Desi Academia Podcast

In this episode, we continue our deep dive into language science. We are joined by a fantastic panel of linguists to unpack the foundational debates shaping modern linguistics and cognitive science.

We explore how studying human and animal communication helps define the boundaries of Language, why the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis continues to spark debates over language as a universal human trait versus a product of culture, and how phenomena like the Bouba/Kiki effect fuel the controversy over whether language is innate or acquired. The conversation also tackles the socio-political aspects of defining of languages and dialects, the field's complex ties to colonialism, nationalism, and racism, and the founder effect on linguistics by controversial figures like Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker.

Professor Indranil Dutta serves as the Dean of the School of Languages and Linguistics, Jadavpur University. He is a computational linguist by training with interests in speech acoustics, motor control, and automatic methods of grammar induction. His research spans areas within acoustic phonetics, computational phonology, and natural language processing.

Dr Remo Nitschke is A postdoctoral researcher in the Distributional Linguistics Lab at the Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution (ISLE), University of Zurich. His research interests include the intersection of machine learning and linguistic theory, animal communication, and emergent sign languages.

Dr. Charles Redmon is a Lecturer at the School of Language, Literature, and Media (SLLaM), University of Essex. He is a phonologist by training and his research aims to understand the structure and evolution of speech systems, linking the low-level articulatory, acoustic and auditory structures in speech with the higher-level word structures the system must encode.

Recommendations:
Remo

Linguistics Wars

Calvin and hobbs comics 

Soviet bus stops - book 

Charlie

Rana Dasgupta, "After nations"

Murder mystery novels 

Indranil

Ira Mukhoti

Orbital -samantha harvey

La conquête de la Terre par les chats by by Alberto Montt 

Vatsal 

“I No Longer Think GLP-1s Are the Answer” https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/114009

Megh

The Boys - Amazon Prime

The Awful German Language by Mark Twain

Biswa Kalyan Rath’s stand up clips

Indranil’s past podcast episodes:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/44KV59s9wlQhWIxDdoUvdb “S4E3- Mandal, Mandir and the 90s with Sunil Menon and Indranil Dutta”

https://open.spotify.com/episode/19VqPH5LbJdq9B2TOy9vsp “S10E2: "Dissertation Research is a Team Sport"- Megh's Defense Experience”

This is our Linguistics 101 episode, where we talk about what linguistics actually is, who a linguist is, and why linguistics research goes far beyond the textbook. Our guests play a big role in shaping linguistics education at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and we sit down to discuss what shaping future linguists looks like.

This episode is co-hosted by Professor Indranil Dutta, Dean of the School of Languages and Linguistics at Jadavpur University. As a computational linguist and phonologist, Professor Dutta’s research focuses on sound patterns of speech across languages like Malayalam and Mongolian, as well as the development of computational datasets and models for human languages and bird songs.

We are joined by Professor Chandan Narayan, an Associate Professor and the Undergraduate Program Director of Linguistics at York University, Toronto, Canada, whose research focuses on the production and perception of human speech. He also shares how his background and training in Sanskrit help him apply linguistic principles to reconstructing ancient forms of Indic languages from archives and stone carvings.

Recommendations:
Vatsal

Movie: Obsession 

Show: Widow’s bay

Megh

Book: Course in phonetics, Peter Ladefocet

Book: Consonants and vowels Peter Ladefocet

Article: "What Will It Take to Get A.I. Out of Schools?" https://www.newyorker.com/culture/progress-report/what-will-it-take-to-get-ai-out-of-schools 

Article: "The End of Reading Is Here" https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/

 Chandan

Book: Language Instinct by Steven Pinker

Movie: My Fair Lady

Indranil

Book: Metaphors we live by, by  George Lakeoff

Battle in the Mind Fields by John A. Goldsmith & Bernard Laks

In this episode of DAP, Megh, Vatsal, Aditya, and friend of the pod Sumaira talk about their post-doctoral lives. In this rant session, we discuss the uniqueness of this title, why this job treats us like trainees, who trains and builds a postdoc, and what there is to build. We also talk about the problems in academia, our backup plans, and much more. Join us for a freewheeling conversation, and if you relate, DM us on our Twitter!

​Recommendations
◦Aditya
▪Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are' - Frans de Waal
▪Attenborough's 100th bday, the Netflix Documentary `Gorilla Story' (not to be confused with Kerala Story)
◦Sumaira
▪Dapaan: Tales from Kashmir's ConflictBook by Ipsita Chakravarty
▪Hari Sarkar Parsai
◦Vatsal
▪Cobalt Red- How the blood of Congo powers our lives
▪Your friends and neighbors
◦Megh
▪The Boys
▪Wildlife trade drives animal-to-human pathogen transmission over 40 years
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adw5518?__cf_chl_f_tk=Ss78lNpRMCYFYsv8.XyhEAhkUA5QvUtaw6RPDFRsN6c-1783283683-1.0.1.1-LqKFdHYN6foCerdZg5ipzkl6shAEPdxg.LAP6JAw6oo

In this episode of DAP, Megh and Vatsal are joined by Dr. G. V. Pavan Kumar. Dr. Kumar is a Professor of Physics at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, India. In his own words, he is a student of science, its history, and its philosophy.
In this episode, we talk about a very important and often ignored aspect of science: the philosophy of science. Join us as Dr. Kumar answers our questions about what it entails, why it is essential, what it means to humanize science, and much more.

Dr. Kumar's blog post: https://historyofscience.in/
Podcast: Pratidhavni
https://open.spotify.com/show/14ArkETgfASwpoVXJNFkcF?si=ab835aabe9b5457c
Recommendations:
Pavan
◦Hessen Chang Realism for Realistic people, a paradigm for phil of science
◦Inventing temperature
◦Horizons: global history of science
◦Ram guha’s the cooking of books
◦podcast : History of Philosophy without any gapsMegh
◦Cobra Kai
◦The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell 1857
◦Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction
◦Lingthusiasm Podcast, Episode 109, “On the Nose”
◦The Linguistics Wars Randy A. HarrisVatsal
◦jamhoor.org

We are joined by friend of the pod, Hassaan Saleem as we talk about the anti-SciComm grift economy in the physics and mathematics space, why billionaires need everyone to know that they are mathematics/ physics geniuses, Cosmism and the falsifiability of science. We ask Hassaan why he keeps fighting with people on Twitter, and discuss ways to escape belief systems.

Recommendations:
The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power by Max Chafkin

The works of Andre Grekoff 

The Peter Theil episode from Tech Won’t Save Us

The work of Sonia Contera

Talking to Strangers, Malcolm Gladwell

Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell

Youtube video: “conspiracy physics and you (and also me), Angela Collier, “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miJbW3i9qQc

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – But Some Don't,  Nate Silver 

“The Penicillin Myth” https://press.asimov.com/articles/penicillin-myth

Steven Pinker : when everyone knows

Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism by Anne Applebaum