You had put the first layer last night. It is still moist in places; nearly uniformly. The day will dawn in an hour. But the paint dries slowly (#TPDS). Always.

#TPDS (The Paint Dries Slowly)--- SynTalk Album

SynTalk thinks about Silence, and speculates whether it is fundamentally an ‘aspiration’. Is Silence ‘a permanent flow of meaning’? The concept of Silence manifests itself in physiological / neurological (auditory feedback loop, aphasia, dementia), linguistic (syntax, binary language), cultural, engineering (constraint layer damping, non-stationary sound), spiritual (higher consciousness), cybernetic and philosophical (‘Being’ and ‘Becoming’) terrains. The concepts are derived off / from Plato, Bhartrihari, Freud, Sri Aurobindo, Piaget, Lacan, Skinner and Chomsky, among others. We also discuss if it is possible to ‘get out of language’. How languages die like mountains and not buffaloes. Why is ‘what is not heard’ conceived as Silence, and what is the link with whales, bees & dogs? How different are the characteristics of machine sound? Is there a link between translation, ‘interpretation’, natural & artificial languages, and ‘meaning’? How does easeful acquisition of language work during infancy? Is there a universal grammar of spoken, written and ‘sign language’? What is the future of (abstract) thought, language and Silence? The SynTalkrs are: Prof. Ganesh Devy (linguistics, Bhasha Trust / Adivasi Academy, Vadodara), Alka Sapru-Joshi (psychology, Ali Yavar Jung Institute, Mumbai), & Prof. Dhanesh Manik (engineering / vibro-acoustics, IIT Bombay, Mumbai)

#TRADOS (The Rise And Decline Of Silence) --- SynTalk

Who does the kidnapping and raping? Are you a parasite? Is your politics in the service of capital? Do the lumpen form one group/class, or is it a general disposition? Are the punk ‘anti-social’ disruptors? Was Namdeo Dhasal punk? Was Kabir? Why write obscene poetry? How (& by whom) are the boundaries policed? What leads to the various underground anti-aesthetic movements (such as punk music, & anti-poetry) across cultures? How was Sex Pistols born? Does the notion of (unemployed, & all other) waste come only with modernity and capitalism? Is the oppositional market for shit, trash, & filth, then, created by a certain death drive in us? Can suffering be enjoyed? Where do you seek solidarity? Did late industrialization lead to fascism in Europe? How do political and aesthetic imaginations influence each other? Do the poor need aesthetic tools to agitate? What happens when industries rust? Are we now passing through a phase of barbarism? Is culture necessarily a good thing? Are you (truly) interested in abolishing inequality? Can the proletariat be precariat proletariat? &, are the lumpen forces (the ‘surplus population’) now here to stay forever? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas from literary studies (Dr. Nandini Chandra, University of Hawai’i, Honolulu), music production (Kunal Dole, Punk On Toast, Mumbai), & political science/poetry (Prof. Ashwani Kumar, TISS, Mumbai). Listen in...

#TPHAL (The Punk Hooligan And Lumpen) --- SynTalk

What happened in the 6th century BCE? Can a non-human (robot? dog?) have a soul? Does God’s time move from the past to the future? Is the present, in a sense, always avant-garde? How are bureaucratic orders made to perpetuate in time? How does a common person today understand the yugas? Who has the ‘need’ to think about the future? How are different time periods squeezed into a single register in art? Why do we invoke ramrajya? Do ideal types constrain how far (& ‘how’) one can think of the future? What did women joining the Buddhist sanghas (not) cause? Could science fiction become a historical artefact? Is a ‘genius’ science fiction writer akin to a ‘genius’ scientist? Is religion all about survival? Are religion, art and politics interwoven in the pharaoh? Are the pyramids, megaliths, Stonehenge, & the Chinese burial pits for the immediate afterlife of the dead or the future of those later alive? Are genealogies often invented? Is there a part of us that ‘needs’ to believe? Do we wish that the future were pre-ordained? Do we inhabit multiple temporalities? &, when is the messiah coming (back)? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas from art history (Dr. Shailka Mishra, Jagdish and Kamla Mittal Museum of Indian Art, Hyderabad), theology (Prof. Ori Z. Soltes, Georgetown University, Washington DC), & ancient history (Dr. Meera Visvanathan, Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida). Listen in...

#TSOFF (The Susurrus Of Former Futures) --- SynTalk

How ‘deep’ would a 1,000 years be? Is all space place? How do use, identity, value, law, power, or (‘imaginative’) memory hold them together? Do we live in layers? Are all human beings historical? Are all places relational? How do ‘material’ cultures of the past enable excavation sites to be dated? Where do ghosts and Gods live? Do all humans think of a place the same way? Can power structures lead to discursive spaces becoming material ‘reality’? What is the wilderness for you? Do you follow official maps? Do you know the seating configuration of the people you are hearing just now? What was below the Mosque? Is land a fictitious commodity? Is it possible to have an affective relationship with a property without having a legal claim? When is a place abandoned? How does a community disintegrate? Could long standing customary rights co-exist with legal rights? Is Law fiction? Are most relational boundaries always in a state of flux? Do leopards also want to take it easy? & How will we interpret our linkages and places in the future – would all space be propertied, financialized & commodified? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas from anthropology & film-making (Prof. Ashish Avikunthak, The University of Rhode Island, Kingston), human ecology (Prof. Asmita Kabra, Ambedkar University, New Delhi), & history (Prof. Anindita Mukhopadhyay, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad). Listen in...

#TPOP (The Production Of Places) --- SynTalk

How do the disposable get marked out? Which institutions have cognitive control over you? How do you develop railways in Argentina? Who changes institutions? Is it always from ‘within’? Do institutions help us with the ‘higher order’ decisions? Are military, markets, prisons, families, religions, borders, languages, & villages coercive in the same way? Are prisons (in reality) chaotic? What’s the price of joining an institution? Is there conformity of opinion around you? Do religions evolve? How do you think of the family? Do institutionalization and socialization go hand in hand? ‘When’ do markets need to be regulated? Are cryptocurrencies really a counter-current?  Does our continuous search for meaning gives Religion its power? Do universities live longer than political organizations? What are universities from the perspective of the dropout? Does the world need one anchor currency? Can algorithms be inclusive of local issues? Have institutions, thus far, been spatially bound? What would planetary scale institutions look like in the future? ‘How’ are the marginal voices to be heard? &, are nation states the best institutional form for the modern world? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas from sociology (Prof. Mahuya Bandyopadhyay, IIT Delhi, New Delhi), economics (Prof. A. Damodaran, IIM Bangalore, Bangalore), & history (Prof. Srinath Raghavan, Ashoka University, Delhi (NCR)). Listen in...

#TOOI (The Order Of Institutions) --- SynTalk

What do you expect to see on windy islands? Can you soar? Are there a finite number of ways of flying? Did we glide before flying? Do birds & insects fly like planes, & vice versa? How are the lift-off forces and moments generated? Was the Wright Flyer I (which made the first sustained manned flight in 1903) actually a very bad design? Do flies fly merely by seeing? Are wings thermo-regulatory devices? Why has flying evolved several times across different species? How many times of its own weight can flying structures take? How should flying carpets be made? Does it matter to the moth what the value of ‘g’ is? How might dragonfly wingspan change with atmospheric oxygen content? Can airplanes fly like sharks swim? Why shiver? How are/would the helicopters that fly on Mars (be) different? How will a balloon inflate on Venus? Are biological flyers far more efficient than the human engineered ones – how? Do birds and insects of the same size fly similarly? How are unmanned and manned systems different? Why don’t we have faster commercial flights (given they are possible)? Can one expect to see new ways and manners of flying? Will we ‘fly’ to Mars at some point? &, is there still a lot of ground to cover? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas from aeronautical engineering (Prof. Rajkumar Pant, IIT Bombay, Mumbai), & neurobiology & physiology (Prof. Sanjay Sane, NCBS, Bangalore). Listen in...

#TGFF (The Grounds For Flight) --- SynTalk

Are you a lobby strategist? Do you negotiate with yourself? Which taste group do you belong to? What are you allowed to see? Do you pay to publish? Do the algorithms that serve you change with you? How are counterpublics generated? Is society constantly transforming itself? What role does capital play? Does media influence human rationality? Are you able to tell real discourse and propaganda apart? Was there ‘public opinion’ (say) a 1000 years ago? Does public sphere have capitalistic roots? What happens to niche ideas in an information supermarket? Are newspapers opinion ‘takers’? Have most modern societies moved from being axiomatic to algorithmic? Can one have societies without a moral discourse? What happens to our base instincts? Do you have the ability of have your own individual opinion? However, are niche morals undesirable? Do ads serve a symbolic norm-making function as well? ‘How’ do you go after your ‘target’ audience? Is it alright if mass media becomes ‘hyper personal’? Is the public just a sum of the all the individual echo chambers? &, what is the kind of public that we want? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas from philosophy (Dr. Muzaffar Ali Malla, Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST), Avantipura (J&K)), social sciences (Prof. Narendar Pani, NIAS, Bangalore), & media studies (Dr. Vibodh Parthasarathi, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi). Listen in...

#TOOP (The Oxygen Of Publicity) --- SynTalk

SynTalk thinks about the (sometimes?) subterranean world of things, and wonders how the world might look from the standpoint of the Thing. We also tentatively wonder if things indeed have a social life, and if the composite affair of thingness is highly linked to the notion of permanence. The concepts are derived off / from Akka Mahadevi, Rumi, Marx, Coomaraswamy, Heidegger, Adorno, Thomsen, Derrida, Jane Bennett, Maturana, Varela, Bruno Latour, & Bill Brown, among others. What (if any) is the difference between an object and a thing, and can one think of it using the framework of phase transition (& change of property)? Is materiality the primary level of reality? What is it like to be a thing from the past (when one looks at an archaeological artifact)? How a thing cannot avoid being involved in history, & there being a ‘historical ontology’ of things. Can we even posit ‘thinghood’ to something that existed before we existed? Does a water bottle have a meaning in itself? What does it mean to be a solid? Is the pyramid (today) an object or a thing? Is the distinction between a thing and ‘the elemental’ more interesting? Does the object always need a subject (with language & semantics)? Is the integrity or singularity of a thing always porous? Is it highly likely that the self organizing tendency of matter serves a social function? Does this provide a clue that things may in fact have a social life? How (& why) did inanimate (inorganic) matter create human beings, and whether we are likely to be recreated (sooner) by things left behind were we to go extinct? Does every thing get to be objectified? The links between rubber, ~23% beta bronze, atoms, CD ROMs, stainless steel, crystals, Challenger disaster, birds, robots, lotus leaves, & nano materials. ‘Why we should weld but the welding should not be seen’? In what sense is a poem a thing? ‘I died as a mineral and became a plant…’. The SynTalkrs are: Prof. Pushan Ayyub (material sciences, TIFR, Mumbai), Prof. Stathis Gourgouris (philosophy, literature, Columbia University, New York), & Prof. Sharada Srinivasan (archaeology, dance, NIAS, IISc, Bangalore).

#TROT (The Realm Of Things) --- SynTalk

Do you have neanderthal DNA? Is your body your identity? What makes the knowledge of death possible when no one alive has experienced it first hand? How does dying feel? What are your schemas for understanding death? Is death the default, & it is life that happens occasionally? Does a cell know when it ought to die? When is an organism dead? When can we not dream? Can (certain) tissues and organs regenerate? What are the biochemical reactions a response to? What does oxygen do? Does the concept of death make control over others possible? Can we reverse death itself? What is the 'location' of a person? Do all cells come from other living cells? Or, can cells be created artificially from scratch? Is the body inferior to atman? Intrinsically, is everything conscious? Why do we see matter around if it's all one consciousness? Is Higg's boson dead? Do the cells need to divide to avoid death? Is dying like falling in deep sleep, & do we therefore die everyday? How does structure and order reproduce? What did you inherit from your mother at birth? Can dead mammoths be resurrected? &, will we have the power to create varied artificial life in the future with genome writing? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas from philosophy of science (Prof. G. Nagarjuna, IISER, Pune), theology (Swami Narasimhananda, Ramakrishna Mission Sevashrama, Kozhikode), & genomic sciences (Prof. Binay Panda, JNU, New Delhi).

#TDAG (The Dead And Gone) --- SynTalk

How do you look at women? Do Goddesses follow Gods? Is the ultimate Reality an ‘It’? What’s the relationship between matter and energy? Are dualities necessarily conflictual? Is Eve inferior to Adam? Where do the Cosmos and the Body intersect? How did the sacred geography of the subcontinent evolve? Do Goddesses have an influence on the lives of men (& kings) & women? Where/how did patriarchy exist? How did Ramabai become Pandita Ramabai? What did the colonial encounter do to the archetypes of Goddesses? How did the early literary women appropriate the Goddesses? Is (only) education responsible for empowerment? Is Vishnu’s primal inner energy essentially female? Who is capable of hedonistic bloodlust? What invoked the wrath of Nanda Devi? Are male and female in a union like speech and meaning? What is evil? Or, dirty? Did women have a voice in pre-Colonial ‘India’? What are your models for feminism? How do courtesans become poet saints and Goddesses? How did the tribal women of India ‘transform a priest’? What might indigenous feminism look like? &, what is the future of the several goddesses & the little (folk) traditions? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas from cultural studies (Prof. Sachidananda Mohanty, IIAS, Shimla), Dr. M.D. Muthukumaraswamy (folklore studies, Chennai) & Sanskrit studies (Dr. Bihani Sarkar, Lancaster University, Lancaster). Listen in...

#TGIP (The Goddesses In Particular) --- SynTalk

SynTalk thinks about the past, present and the future of water, and its dialectical relationship with Earth and life. We enter the worlds of rain, snow, ocean, monsoon, subterranean & surface rivers, dams, volcanoes, canals, lakes, estuaries, mountains, polar regions, and drains. What exactly is a river? Is water the same everywhere? The concepts are derived off / from Thales, Anaximander, Pierre Perrault, & Edme Mariotte, among others. We think of water both as an element and a compound. What would water be as a ‘ground’ of design and thinking, given that we are so wedded to the fixed dimensions of terra firma? How water is open, fluid (in space & time), and relative, and always retains its identity (?). Why are maps blue only somewhere, when water is everywhere? Do we privilege one moment in time (as rivers) in the hydrological cycle? Can we challenge ourselves to live in moments of (say) the rain or evaporation? Is there a need to include soil moisture in our imagination? How the sun is the essential driver of the water cycle, even though sunlight penetrates only till about ~100 metres in the sea. Do rivers also need water? How water is a lot more than H2O, with dissolved & suspended loads, nutrients, isotopic content, and microbial life. How & why rivers keep changing their dendritic courses? Are rivers fundamentally a series of holding & overflow systems, rather than systems with a source and a destination? How the ‘main stream’ of certain rivers may have been fallaciously justified historically by the surveyors? How stagnant water can be anti life. Have we (contextually) subjugated and privileged water, and told it: ‘be there, don’t come here’? Are floods a problem? Why do we channelize rivers, when water finds its own level? Is the earth losing water? When did it first rain on earth, and did rains come much before the rivers? The links between ~11 days, Cameroon’s Lake Nyos disaster, Catcher in the Rye, stream orders, The Big Muddy, photolysis, fair weather, Nile floods, run-offs, Sun, ecological cycles, electricity, Avogadro’s number, gravity, & independence. How water acts as Earth’s thermostat, & also helps the planet self sustain. Why doesn’t water vapour heat the earth up despite being a powerful greenhouse gas? Are there some water molecules that have never left the deep oceans or the atmosphere? How variation (a feature, & not a bug) is the life of water flow. What would happen if 100% of the rivers were dammed; could nature strike back? Can/should we simulate nature? Should dams be undone? Can future be a place of liberated water, with dissolved lines between land and water? The SynTalkrs are: Prof. Dilip da Cunha (architecture, design, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia), Shripad Dharmadhikary (social & environmental activism, Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, Pune), & Prof. Ramesh Rengaswamy (paleoclimatology, oceanography, PRL, Ahmedabad).

#TWOW (The Ways Of Water) --- SynTalk

What comes first - matter or space or time? What is the structure of space? Why did Paul Cezanne go 'flat'? How did Picasso turn the artistic conception of space on its head with cubism? Is there a link between colour and space? What is it like to be in Matisse's The Red Studio? What happens when you walk into a room that you have not been in before? Are there specific neurons in your brain for every space that you have ever been to? How do place cells within the hippocampus represent the physical space as a cognitive map? Is space the same everywhere in the universe? Is it possible to represent empty space? How does an artist create the pictorial space on a 2-dimensional canvas? Is the perception of space always relative to matter (& objects)? Is episodic memory anchored in space (the 'where')? What is space like at sub atomic scales? Does nature really have more than 3 dimensions? Has theoretical physics completely missed incorporating gravity of all the matter in the universe? Is matter essentially primary, time derived, and space essentially relational? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions, about the manifested space around and within us, using concepts from physics (Prof. C.S. Unnikrishnan, TIFR, Mumbai), art (Atul Dodiya, Mumbai), and neuroscience (Dr. Sachin Deshmukh, IISc, Bangalore). 

Listen in...

#TROS (The Representation Of Space) --- SynTalk

How many meals do you have time for? Why do sweets make you happy? Does fruit sugar (fructose) need insulin? Why does sugar spike? Are oranges and grapes differently sweet? Has sugar always been a transnational commodity? How did Europe get sugar? How did the first sweet shops come up? How did we end up milking animals? Is time the fourth factor in nutrition? Are apples autochthonously sweet? Do sweet making techniques travel easily? What travels first – people or food? What does grinding do to grains? Where do you get your samosas and croissants? Does your tea have blood in it? Is your diet carbohydrate heavy? Might you crave ‘more’ food if you consume less sweets? What has the relatively recent non-seasonal abundance done to human bodies? Have our metabolic systems evolved to fight abundance as well as scarcity? Do all blood pressure patients need to restrict salt? How important is the sensation of sweetness? What exactly do sugar-free sweets do? What is monk fruit’s future? Is greater industrialization of our food systems inevitable? &, would sweets continue to embody the spirit of indulgence (& excess) in the future? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas from endocrinology (Dr. Hemraj B. Chandalia, Jaslok Hospital, Mumbai), culinary anthropology (Dr. Kurush F. Dalal, Gyaan Factory, Mumbai) & sociology (Dr. Ishita Dey, South Asian University (SAU), New Delhi). Listen in...

#TEST (The Entangled Sweet Tooth) --- SynTalk

Are you a born criminal? Is genocide ever justified? Is meritocracy a ‘garbage’ concept? What are the entitlements that you have by virtue of being a human being? Do rights exist because the State exists, & vice versa? Are rights sometimes anti norms? Do nomadic and sedentary societies think differently of rights? Are rights always a product of struggle? Are you 42 and a communist? Are all rights inter-related? Can the right to dignity be limited? What gets transmitted across generations? Are the normative social structures of the past in our prefrontal cortex today? Does reservation come under the framework of equality? What are a prisoner’s rights? Does it suit us to have certain sections of people stigmatised? Must social, political & economic rights go hand in hand? Can societies be changed without economic incentives? Is West Africa still scarred by slave trade? Can historical recompensation be done forever? Do you have a present bias? When are gender points a good idea? What makes rights effective - is this scale dependent? Why is Geneva Convention not always enforceable? Which rights are non-derogable? &, what are the rights of the next generation today? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using ideas from economics (Prof. Sujoy Chakravarty, JNU, New Delhi), history (Prof. Ajay Dandekar, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR) & law (Prof. Arvind Narrain, NLSIU, Bangalore). Listen in...

#TEOR (The Effects Of Rights) --- SynTalk

Is 100% memory loss possible? Is the past ‘preserved by itself, automatically’? Is the notion of decay linked intimately to the concepts of order and memory? Does life grow towards order, even as physical systems go towards disorder? Does maintenance of order require a significant amount of energy? Is there a fundamental unit of order? Are rituals (say) the work required to reproduce social order? Is anomie or agonism the opposite of order? Is too much cohesion also a symptom of decay? Do systems decay when they go ‘out of context’ vis-à-vis the neighbours? Is memory the sense-organ to perceive time? Why does a fly develop a complex memory for a life of ‘just’ 1-2 (human) days? Do life-forces wax & wane? Are there different forms of decaying? Can some systems self heal or (erroneously) self destruct? Are perpetual systems possible? Do automata (or, human beings) always display highly rule bound behaviour? Is physical immortality (with selfhood) technically possible? Can machines introspect? How do you prove that you are not a machine? Why is it that some trees do not seem to ever die? Are myths ‘more’ futuristic? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from neurosciences & psychiatry (Prof. Sanjeev Jain, NIMHANS, Bangalore), computer science (Prof. Madhavan Mukund, CMI, Chennai), and anthropology & philosophy (Dr. Bhrigupati Singh, Brown University, Providence, USA). Listen in...

#TPOD (The Process Of Decay) --- SynTalk

f(q) = Is soil a definitive sign of life? (#TCAFG)

SynTalk is a freewheeling interdisciplinary talk show with a philosophical approach to understanding the world from a long term perspective.

#TWOW (The Ways Of Water) --- SynTalk

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