Postcards From Nowhere with Utsav Mamoria

A city finds itself at the centre of the world's attention twice in a span of ten years, but for completely opposite reasons. In 1984, it became the first Balkan country to host the Winter Olympics. In 1992, it was home to the first televised war in human history. This week, in the third episode of Dark Tourism, we take you to the city of Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and tell a sto...

What would you do if you were forced to pick up a gun at a tender age of 10? And fight numerous wars for the next ten years, without ever having any choice? This isn't fiction, but the story of countless youth from Cambodia who grew up in the 70's. This week, in the second episode of Dark Tourism, we listen to the story of Aki Ra, a man who turned around not only his life, but that of his country...

Since 1993, the Kazimierz district in Kraków, Poland has seen a huge influx of tourists, thanks to the film Schindler's List, an uplifting story of how the Schindlers saved a thousand mostly Polish German refugees from the Holocaust. The phenomenon is not unique. Starting a new series, Dark Tourism, we explore why are we so attracted to places of death and suffering. In the first episode, we shift...

On January 23, 1960, at a little after one in the afternoon, two men seated on small stainless steel boxes inside a forged steel-alloy cabin, settled gently onto a patch of ivory-coloured silt on the floor of the Mariana trench. At a depth of 35,800 feet, they had achieved every explorers dream. But what has become of the human desire for exploration, especially in pandemic times? This week, join...

What does Venice, a floating city with an algae problem and Finland, a country battling climate change have in common? And what could it possibly have to do with stamps? This week, in the fifth episode of Currencies and Stamps, we explore the intersection of stamps and climate change, and how are countries are bringing out these problems through their stamps. Tune in, and discover how Venice and F...

Why would the sleepy Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan decide to suddenly issue talking stamps? Or the tiny West African nation of Burkina Faso issue stamps featuring the American singer and musician Elvis Presley? In fact, these were not frivolous pursuits by deluded monarchs or a tin pot dictator but were well thought out strategies. This week, in the fourth episode of Currencies and Stamps, we delve...

What happens when a British civilian administrator in the Indian government, a graduate in math and physics from Cambridge, on a fatal mission to organize a guerrilla network against the Japanese disappears? And what does that have to do with currencies? This week, in the second episode of Currencies and Stamps, crisscrossing Britain, Japan, Burma and Manipur, we delve into a rather unexplored asp...

What does the Oscar winning iconic director Stanley Kubrick have in common with a Chess grandmaster? And what does it have to do with banknotes of Armenia? This week, in the second episode of Currencies and Stamps, we travel all the way to Armenia and uncover how banknotes can be used to trace the cultural changes of a young nation. Tune in, and understand how banknotes, when turned into objects o...

What could Marie Curie, a two time Nobel Prize winner and the famous poet Jane Austen possibly have in common? And what does that have to do with banknotes, an everyday object we scarcely pay any attention to? This week, starting a new series, Currencies and Stamps, we travel from the WW 1 trenches in France to modern day UK and Tunisia and answer a simple question - What does a banknote tell us a...

Erling Kagge, is no ordinary man. In 1992, skiing and walking 1300 kilometres, over 52 days, he reached the South Pole. Alone. A few hundred miles away, there is a waterfall known as the Blood Falls, after the red water which constantly flows out of its parent glacier. But what do Earling and the Blood Falls, have to do with the Moons of Jupiter. In the fifth and final episode of the series, Alien...

Deep into South America, lies a place which is considered barren and inhospitable. And for good reason - how can life flourish in a place which has less than 15 mm of rainfall every year. But its barrenness is its advantage, for it houses some of the most elite and far ranging scientific pursuits known to man. In the fourth episode of the series, Alien Landscapes, we travel to the Atacama desert i...

Extreme temperatures, check. The harsh desert climate, check. One place is an arctic desert in the northernmost part on our planet, the other a hot desert country plagued by a brutal, seemingly unending civil war. Svalbard is a unique lonely place - you cannot be born, die or be buried there. Less than 10% of the place has any vegetation. Outside its capital city, you are more likely to encounter...

What do the father of the nuclear age, the Italian American physicist Enrico Fermi and a young European traveller by the name of Mubarak Bin London have in common? And why would it lead you to one of the most inhospitable and inaccessible places on earth, a place which Fermi hadn't ever set foot in? In the second episode of the series, Alien Landscapes, Utsav takes you to the Danakil Depression in...

58 degree celsius, 100% humidity and pitch dark. This is not Mars, but somewhere on our very own planet. While 2020 killed all our travel plans, I am sure even that would not make you go here. But there was a Spanish man who was waiting for the moment he could visit this place. A place where you would not survive for more than a couple of minutes. This week, starting a new series, Alien Landscapes...

In the 1928 and 1968 Olympics, Mexico participated in the marathon and failed to get a podium finish. The runners, who came in with a great reputation and a mystic halo around them felt that the 26-mile race was too short. In fact, in 1928, they had to be stopped to tell them that the race was already over. In the last episode of People Unlike Us, Utsav takes you up close to the Raramuri people, w...

Black Holes - Those enigmas of the universe we all have conceptually heard of but don't really understand. Taking a break from regular episodes, here comes a 2020 year-ender reflecting on a strange year gone by. This week, join Utsav as he asks us to relook at 2020 in a completely new light, much like the way we need to rethink what black holes are. Straddling the work of Albert Einstein and his f...

In 2016, deep into the heartland of Ethiopia, a herder by the name of Ali Bereino, chanced upon a bone in the goat pen in his backyard. It took an archeologist to determine the significance of Ali's find. In many ways, it was literally the bone the world was waiting for. In the fourth episode of the series, People Unlike Us, Utsav takes you to the vast expanse of the Kalahari desert, to peek into...

What if I put a bunch of children from varied countries, from Mexico to Vietnam, in a room. What if I told you that they may eventually develop a common language to communicate? Across the world, there are societies which have independently developed a whistling language: they chat, flirt and hunt through whistling! In the third episode of the series, People Unilke Us, Utsav takes you to a village...

What does the 80's blockbuster film - The Karate Kid, a 17th century poem by an English poet have in common with the people who live for over a 100 years? And what if there are multiple communities of people, right from North America to Asia who live for a century? In the second episode of the series, People Unilke Us, Utsav takes you to Okinawa in Japan, where you are considered 'Young' at the ag...

In a letter dated 14 May 1728, a Dutch East India company official writes to the Governor-General about a group of people camping out in the ocean off the coast of Indonesia. Two hundred years later, marine biologist suggests a theory of our evolution which gets dismissed by the scientific fraternity. So what do these two incidents have in common? In the first episode of a new series, People Unlik...

We've all heard the story - Put a frog in boiling water and it will jump out. Put it in cold water, bring it to a boil and the frog will be toasted to death. In times where the impact and advancement of climate change are not disputable, why are we acting like frogs? Why are we so terrible at fighting climate change? Taking you from the port cities of Surat, Cochin and Malacca to our prediction fo...

For a declining Native American tribe, it's a symbol of future abundance and health. For a whole host of scientists and conservationists, it's a horror story unfolding over the last few decades. Their annual migration is known to be one of the most beautiful in the world. But it's under significant threat. In the penultimate episode of Our Changing World: Stories of Climate Change, Utsav takes you...

What does an Icelandic composer, a Belarusian author and a Nobel Laureate have in common to do with the Chernobyl disaster? And why are we talking about Chernobyl 34 years after the disaster, and over a year after the world was swept up in the frenzy of the HBO show? In the sixth episode of Our Changing World: Stories of Climate Change, Utsav takes you to the exclusion zone of Chernobyl, beyond wh...

10th April 1815: On a remote Indonesian island, a volcano, Mt Tambora, erupted. It was no ordinary eruption - largest in recorded human history and the largest of the Holocene (10,000 years ago to present). It ended up having an enormous impact on the climate of the world. But it also impacted writers, artists and painters in a multitude of ways. One of which is now helping us understand how the f...

In 1993, Dario Camuffo and Giovanni Sturaro started looking at the paintings of two 18th century landscape artists from Italy. However, Camuffo and Sturaro weren't art critics or artists themselves, they were climate scientists. And their interest was purely scientific. But what exactly was it that interested them in the paintings of Venice? In the fourth episode of Our Changing World: Stories of...