher Prajnakara, and together they entered the Great Snow Mountains, aka the Hindu Kush.  This path was even more dangerous than the trip through the Tian Shan mountains to Suyab.   They eventually left the territory of Tukhara and arrived at Bamiyan.  Bamiyan was a kingdom in the Hindu Kush, themselves an extension of the Himalayan Mountain range.  It Is largely based around valley, home to the modern city of Bamyan, Afghanistan, which sits along the divide between Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent.  Today it is a major center for individuals of the Hazara ethnic group, one of the main ethnic groups in Afghanistan, which is a multi-ethnic state that includes, today, the Pashtun, Hazara, Tajik, and Uzbek people, along with a number of smaller ethnic groups.  Today they largely reside in the mountainous areas of the Hindu Kush. Bamiyan made an impact on our protagonist.   Their language was slightly different from that in Tukhara, but using the same—or similar enough—writing system.  Buddhism was thriving in the capital, and we are told of a rock statue of the standing Buddha, over a hundred feet in height, along with a copper statue of the standing Buddha nearby.    There was also another reclining Buddha a mile or two down the road.  There were multiple monasteries with thousands of monks, and the ruler of that kingdom received Xuanzang well. Xuanzang wasn't the first monk to travel to Bamiyan from the Middle Kingdom—in this he was, perhaps unwittingly, on the trail of the monk Faxian.  Faxian likely did not see these statues, though, as we believe they were built in the 6th and early 7th century—at least the stone Buddha statues.  They were a famous worship site until February 2001, when the Taliban gave an order to destroy all of the statues in Afghanistan.  Despite this, they were inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. Fortunately, we have images from before their destruction.  These statues were a blend of Greco-Buddhist and Gandharan art styles—appropriate as it stands between the Hellenistic area of Tukhara and the ancient region of Gandhara—including the modern city of Kandahar and into the Indus Valley region of Pakistan. Continuing east through the mountains, Xuanzang eventually came out at the kingdom of Kapisa.  This may have had its capital around modern-day Bagram, north of modern Kabul, but the country seems to have been quite large.  Kapisa over saw some tens of other countries, and it is thought that at one time its influence extended from Bamyan and Kandahar to the area of modern Jalalabad.  Their language was even more different than that of Tukhara, but they were still using the same writing system.  The king of Kapisa is said to have been of Suli ethnicity—which would seem to indicate that he was Sogdian, or at least descended from people of the Transoxanian region.    Xuanzang notes that the ruler, as rough and fiery as he is described—as a true warlord or similar—he nonetheless made a silver image of the Buddha, eighteen feet in height, every year.  He also gave charity to the poor and needy in an assembly that was called every five years.  There were over one hundred monasteries and some 6000 monks, per Xuanzang's recollection, and notably, they were largely following Mahayana teachings. For the most part the monks that Xuanzang had encountered on this journey were Theravada—Xuanzang refers to them as “Hinayana”, referring to the “Lesser Vehicle” in contrast to Xuanzang's own “Mahayana”, or “Greater Vehicle”.  “Theravada” refers to the “way of the elders” and while Mahayana Buddhism largely accepts the sutras of Theravada Buddhism, there are many Mahayana texts that Theravada Buddhists do not believe are canonical.  We discussed this back in Episode 84. There was apparently a story of another individual from the Yellow River being sent as a hostage to Kapisa when it was part of the Kushan Empire, under Kanishka or similar.  Xuanzang recounts various places that the hostage, described as a prince, lived or visited while in the region.  Xuanzang's arrival likely stirred the imagination of people who likely knew that the Tang were out there, but it was such a seemingly impossible distance for most people.  And yet here was someone who had traveled across all of that distance.  One of the monasteries that claimed to have been founded because of that ancient Han prince invited Xuanzang to stay with them.  Although it was a Theravada monastery, Xuanzang took them up on the offer, both because of the connection to someone who may have been his countryman, but also because of his traveling companion, Prajnakara, who was also a Theravada monk, and may not be comfortable staying at a Mahayana monastery. Xuanzang spends a good deal of ink on the stories of how various monasteries and other sites were founded in Kapisa and the surrounding areas.  He must have spent some time there to accumulate all of this information.  It is also one of the places where he seems to have hit at least twice—once on the way to India, and once during his return journey. The King of Kapisa is said to have been a devotee of Mahayana Buddhism.  He invited Xuanzang and Prajnakara to come to a Mahayana monastery to hold a Dharma gathering.  There they met with several leading figures in the monastery, and they discussed different theories.  This gathering lasted five days, and at the end, the king offered Xuanzang and the other monks five bolts of pure brocade and various other gifts.  Soon thereafter, the monk Prajnakara was invited back to Tukhara, and so he and Xuanzang parted ways. And it was about time for Xuanzang to continue onwards as well.  From Kapisa, he would travel across the “Black Range” and into Lampaka.  This may refer to the area of Laghman or Jalalabad.  Today, this is in modern Afghanistan, but for Xuanzang, this would have been the northwestern edge of India.  He was almost there. And so are we, but we'll save his trip into India for next episode. Until then thank you 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.

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

Yoga has come a long way. From its ancient roots in the Indus Valley to becoming a global phenomenon practiced by millions, this ancient discipline's journey is truly fascinating. In this episode, yoga teacher and author Christine Marie Mason shares her unique perspective, rooted in her transformative personal experience with yoga. She guides us through the influential figures, cultural forces, and challenges that have shaped the evolution of yoga in the West. Listen in and join us as we trace this transformative practice's past, present, and future.In this episode, we cover:Christine's journey with discovering and beginning to practice yogaThe Evolution and History of Yoga in the WestThe explosion of yoga's popularity in the 1960s-1990sThe commercialization and dilution of yoga as it became mainstreamThe benefits and challenges of the widespread diffusion of yogaYoga as a "healing art" focused on the breath, alignment, and self-awarenessSuggestions for developing a personalized and sustainable yoga practiceSharing some short storiesHelpful links:Episode #146: Classical Tantra and Near Enemies of the Truth with Christopher “Hareesh” WallisEpisode #121 Peace In and Through the Body with Mark WhitwellLiving Tantra: An Intro to Tantra, Neo Tantra and Sacred SexualitySubscribe to the Museletter on SubstackFind Rosebud Woman on Instagram as @rosebudwoman, Christine on Instagram as @christinemariemason, and on Tiktok as @therosewoman108.Find Radiant Farms on Instagram @weareradiantfarms and on Facebook @RadiantFarmsLLCOrder the new Blue Lotus Gift Set: Tea and Floral Tea Infuser (Gold or Silver) for this holiday season at Radiant Farms. It is made with 100% Blue Lotus Flowers.Check out these Free E-books brought to you by Radiant Farms Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There's a quote I heard a long time ago that goes something like this - “India has consistently disappointed both the optimists and the pessimists”. It is equal parts pithy and profound, and does a somewhat passable job of summarising the multitudes contained in 21st century India. It's a quote that was brought to life for me numerous times in my conversation with this week's guest on Infinite Loops - Sajith Pai. Sajith is a GP at Blume Ventures, one of India's largest homegrown VC firms. He's known for his prolific writing and sharp frameworks that have become part of Indian startup canon over the past decade. In 2018, he swapped a long-time career as a media executive for one as a venture capitalist. This changing of lanes, relatively late in his professional life, has given him a refreshingly nuanced perspective on the Indian startup ecosystem (which he's bestowed with the moniker of ‘Indus Valley', as a nod to both Silicon Valley as well as the Indus Valley Civilisation, one of the cradles of the ancient world and the ancestral civilisation of the Indian people). His most compelling insight? That India isn't the monolithic 1.5-billion-person market that many Westerners believe. Instead, it's three distinct "countries" hiding in plain sight. There's India One: 120 million affluent, English-speaking urbanites (think the population of Germany) who love their iPhones and Starbucks. Then comes India Two: 300 million aspiring middle-class citizens who inhabit the digital economy but not yet the consumption economy. Finally, there's India Three: a massive population with a similar demographic profile to Sub-Saharan Africa, that's still waiting for its invitation to join India's bright future. ‘India 1-2-3' is one amongst many pearls of wisdom that Sajith gifted me over our conversation, that also touched on India as a "digital welfare state", India as a ‘low trust society'; the emergence of a new class of ‘Indo-Anglians'; how cultural nuances in India shape everything from app design to payment systems; and much, much more. Whether you're an investor, founder, or just curious about where the next decade of innovation might come from, this conversation is your crash course to understanding India in the 21st century. Sajith likes to say that ‘India is not for beginners'. Well, if you are a beginner on India, this week you're in luck. For the full transcript, episode takeaways, and bucketloads of other goodies designed to make you go, “Hmm, that's interesting!”, check out our Substack. Important Links: Sajith's website Sajith's Twitter Sajith's Substack Blume VC's Indus Valley Annual Report 2024 Show Notes: The Three Indias Navigating India in the 21st century India as a ‘low trust' society Touring ‘India 2' The States and the Union Caste and Class in Modern India Governance and the Government Brain Drain The English Tax The Rise of the Indo-Anglians I, Writer On Media and Markets India as a Digital Welfare State The Virtues of Leapfrogging Sajith, The Emperor of the World Books and Articles Mentioned: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid; by C. K. Prahalad Supercommunicators; by Charles Duhigg Career Advice; by Scott Adams The Indus Valley Report 2024; by Blume VC

Anuj sits down with Uzma Rizvi - an anthropological archaeologist to explore a fascinating journey through her field, and the history of one of the world's oldest civilizations, in the Indus Valley. Uzma shares many stories and insights into the way in which archaeologists study and piece together the past, and how she uniquely works with many contemporary disciplines to both understand the past, and also connect it to our present moment. Uzma also shares unique insights on how decolonization of the field and our use of certain ways of framing conversations are problematic and in need of reflection. Uzma shares her thoughts on the role technology, and in particular, AI, may play in the field of archaeology. Uzma and Anuj also reflect on the situation in Gaza in January 2024, and the place and practice of hope and our current moment in time. Dr. Uzma Z. Rizvi is an anthropological archaeologist, and currently a professor at the Pratt Institute. Uzma received a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. She specializes in the archaeology of the first cities, while teaching anthropology, ancient urbanism, new materialisms, critical heritage studies, decolonization/the postcolonial critique, and social practice. (source: https://www.pratt.edu/people/uzma-z-rizvi/) Special Guest: Uzma Rizvi.

It's taken 80+ years for any widespread interest in Lion Man, a therianthropic statuette found in 1939 within a German cave, to be founded. Dating to 40,000 years ago, it is one of the oldest examples of human religious-spiritual belief, with even more recent findings of cave art in Indonesia depicting therianthropic beings that date to 51,200 years ago! How many more artifacts like this wait to be found alongside of the countless pieces that collect dust due to lack of money, unwillingness, or lack of interest, for studying them? The same goes for archeological sites like Mohenjo-Daro, located in the Indus Valley between Pakistan and Indian. Discovered in the 1850s the location was not even acknowledged until the 1920s, didn't obtain a World Heritage designation until the 1980s, and wasn't really excavated until the 1990s. Today it remains between 10-20% investigated. What's so fascinating about this city is that it is conceptually modern to our own cities, with most houses having bathrooms that, along with the city streets, were lined with drains and proper methods of sanitation. The problem is that Mohenjo-Daro is roughly over 5,000 years old! Investigating places like this indicate that ancient and modern civilization may have grown out of India, rather than Africa, and that doesn't fit any narrative. The same goes for institutional religion and general social developments.-FREE ARCHIVE & RSS: https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-secret-teachings Twitter: https://twitter.com/TST___Radio Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesecretteachings WEBSITE (BOOKS, RESUBSCRIBE for early show access): http://thesecretteachings.info Paypal: rdgable@yahoo.com CashApp: $rdgable EMAIL: rdgable@yahoo.com / TSTRadio@protonmail.com

I had no idea how wild human history was before chatting with the geneticist of ancient DNA David Reich.Human history has been again and again a story of one group figuring ‘something' out, and then basically wiping everyone else out.From the tribe of 1k-10k modern humans who killed off all the other human species 70,000 years ago; to the Yamnaya horse nomads 5,000 years ago who killed off 90+% of (then) Europeans and also destroyed the Indus Valley.So much of what we thought we knew about human history is turning out to be wrong, from the ‘Out of Africa' theory to the evolution of language, and this is all thanks to the research from David Reich's lab.Buy David Reich's fascinating book, Who We Are How We Got Here.Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here.Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.SponsorThis episode is brought to you by Stripe, financial infrastructure for the internet. Millions of companies from Anthropic to Amazon use Stripe to accept payments, automate financial processes and grow their revenue.If you're interested in advertising on the podcast, check out this page.Timestamps(00:00:00) – Archaic and modern humans gene flow(00:21:22) – How early modern humans dominated the world(00:40:57) – How the bubonic plague rewrote history(00:51:04) – Was agriculture terrible for humans?(01:00:14) – Yamnaya expansion and how populations collide(01:16:26) – “Lost civilizations” and our Neanderthal ancestry(01:32:18) – The DNA Challenge(01:42:32) – David's career: the genetic vocation Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkeshpatel.com/subscribe

It's taken 80+ years for any widespread interest in Lion Man, a therianthropic statuette found in 1939 within a German cave, to be founded. Dating to 40,000 years ago, it is one of the oldest examples of human religious-spiritual belief, with even more recent findings of cave art in Indonesia depicting therianthropic beings that date to 51,200 years ago! How many more artifacts like this wait to be found alongside of the countless pieces that collect dust due to lack of money, unwillingness, or lack of interest, for studying them? The same goes for archeological sites like Mohenjo-Daro, located in the Indus Valley between Pakistan and Indian. Discovered in the 1850s the location was not even acknowledged until the 1920s, didn't obtain a World Heritage designation until the 1980s, and wasn't really excavated until the 1990s. Today it remains between 10-20% investigated. What's so fascinating about this city is that it is conceptually modern to our own cities, with most houses having bathrooms that, along with the city streets, were lined with drains and proper methods of sanitation. The problem is that Mohenjo-Daro is roughly over 5,000 years old! Investigating places like this indicate that ancient and modern civilization may have grown out of India, rather than Africa, and that doesn't fit any narrative. The same goes for institutional religion and general social developments.-FREE ARCHIVE & RSS: https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-secret-teachings Twitter: https://twitter.com/TST___Radio Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesecretteachings WEBSITE (BOOKS, RESUBSCRIBE for early show access): http://thesecretteachings.info Paypal: rdgable@yahoo.com CashApp: $rdgable EMAIL: rdgable@yahoo.com / TSTRadio@protonmail.com

Watch the bonus show w/ Praveen on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Praveen Mohan investigates the ancient megalithic structures of India, archeology, and extraterrestrial theory. Praveen has also been featured on History Channel's "Ancient Aliens". SPONSORS https://shopify.com/dannyjones - Sign up for a $1 per month trial period. https://meundies.com/dannyjones - Get 20% off your first order, plus free shipping. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off. EPISODE LINKS Praveen's YouTube channel: @RealPraveenMohan https://twitter.com/IamPraveenMohan https://www.instagram.com/PraveenET FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Blythe Intaglios & Nazca Lines 05:23 - Flying machines in ancient texts 11:21 - Ancient temple carvings 22:00 - U.S. vs. India 33:25 - Politics & news media 39:28 - Kailasa Temple 46:58 - How ancient Hindu temples are dated 53:53 - Rock-cut architecture 58:22 - Why Hindus worship cows 01:09:20 - Psychedelics & ancient religions 01:13:07 - Indus Valley mysteries 01:19:24 - Ancient atomic bomb 01:25:59 - Evidence for ancient machining in India 01:30:19 - Coral castle in Florida 01:38:36 - Ancient lathe machines 01:54:22 - Ancient alien reptiles in India 01:57:24 - Archeological evidence for Giants 02:08:25 - YouTube 02:17:22 - Alex Jones 02:31:36 - Birthrate crisis 02:40:32 - Jeff Bezos' space race 02:45:58 - 2024 presidential election 02:54:05 - Secrets of the Taj Mahal 03:06:58 - Praveen's travel schedule Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a short introduction to the wonderful history and benefits of Yoga with Andrea Ushananda Morava  (Prana Yoga Perth). Did you know Yoga is over 5000 years old in the Indus Valley civilisation? Did you know many refer to Yoga as the Science of the Mind? Did you know that 'the Physical Yoga, or Hatha Yoga, was primarily designed to facilitate the real practice of Yoga - namely, the understanding and complete mastery over the mind. So the actual meaning of Yoga is the Science of the Mind'.  Source - Introduction to The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - by Reverend Vidya Vonne, Satchindananda Ashram - Yogaville.  In this short podcast Andrea gives you more insight on this. For the full interview with Andrea go to https://youtu.be/M-oiywB9ZHc  

Today my guest is Sajith Pai, who is a partner at Blume Ventures and he is a long-time media executive turned VC. At Blume, Sajith supports investments in media, ed tech and e-commerce, while simultaneously helping Blume building a research and knowledge platform. We spoke about the 2024 Indus Valley Annual Report. written by Sajith and his co-authors, Anurag Pagaria, Nachammai Savithiri both at Blume Ventures; the many countries that make up the country of India; bifurcated between India1, 2, and 3; gross fixed capital formation, fintechs, the consumption led boom that India is experiencing, the space industry, and much more. Recorded June 25th, 2024. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links. Connect with Ideas of India Follow us on X Follow Shruti on X Follow Sajith on X Click here for the latest Ideas of India episodes sent straight to your inbox. Timestamps (00:00:00) - Intro (00:09:16) - Private Consumption and Fixed Capital Formation (00:14:15) - Gross Fixed Capital Formation (00:22:39) - Regime Uncertainty (00:26:51) - The Indian Consumer (00:35:10) - Bottlenecks and Reforms (00:42:18) - Mutual Funds Savings Model (00:47:33) - Path from Seed to IPO (00:55:40) - India's Foreign Investors (01:00:57) - India's Fintechs (01:11:09) - Space Tech in India (01:17:36) - What's on Pai's Bookshelf? (01:23:39) - Outro

“I think the biggest takeaway for me has to be about the storytelling bit of it and how important it is to tell a story. And I think I will not even take the credit for it. I will give most of the credit to Sajith because of driving the whole process, right? If you look at him, he has done it three times. So the driving of the story, how do you tell a story? What is the story? What are you trying to answer? All of those things are something that I learned along the way.”  - Anurag P, Blume VenturesIn this episode, we speak with Anurag Pagaria and Nachammai Savithri (or NS), co-authors of the Indus Valley Annual Report 2024.The Indus Valley Annual Report (now in its 3rd year of publication) by VC firm Blume Ventures offers the most definitive story of the vibrant Indian startup ecosystem. Several decades later when historians study the origin of this phenomenon during this crucial period in India's economic history, I have no doubt that the Indus Valley reports would be among their go-to sourcesWhile the report's authorship is led by the inimitable Sajith Pai, I thought it would be useful to speak to the folks who would have done the bulk of the research and creation work for the deck. (Incidentally I have already interviewed Sajith on this podcast earlier – a must listen episode).So in this conversation, Anurag and NS get into the weeds of how they picked key themes for covering in the report, how they went across the research process, how the draft storylines were crafted, the review and refinement process for the narrative and finally the visual element in creating the deck.Several fascinating takeaways for students of data-storytelling emerge from the episode:- Simple tools work for research and retrieval: The three of them just used basic G-Suite tools for the project- Leading with the story: Once a reasonable amount of data for a theme/sector was collected, the first step was to create a skeleton storyline and refine it before making the slides- Connecting the dots: The team would not look at sectors in silos. Instead connections were made between similar patterns across sectors and geographies- Following Data Storytelling basics: Clear messages on top of slides, connecting messages across slides, using transition slides between sections-  Simple visuals: No fancy graphics and charts – just simple column, bar and line charts to explain the message in the easiest way possible- Using engagement elements: Evocative images, tweets and quotes from credible people to make the content engaging for the general readerI am sure you will derive a lot of value from this in-depth conversation.Let's dive in.Show Notes:- My post analysing the storytelling techniques used in the report - Steve Jobs Interview – on the importance of story at Pixar: - Sajith Pai on Story Rules Podcast- Anurag on Twitter and LinkedIn- Nachammai Savithri on LinkedIn- Blume website, Twitter and YouTube

This is the Catch Up on 3 Things for the Indian Express and I'm Flora Swain.It's the 4th of April and here are today's headlines.Some of the significant changes introduced by the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) in the history chapter meant for Class 12 students on the origins and fall of the Harappan civilisation. Example: Assertion that recent studies of ancient DNA were obtained from archaeological sources at Rakhigarhi, an Indus Valley site in Haryana, ruling out Aryan immigration to a call for more research into whether the Harappans and the Vedic people were the same. These changes are part of the revision and updating of history textbooks undertaken by NCERT for the academic year 2024-25, which were recently communicated to the Central Board of Secondary Education.A day after he was expelled from the party for six years for indiscipline and anti-party statements, former Mumbai Congress president Sanjay Nirupam today launched a scathing attack against the party. He said its “outdated” leaders have lost touch with ground reality and it was a party with “no future left”.vWhile Nirupam chose to attack “Nehruvian secularism” and the “Leftist circle” around the Congress leadership, he also expressed displeasure over the party denying him a ticket from the Mumbai North West Lok Sabha constituency.Former Congress national spokesperson Gourav Vallabh, who quit the party earlier in the day, joined the BJP in New Delhi. Former Bihar Congress president Anil Sharma also joined the BJP in the presence of its national general secretary Vinod Tawde. Quitting the Congress, Vallabh, who represented the party on several TV debates, said of late, he had found himself uncomfortable with several stands taken by the party. He further alleged that the Congress party is moving in the wrong direction, against the “basic principles of the party.” Gourav Vallabh had contested the Rajasthan assembly election from Udaipur constituency in 2023.The Catholic Bishops' Conference of India (CBCI) made major suggestions to all educational institutions under its jurisdiction to help address “emerging challenges due to the current socio-cultural, religious, and political situation” in the country. These are: Respect all faiths and traditions, don't force Christian traditions on students of other religions, have students recite the Preamble to the Constitution during the daily morning Assembly, and set up an “inter-religious prayer room” on school premises. The CBCI is the apex decision-making body representing the Catholic community in India.Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Ali Sabry reportedly told a local news channel that Sri Lanka does not see any need to re-open talks on a contentious island, called Katchatheevu, ceded to it by New Delhi 50 years ago. Meanwhile, former Sri Lankan envoy to India Austin Fernando, while speaking with The Indian Express said if the Indian government crosses the Sri Lankan maritime international boundary line, it would be seen as a “violation of Sri Lankan sovereignty”.This was the Catch-Up on the 3 Things by The Indian Express.

The full written version of the episode can be found further below. Please, also, enjoy a short recording of the Regina Caeli chant by Will Wright at the beginning of the episode. Happy Easter!SummaryIn this episode, Will Wright discusses the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He emphasizes the importance of understanding what it means for something to be historical and provides an overview of different historical periods. Wright then presents several proofs for the resurrection, including the empty tomb, post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, and the transformation of the disciples. He also highlights the significance of early Christian creeds and the continuity of belief in the resurrection throughout history. Wright concludes by emphasizing the need for faith and reason to work together in understanding the truth of the resurrection.Takeaways- The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a historical event supported by multiple proofs, including the empty tomb, post-resurrection appearances, and the transformation of the disciples.- Early Christian creeds attest to the reality of the resurrection and demonstrate the continuity of belief throughout history.- Understanding the historical context and the lack of alternative explanations further strengthens the evidence for the resurrection.- Faith and reason are not in conflict but work together to support the truth of the resurrection.Chapters:00:00: Introduction and Podcast Promotion01:38: Understanding History03:40: Classical Period and Roman Historians05:08: Medieval and Modern Periods05:38: Historical Evidence for the New Testament06:47: Reliability of the Gospels09:00: Levels of Knowing09:30: Proofs for the Resurrection: Empty Tomb11:49: Proofs for the Resurrection: Post-Resurrection Appearances12:55: Proofs for the Resurrection: Transformation of the Disciples19:32: Proofs for the Resurrection: Historical Context20:54: Conclusion and Importance of the Resurrection23:13: Call to Action and Podcast PromotionFull Written Transcript:What is Historical?Humanity has practiced stewardship and dominion over the Earth for many millennia. However, recorded History is relatively new. Five thousand or so years ago in Mesopotamia, we have archaeological evidence of cave paintings and other artifacts that indicate a culture of storytelling. Oral traditions were the primary means of the historical record in the prehistoric period. This is, of course, why we refer to that time as “prehistoric.”In the Ancient Period, the record became more extensive and we started to see written content from Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Mesoamerica, and the Indus Valley. The texts are legal documents, religious documents, poetry, and other items related to political, social, and cultural life. In the Classical Period, the Greeks and Romans left a great deal of historical accounts, works of philosophy, legal writings, and works of literature. The historical record at this time is significant. One of the most famous Roman historians is Titus Livus, known as Livy. He was born around 60 B.C. and wrote during the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. Over his life, he wrote an astounding 142 books. Today, however, we only have about 35 of these books. The most famous Roman Historian during the time of Christ is Tacitus. He wrote two main works: “Histories” and “Annals.” Histories had 16 books, of which we only have 1 - 6 in their entirety and parts of books 11 - 16. Annals had either 12 or 14 books, of which we have 1 - 4 and parts of book 5. These partial volumes are essential historical sources and one of the most significant sources for understanding Roman history and politics.In the Medieval Period, the historical record was preserved in chronicles, charters, religious texts, and legal records. And in the Modern Period, following the invention of the printing press, the historical record became abundant. In the age of the Internet, the amount of written and published material has increased at an exponential rate.  For the New Testament, the works are situated in the Classical Period, so we should apply the scrutiny appropriate to that period. There are multiple codices from the 4th and 5th Centuries which contain most of the Old and New Testaments in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic. These codices provide abundant historical evidence for the consistency of biblical writings. If there were major changes in the texts, then we would expect a codex in one location to be vastly different from a codex in another location, especially after four hundred years. Instead, we find that the extant copies of the manuscripts of the Bible are consistent, one to the other. And… and this should not be understated… we have them! We have far more manuscripts of Sacred Scripture than we do of Livy or Tacitus. And, yet, the historical reliability of the latter are rarely questioned by modern scholars. The reality is that the Gospels, especially, are historically reliable. The Gospel writers were eyewitnesses who wrote shortly after the recorded events. The apostles followed Jesus and lived with Him for three years, receiving daily teachings. They lived in the Classical Period in which oral tradition was exceptionally important and when memorization skills were top notch. The apostles likely made written notes while traveling with Jesus, as well. Further, it is clear that the Gospel writers intended to write reliable history. And we can show that they did, in fact, write reliable history.To learn more about the reality of the reliability of the Gospels, I highly recommend reading more at Catholic Answers on The Reliability of the Gospels by Karlo Broussard.Three Levels of KnowingI am not suggesting that the proofs of the Resurrection of Jesus that I am about to run through are “slam dunks.” What we are showing is akin to the Five Ways of St. Thomas Aquinas - they are converging and convincing arguments. I do not think that any one of these proofs will suffice to convert an atheist. However, the evidence is nonetheless historically formidable. There are three levels of knowing and discussing the things of God. First, we have to answer the question: Does God exist? If yes, then we move to step two. Second, we answer: Is Jesus God? If yes, then we move to three. Third, we answer: Is the Catholic Church the Church that Jesus founded? And, of course, the answer is yes. What we are about to investigate presumes the existence of God and speaks to both the second and third level. The Resurrection shows us the Divinity of Jesus and its truth is demonstrated and handed down through the testimony of the Church.  Proofs of the Resurrection of JesusNow, onto the proof for the Resurrection of Jesus.Empty TombThe unanimous testimony of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) is that the tomb of Jesus was discovered as empty on the third day after the crucifixion. The tomb being empty is unexpected. Jesus was laid in the tomb on Friday because the Sabbath was quickly approaching. On the Sabbath, the Jewish people are forbidden from doing anything laborious. Removing the body of Jesus certainly would have constituted work. There is the possibility that Jesus' body was stolen, but this is unlikely as well. Those who put Jesus to death were concerned of theft because they did not want a martyred “ghost” to continue making trouble. They, therefore, set Roman guards at the entrance of the tomb to stop this from happening. No rabble would be able to overtake Roman soldiers without raising notice and possibly starting a war. Post-Resurrection Appearances:In the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, Jesus appeared multiple times to different individuals and groups: the pair on the road to Emmaus, Mary Magdalene at the tomb, the apostles in the Upper Room, on the seashore, and then prior to the Ascension. He also appeared to the incredulous St. Thomas as well as to St. Paul on the road to Damascus. Most of the post-resurrection appearances are reported in the texts of early Christians and followers of Jesus; so, we have to be aware of bias and theological interpretation. Perhaps the appearances were a shared vision or spiritual experience rather than a physical resurrection. However, this does not explain the next proof: the utter transformative effect the Resurrection had on the disciples. Transformation of the DisciplesBefore the crucifixion the apostles, with the exception of St. John, were huddled in fear in the Upper Room. After the Resurrection, multiple encounters with the Risen Jesus, the Ascension, and Pentecost, the disciples were transformed. Proclamations became bold and tenacious rather than fearful and disillusioned. The willingness to endure persecution and martyrdom can be partly explained by the reality of the Resurrection. The transformation and testimony of St. Paul is particularly prominent because he persecuted Christians and put them to death prior to His encounter with the Risen Christ. Many who are critical of this line of thinking will say that there are other psychological or sociological factors that could explain the change of behavior and belief. However, I cannot imagine that these factors would explain the persistence of the early Church in their conviction in the face of persecution and martyrdom. All but one of the apostles, in traditional understanding, died as martyrs. You do not die for some spiritual experience, some after isolation and torture. You die for the Risen Christ who is truly risen. Early Christian CreedsThe early Christian creeds attest to the Resurrection, including the writing of St. Paul to the Church in Corinth:3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Cor. 15:3-8)Of course the Apostles' Creed attests the Resurrection, as does the Athanasian Creed and the later Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. These creeds remind us that the historical reality of the Resurrection is paramount to the veracity of Catholicism. If we found the bones of Jesus, we would rightly leave the Faith entirely.Critics of this view will say that these creeds do not prove the Resurrection, they only prove that the early Church believed in the Resurrection. Fair enough. But this is only one aspect of the proofs for the Resurrection.Historical ContextAt the time, the concept of bodily resurrection was not part of Jewish thought. So, hearing that Jesus had risen from the dead, the Romans could simply produce Jesus' body to quell any rumors amongst the early Christians. Again, the tomb was guarded by a Roman guard, which would not be easily and quietly overtaken. Continuity with Christian TraditionThe Resurrection as a real, historical event has been held by Christians from the apostles until now. Evidence of the reality of the Resurrection is thus further strengthened by consistent tradition. Tradition is not direct evidence of the Resurrection itself, but it does show a persistence in the belief.The Resurrection of Jesus is a True EventWhen weighed individually, each of these proofs can be dismissed. But when taken together, the preponderance is more powerful. The reality is that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is a true event. Ultimately, this evidence does not prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus rose from the dead. If it was, then our free will would be overtaken. God always reveals Himself to those who seek and promises answers to those who question. But for those who do not seek, then they will not find. For those who do not ask questions, they will receive no answers. The evidence that God does give us is overwhelming - for Himself, for the divinity of Jesus, for the truth of the Church, and, yes, for the bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ on the third day.Happy Easter! Christ is Risen! Indeed, He is Risen!Good Distinctions is a listener and reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber at GoodDistinctions.com Get full access to Good Distinctions at www.gooddistinctions.com/subscribe

"And he gave a very (interesting) thought experiment. He said, go to your Facebook, remove all your school friends, remove all your relatives, remove all your college friends, work friends. And, if you're able to get 10 people after removing all of this, then probably you're lucky. Okay. I think that had a very profound impact to say that, you know… It was true, right? You know, because all the people that I knew, we're all from the same college, same school, same town, blah, blah, right? You know, you would never have like a Swiggy delivery executive as a part of your Facebook friend list, right? You would never have someone who is a farmer as a part of your WhatsApp contact list, right? Which means that, you know, our worldviews are generally also limited, right? So research allows you to break away from that and meet other people and gives you an opportunity to learn about their stories."Welcome to the Story Rules podcast with me, Ravishankar Iyer, where we learn from some of the best storytellers in the world, find their story, and unearth the secrets of their craft.Today we speak with Dharmesh Ba, a behavioural researcher who writes the popular India Notes newsletter and is the founder of 1990 Research Labs.I came across Dharmesh through leading India-based VC Sajith Pai – who dubbed him as ‘Indus Valley's chief anthropologist' (though Dharmesh prefers the term ‘ethnographer').In simpler terms, Dharmesh is an expert on the art and craft of understanding user behavior and motivations, through detailed personal interviews - so that we can design better products and services. Why is this important? I remember an interview from Oct-2019 of Kalyan Krishnamurthy, the CEO of Flipkart, where he stated the importance of this task. His key point: The e-commerce puzzle had been solved for the top-tier users in the country – the top 8 cities. But for the vast middle and bottom tiers, product managers would need to completely reimagine every aspect of the product from the ground up. They can only do that by a comprehensive understanding of user behaviour in their context and environment.Dharmesh and his team are among the ones at the forefront of this initiative – to understand user behaviour. Their clients include leading corporates and non-profits which are building products and services for these hundreds of millions of aspiring Indians… and Dharmesh and team are doing the critical and under-appreciated task of deeply understanding their world.They do this through in-depth, well-researched and structured conversations with the users. There's a lot of science and craft that Dharmesh uses to ensure that the interviewee trusts him and is willing to share the true reasons for their choices. We will learn about them in this podcast conversation.And while we will learn about interviewing techniques, analysis approaches, and presentation tips, the overarching message I could glean after speaking with Dharmesh was – be curious, empathetic, and respectful.It's a must-listen conversation for anyone keen on conducting detailed user interviews, analysing the responses, and coming up with clear recommendations – for product design, research, employee well-being – multiple use cases.Let's dive in.Show Notes:Dharmesh on LinkedIn and TwitterLink Tree with most popular links and work by DharmeshIndia Notes Newsletter

This week on Puliyabaazi, listen in as Saurabh Chandra shares his words of advice about start-ups and entrepreneurship. How to evaluate your start-up idea? What are the ways to raise funding? When not to start-up? Listen in, and if you have any questions, do send them to us! ये स्टार्ट-अप क्या होता है? अपने स्टार्ट-अप आईडिया को कैसे परखा जाए, फंडिंग इक्कट्ठा कैसे करें, स्टार्ट-अप कब ना करें। इस हफ़्ते पुलियाबाज़ी पर सुनिए सौरभ चंद्रा से उनके स्टार्ट-अप अनुभव की कहानी।  *****   related Puliyabaazi   ***** स्टार्टअप वादी. Indus Valley of the Information Age ft. Sajith Pai  वेंचर कैपिटल : क्या, क्यों, और कैसे. Venture Capital in India ft. Kushal Bhagia ***************** Website: https://puliyabaazi.in Write to us at puliyabaazi@gmail.com  Hosts: @saurabhchandra @pranaykotas @thescribblebee Guest: @iamthedrifter    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 app.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

EPISODE 103 | Down in Bermuda, It's Easy to Believe – The Devil's Triangle Back in the 70s, the Bermuda Triangle was all over the place but today, not so much. Whatever happened with that? Did it go away? Was it debunked? Or did the woosphere simply get bored and move on to juicer subjects?  A bit of both. Plus, the are lots of other supposed interesting/mysterious/dangerous triangles out there. They do have sharp corners, after all.  Like what we do? Then buy us a beer or three via our page on Buy Me a Coffee. #ConspiracyClearinghouse #sharingiscaring #donations #support #buymeacoffee You can also SUBSCRIBE to this podcast. Review us here or on IMDb! SECTIONS 02:29 - New Frontier - How it all starts: Edward Van Winkle Jones gets the ball rolling in 1950, Allan W. Eckert picks it up in 1952, Vincent Gaddis expands the idea in 1962, as does John Wallace Spencer in 1969, and in 1974, Charles Berlitz and Richard Winer go all in on the Triangle; Larry Kusche thoroughly debunks it all in 1975, Hitchens' Razor and the Sagan Standard (ECREE) 11:31 - Strange Brew - Cayce's people weigh in as do plenty of other knowledge garglers, better woo comes along, Lloyds of London investigates, Gian J. Quasar tries to revive Triangle interest in the Noughties 15:17 - Your Haunted Head - The Sargasso Sea - an oceanic gyre surrounded by four currents, Donald Crowhurst gets stuck there and goes insane 19:36 - Long Way Down - Ocean farts, the Gulf Stream, the Milwaukee Deep, the agonic line and the North Poles (both true and magnetic) 24:59 - Hunting High and Low - The Dragon's Triangle near Japan, Ivan Sanderson develops his Twelve Vile Vortices theory: 27:31 - "Hamkulia Volcano", Hawaii; the Ring of Fire 29:14 - Jeddars in the Atlas Mountains, Algeria; fungoid rock art in the Tassili n'Ajjer  29:57 - Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley, ancient nuclear war, chicken city 34:00 - The Wharton Basin, Indian Ocean, Flight MH370 34:44 - The Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia; Sandy Island 35:52 - Easter Island, Rapa Nui,  Szukalski's Zermatism, Miroljub Petrović 37:26 - The Southern Atlantic Anomaly, the Mozambique Channel  38:22 - Fever to Tell - Ley lines, Ramsey's Theorem, the Bridgewater Triangle near Boston (home of the  Pukwudgie), the Bennington Triangle in Vermont, the Nevada Triangle, the Lake Michigan Triangle and yet another "America's Stonehenge" 41:45 - The Marysburgh Vortex in Lake Ontario, the Matlock Triangle and Falkirk Triangle in the UK, the Broad Haven Triangle in Wales, the Hoia Forest in Romania 42:47 - The Mapimí Silent Zone in Mexico's Chihuahuan desert  Music by Fanette Ronjat More Info Sea's Puzzles Still Baffle Men In Pushbutton Age by Edward Van Winkle Jones, Miami Herland, 1950 Sea Mystery at our Back Door by George X. Sand, Fate Magazine, 1952 The Mystery of the Lost Patrol by Allan W. Eckert, American Legion Magazine, April 1962, page 12 The Deadly Bermuda Triangle by Vincent Gaddis, The Argosy, February 1964 Invisible Horizons True Mysteries of the Sea by Vincent Gaddis Limbo of the Lost by John Wallace Spencer The Bermuda Triangle by Charles Berlitz The Devils' Triangle by Richard Winer The Devil's Triangle 2 by Richard Winer From the Devil's Triangle to the Devil's Jaw by Richard Winer Bermuda Triangle Mystery - Solved by Larry Kusche The Case of the Bermuda Triangle episode of NOVA What is the Bermuda Triangle? on the National Oceanic Service website Bermuda Triangle on Britannica What Is Known (and Not Known) About the Bermuda Triangle on Britannica Bermuda Triangle: Where Facts Disappear on LiveScience Into the Bermuda Triangle: Pursuing the Truth Behind the World's Greatest Mystery by Gian Quasar Mysteries of the Sargasso Sea in The Bermudian The Mystery on the Sargasso on How Stuff Works Donald Crowhurst: The fake round-the-world sailing story behind The Mercy in Yachting World They Went to Sea in a Sieve, They Did by Shannon Proudfoot on Big Reads Off the Deep End: A History of Madness at Sea by Nic Compton Bermuda Triangle mystery solved? It's a load of gas on The Age 7 Chilling Conspiracy Theories About the Bermuda Triangle in Popular Mechanics Down in the Milwaukee Deep  Magnetic Declination Varies Considerably Across The United States on USGS The Bermuda Triangle Mystery Delusion: Looking Back after Forty Years by Larry Kuche for Skeptical Inquirer Mysterious waters: from the Bermuda Triangle to the Devil's Sea on CNN Beyond the Bermuda Triangle: The Devil's Sea documentary video Unexplained Mystery: The Devil's Sea – The Dragon's Triangle on Marine Insight The Vile Vortices Of Ivan T. Sanderson on History Daily Vile Vortices Part 2 – Hamakulia on CryptoVille Algeria's ancient pyramid tombs still shrouded in mystery on France24 What Happened to Mohenjo Daro? on Wonderopolis Rediscovering the lost city of Mohenjo Daro on National Geographic Uncovering the Secrets of the Indus Valley Civilization and Its Undeciphered Script The Mythical Massacre at Mohenjo-Daro Top Things to Do in the Loyalty Islands Now You See It, Now You Don't - Finland Doesn't Exist episode The Secrets of Easter Island on Smithsonian Easter Island - the Mystery of the Moai on Mountain Kingdoms Rapa Nui on IMDb What Lies Beneath - The Hollow Earth episode including Zermatism Weird behavior of Earth's magnetic field over South Atlantic dates back 11 million years NASA Is Tracking a Huge, Growing Anomaly in Earth's Magnetic Field  10 Mozambique Channel Facts You Might Not Know Madagascar's Menagerie Floated from Africa from the University of Hong Kong It Happens Here: A look at the 'weirdness' of the Bridgewater Triangle Bennington Triangle, Vermont on Legends of America Mysteries of Flight: The Nevada Triangle Lake Michigan Triangle on Atlas Obscura What Is the Great Lakes Triangle? classroom activity Stonehenge-like Structure Found Under Lake Michigan ‘Strange things out there': Inside Lake Ontario's ‘Bermuda Triangle' The Great Lakes and the mystery of the Marysburgh Vortex Gateway to Oblivion: The Great Lakes' Bermuda Triangle by Hugh F. Cochrane The Falkirk Triangle in Scotland Why Is a Small Village in Scotland the UK's UFO Hotspot? What's inside Hoia Baciu Forest, the world's most haunted forest? Romania's Bermuda Triangle: The Creepy Hoia Forest of Transylvania What does the Mexican Bermuda Triangle look like Enter The Mapimi Zone Of Silence: Where Science Fiction Meets Reality The Zone of Silence in Northern Mexico: scientific marvel or just fiction? Zone Of Silence Mexico video Mexico: UFOs, magnetism, army: The strange zone of silence Follow us on social: Facebook Twitter Other Podcasts by Derek DeWitt DIGITAL SIGNAGE DONE RIGHT - Winner of a 2022 Gold Quill Award, 2022 Gold MarCom Award, 2021 AVA Digital Award Gold, 2021 Silver Davey Award, 2020 Communicator Award of Excellence, and on numerous top 10 podcast lists.  PRAGUE TIMES - A city is more than just a location - it's a kaleidoscope of history, places, people and trends. This podcast looks at Prague, in the center of Europe, from a number of perspectives, including what it is now, what is has been and where it's going. It's Prague THEN, Prague NOW, Prague LATER

This Podcast is a continuation of “GENGHIS KHAN and Mongols PART 1”. In this episode, we dive into Genghis Khan's (PART 2) conquests across Chinese dynasties, Central Asia, Khwarezmian Empire, Georgia, Rus princes, the Battle of Indus Valley, and the Kalka River and many more. Why didn't he invade India ? We talk about his ruthless Mongol army. We Explore his mysterious death, and separate fact from fiction in the myths surrounding him.

In today's episode, you will learn a series of vocabulary words that are connected to a specific topic. This lesson will help you improve your ability to speak English fluently about a specific topic. It will also help you feel more confident in your English abilities.5 Vocabulary Words Related to the topicCivilization (noun): the stage of human development and organization marked by the creation and advancement of complex societies. Example sentences: Ancient Mesopotamia is believed to be one of the earliest cradles of civilization.We read about the Indus Valley civilization which flourished around 2500 BCE.The Mayan civilization left behind amazing architectural and cultural structures.Revolution (noun): a sudden, radical, or complete change, often referring to political or social upheaval. Example sentences: The French Revolution had a huge impact on Europe.The Industrial Revolution transformed many societies.The Cuban Revolution led to the establishment of a government based on socialism.Colonization (noun): the process of establishing settlements in a new territory, often involving the control or dominance of the indigenous population. Example sentences: European powers engaged in extensive colonization in the past.The colonization of America resulted in the displacement and marginalization of Native American populations.The British colonization of India had widespread economic and political consequences.Imperialism (noun): a policy or practice of extending a nation's power and influence through territorial acquisition or economic dominance. Example sentences: The Scramble for Africa was a period of intense European imperialism in the latter part of the 19th century.The teacher told the students how important it was for them to understand imperialism.Imperialism played an important role in shaping global power dynamics in the past.Nationalism (noun): a strong sense of loyalty and devotion to one's own nation or ethnic group, often accompanied by the belief in its superiority. Example sentences: The rise of nationalism in the 19th century contributed to the formation of new sovereign states in Europe.Nationalism can have many good and bad effects on societies.The concept of self-determination is closely associated with nationalism.A Paragraph using the 5 vocabulary wordsFrom the birth of advanced societies to major societal changes, the history of the world is filled with stories of exploration, conquest, and cultural pride. Ancient Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley saw the rise of impressive city-states, while the Mayan civilization left behind remarkable architectural marvels. Revolutions like the French and Industrial transformed nations, while colonization and imperialism shaped global dynamics. The strong sense of loyalty and devotion to one's nation, known as nationalism, played an important role in the formation of independent states. These interconnected themes reveal the triumphs and challenges of humanity throughout history.If you want to sign up for the free daily English vocabulary newsletter, go towww.dailyenglishvocabulary.com

Vor mehr als 4000 Jahren entsteht im Industal eine der ersten Zivilisationen der Geschichte. Aus dem Nebel der Geschichte erheben sich über tausend Siedlungen und mehrere große Städte mit monumentalen Mauern, genauestens geplanten Stadtvierteln und ausgeklügelten Abwassersystemen. Klar ist, dass nur eine hochkomplexe Kultur und Gesellschaft derartiges erschaffen konnte. Doch ihre Geheimnisse warten bis heute darauf, gänzlich entschlüsselt zu werden. Darunter fällt die Frage, wer über die Städte herrschte, welche Götter die Menschen anbeteten, nach Krieg und Frieden, nach der mysteriösen Indus-Schrift und schließlich nach dem Ende der Hochkultur am Indus...........WERBUNGDu willst dir die Rabatte unserer Werbepartner sichern? Hier geht's zu den Angeboten!........Das Folgenbild zeigt die Ruinen von Mohenjo-Daro mit dem Großen Bad; der buddhistische Stupa auf dem Hügel-Komplex entstand später.........NEU!! Jetzt His2Go unterstützen für tolle Vorteile, über Acast+ oder Steady.Werde His2Go Hero oder His2Go Legend: https://plus.acast.com/s/his2go-geschichte-podcast.Werde auch ohne Kreditkarte His2Go Hero oder His2Go Legend: steadyhq.com/his2go.........LITERATURKenoyer JM. The Indus Civilisation. In: Renfrew C, Bahn P (Hrsg.): The Cambridge World Prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2014.Parpola, Asko: The Roots of Hinduism. The Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization, New York 2016.Dyson, Tim: The First Modern People. A Population History of India: From the First Modern People to the Present Day, Oxford 2018 (Vor allem Kap. 2).Coningham, Robin: The Archaeology of South Asia. From the Indus to Asoka, c. 6500 BCE- 200 CE, New York 2015.Manuel, M. .Chronology and Culture-History in the Indus Valley. In: P. Gunawardhana, G. Adikari, & R. Coningham (Hrsg.): Sirinimal Lakdusinghe Felicitation Volume (145-152), Neptune 2010..........UNTERSTÜTZUNGIhr könnt uns dabei unterstützen, weiterhin jeden 10., 20. und 30. des Monats eine Folge zu veröffentlichen!Folgt und bewertet uns bei Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Podimo, Instagram, Twitter oder über eure Lieblings-Podcastplattformen.Wir freuen uns über euer Feedback, Input und Vorschläge zum Podcast, die ihr uns über das Kontaktformular auf der Website, Instagram und unsere Feedback E-Mail: kontakt@his2go.de schicken könnt. An dieser Stelle nochmals vielen Dank an jede einzelne Rückmeldung, die uns bisher erreicht hat und uns sehr motiviert..........COPYRIGHTMusic from https://filmmusic.io: “Sneaky Snitch” by Kevin MacLeod and "Plain Loafer" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY !Neu! Jetzt hier His2Go unterstützen, Themen mitbestimmen und Quiz2Go mit Moderatorin Chiara erleben! https://plus.acast.com/s/his2go-geschichte-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMaT1tvnXTc https://www.academia.edu/41037063/OUT_OF_INDIA_-_BY_LAND_OR_BY_SEA_A_Paradigm_Shift_in_Ancient_Migration_Theories_2019_New_Delhi OVERVIEW Based on archaeogenetic, archaeolinguistic and archaeological data, this hypothesis proposes that over an extended period of time, between 8,500 and 3,350 years ago, large segments of the urban, agricultural, river-faring and seafaring population of the northwest delta (the Indus Valley) of the Indian subcontinent left their homeland in migratory waves. They were driven by: (a) a natural human inclination to "look for other shores", (b) a number of large natural catastrophes and the various diseases that resulted from them. These multiple group migrations went into three main directions, following 3 distinct routes. 1. Migrations by sea and partially over land along the coasts to coastal European lands through the Red Sea to the Mediterranean lands (including northern Africa), and subsequently via the Strait of Gibraltar to the North Sea's coastal lands, and from there to the Scandinavian and Baltic Sea 2. Migrations overland within India to north, north east, central and southern Indian regions, where, over time, the migrants merged with existing populations and cultures. Shore hugging sea migration also took place around India's mainland coasts. 3. Further east oversea, via Ceylon, etc. to coastal and central Asia, via the Indonesian archipellago to Australia, and via the Pacific Ocean's archipelagos to the Americas. #2023 #art #music #movies #poetry #poem #food #photooftheday #volcano #news #weather #monkeys #climate #horse #puppy #fyp #love #instagood #onelove #eyes #getyoked #horsie #gotmilk #book #shecomin #getready

Tonight, we'll read about the Persian empire at the zenith of its expansion from the book “The Retreat of the Ten Thousand” by Carl Witt, published in 1896. The ancient Persian or Iranian empire was the largest empire the world had ever seen at its time, spanning from the Balkans and Egypt in the west to Central Asia and the Indus Valley in the east. In the modern era, this empire has been recognized for its imposition of a successful model of centralized, bureaucratic administration; its multicultural policy; building complex infrastructure, such as road systems and an organized postal system; the use of official languages across its territories; and the development of civil services. — read by 'V' — Sign up for Snoozecast+ to get expanded, ad-free access by going to snoozecast.com/plus!

While Cyrus the Great built the Persian Empire from the ground up, his successors expanded it until the new state stretched from the Indus Valley of Pakistan to the Upper Nile, Kazakhstan to the Aegean, the Balkans to the Hindu Kush. This new Persia was built not just to expand through conquest but to endure, becoming an empire that would last for 200 years.Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWverge. And check out Patrick's new podcast The Pursuit of Dadliness! It's all about “Dad Culture,” and Patrick will interview some fascinating guests about everything from tall wooden ships to smoked meats to comfortable sneakers to history, sports, culture, and politics. https://bit.ly/PWtPoDListen to new episodes 1 week early, to exclusive seasons 1 and 2, and to all episodes ad free with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ for exclusives, binges, early access, and ad free listening. Available in the Wondery App https://wondery.app.link/tidesofhistorySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Harappan civilisation, also known as the Indus Valley civilisation, was an ancient urban civilisation that thrived in the Indus River valley in South Asia around 4000 years ago. Known for its well-planned cities, advanced drainage systems, and incredible culture - it played an integral role in ancient History. But with a script that still remains undeciphered to this day - what do we actually know about the Harappan civilisation?In this episode, Tristan welcomes archaeologist Disha Ahluwalia to the podcast to talk about her work and research surrounding the Harappan. Looking at the archaeological evidence, their appearances in other cultures, and the legacy left behind at Rakhigarhi- who were the Harappan, and how did they influence the course of history?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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we dive into the murky waters of the Gulf of Khambat to unravel the myths and controversies surrounding the alleged sunken city of Dwarka—exploring its cultural significance, scrutinizing archaeological methods, and debunking claims that link it to extraterrestrial beings and ancient civilizations older than the Indus Valley.Go watch Angela's videos on YouTube.Get new episodes early on Nebula!Subscribe to It's Probably (not) Aliens for weekly episodes about cool ancient history! And give us a 5-star review if you have the time. It would really help us out!Tristan Johnson Twitter | YouTubeScott Niswander Twitter | YouTubeFollow the show on Twitter for more updates!Ask us questions and send us topics to talk about at ProbsNotAliens.comMusic by Rod Kim | Cover art by SkutchSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the years that followed Alexander the Great's victory at Gaugamela on October 1, 331 BC, his Macedonian and Greek army fought a truly ‘Herculean' series of campaigns in what is today Iran, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. But it was in the Indus Valley, on the banks of the Hydaspes River (known today as the Jhelum) in 326 BC that Alexander would fight his last major battle against King Poros.Alexander used feints and deception to transport a select force from his army across the swollen River Hydaspes without attracting the enemy's attention, allowing his troops the crucial element of surprise. There was a fascinating array of forces that clashed in the battle, including Indian war elephants and chariots, and horse archers and phalanx formations. Although a tactical masterpiece, the Hydaspes was the closest that Alexander the Great came to defeat, and was one of the costliest battles fought by his near- exhausted army. To examine this battle is today's guest, Nic Fields, author of “The Hydaspes 326 BC: The Limit of Alexander the Great's Conquests.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/3101278/advertisement

VOTE FOR THE THREE RAVENS PODCAST IN THE BRITISH PODCAST AWARDS HERE: https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/votingIn this Bonus Episode, Martin and Eleanor talk about the surprising history and folklore of Unicorns.Part of the new "Three Ravens Bestiary" series, they discuss the historical evidence of unicorns from Ancient Babylon, Persepolis and the Indus Valley before digging into the ways unicorns have been differently depicted through Ancient Greek writings, the Bible, Medieval tapestries, Scottish nationalism, and the modern-day LGBTQIA+ movement.Learn more about The Three Ravens Podcast at www.threeravenspodcast.com and join our Patreon at www.patreon.com/threeravenspodcast. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nelumbo nucifera, or the sacred lotus, is a plant that grows in flood plains, rivers, and deltas. Their seeds can remain dormant for years and when floods come along, blossom into a colony of plants and flowers. Some of the oldest seeds can be found in China, where they're known to represent longevity. No surprise, given their level of nitrition and connection to the waters that irrigated crops by then. They also grow in far away lands, all the way to India and out to Australia. The flower is sacred in Hinduism and Buddhism, and further back in ancient Egypt. Padmasana is a Sanskrit term meaning lotus, or Padma, and Asana, or posture. The Pashupati seal from the Indus Valley civilization shows a diety in what's widely considered the first documented yoga pose, from around 2,500 BCE. 2,700 years later (give or take a century), the Hindu author and mystic Patanjali wrote a work referred to as the Yoga Sutras. Here he outlined the original asanas, or sitting yoga poses. The Rig Veda, from around 1,500 BCE, is the oldest currently known Vedic text. It is also the first to use the word “yoga”. It describes songs, rituals, and mantras the Brahmans of the day used - as well as the Padma. Further Vedic texts explore how the lotus grew out of Lord Vishnu with Brahma in the center. He created the Universe out of lotus petals. Lakshmi went on to grow out of a lotus from Vishnu as well. It was only natural that humans would attempt to align their own meditation practices with the beautiful meditatios of the lotus. By the 300s, art and coins showed people in the lotus position. It was described in texts that survive from the 8th century. Over the centuries contradictions in texts were clarified in a period known as Classical Yoga, then Tantra and and Hatha Yoga were developed and codified in the Post-Classical Yoga age, and as empires grew and India became a part of the British empire, Yoga began to travel to the west in the late 1800s. By 1893, Swami Vivekananda gave lectures at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago.  More practicioners meant more systems of yoga. Yogendra brought asanas to the United States in 1919, as more Indians migrated to the United States. Babaji's kriya yoga arrived in Boston in 1920. Then, as we've discussed in previous episodes, the United States tightened immigration in the 1920s and people had to go to India to get more training. Theos Bernard's Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience brought some of that knowledge home when he came back in 1947. Indra Devi opened a yoga studio in Hollywood and wrote books for housewives. She brought a whole system, or branch home. Walt and Magana Baptiste opened a studio in San Francisco. Swamis began to come to the US and more schools were opened. Richard Hittleman began to teach yoga in New York and began to teach on television in 1961. He was one of the first to seperate the religious aspect from the health benefits. By 1965, the immigration quotas were removed and a wave of teachers came to the US to teach yoga. The Beatles went to India in 1966 and 1968, and for many Transcendental Meditation took root, which has now grown to over a thousand training centers and over 40,000 teachers. Swamis opened meditation centers, institutes, started magazines, and even magazines. Yoga became so big that Rupert Holmes even poked fun of it in his song “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” in 1979. Yoga had become part of the counter-culture, and the generation that followed represented a backlash of sorts. A common theme of the rise of personal computers is that the early pioneers were a part of that counter-culture. Mitch Kapor graduated high school in 1967, just in time to be one of the best examples of that. Kapor built his own calculator in as a kid before going to camp to get his first exposure to programming on a Bendix. His high school got one of the 1620 IBM minicomputers and he got the bug. He went off to Yale at 16 and learned to program in APL and then found Computer Lib by Ted Nelson and learned BASIC. Then he discovered the Apple II.  Kapor did some programming for $5 per hour as a consultant, started the first east coast Apple User Group, and did some work around town. There are generations of people who did and do this kind of consulting, although now the rates are far higher. He met a grad student through the user group named Eric Rosenfeld who was working on his dissertation and needed some help programming, so Kapor wrote a little tool that took the idea of statistical analysis from the Time Shared Reactive Online Library, or TROLL, and ported it to the microcomputer, which he called Tiny Troll.  Then he enrolled in the MBA program at MIT. He got a chance to see VisiCalc and meet Bob Frankston and Dan Bricklin, who introduced him to the team at Personal Software. Personal Software was founded by Dan Fylstra and Peter Jennings when they published Microchips for the KIM-1 computer. That led to ports for the 1977 Trinity of the Commodore PET, Apple II, and TRS-80 and by then they had taken Bricklin and Franston's VisiCalc to market. VisiCalc was the killer app for those early PCs and helped make the Apple II successful. Personal Software brought Kapor on, as well as Bill Coleman of BEA Systems and Electronic Arts cofounder Rich Mellon. Today, software developers get around 70 percent royalties to publish software on app stores but at the time, fees were closer to 8 percent, a model pulled from book royalties. Much of the rest went to production of the box and disks, the sales and marketing, and support. Kapor was to write a product that could work with VisiCalc. By then Rosenfeld was off to the world of corporate finance so Kapor moved to Silicon Valley, learned how to run a startup, moved back east in 1979, and released VisiPlot and VisiTrend in 1981. He made over half a million dollars in the first six months in royalties.  By then, he bought out Rosenfeld's shares in what he was doing, hired Jonathan Sachs, who had been at MIT earlier, where he wrote the STOIC programming language, and then went to work at Data General. Sachs worked on spreadsheet ideas at Data General with a manager there, John Henderson, but after they left Data General, and the partnership fell apart, he worked with Kapor instead. They knew that for software to be fast, it needed to be written in a lower level language, so they picked the Intel 8088 assembly language given that C wasn't fast enough yet. The IBM PC came in 1981 and everything changed. Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs started Lotus in 1982. Sachs got to work on what would become Lotus 1-2-3. Kapor turned out to be a great marketer and product manager. He listened to what customers said in focus groups. He pushed to make things simpler and use less jargon. They released a new spreadsheet tool in 1983 and it worked flawlessly on the IBM PC and while Microsoft had Multiplan and VisCalc was the incumbent spreadsheet program, Lotus quickly took market share from then and SuperCalc. Conceptually it looked similar to VisiCalc. They used the letter A for the first column, B for the second, etc. That has now become a standard in spreadsheets. They used the number 1 for the first row, the number 2 for the second. That too is now a standard. They added a split screen, also now a standard. They added macros, with branching if-then logic. They added different video modes, which could give color and bitmapping. They added an underlined letter so users could pull up a menu and quickly select the item they wanted once they had those orders memorized, now a standard in most menuing systems. They added the ability to add bar charts, pie charts, and line charts. One could even spread their sheet across multiple monitors like in a magazine. They refined how fields are calculated and took advantage of the larger amounts of memory to make Lotus far faster than anything else on the market. They went to Comdex towards the end of the year and introduced Lotus 1-2-3 to the world. The software could be used as a spreadsheet, but the 2 and 3 referred to graphics and database management. They did $900,000 in orders there before they went home. They couldn't even keep up with the duplication of disks. Comdex was still invitation only. It became so popular that it was used to test for IBM compatibility by clone makers and where VisiCalc became the app that helped propel the Apple II to success, Lotus 1-2-3 became the app that helped propel the IBM PC to success. Lotus was rewarded with $53 million in sales for 1983 and $156 million in 1984. Mitch Kapor found himself. They quickly scaled from less than 20 to 750 employees. They brought in Freada Klein who got her PhD to be the Head of Employee Relations and charged her with making them the most progressive employer around. After her success at Lotus, she left to start her own company and later married. Sachs left the company in 1985 and moved on to focus solely on graphics software. He still responds to requests on the phpBB forum at dl-c.com. They ran TV commercials. They released a suite of Mac apps they called Lotus Jazz. More television commercials. Jazz didn't go anywhere and only sold 20,000 copies. Meanwhile, Microsoft released Excel for the Mac, which sold ten times as many. Some blamed the lack os sales on the stringent copy protection. Others blamed the lack of memory to do cool stuff. Others blamed the high price. It was the first major setback for the young company.  After a meteoric rise, Kapor left the company in 1986, at about the height of their success. He  replaced himself with Jim Manzi. Manzi pushed the company into network applications. These would become the center of the market but were just catching on and didn't prove to be a profitable venture just yet. A defensive posture rather than expanding into an adjacent market would have made sense, at least if anyone knew how aggressive Microsoft was about to get it would have.  Manzi was far more concerned about the millions of illegal copies of the software in the market than innovation though. As we turned the page to the 1990s, Lotus had moved to a product built in C and introduced the ability to use graphical components in the software but not wouldn't be ported to the new Windows operating system until 1991 for Windows 3. By then there were plenty of competitors, including Quattro Pro and while Microsoft Excel began on the Mac, it had been a showcase of cool new features a windowing operating system could provide an application since released for Windows in 1987. Especially what they called 3d charts and tabbed spreadsheets. There was no catching up to Microsoft by then and sales steadily declined. By then, Lotus released Lotus Agenda, an information manager that could be used for time management, project management, and as a database. Kapor was a great product manager so it stands to reason he would build a great product to manage products. Agenda never found commercial success though, so was later open sourced under a GPL license. Bill Gross wrote Magellan there before he left to found GoTo.com, which was renamed to Overture and pioneered the idea of paid search advertising, which was acquired by Yahoo!. Magellan cataloged the internal drive and so became a search engine for that. It sold half a million copies and should have been profitable but was cancelled in 1990. They also released a word processor called Manuscript in 1986, which never gained traction and that was cancelled in 1989, just when a suite of office automation apps needed to be more cohesive.  Ray Ozzie had been hired at Software Arts to work on VisiCalc and then helped Lotus get Symphony out the door. Symphony shipped in 1984 and expanded from a spreadsheet to add on text with the DOC word processor, and charts with the GRAPH graphics program, FORM for a table management solution, and COM for communications. Ozzie dutifully shipped what he was hired to work on but had a deal that he could build a company when they were done that would design software that Lotus would then sell. A match made in heaven as Ozzie worked on PLATO and borrowed the ideas of PLATO Notes, a collaboration tool developed at the University of Illinois Champagne-Urbana  to build what he called Lotus Notes.  PLATO was more more than productivity. It was a community that spanned decades and Control Data Corporation had failed to take it to the mass corporate market. Ozzie took the best parts for a company and built it in isolation from the rest of Lotus. They finally released it as Lotus Notes in 1989. It was a huge success and Lotus bought Iris in 1994. Yet they never found commercial success with other socket-based client server programs and IBM acquired Lotus in 1995. That product is now known as Domino, the name of the Notes 4 server, released in 1996. Ozzie went on to build a company called Groove Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft, who appointed him one of their Chief Technology Officers. When Bill Gates left Microsoft, Ozzie took the position of Chief Software Architect he vacated. He and Dave Cutler went on to work on a project called Red Dog, which evolved into what we now know as Microsoft Azure.  Few would have guessed that Ozzie and Kapor's handshake agreement on Notes could have become a real product. Not only could people not understand the concept of collaboration and productivity on a network in the late 1980s but the type of deal hadn't been done. But Kapor by then realized that larger companies had a hard time shipping net-new software properly. Sometimes those projects are best done in isolation. And all the better if the parties involved are financially motivated with shares like Kapor wanted in Personal Software in the 1970s before he wrote Lotus 1-2-3. VisiCalc had sold about a million copies but that would cease production the same year Excel was released. Lotus hung on longer than most who competed with Microsoft on any beachhead they blitzkrieged. Microsoft released Exchange Server in 1996 and Notes had a few good years before Exchange moved in to become the standard in that market. Excel began on the Mac but took the market from Lotus eventually, after Charles Simonyi stepped in to help make the product great.  Along the way, the Lotus ecosystem created other companies, just as they were born in the Visi ecosystem. Symantec became what we now call a “portfolio” company in 1985 when they introduced NoteIt, a natural language processing tool used to annotate docs in Lotus 1-2-3. But Bill Gates mentioned Lotus by name multiple times as a competitor in his Internet Tidal Wave memo in 1995. He mentioned specific features, like how they could do secure internet browsing and that they had a web publisher tool - Microsoft's own FrontPage was released in 1995 as well. He mentioned an internet directory project with Novell and AT&T. Active Directory was released a few years later in 1999, after Jim Allchin had come in to help shepherd LAN Manager. Notes itself survived into the modern era, but by 2004 Blackberry released their Exchange connector before they released the Lotus Domino connector. That's never a good sign. Some of the history of Lotus is covered in Scott Rosenberg's 2008 book, Dreaming in Code. Others are documented here and there in other places. Still others are lost to time. Kapor went on to invest in UUNET, which became a huge early internet service provider. He invested in Real Networks, who launched the first streaming media service on the Internet. He invested in the creators of Second Life. He never seemed vindictive with Microsoft but after AOL acquired Netscape and Microsoft won the first browser war, he became the founding chair of the Mozilla Foundation and so helped bring Firefox to market. By 2006, Firefox took 10 percent of the market and went on to be a dominant force in browsers. Kapor has also sat on boards and acted as an angel investor for startups ever since leaving the company he founded. He also flew to Wyoming in 1990 after he read a post on The WELL from John Perry Barlow. Barlow was one of the great thinkers of the early Internet. They worked with Sun Microsystems and GNU Debugging Cypherpunk John Gilmore to found the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF. The EFF has since been the nonprofit who leads the fight for “digital privacy, free speech, and innovation.” So not everything is about business.    

In this episode, I am asking everyone to reconnect and reject the fragmentation of the Hegemony. For centuries we have been convinced to categorize the world, ourselves, and the Pluralverse. The more you learn, the more you will see how intrinsically connected all things are. I am also discussing how these historical misdirects created the Hegemonic power ruling us globally. The six cradles of civilizations, Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, China, Egypt, Peru, and Mexico, evolved at the SAME TIME! There has been a concerted effort to keep us in the dark to control the narrative about this fact and reconnect to the inner knowing we all have! Until we soften the soil, we can't plant new seeds of healing and growth! Learn more about my products and services, and support this podcast with the link below! https://linktr.ee/Thisreallifebooksandcoaching Donate! https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=RH73S3W6L3JJN Buy Ascension Beings of Light Art! https://ascension-beings-of-light.printify.me/products --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/eqaboveiq/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/eqaboveiq/support

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

Visit GaiaPodcast.com for more information. How do past life experiences help us evolve in this life? Past life regressionist Linda Backman, Ed.D. teaches her clients how to become their own channel to work through lessons from past lives on a more personal and visceral level. In this episode, Backman shares her encounters with souls including Moses, angels, and those from Babylonia and the Indus Valley region, who continue to incarnate on Earth to this day. She offers a unique perspective on the ultimate divine power explaining how we can overcome obstacles in this life by understanding lessons from our past lives. Linda Backman has been a regression therapist for more than 40 years. She is the author of the book Souls on Earth: Exploring Interplanetary Past Lives, and was previously featured on Gaia's Inspirations with Lisa Garr in Spiritual Healing Through Past Life Exploration. Host: George Noory Guest: Linda Backman

This weekend, every startup person in India (or maybe just Bengaluru?) had only one question — “Did you read the Blume Ventures report?” And we didn't want you to feel any FOMO. So we read the 125-page ‘Indus Valley' report prepared by the venture capital firm and picked out some really cool things. By the way, it's not just data from Blume, but we've peppered our observations into this as well. Let's dive in.

Khizra Munir is finally on the show! She's somebody I'd been meaning to speak to years and we'd been failing to coordinate but now its up! She's been in ads/brands space for many years so obviously I wanted to get her views on how the industry has changed in front of her, get some content creator perspectives from the other side, and also talk about a whole lot more. Great chat, lots of silliness. Things discussed in this episode: 00:00 Intro and why is Khizra here and what is her job 04:57 Growing up in Lahore, going to a rich person school without actually being rich 10:16 Moving to Karachi, getting through Indus Valley 16:03 Writing a popular blog lands her a job at one of the biggest ad agencies in Pakistan 21:14 Going to India, how internet changed the industry, leaving Interflow and trying new things 29:03 All about Sattarbuksh! How the idea came around, what she did, going viral regularly 35:21 How was Khizra good at marketing/brand work on the internet from the very start? 39:04 How the branding scene shifted fully to content creators, and how they're not all the same 45:49 Working with big creators vs up & coming, Instagram vs TikTok 51:09 She started her own podcast! Why? Why are podcasts becoming more acceptable? 57:53 Khizra has many cats and some dogs too and this is totally fine and normal 1:01:09 Sudden interlude to talk about her getting her Masters in the UK and working at a restaurant 1:05:00 Back to talking about her podcast! What's the aim, what's the name, WHY is the name 1:11:04 Nihari Jinn story! 1:16:52 Outro LINKS: Her Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/khizm/ Her Twitter: https://twitter.com/KhizM Her new podcast!: https://www.youtube.com/@sisterplzofficial Support the podcast by becoming a monthly patron on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/tprpod) or send a one-off token on Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/tprpod)! Find all our previous episodes on SoundCloud, Spotify & Apple Podcasts and follow us all on Twitter! Links to everything below! SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/tprpod Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6PvTahp... Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tprpod/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TPRPod Ali: https://twitter.com/themaholupper Rizwan: https://twitter.com/RizwanTakkhar Sarkhail: https://twitter.com/Sarkhail7Khan --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/tprpod/support

In this episode Priya is connected to Disha Ahluwalia, a field archaeologist and the founder of Confessions of an Archaeologist—an archaeology communications handle. In this podcast, we talk about Indian history, the Indus Valley civilization, the significance of Archaeology in India, and what are the challenges of being an archaeologist. She is a person with a wealth of knowledge and experience, and the clarity with which she expresses her ideas is simply amazing. She is a leading archaeologist in India. It was an honour to record this lovely and enduring piece of content with her. Make Sure to leave a positive review on Apple Itunes #trendingdiary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Indus Valley civilization is one of the oldest, largest, most sophisticated Bronze Age civilizations we know about today. Roughly 80 cities and towns have been unearthed that were part of it. The biggest—perhaps the most important—was a city called Mohenjo Daro. There were no kings at Mohenjo Daro, no priests and few signs of organized religion. There are few if any signs of war, slavery, wealth inequality or violence. There was a very high standard of living for its time, including indoor flushing toilets in every home. But they don't call it “Mound of the Dead Men” for nothing. It turns out this peaceful, utopian ancient city has a gruesome secret… Get ad-free episodes here: https://www.patreon.com/ancienthistoryfangirl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode: 2396 The Indus Valley: a third great ancient civilization coming to light.  Today, the Indus Valley.

The Silk Road, or roads more appropriately, has been in use for thousands of years. Horses, jade, gold, and of course silk flowed across the trade routes. As did spices - and knowledge. The term Silk Road was coined by a German geographer named Ferdinand van Richthofen in 1870 to describe a network of routes that was somewhat formalized in the second century that some theorize date back 3000 years, given that silk has been found on Egyptian mummies from that time - or further. The use of silk itself in China in fact dates back perhaps 8,500 years. Chinese silk has been found in Scythian graves, ancient Germanic graves, and along mountain ranges and waterways around modern India gold and silk flowed between east and west. These gave way to empires along the Carpathian Mountains or Kansu Corridor. There were Assyrian outposts in modern Iran and the Sogdia built cities around modern Samarkand in Uzbekistan, an area that has been inhabited since the 4th millennium BCE. The Sogdians developed trading networks that spanned over 1,500 miles - into ancient China. The road expanded with he Persian Royal Road from the 5th century BCE across Turkey and with the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 300s BCE, the Macedonian Empire pushed into Central Asia into modern Uzbekistan. The satrap Diodotus I claimed independence of one of those areas between the Hindu Kush, Pamirs, and Tengri Tagh mountains, which became known as the Hellenized name Bactria and called the Greco-Bactrian and then Into-Greek Kingdoms by history. Their culture also dates back thousands of years further.  The Bactrians became powerful enough to push into the Indus Valley, west along the Caspian Sea, and north to the Syr Darya river, known as the Jaxartes at the time and to the Aral Sea. They also pushed south into modern Pakistan and Afghanistan, and east to modern Kyrgyzstan. To cross the Silk Road was to cross through Bactria, and they were considered a Greek empire in the east. The Han Chinese called them Daxia in the third century BCE. They grew so wealthy from the trade that they became the target of conquest by neighboring peoples once the thirst for silk could not be unquenched in the Roman Empire. The Romans consumed so much silk that silver reserves were worn thin and they regulated how silk could be used - something some of the Muslim's would do over the next generations.  Meanwhile, the Chinese hadn't known where their silk was destined, but had been astute enough to limit who knew how silk was produced. The Chinese general Pan Chao in the first century AD and attempted to make contact with the Roman's only to be thwarted by Parthians, who acted as the middlemen on many a trade route. It wasn't until the Romans pushed East enough to control the Persian Gulf that an envoy was sent by Marcus Aurelius that made direct contact with China in 166 AD and from there, spread throughout the kingdom. Justinian even sent monks to bring home silkworm eggs but they were never able to reproduce silk, in part because they didn't have mulberry trees. Yet, the west had perpetrated industrial espionage on the east, a practice that would be repeated in 1712 when a Jesuit priest found how the Chinese created porcelain.  The Silk Road was a place where great fortunes could be found or lost. The Dread Pirate Roberts was a character from a movie called the Princess Bride, who had left home to make his fortune, so he could spend his life with his love, Buttercup. The Silk Road had made many a fortune, so Ross Ulbricht used that name on a site he created called the Silk Road, along with Frosty and Attoid. He'd gotten his Bachelors at the University of Texas and Masters at Penn State University before he got the idea to start a website he called the Silk Road in 2011. Most people connected to the site via ToR and paid for items in bitcoins. After he graduated from Penn State, he'd started a couple of companies that didn't do that well. Given the success of Amazon, he and a friend started a site to sell used books, but Ulbricht realized it was more profitable to be the middle man, as the Parthians had thousands of years earlier. The new site would be Underground Brokers and later changed to The Silk Road. Cryptocurrencies allowed for anonymous transactions. He got some help from others, including two that went by the pseudonyms Smedley (later suspected to be Mike Wattier) and Variety Jones (later suspected to be Thomas Clark). They started to facilitate transactions in 2011. Business was good almost from the beginning. Then Gawker published an article about the site and more and more attention was paid to what was sold through this new darknet portal. The United States Department of Justice and other law enforcement agencies got involved. When bitcoins traded at less than $80 each, the United States Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) seized 11 bitcoins, but couldn't take the site down for good. It was actually an IRS investigator named Gary Alford who broke the case when he found the link between the Dread Pirate Roberts and Attoid and then a post that included Ulbricht's name and phone number. Ulbricht was picked up in San Francisco and 26,000 bitcoins were seized, along with another 144,000 from Ulbricht's personal wallets. Two federal agents were arrested when it was found they traded information about the investigation to Ulbricht. Ulbricht was also accused of murder for hire, but those charges never led to much. Ulbricht now servers a life sentence. The Silk Road of the darknet didn't sell silk. 70% of the 10,000 things sold were drugs. There were also fake identities, child pornography, and through a second site, firearms. There were scammers. Tens of millions of dollars flowed over this new Silk Road. But the secrets weren't guarded well enough and a Silk Road 2 was created in 2013, which only lasted a year. Others come and go. It's kinda' like playing whack-a-mole. The world is a big place and the reach of law enforcement agencies limited, thus the harsh sentence for Ulbricht.

Several new South Asian nation-states were born as the British Raj ended in 1947. The Panjab of the Indus Valley civilization (3300-1300 BCE) and the Sikh Rulers (1710-1849) was annexed by the British in 1849 and partitioned by their Radcliffe line in 1947. Akalis have been representing the Sikh political consciousness since 1920. After 75 years of the Partition: Why are the significant sections of Panjabis and the Sikhs feeling estranged? What are the historical, cultural, geopolitical, trade, and economic contexts and realities? How can those mentioned above be addressed, given the current trends? ~~~ Presenters Harinder Singh - https://sikhri.org/people/harinder-singh Amandeep Singh Sandhu - https://sikhri.org/people/amandeep-sandhu Tridivesh Singh Maini - https://sikhri.org/people/tridivesh-singh-maini Listen to all podcasts at: https://sikhri.org/podcasts ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ABOUT OUR CHANNEL

Coming back from hiatus, Rowan brings us stories of unicorns. Turns out: if it looks like a mythical creature, and has one horn like a mythical creature, it's probably a rhinoceros. Join us in examining one-horned, magical creatures from Ancient Greece, the Indus Valley, China, England, and beyond.SourcesWikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicornhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicorn_hornhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isidore_of_Sevillehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochester_Bestiaryhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QilinLive Sciencehttps://www.livescience.com/origins-of-unicornshttps://www.livescience.com/what-was-the-indus-valley-civilizationWorld History​https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1629/the-unicorn-myth/Thought Co​​https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-qilin-195005St Neots Museumhttps://www.stneotsmuseum.org.uk/articles/unicorns-a-brief-history/American Museum of Natural Historyhttps://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/mythic-creatures/land/unicorns-west-and-eastWiredhttps://www.wired.com/2015/02/fantastically-wrong-unicorn/NY Timeshttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/t-magazine/unicorns-culture-myth.html

My guest in this episode is Mitch Horowitz, a PEN Award-winning historian considered an expert of alternative spirituality, he's also known widely as the voice of esoterica ideas. Mitch and I first met when a few years ago I was producing a TV series called Open Minds. Mitch was a guest on the show and at the time he was coming on to discuss his book Occult America. Since then he's written at least 20 more books! And has two news ones coming out this year - Day Dream Believer out this July, and Uncertain Places available in October. We chat about those books plus…Mitches film The Kybalion, which breaks down the 7 Hermetic principals. This episode is a thought-provoking discussion of the spiritual, the occult, the magickal, and the extra-sensory world with mentions of many, many people from Neville Goddard, a continued influence on Mitch as well as Émile Coué and, of all people, The Amazing Randi. All the links to everything we talk about in this episode from books to people and more about Mitch his books and work, can be found at TheConsciousDiva.com episode 41. Highlights from this episode include: - Kybalion and the seven Hermetic principals. - Where did the Hermetic tradition and experience evolve from (Greek and Egyptian traditions). I ask Mitch why the Indus Valley, an almost equally ancient civilization and the Vedic tradition are not considered a part of the Hermetic tradition? - How Mitches journey through his interests as a Seeker lead him to become a wisdom school educator of transformation and manifestation. - Who is Neville Goddard and how/why does Mitch continue to be influenced by him? And we chat about Neville's interesting childhood influences growing up in Barbados. - Mitch shares insights from his two new books: Dream Believer out in July and, Uncertain Places, available in October 2022. - Mitch shares his own personal practice with influences from Émile Coué, the French mind theorist. - And we rant on about The Amazing Randi (James Randi), the stage magician and skeptic of the paranormal and ESP and the content of the book by Rhonda Byrne, The Secret. - Plus so much more! About Mitch: Mitch is a writer-in-residence at the New York Public Library, lecturer-in-residence at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles, and the PEN Award-winning historian and author of books including Occult America; One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life; The Miracle Club; The Miracle Habits. And so many more. He is widely known as a voice of esoteric ideas with bylines in The New York Times, Time, Politico, and The Wall Street Journal. His work is censored in China. Through his research and books he illuminates and explains the relevance of alternative spirituality to comtemporary life. LINKS: mitchhorowitz.com

Photo:    Islamabad — Horned deities on an Indus Valley seal (Harappa) #AfterAfghanistan: Benign neglect for Islamabad and Kabul. Bill Roggio FDD. Husain Haqqani @husainhaqqani, former Pakistani Ambassador to the United States; Director, South & Central Asia,  Hudson Institute  https://en.mehrnews.com/news/187883/3-blasts-across-Afghanistan-leave-11-killed-or-injured https://www.voanews.com/a/taliban-claim-killing-8-isis-k-militants-in-northeastern-afghanistan-/6613497.html

In episode three of our four-part conversation for World Localisation Day, Morag Gamble talks with Helena Norberg-Hodge about the central role of community and ecology in our world. And, how localising both of these things can improve the health of people and the planet.Helena is a filmmaker, author and founder and director of the international non-profit organisation, Local Futures. Helena and I first met in 1992, working on the Ladakh Project over the other side of the Himalayas in the Indus Valley. This time we spent together (and since) as well as her film, Ancient Futures, led Evan and me to work in Permaculture. Thirty years later, I'm still inspired and motivated by Helena's wisdom and mission.In this episode, Morag and Helena discuss:How healthy communities nurture healthy happy children;The pitfalls of modern education systems and consumer cultures that pit children (and adults) against each other;The role of elders in communities;How indigenous knowledge and rural living has been systematically depreciated;The relationship between nature, animals and human happiness;How we can reconnect with place, even when we live away from our ancestral lands;What individualism looks like in modern cities and how we can break away from unhealthy lifestyles.This podcast is brought to you by The Permaculture Education Institute.Please rate and review this podcast in the Apple Podcast app, Spotify, or wherever you listen. By giving this podcast a five-star review, we can help bring Permaculture into other people's lives.

One of the most amazing facts about Hinduism is that traditional Hindus don't call themselves Hindus and they don't call their religion Hinduism! The word Hindu is not found in any of the Hindu scriptures. The word Hindu was actually used by those who had come from outside India to refer to the people living in the Indus Valley, on the banks of the Sindhu River. So the word Hindu referred to the place that we lived, rather than to the religion that we practiced. To Hindus, our religion is called Sanatan Dharma. In this teaching, Sadhviji shares that it is Sanatan Dharma, not Hinduism, that forms the foundation of our traditions. Watch and listen as Sadhviji beautifully explains!

Quizmasters Lee and Marc meet for a general knowledge trivia quiz with topics including Music, Movies, Sports, Television, Etymology, Psychology, Religion, Literature and more! Round One MASS SHOOTINGS - Disgruntled school board treasurer Andrew Kishore committed the largest mass murder in a school in U.S. History when he killed 44 people at Bath Consolidated School in what state? SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS - Dollar the Dog was a character who appeared frequently on what 1980's Saturday morning cartoon that stars a Harvey Comics character? POSTAL TERMINOLOGY - In the postal world, what does the acronym S.A.S.E. stand for? PSYCHOLOGY - Which part of Freud's model of the psyche handles moral decisions? PHOBIAS - Affecting 10% of the population, and related to trypanophobia, what does someone with belonephobia fear? MUSIC - Notable performances by Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding occured at a rock festival in 1967 in what sea-side Californian city (that is also known for the folk festival that occured there in 1963)? Round Two MOVIES - Christian Slater plays reporter Daniel Molloy in what 1994 gothic horror film? TRACK & FIELD - How many hurdles are there in a 400 m hurdle race? FESTIVALS - Until the COVID-19 pandemic, food fighters would gather annually in Valencia, Spain, to hurl what kind of food at each other in the city streets? ETYMOLOGY - What food gets its name from the Nahuatl word for "swelling fruit or "fat thing"? RELIGION - Also known as the Vedic religion and predating Hinduism, what religion of the Indus Valley has a name that refers to the concept of a single binding unity in all that exists in the universe? BEAUTY PAGEANTS - In what decade was the first Miss World competition held? Rate My Question MILITARY - Alluding to its mission to be in the forefront of intelligence collecting, what does 303rd MI Battalion motto Primi Noscere translate to? Final Questions LITERATURE - Mrs. Hudson is the landlady and housekeeper of what literary character that was first introduced in 1997? FRANCHISES - At more than 88 billion dollars, what Japanese cartoon character has earned its owners more in merchandise sales than Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and Star Wars? Upcoming LIVE Know Nonsense Trivia Challenges June 1st, 2022 - Know Nonsense Challenge - Point Ybel Brewing Co. - 7:30 pm EDT June 2nd, 2022 - Know Nonsense Trivia Challenge - Ollie's Pub Records and Beer - 7:30 pm EDT You can find out more information about that and all of our live events online at KnowNonsenseTrivia.com All of the Know Nonsense events are free to play and you can win prizes after every round. Thank you Thanks to our supporters on Patreon. Thank you, Quizdaddies – Gil, Tim, Tommy, Adam, Brandon Thank you, Team Captains – Kristin & Fletcher, Aaron, Matthew, David Holbrook, Mo, Lydia, Rick G, Skyler Thank you, Proverbial Lightkeepers – Elyse, Kaitlynn, Frank, Trent, Nina, Justin, Katie, Ryan, Robb, Captain Nick, Grant, Ian, Tim Gomez, Rachael, Moo, Rikki, Nabeel, Jon Lewis, Adam, Lisa, Spencer, Luc, Hank, Manu, Justin P., Cooper, Sarah, Karly, Lucas Thank you, Rumplesnailtskins – Mike J., Mike C., Efren, Steven, Kenya, Dallas, Issa, Paige, Allison, Kevin & Sara, Alex, Mike K., Loren, MJ, HBomb, Aaron, Laurel, FoxenV, Sarah, Edsicalz, Megan, brandon, Chris, Alec, Sai, Nathan, Tim If you'd like to support the podcast and gain access to bonus content, please visit http://theknowno.com and click "Support."

Photo:  Horned deities on an Indus Valley seal with detail  #Pakistan: Unstable by Imran Khan. Bill Roggio, FDD.  Husain Haqqani @husainhaqqani, former Pakistani Ambassador to the United States; Director, South & Central Asia,  Hudson Institute https://apnews.com/article/politics-pakistan-islamabad-elections-arrests-52659233f1ca111b429597ab258d1a62

ये पुलियाबाज़ी है भारत के उभरते tech ecosystem पर. इसके कल, आज, और कल पर एक गहरी चर्चा सजित पई (@sajithpai) के साथ. सजित ब्लूम वेंचर्स में एक इन्वेस्टर है और उन्होंने हाल ही में भारत की tech हलचल पर एक विस्तृत रिपोर्ट लिखी है.This Puliyabaazi is in India's emerging tech ecosystem. This episode dives deep into discussion on its timeline with Sajith Pai (@sajithpai). Sajith is an investor in Blume Ventures and has recently written a detailed report on India's tech bustle.For more:Indus Valley Annual Report 2022, by Sajith Pai and Amal VatsPuliyabaazi #54 on Venture Capital with Kushal BhagiaPuliyabaazi #90 on e-retail in India with Amit MittalPuliyabaazi is on these platforms:Twitter: https://twitter.com/puliyabaaziInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/puliyabaazi/Subscribe & listen to the podcast on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Castbox, AudioBoom, YouTube, Spotify or any other podcast app.

I may have exaggerated in the title, but Mattie does talk about grammar and punctuation and how court cases have been decided on typos and misplaced commas. it might not exactly save your life, but it has cost companies and governments millions of dollars.   Next Austin turns the clock way back. back before even Pliny the Elder. (that's right, Austin can research something without leaning on the genius that is Pliny) and talks about one of the earliest civilizations, The Indus Valley people in North Western India and Pakistan from back in 3000 BCE, and how surprisingly modern they were.   We also talk reality TV. so don't worry, it isn't all archeology and Grammar this episode. we have standards to uphold.   Twitter: @onthetestpod Facebook: Facebook.com/onthetestpod Insta: @onthetestpod onthetestpod.com theme song by https://www.fiverr.com/nilgunozer