Each week, Milan Vaishnav and his guests from around the world break down the latest developments in Indian politics, economics, foreign policy, society, and culture for a global audience. Grand Tamasha is a co-production of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Hindustan Times.
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Curiosity ⇔ Entangled brings together two experts from different fields for unscripted conversations fueled by mutual curiosity. Each episode explores intersections of science, technology, philosophy, and humanity, diving into topics like the origins of life, artificial intelligence, ancient and modern history, and the mysteries of the cosmos. These unique dialogues create opportunities for the cross-pollination of ideas, sparking new insights and innovation. Join us to discover where curios ...
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Rewriting India’s Education Story, One Girl at a Time
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47:19This year, the non-profit Educate Girls became the first Indian organization ever to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award—often called Asia’s Nobel Prize. The foundation recognized the group for its groundbreaking work enrolling out-of-school girls, improving learning outcomes, and shifting social norms in some of India’s most underserved communities.…
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Beyond the Raj: Recasting the India–UK Partnership
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49:43India and the United Kingdom have spent decades trying to define their post-colonial relationship—part partnership, part rivalry, and often, part courtship. Today, that relationship is being recast amid trade talks, tech cooperation, and geopolitical shifts. The two sides recently signed a landmark trade agreement and officials in London and New De…
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Bihar has once again delivered a political drama worthy of its reputation—record turnout, sharp debates over the voter rolls, a decisive victory for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), and a fresh round of questions about whether the opposition has what it takes to displace Modi and the BJP. The NDA—anchored by Nitish Kumar and his Janata Dal (…
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Understanding South Asia’s “Ordinary Rebels”
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57:15How do non-state armed groups act when the state seeks not to crush them—but to tolerate their activities? This is the central question of a new book by the political scientist Kolby Hanson titled, Ordinary Rebels: Rank-and-File Militants between War and Peace. Kolby is an assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University, and his new book l…
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Robin Hanson x Joe Henrich | Cultural Evolution: The Slow Burn Rewriting Human Nature
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1:29:17Cultural evolution has shaped human nature far more than we realize, and economist Robin Hanson and evolutionary biologist Joe Henrich reveal why ignoring this changes everything about policy, innovation, and our future. In this deep dive conversation, they explore how culture doesn't just influence behavior, it rewrites our preferences, beliefs, a…
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Daniel H. Wilson x Eric Anctil | Keep Evolving, Stay Human: Can AI Make Us Better People?
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1:13:32In this episode of Curiosity Entangled, professor @DrEricAnctil and science fiction author Daniel H. Wilson meet for a wide-ranging dialogue on artificial intelligence, human nature, and the uncertain futures we're building together. What begins as introductions between a media scholar and a roboticist-turned-storyteller unfolds into a profound exp…
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How India’s Women Are Redefining Politics
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59:45For much of India’s democratic history, the woman voter has either been invisible or ignored – at times she has been spoken for, but very rarely listened to. A new book by the journalist Ruhi Tewari argues that this is no longer the case and seeks to understand why women have emerged from the political shadows. What Women Want: Understanding the Fe…
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Can Consciousness Be Engineered? | Bernardo Kastrup & Christof Koch
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1:18:49In this episode of Curiosity Entangled, philosopher Bernardo Kastrup and neuroscientist Christof Koch meet for a rare and wide-ranging dialogue on consciousness, physics, and the limits of materialism. What begins as an exchange between two leading proponents of Integrated Information Theory (IIT) unfolds into a profound exploration of what conscio…
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The Forgotten Partitions That Remade South Asia
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59:07As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia—India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait—were bound together under a single imperial banner, an entity known officially as the “Indian Empire,” or more simply as the British Raj. And then, in just fifty years, the Indian Empire shat…
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A Sixth of Humanity and the Dreams of a Nation
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1:20:52A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India's Development Odyssey is a landmark new book by the scholars Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian. The book is an audacious attempt to trace how India—uniquely and daringly—attempted four concurrent transformations—building a state, creating an economy, changing society, and forging a sense of nationhood under …
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The Court and the Republic: A Conversation with Justice D.Y. Chandrachud
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1:03:59Justice Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud was the fiftieth chief justice of India. An alumnus of Harvard Law School, he served as additional solicitor general of India. He was appointed as a judge of the Bombay High Court in 2000 and became the chief justice of the Allahabad High Court in 2013. In 2016, he was elevated to the Supreme Court of India, …
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By Britta Glennon, Milan Vaishnav
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One of the most surprising developments in Washington, if you’re a South Asia-watcher, is the surprising turn in U.S.-Pakistan relations. Having largely sidelined Pakistan over the past decade or more, the current U.S. administration has courted Pakistan with an enthusiasm that has caught many analysts off-guard. In June, Trump hosted Pakistan’s ar…
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From Convergence to Confrontation: Trump’s India Gambit
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39:33For a quarter century, Washington policymakers made a strategic bet on India premised on the belief that shared values, shared interests, and a shared strategic convergence in Asia would bind these two countries together as ‘natural allies’ in the twenty-first century. All of this optimistic talk came crashing down to Earth a few months ago with th…
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India’s once-flourishing ties with Washington have soured in Trump’s second term, marked by punishing tariffs and penalties over Russian oil. This turbulence reinforces New Delhi’s instinct for “multi-alignment,” and the desire to hedge between great powers rather than bet on any single partner. Against this backdrop, a new paper by the journalist …
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K.M. Panikkar and the Making of Modern India
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1:03:38A Man for All Seasons: The Life of K.M. Panikkar is the new book by the author Narayani Basu. It documents the life and times of one of modern India’s most fascinating characters. Panikkar defies simple description. He was a journalist who founded the Hindustan Times; a bureaucrat who advised India’s princely states; a poet, a philosopher, and an i…
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Vajpayee and the Making of the Modern BJP
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1:04:17Believer’s Dilemma: Vajpayee and the Hindu Right’s Path to Power, 1977-2018 is the much anticipated second volume of author Abhishek Choudhary’s biography of former BJP prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The book traces his life from his stint as external affairs minister in the short-lived Janata government to his death in 2018 following a perio…
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Báyò Akómoláfé & Catherine Keller: Crossroads, Creation, and Artificial Intelligence
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1:23:04In this episode of Curiosity Entangled, philosopher and psychologist Báyò Akómoláfé joins theologian Catherine Keller for a searching dialogue on artificial intelligence, theology, and what it means to be human at the crossroads of technology. What begins with the question of AI’s place in creation unfolds into a meditation on race, mortality, auth…
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Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order slapping India with a 25 percent special tariff due to its purchases of Russian oil. This surprise measure raised the total tariff on Indian exports to the United States to 50 percent—among the highest rates imposed by the United States on any country in the world. But India is not ju…
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What Kind of Great Power Will India Become?
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47:42Two summers ago, Ashley J. Tellis published an essay in Foreign Affairs titled, “America’s Bad Bet on India,” which led to an extended, highly charged debate about the future of the U.S.-India relationship. Just a few weeks ago, Ashley published another big-picture piece in Foreign Affairs titled, “India’s Great-Power Delusions,” which has once aga…
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Gurcharan Das & Milan Vaishnav: The Bhagavad Gita, War Ethics, Liberalism, and Global Power Shifts
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1:12:21In this episode of Curiosity Entangled, author and philosopher Gurcharan Das joins political economist Milan Vaishnav for a wide-ranging conversation on the ethics of war, the future of liberalism, and the enduring tensions between statecraft and morality. What begins as a thought experiment—could the targeted assassination of a tyrant prevent a fu…
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How and why did Hindu nationalism become popular among India’s diaspora after India’s independence in 1947? This is the central question of Hindu Nationalism in the Indian Diaspora: Transnational Politics and British Multiculturalism, a 2023 book by the historian Edward Anderson. The book interrogates the distinctive resonance Hindutva ideology has…
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The Decline and Fall of an Indian Ed Tech Empire
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47:45India’s celebrated education technology company Byju’s went from being one of the world’s most hyped start-ups to being sued for fraud in a Delaware court and accused of engaging in unethical, if not illegal, behavior. The episode serves as a cautionary tale about the world of start-ups, venture capital, and the crushing social pressures Indian chi…
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A Reappraisal of Indira Gandhi’s Life—and Legacy
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56:56Indira Gandhi’s ascent as prime minister of India in 1966 seems obvious with the benefit of hindsight, but it was entirely unforeseen at the time. Within years—if not months—she emerged as one of the most powerful political leaders of her era—serving as prime minister for fifteen years, leaving behind a complex and deeply controversial legacy. A ne…
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Indian Genius: The Meteoric Rise of Indians in America is a new book by the author and journalist Meenakshi Ahamed. While many immigrant groups have found success in the United States, few have excelled as far and as fast as Indian Americans, reaching heights in a single generation that many thought would take the better part of a century to achiev…
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Decolonization and India’s Constitutional Order
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54:14Anticolonial movements of the 20th century generated audacious ideas of freedom. After decolonization, however, the challenge was to give an institutional form to those radical ideas. Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony is a new book by the scholar Sandipto Dasgupta which provides an innovative account of how Ind…
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How This India-Pakistan Conflict Will Shape the Next One
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51:16At this point, you’ve probably read 1,001 post-mortem analyses of the India-Pakistan conflict, desperately searching for some new nugget or data point that helps you understand this brief, but intense clash between these two South Asian rivals. In this sea of hot takes, one essay stands out both for its analytical clarity and its wisdom. That piece…
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How Earth Shaped Life and Life Shaped Earth: A Conversation Across Deep Time | Sean B. Carroll x Andrew H. Knoll
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1:10:33In this episode of Curiosity Entangled, evolutionary biologist Sean B. Carroll and paleontologist Andrew H. Knoll dive deep into the intertwined story of life and Earth—how genetics and geology, extinction and emergence, have sculpted the living world as we know it. From early microbial life and the Cambrian explosion to mass extinctions and planet…
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