Desi Academia Podcast

S11E2: Mathematics, or, the pursuit of perfection in an imperfect world, with Saurabh

Desi Academia Podcast’s Golden Jubilee episode is now live🌟!

We talk to Dr. Saurabh Singh about his journey as a mathematician. We talk about the pursuit of truth, mathematics’s place within and outside academia, and the intrinsic value of pure science.

open.spotify.com/episode/2QDg...

This Body is doing such a great job besmirching India’s image, why import foreign talent for that job.

scroll.in/latest/10907...

It's almost time for a fantastic conversation on mathematics, 'labless science', and seeing the world in an elegant way!

mandir ka diya bujhne ka dar tha yahaan toh koi moot ke hi chala gaya.

Mood rn.

The Algorithmic Flattening of Goan History The Instagram algorithm rewards retention and engagement.

In my new Substack post, I write about ‘this survived the brutal Portuguese rule’ hook for Insta reels and the algorithmic flattening of Goan history. open.substack.com/pub/kaustubh...

Previous episodes:
bsky.app/profile/desi...

S11E1: Pivoting from a PhD- navigating an alternative career path with Harsha

We start Season 11 and 2026 with insights into a serious question: what if your chosen research path is beyond a PhD ?

We are joined by Harsha to continue the story of his research journey- onto an industry career:

open.spotify.com/episode/16aF...

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

It's time for Season 11, and we start 2026 with a discussion on resilience and grace.

Harsha joins us again to share how he navigated a career shift when his academic program failed him, the harsh reality of funding games, and the price PhD students pay for systemic problems.

Persist or Give up? Fire ants motivated to search for a high-quality food source even if they don’t know how to find it Finding resources for the colony is one of the most difficult and risky tasks for a social insect worker. A worker on a foraging trip can face a number of challenges, including interference from other...

Pre-print alert 🚨🐜!!!
I am really excited to share results from the first empirical chapter of my PhD. We ( @dornhaus.bsky.social and I) set out to examine how fire ants deal with perturbations to communication during foraging. Turns out their foraging is not robust to this perturbation. (1/5)

Settler branding in Goa - Of Khazans and Balcãos Why the settler elites love Goan words but ignore Goan realities.

Settler branding in Goa - Of Khazans and Balcãos open.substack.com/pub/kaustubh...

S10E4: Teaching sociology to STEM students: why do we need a sociologist in the room?

🎙️ Happy New Year to all!
In this episode, Vatsal & Megh are joined by the friend of the pod Dr. Rituparna Patgiri (@Rituparna37) who talks about teaching sociology to STEM grads, her mentorship philosophy and the many roles of a teacher.
🎧 Tune in!

open.spotify.com/episode/3D6Y...

I would not have made this connection.

Declared extinct in 2025: A look back at some of the species we lost Some species officially bid us farewell this year. They may have long been gone, but following more recent assessments, they’re now formally categorized as extinct on the IUCN Red List, considered the...

Species declared extinct in 2025.

Includes 3 bandicoots (marsupials, not closely related to the Indian bandicoot rat)
news.mongabay.com/short-articl...

Unconventional data viz is the best! thanks for the inspo with this post.

Would you be open to a podcast pitch? we would love to connect with you.

gaah it’s the kind of graph that is so satisfying to knit or crochet.

S10E3: The Second Postdoc- Vatsal's life in outside his Alma Mater

Aditya, Megh, and Vatsal are back to discuss Vatsal's second postdoc (this time outside his alma mater), working on a different disease and with human tissue

We also talk academic HR, dry lab privilege, 9-5, RTO, and much more!
open.spotify.com/episode/7spN...

It’s here!! ✨

Megh, Aditya, and Vatsal are joined by Indranil @academicmargin, as we discuss Megh’s dissertation research. We talk about cooperation, support systems, linguistics, and the impact of AI on the field.

Check out the episode:
open.spotify.com/episode/19Vq...

S10E1: Desi Academia Podcast founders meet: Postdoc edition!

It's season 10 (Yes, we can't believe it either!) and the OG gang gets together after a long time to vent about all things academia.
In this episode of Desi "postdoctoral" podcast, we catch up with Aditya, talk about our lives post PhD and much more!

open.spotify.com/episode/50Uk...

S9E4: What is Islamic Studies? Wrong answers only, with Manan and Sumaira

✈️📚 Ever tried explaining your research to an immigration officer?
In this DAP episode, Manan & Sumaira join us to talk about trans-continental poetry, periodicals, studying Islamic communities and what exactly is Islamic studies!

open.spotify.com/episode/0p88...

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Any researchers or scholars thinking about Return to India should first try and post in support of our peers.

I mean, they operate in defiance of the law, and it is a civil (not criminal matter) right? I'm based out of the US, and I have not had any trouble using it...

But it would be nice to live in a world where these shitty paywallers did not exist.

💯

Have you ever wondered how an Islamic Studies scholar explains their research to an immigration officer?

Watch this space for our latest episode, where we find out more!

I would I would like to share this snippet from my dissertation's acknowledgements section. I cannot stress how IMPOSSIBLE academic success is in the Global South without disobedience.

Fuck academic paywalls forever.

Google Scholar Is Doomed Academia built entire careers on a free Google service with zero guarantees. What could go wrong?

Happy Friday.

hannahshelley.neocities.org/blog/2025_08...

There is something so ugly about a country desperate to claim a foreign prime minister or second lady as its own, while using its military might to displace and exile life-long residents.

There is no coming back from purging people's records and casting them out.
scroll.in/article/1085...

Supplementary Materials 6: Fighting for Research Integrity with India Research Watch

Link to episode: open.spotify.com/episode/6gOI...

It felt nearly impossible to make sense of all the dramatic changes and crises around us. But one thing helped: community.

Whether as a guest or a listener, you have been important to our doctoral journey. We hope that you continue to connect with us. 🫶
2/2

Delighted to share that the Desi Academia Podcast is now the "Desi Postdoc Podcast, PhD"!
💪😎

We balanced this production with two dissertations, research projects, international relocations and a whole lot of paperwork.
1/2