Latest Natgeotravellar Podcast Episodes
Inuit Throat Singing, Polar Bears and Stillness
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - October 20, 2022 00:30 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratings"In January 2022, Tanya Tagaq, a 47 year old Canadian singer released her album - Tongues.The Rolling Stone called her ‘one of the avant-garde’s most dynamic performers. The Pitchfork said that her ‘music joins landscape, culture and resistance.’ Music joining landscape and resistance? This ...
Impossible Journeys, Polynesian Navigation and BRT Wildlife Sanctuary
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - October 13, 2022 00:30 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThe island of Satwal in the Pacific Ocean is incredibly small - Just 1 square kilometre and supports a population of 500. And yet, it is home to Mau Piailug, a man who holds the secrets of the some of the most long distance travellers of the world. Travellers who for thousands of years, have tra...
Led Zeppelin, Harry Potter and Murals of Belfast
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - October 06, 2022 00:30 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 1971, Belfast witnessed a rising rock band debut their unnamed fourth album. Despite their first three albums breaking sales records, the album had a very cold reception. Decades later, a British author shopped her book to over ten publishers, all of whom rejected it. This week, in the fifte...
Ancient Celtic Language, Yetis and the Wood Wide Web
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - September 29, 2022 00:30 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 1920, Colonel Charles - Bury was nervous about a diplomatic conversation with the then British Viceroy of India. He wanted to convince the Viceroy to allow a trip to Peak XV, which was suspected to be taller than Mount Kanchenjunga. Back in his home in Ireland, at the Charleville Castle, a 40...
The X Club, Colonialism and Foghorns as Music
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - September 22, 2022 00:30 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 1864, London saw the formation of a club consisting of nine members. It was called the X Club, since it committed its members to nothing. In fact, the only rule of the club was to have no rules. But this wasn't a bunch of rag-tag individuals. These nine members were some of the most influenti...
The strange, colliding worlds of Tagore and Yeats
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - September 15, 2022 00:30 - 13 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsOn 4th May 1799, the British forces defeated the famed king of Mysore in a battle, largely owing to the king's chief minister betraying him. About 8500 kms away, the battle finds a reference in a 200 ft talk Obleisk in Phoenix Park, in Dublin Ireland. But is that the only legacy India has left i...
Amelia Earhart, Microscopes and the Mental Health Crises of Northern Ireland
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - September 08, 2022 00:30 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsOn 20th May 1932, a 34-year-old woman set off from Newfoundland, the easternmost province of Canada. She flew for almost 15 hours, and created aviation history. She was supposed to land in Paris, but ended up in Derry, Northern Ireland. Almost 60 years later, just below the hill she landed, live...
Magdalene Laundries, Alternative Rock and the Shame Industrial Complex
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - September 01, 2022 00:35 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn the summer of 2009, as the world was still reeling from the impact of The Great Recession, a young man, by the name of Kieran McGuinness, was trying to perfect a song. It was inspired by some grafitti he had seen in Spain. But the song had a purpose, for he was trying to find someone. And lik...
The Troubles, Derry Girls and The Cranberries
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - August 25, 2022 00:35 - 12 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 1993, a young alternative rock band was touring England. The lead vocalist, passed through a town near Liverpool which had been the site of a brutal bombing. Moved by the death of two people, she penned a stream of conciousness song which went onto become their biggest hit worldwide, and amas...
Three Irish Women, Emigration and India's National Anthem
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - August 18, 2022 00:35 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratings1856, Dublin City. Over 3,600 soldiers sit down for a celebratory banquet after a hard fought Crimean war. But where does one find a building large enough to seat these many people? A warehouse is converted for this purpose, and 150 years later, it houses one of the most unique emigration museum...
Titanic, Mosul and the Global shame of Western Museums
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - August 04, 2022 00:35 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsOn 15th April 1912, the RMS Titanic sank into the Atlantic Ocean. 100 years later, the city of Belfast inaugurated the opulent Titanic Museum, built at the cost of a whopping 116 million Euros. The museum also tells another story, that of the rise of Belfast city, making it one of the largest po...
Irish roads that go nowhere, Houses no one lives in
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - July 28, 2022 00:35 - 11 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsAcross the countryside in Ireland there are roads which go nowhere, and there are houses nobody lives in. The thousands of traveller less roads and empty homes have a singular story behind them. This week, in the sixth episode of the series, Ireland Untravelled, we uncover the greatest single ev...
Bombay, Paris and the improbable victory for LGBTQ+ rights in Ireland
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - July 21, 2022 00:35 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn the early 1960’s, a young man from the Varad village on the Konkan Coast of India goes to study medicine at KEM Hospital in Bombay. Continents away in Paris at the Pere Lachaise cemetery, lies buried one of the finest playwrights and poets of the 19th century. A song by the Irish Punk Rock ba...
U2, Body Snatching and the Irish Way of Death
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - July 14, 2022 00:35 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsThree of the most iconic Irish bands walk into a bar - The Dubliners, The Chieftains and U2. They grab a few drinks, clear their throats and then proceed to play. The bar owner turns them down, and says that there will be no music at his bar. They leave. What? Who in their right mind would turn ...
Trinity Long Room and the Soul of the Irish Nation
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - July 07, 2022 00:35 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsOn 25th August 1992, the Serbian paramilitaries set fire to the National Library of Sarajevo. The library burned for 2 days and 2 nights before the fire could be bought under control. A few centuries prior in 1592, Trinity College was established in Dublin, and it became the first university in ...
Gaelic and the stunning decline of the Irish Language
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - June 30, 2022 00:35 - 11 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 2016, a strange event unfolded in Cork County in Ireland. A staff member at the Flying Enterprise pub in Cork city was asked not to speak in Irish. Wait What? Not speak Irish in Ireland? This week, in the second episode of the series, Ireland Untravelled, we uncover the stunning decline of th...
Lost Treasures, Dynamite and the Irish Nation
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - June 23, 2022 00:35 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsWhat does an instant Scottish classic, published in 1824, a book which has captured the imagination of the world since have to do with the troubled history of Ireland and Northern Ireland? What does a designer of a lighthouse along the coast of the UK have to do with Alfred Nobel, the man behind...
Soma - The world's greatest unsolved culinary mystery
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - June 16, 2022 00:35 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsOnce consumed, feelings of infusion, vitalisation, empowerment, elevation, even travel into other worlds or possession by the divine had been reported. So important was this drink, that there is an entire chapter with 114 hymns that have been dedicated to this drink alone - in the Rigveda, no le...
Podi, Jesus Christ and the LTTE
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - June 09, 2022 00:35 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn the town of Rameswaram in Coastal Tamil Nadu, a boy is born into a fishing caste household. Across the Indian ocean in Sri Lanka, another boy is born into another household from the same fishing caste. Uncharacterstically, both of these men went on to become really famous in their own countri...
Appam, Vindaloo and the trade cuisines of Kerala
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - June 02, 2022 00:35 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 1568, the Raja of Kochi gifted land to a tiny religious community, so that they have a place of worship away from home. This community was fleeing persecution in Spain and Portugal and arrived in India in the 15th and 16th centuries and were given the name Paradesi or a foreigner in Malayalam...
Cooking Rhinoceros, Rajputana Kings and Fake Meat
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - May 26, 2022 00:35 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, you would find a painting of Raja Ram Singh I, the ruler of Amer or present-day Jaipur. The king is engaged in an activity pretty common to the royals of his time. Meanwhile, every February and March, there is a fiery orange flower which blooms and ...
A 400 Year Old Curse, Coffee and Indian Chinese food
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - May 19, 2022 00:35 - 10 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 1612, the royal family of Mysore - The Wodeyars brought upon themselves a curse which lasted 400 years. About two thousand years before that, the Mauryans traded over a branch of the Silk Route, which gave rise to an Indian culinary tradition which exists to this day. In the late 19th and ear...
Nine Poisons, Tamil Mountain Gods and Food as Faith
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - May 12, 2022 00:35 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 2003, at a famed temple in South India, a 5000 year old idol was to be replaced. The temple officials decided to make an idol and several kilos of gold were collected to make the idol. However, once it was installed, things went awry, and a joint investigation by the police and IIT Madras fou...
Taboo Foods, Hindu Epics and Dharma
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - May 05, 2022 00:35 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsBlood filled sausages, goat’s head in sour gruel, grilled stomach membrane and barbecued river rats - If this grossed you out, you must listen to this episode. This week, in the eighth episode of the series, Fabulous Foods, we delve into our privileged idea of Taboo foods, the tradition of eatin...
Biryani vs Pulao, Deceit and Mughlai Cooking
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - April 28, 2022 00:35 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsIn 1856, the last Nawab of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah invites a prince from Delhi to his durbaar. He serves a dish, which masquerades as a a murabba - a thick, highly spiced conserve made of fruit or vegetables. In return, the prince invites Wajid Ali Shah to Delhi, and he too serves hundreds of dish...
Clove, Transnational Smuggling and Nostalgia
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - April 14, 2022 00:35 - 7 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratings"Peter Piper picked some packs of pickled peppers in each pack of pickled peppers that peter piper picked was 3 pickled peppers. Now peter piper is happy with all 36 of his pickled peppers. How many packs of pickled peppers did peter piper pick?" What does this tongue twisting nursery rhyme ha...
Dosa, Apocalypse and Dashavataras of Vishnu
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - April 07, 2022 00:35 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsWhat does a 12th century treatise on the life of a medieval king in Karnataka have in common with 1st century Sangam literature from Tamil Nadu, that describes the ancient food practices of the Tamil people? And do they have to do with Dashavatars of Vishnu? This week, in the fifth episode of th...
Portugese, Banned Languages and Grinding Songs
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - March 31, 2022 00:35 - 8 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsWhat connects the assasination attempt of King Jospeh 1 in Portugal, the ban on the Konkani language in Goa and a story about a young Lord Krishna, whose bravery provided the name of a famous waterfall? And how does it have an impact on almost all our culinary practices as Indians? This week, in...
Nutmeg: The World's Most Violent Spice
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - March 24, 2022 00:35 - 9 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsWhy is the spice Nutmeg being mentioned in India's foremost treatise on military strategy? Why is it mentioned in a tri-fold collection of Sanskrit poetry about politics, erotic passion and renunciation? And what does it all have to do with the tiny cluster of islands in the southeastern Indian ...
Indian Jews, Konkan Coast and Kippur-Chi-Puri
Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria - March 17, 2022 00:35 - 18 minutes ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsAbout 2000 years ago, a group of people escaping persecution by the Greeks landed on the shores of Alibaug in Maharashtra, India. They were a small community, and soon spread out across the state. A similar phenomenon was observed in Cochin and Calcutta as well. The community went onto integrate...
Related Natgeotravellar Topics