Tuckered Out with Ami Thakkar

It's time for an update people! We've done over 60 episodes, brought on big names, shared fantastic stories, and undoubtedly have some new listeners to the show from all around the world . So, I wanted to take this week to re-introduce myself a bit, as well as re-introduce the show -- what we're all about here at Tuckered Out, what we're trying to accomplish, and where we're hoping to go with ever...

My next guests have built an organization that is not just starting the conversation around menstrual hygiene in India, but they are educating people across India and changing the way menstruation has been talked about in the past and even today. Tarun Bothra and Kristin Kagetsu are co-founders of Saathi, a purpose driven manufacturing company that makes eco-friendly hygiene products. Their missio...

Pallavi Sharda knows what chasing your dreams is all about.  Growing up in Melbourne Australia, she knew from a very young age she wanted to become a Bollywood actress. We talk about making the decision to move to India to fulfill her dreams of working in Bollywood, her biggest takeaways from her time there and what she learned about herself, what she would tell other young women who want to make...

In honor of Pride Month, I had the honor of interviewing my friends, Parag Mehta and Vaibhav Jain,  a couple who has not just inspired the LGBTQ+ community, but also the South Asian community around the world. Last March, they tried to register their marriage with the Indian Consulate in NYC under India’s Foreign Marriage Act, which is a pretty standard process for Indian citizens who get married...

Sharbari Zohra Ahmed is a Bangladeshi-American writer and was on the writing team for the ABC show Quantico, making her the first woman of Bangladeshi origin to write for a network show. We talk about why she never thought she would get picked to walk into the writers’ room for the show, why the show didn’t focus on Priyanka Chopra’s cultural background, the reason she was heavily trolled online f...

The India Covid crisis has devastated the country and has affected many of us living in the US. I chat with Megha Desai, President of The Desai Foundation, about their efforts to help thousands in need and what we can do to support the cause. We also talk about the Asani Sanitary Napkin Program, which trains women in rural India to manufacture and distribute sanitary products.  We talk about why t...

Recognized among TIME Magazine’s 16 people fighting for a more equal America, Simran Jeet Singh is Senior Adviser for Equity and Inclusion at YSC Consulting, a professor at Columbia University, a Senior Fellow at the Sikh Coalition, a 2020 Equality Fellow with the Open Society Foundations, an author, a father, and a devout San Antonio Spurs fan.  We talk about his American story, the reasons that...

As immigrants to this country from India, Reshma and her family had to build a new life from the ground up and make every dollar work for them.   A graduate of MIT, Reshma was an advisor to the NYC Comptroller’s office for almost a decade, including during one of the City’s darkest moments, 9/11. This past year has laid bare a failure of government on many levels and highlighted that NYC is not se...

Nitin Pandey is the founder and CEO of Parentune.com, a pro-parent network supporting parents in India to do more for their child. Parents can find trusted advice, validated solutions and real time support on the platform. Their vision is to be the must-have support for each parent and believe that an empowered pro-parent community is crucial to improve the quality of child development. Parentune...

Sharan Dhaliwal founded, developed and now runs the UK’s leading South Asian magazine Burnt Roti , which is a platform for young creatives to showcase their talent, find safe spaces and destigmatise topics around mental health and sexuality, amongst others. Her particular interests focus on discussing the representations of young women, South Asian women and queer women. She is the Director of Mid...

Smita Sharma is an award winning photojournalist and visual storyteller based in Delhi, India, reporting on critical human rights and social issues in her own community as well as in the Global South on assignments for Human Rights Watch, National Geographic Magazine, and other publications. From documenting the effect of pregnancy on girl’s education in Kenya to child marriage in Nepal, and sex-t...

One of my favorite things about doing this podcast is reconnecting with people who have been part of different phases in my life. Dr. Sumun Pendakur and I met 20 years ago when I was a production assistant on her hubby’s film set. Needless to say, I knew she was a rock star even then. She is a #dei strategist, consultant and trainer who has spent the last 20 years focusing on building community st...

I could not think of a better guest for EPISODE 50 🥳then the Founding CEO of Times Bridge, Rishi Jaitly. Beginning late 2016, Rishi envisioned, architected and scaled a new business to help purposeful ideas travel more evenly around the world. Today, Times Bridge, the global investment and partnership arm of Times Group, is the U.S.'s largest venture firm bringing the world's best ideas and techn...

Zarna Garg is an Indian immigrant, mom, and lawyer turned New York comedian and TikTok star ( https://www.tiktok.com/@zarnagarg ) with more than 20 million views on the platform. She has performed standup at sold-out clubs across the country and headlined her own show My American Dream at the famous Carolines on Broadway. Unwilling to let the pandemic stop her, Zarna has kept audiences laughing wi...

Pat Shah has had his ear pressed against the audio industry for awhile now.  He is the Head of Content Acquisition and Development for Audible, a  membership service that provides customers with the world's largest selection of audiobooks as well as podcasts, exclusive originals, and more. We talk about how both of our dads would teach us math nightly using white boards,  how he initially thought...

Alka Joshi was born in India and raised in the U.S. since the age of nine. She has a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from California College of Arts. At the age of 62, Joshi published her debut novel, The Henna Artist, which immediately became a New York Times bestseller, a Reese Witherspoon Bookclub pick, was long listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and is being developed i...

When Siyona Vikram realized there were few Indian podcasts specifically for children, she decided that it was time to start one herself. Siyona’s podcast is called Little Mind Chats and focuses on helping kids breakdown the news, current events, and important topics.  She covers everything from science, the environment, politics around the world, and important figures in history such as Gandhi. We...

The #BlindianProject is the "meeting place for Black x South Asian communities". Started as a passion project in 2017, the project drew its inspiration from an incident in which street mobs attacked African students in Noida, New Delhi. Restarted at the beginning of 2020, the events of this year have seen the community grow enormously. The #BlindianProject aims to normalize Black x South Asian rel...

As part of my podcasting fellowship with On Deck (beondeck.com) , I had the chance to interview On Deck fellows Nivi Jayasekar and Paula Hernandez Forero about their peer coaching platform for women called YaYa. joinyaya.com  

Dr. Saya Nagori is a Digital Health Executive who is passionate about telehealth and innovation in healthcare. She is widely known in the health tech space for her early work in telemedicine and increasing access to healthcare through innovative patient solutions. In 2015, Dr. Nagori created the first remote telemedicine eye exam. Since 2015, her company Simple Health (previously known as Simple C...

India’s six-month-long farmer protests, which has recently gained global attention, has been on the forefront of news around the world.  With the recent attacks on protestors and a government shutdown of the Internet, the international community is left wondering what exactly is happening there. I chat with my friend, Manpreet Singh, trial attorney and board member of the Sikh Coalition as well as...

Rajiv Satyal is a Los Angeles-based comedian/host with over 50 million views on YouTube.  From stand-up performances, to going on tour, to hosting talk shows, events, and podcast, this one-man band has done it all. We talk about how Pete Sampras' advice impacted his comedy career, what it was like closing for Jerry Seinfeld, whether he would open up for Prime Minister Modi again, and why he believ...

Jia Wertz is  a South Asian true crime documentary filmmaker and director.. Her debut film, Conviction, recently released on Amazon Prime and, selected at 11 film festivals around the world, and won 3 awards. The documentary sheds light on the shortcomings of the criminal justice system through Jeffrey Deskovic's wrongful conviction of a rape and murder in New York. In addition, Jia is a featured...

I chat (and laugh) with the co-founders of Product of Culture, Archana Jain and  Monika Sharma! Product of Culture (#POCNation) empowers South Asian creatives and innovators to grow and thrive globally. The organization is a WOC founded and funded collective that amplifies Brown brands + creatives with strategy, content, and experiences rooted in culture. We discuss how the co-founders met, why th...

CEO & Founder of Mango and Marigold Press (formally Bharat Babies) Sailaja Joshi sits down and chats with me about building her company literally starting from scratch. Joshi founded Mango and Marigold Press in 2014, a publishing company that aims to fill bookshelves across America with age-appropriate, culturally sensitive and visually vibrant books that tell tales of brown kids growing up in dia...