Vijayanagara – The Last Emperors of South India [audio]
podcasts.apple.com
podcasts.apple.com
If anyone is interested in podcasts from or about India (mostly history related), here I list some:
- Scroll & Leaves - https://scrollsandleaves.com/
- Incarnations: India in 50 lives - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05rptbv
- History of India - https://overcast.fm/itunes1041684187/the-history-of-india-po...
- Desi Stones and Bones - https://desistonesandbones.org
- Echoes of India - https://shows.ivmpodcasts.com/show/echoes-of-india-a-history...
There are two fine BBC podcasts on modern India (last colonial years and onwards) but those are in Hindi (ones I am aware of) and have pleasantly short episodes.
Then there’s the contemporary Seen and the Unseen (https://seenunseen.in) having pleasantly very long episodes.
Really well thought, no overly dramatic narration or extravagant sound effects.
I like the calm, cool storytelling in Kit Patrick's History of India podcast. I highly recommend it.
https://historyofphilosophy.net/series/classical-indian-phil...
I suggest everyone check out the skeptic and athiestic (Nirisvara- non-God) schools of Indian philosophy. Especially Samkhya and Vaisheshika.
Indian past is always painted as a religious golden age. That is simply not true.
Indian skepticism, logic, and athiesm is centuries and millenias old.
https://overcast.fm/p686440-1S0rdQ बीबीसी हिंदी - seems defunct/dead but old episodes are still available and overlaps quite some with vivechna.
Carthage was the and only real sea power in the region and its funny yet sad that they labelled ship parts to make construction more efficient. The Romans eventually capatured a ship and were able to use the built-in guide to make their own copies. Rome used the ships to attack and defeat Carthage.
I often wonder what the world would be like if Rome fell and Carthage survived. Adding insult to injury even words like Africa are Roman terms that we use today to describe where Carthage existed.
I feel a bit of guilt knowing that a whole civilization had to fall to produce each of these episodes. This is really expensive to produce!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_South_India:_Fr...
My first introduction to the region outside of what was then known as Tamil country was via Raja Raja Chozhan ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajaraja_I )from the tamil historical fiction, Ponniyin Selvan by Kalki. I knew he also wrote a first person narrative titled “Naan, Krishna Deva Rayan” of the later Vijayanagara Empire but I never got around to reading it. This post inspired me to look it up and it’s on Amazon Kindle if anyone else is interested. It’s in Tamil.
Anyone interested in historical novels, check out these - Yavana Rani, Kadal Pura and Raja Muthirai. All by an author called Sandilyan.
Kalki’s books are a bit slow paced with phenomenal dialogues, beautiful prose and amazing descriptions. Sandilyan writes short, punchy dialogues and his novels are fast paced. They are both good, but Kalki is better and more authentic. Well with your time.
If you know Tamil, please read them in Tamil, not translations. Kalki especially is not easy to translate.
It is to be read in the same as order as it was written.. PaKa, SiSa and PoSe. Poniyin Selvan, of course is the magnum opus…there are ponniyin selvan tours in tamilnadu that goes to each and every location in the novels.
My neighbor used to say that there are only two kinds of female archetypes in the world: Nandini or Kundavai. Now that I am older, it terrifies me that he thought that! Altho..having said that..I know someone who didn’t speak to their cousin for months and months because one of them was Team Nandini and the other was Team Kundavai..so there’s that.
Submitted link prompts me to download the previously deleted Apple Podcasts app on my iPhone.
https://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:57211941...
And to see it’s all released for free for us to consume… just mind-boggling.
Then there is Hollywood, rehashing superhero movies over and over and over. And Netflix’s so called documentaries which take “liberties” with truth.
It is amazing what passionate individuals can produce, when profit is not the only motive
Of course most of these creators wouldn’t make content if there is no money in it, they gotta eat too! But unlike mega corporations, money is just one of the factors to them, not the only factor
Primarily agency conflict of interest between employees who believe strongly in social justice (as one example) and the employer's profit motive. Said employees create significant social peer pressures inside the org's culture, for example organizing walkouts based on their principles, which forces the hand of the execs. Execs are scared of the employees and prefer to cede to the new culture rather than challenge it and face their two minutes of hate. These are all just people following their private incentives and beliefs at the expense of the employer's profit motive.
A concrete example of this is when tech company employees protest their employer's contracts with the army. That works against the exec's judgment of what is profitable.
Now, this only happens when there is true ideological conviction. Otherwise the profit motive rules the day.
https://youtube.com/c/FallofCivilizationsPodcast
(This particular episode is not out with images yet.)
The stock stuff earlier really adds value though. It's not some generic background pan and zoom. If it's in the background it's probably being activity talked about and being used as a visual aid. Having a map of an area or seeing the ruins as they are today or quotes from sou fe out of books etc really elevates the experience.
I honestly don't listen to the non-video ones they are such an essential element.
I'll chime in with History Time.
Ancient Mesopotamia - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-mAWItV2q0
For video content of a similar feel, Historia Civilis[3] is hard to beat.
[0]: revolutionspodcast.com [1]: https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/ [2]: https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/ [3]: https://www.youtube.com/c/HistoriaCivilis
Napoleonic Wars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91OmO2YMiDM
As for history podcast suggestions, there are many decent podcasts for specifics historical eras or events. Here's a few of my favourites:
https://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/
https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/
and old one but still an excellent:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-history-of-rome/id...
I have more on my phone, but they're specific to UK history (where i live).
I've not listened to first two in a while as I'm listen to a lot of history books via audible. But I've listened to the first 100 episodes of the Byzantium podcast and the Russian Revolution episodes in the Revolutions Podcast - both are really well researched and produced.
If any one loves listening to things about the rise/decline of civs I can recommend the audio book version of Oswald Spenglers Decline of the West:
https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-Decline-of-the-West-Audiobo...
I plan to read the book version at some point but it's a bit of a tomb. So thought I'd approach it via the audio book first to get a better idea of the main concepts before reading it.
And i'm currently reading Arnold J. Toynbee - A Study of History, which is a fascinating look at the rise and fall of civs. It adds a different point of view to Spenglers theory and work.
The Song of Urania, a podcast about the history of astronomy
But having read Graeber, Mann, Diamond, Harari, and Reich among others and some historical cultural stuff, I'm lusting for more non-Western history. Even Russia is a black hole to me pre-realists. Anybody have recommendations for more exotic stuff?
Tides of History likes to cover African/Asian/Precolumbian a lot.
Highly recommend both.
I also like stefan milo https://m.youtube.com/c/StefanMilo
north02 is good,
It's the sort of place where you can spend even a month and still see new things every day.
One of the most striking bits apart from the landscape is how much of the modern village is built out of the colonnades of the original city.
Our village has several bits that have assimilated the empire. I remember we needed the permission of the Archaeological Society of India to change our front door since the door itself was 200 years old. At one point we didn't have a door because we were waiting for permission.
Did exactly that in the mid 1990s. Hampi is a magical place. The evocative granite ruins are scattered across a vast swathe in a hilly landscape of huge orange boulders with the broad Tungabadra river flowing through it, fringed by coconut and banana fields.
The main street of modern Hampi is located in a Vijayanagar shopping arcade. @stonecharioteer, have they kept cars and motorbikes out of Hampi? I hear the town now stretches across the river. Have the ferrymen in their round coracles disappeared?
My travelling partner and I made friends with Niju, the postmaster, and we went wild honey hunting with him.
One of the most memorable months of my life, and I've had a few.
I have a cousin who has an instagram channel you'll love: @hampi_stories. He's a photographer who goes to Hampi every weekend.
If you ever return, hit me up. I use this handle everywhere. I can introduce you to the Dean of the Hampi university, who is a family friend. No one knows Hampi like he does.
I'm writing a book on the Rayas. It's a lot of work because I want to write it in a vein that skips ahead and behind, with scenes that intertwine stories from before it's most famous king, Krishnadevaraya, and scenes of his own time. It's one of my favourite places. I'm glad you loved visiting.
For podcasts that don't, does anyone know of a tool that might be able to generate a reasonably accurate transcript? I'm probably putting too much faith in the ability of ML to transcribe Vijayanagara correctly, but I'm hoping I'm wrong.
(And I'm aware I'm losing some of the value of this podcast - the readings in Sanskrit, the traditional music - in looking for transcripts, but I'd pay that price to dive into new information at a rate that suits me better.)
So, what are your all-time favorite podcasts in any topic?
There has been one general thread, but a decade ago, or before.
For folks who listen to this and/or read about this topic regularly have you found a common set of reasons on why civilizations/societies fall?
The decades since the end of WW2 have been the most peaceful certainly from a POV of major power vs major power war in human history.
We all know weaknesses of major nuclear powers now but no one dares attack.
Empires and kingdoms have fallen through internal systemic failures, both political and logistical.
The modern prevalence of nuclear war has obviously all but removed the risk of collapse via invasion, but there are multiple other credible collapse vectors for the present day 'empires'.
Yes.
I watched a documentary on hughtube, and it showed how the red chinese were turning frogs gay through chemtrails in their passenger jets.
If this continues, the US will fail due to lack of kids and due to everyone left being an immigrant!
(the above example comment shows what really causes civs to fail, dumbassery)
I don't think there is a common failure point, from what I've seen. Easter Island collapsed from disease. Various Amerindian cultures suffered similar fates, those who made it through were victims to genocidal campaigns. Some of the earliest societies we really just don't know. Like the Indus Valley, I think it was FoC that covered it, but there's evidence that water supply fell short of demand, and they appear to have been highly dependent on it. Sometimes it's war, and war can be incredulously asymmetrical, Battle at Marathon, or the barbarians that demanded tribute from the Chinese Empire, Incans, Aztec, etc...
I think the one running theme I've pressed out of it is initiating a civilization in the first place. Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens describes this metanarrative crafted out of a shared myth, be it gods or legal fictions. And it's true, fiat currency, corporations, ownership and et cetera are the functional mythos by which we operate. But it's a house of cards. In the real human timeline the practical concept of state/society/civilization has only existed very briefly. And a considerable amount of information we take from it is inferred, and some of the constructions underpinning our narrative are purely inductive.
And I think there's also room to debate on the definition of fail states. If there's some radical reconstitution, I think that counts as a fall. When Caesar, and then Octavian, and the transition that they ushered in, I'd consider that a failure. The various revolutions we've seen throughout history I think would count even in the case they weren't successful, excepting the American Revolution. I'd even go so far as to argue that something like the introduction of the Fed could be at least an admission of failure, and then Bretton Woods. I guess my argument is every time that house of cards falls, y'know, the social contract, falls flat - it's a fail state. I don't think that's necessarily acknowledged as such though.
I'm reticent to cartoon it. In the more literal sense: you've got conservatism which removes degrees of freedom, you have progressivism which increases them. Too much conservativism reduces dynamism, and the system can't adapt, or is maladapted. On the obverse, the civilization loses directionality and, I dunno, random walks and loses its identity (social contract) at which point maybe internal stresses build to breaking and you get a radical reconstitution. Acceleration and a sort of whiplash could explain other cases. I think there's a Goldilocks balance, which itself is sort of a moving target. But this is all relative, too. A warlike civilization will be conservative in a mode of warring, and a peaceable civilization would be progressive in adopting it.
And of course we have to meter all aspects that are within the sphere of influence of the civilization, and how impactful it is. Sort of an inverse squares problem in earlier civilizations where it was actually difficult for kings to enforce their dominion, and information was slow. The ability for a civilization's state to "self-motivate" is pretty critical for its existence (schismatic, or low-influence), otherwise it's really just for play - and I'd argue that's a pretty crazy semantic territory I can't make ground in.
Vijayanagara: The Deccan Empires of Medieval India, 1290-1398 depicts the epic, century-long rise and fall of medieval kingdoms in India over two dynastic periods, for 1-3 players.
https://www.gmtgames.com/p-918-vijayanagara-the-deccan-empir...