# Episode 070 - Arabian Nights, Unreliable Narrators & Conspiracy Theories ft. Ani

An episode of [Are You Quizzing Me?](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1663104901), 27 May 2024, 56 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/d7afa960/podcast/play/87233814/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2024-5-5%2Fc83ac3e2-d4e3-3363-3c73-21aaa096477f.mp3

Do you know which member of the Barmakid family is a well known name from pop-culture and also appears in the Arabian Nights multiple times? Do you know which author went to India to write a story set in Portugal but ended up writing a novel famous for its unreliable narrator? Do you know which famous 20th century conspiracy theory features the divine being, the undertaker, the gravedigger and the corpse? Tune in to find out!!You can reach us atInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/areyouquizzingme/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/areyouquizzingmeEmail: areyouquizzingme@gmail.comSubreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/areyouquizzingme

## Transcript

[0:00] Welcome to Are You Quizzing Me. I am Vineet Nair with my Co host
[0:04] Aditya Kashyap. This is a quizzing trivia
[0:07] podcast show. Join us as we dive deep into
[0:10] history, science, pop culture and so much more.
[0:14] Let's get quizzing and we're back for episode #70 of Are You
[0:22] Quizzing Me? Your favorite trivia and podcast
[0:26] show. So before we start, there is the
[0:28] audio matter of the audience question.
[0:31] This is a question I ask at the beginning of every episode and
[0:33] which I answer at the end of today's episode.
[0:36] So today's question is as follows.
[0:38] A retired British Army officer, Captain Charles XX being his
[0:43] last name, was managing the property of an absentee landlord
[0:47] in the late 19th century in Ireland.
[0:50] A rent dispute between him and the farmers tending to the land
[0:54] led the tenants to stop working the fields and to shun the
[0:57] Englishman on mass. Local businesses followed suit
[1:01] and soon Charles, who was rich in status but poor in access to
[1:05] useful resources like food, was eventually driven out of town.
[1:09] My question to you, my dear audience, is what was Charles
[1:13] last name? I will answer this question at
[1:15] the end of today's episode. This, the 70th episode, is a
[1:19] very special one because today we have a guest quiz master and
[1:25] it is none other than Aniruddha Sen Gupta, popularly called
[1:29] Annie for short. He's a journalist.
[1:32] He's been a journalist, communications designer, writer
[1:35] and editor. Apart from these, he's also
[1:38] currently the consulting editor with Comic Sense, a quarterly
[1:41] comics magazine. He's a true man of letters,
[1:45] master of puns, and one of my favorite quiz masters, and there
[1:48] has never been a single set of his which I've not enjoyed.
[1:52] Welcome, Annie, to Are You Quizzing Me?
[1:54] And thank you for taking time out to appear on our little
[1:56] podcast. Thanks.
[1:58] Thanks Vineeta. I'm delighted to be here.
[2:01] Its really nice of you guys to have me on.
[2:03] I'm looking forward to doing this.
[2:05] OK, so. The format is the same that we
[2:08] have for all our guests. Quiz masters are the Annie will
[2:13] obviously be asking the most of the questions.
[2:16] So Annie will be followed by myself, followed by Annie's
[2:19] question, again followed by Aditya's question and so on and
[2:21] so forth. So let us start off today's
[2:24] episode with a question from our guest, Annie.
[2:28] Go ahead. So OK, let's start with this
[2:30] one. So interpretatio germanica is a
[2:35] contemporary term used among linguists and sociologists for a
[2:40] cultural phenomenon that occurred around the 1st century
[2:43] AD when the ancient Romans and Germanic tribes came into close
[2:46] contact. What aspect of people's everyday
[2:49] lives in the present is considered to be an outcome of
[2:53] the enterprise interpretation Germanica?
[2:56] So this is a phenomenon that occurred in the 1st century AD,
[3:00] but something in people's everyday lives now is considered
[3:05] to be an outcome of this phenomenon.
[3:07] It's a sociological phenomenon. So what?
[3:10] What is the aspect of people's everyday lives that's considered
[3:14] to be an outcome of the interpretation Germanica?
[3:17] Wow. OK Aditya.
[3:20] Any ideas? I'm going to take a quick water
[3:25] break. I'll be back in a few minutes.
[3:27] It's going to go drink what I realized.
[3:29] OK, OK, very nice, very nice. I hope that's not because of the
[3:33] question. I'm sure it is.
[3:38] And your question instantly dried up my throat.
[3:41] That's what happened. OK, no.
[3:44] Vineet, what do you do? You want to take a shot at it?
[3:47] How do you want to go about this?
[3:49] OK, let's see. Interpreter show Germanica.
[3:51] You said it's a sociological phenomenon and it's what
[3:54] happened when the Germanic tribes made contact with the
[4:00] Romans, right? Correct.
[4:03] The first thing that comes to mind is, considering the current
[4:07] climate, is it something related to immigration or movement of
[4:12] populations into a new country? Because a lot of that happening
[4:15] is happening in Europe. So is it something related to
[4:16] that? No, it's a much more sort of
[4:21] widespread and something that everybody, all of us are also
[4:26] kind of part of. When I say cultural, obviously a
[4:30] lot of the cultural aspects of the time revolved around
[4:35] religious stuff. So it has something also to do
[4:38] with that, with religion basically, and the religions of
[4:43] the Romans and the Germanic tribes.
[4:44] So I'm thinking how basically through history this has
[4:48] happened where existing religious practices have been
[4:51] adopted into the new culture that comes up.
[4:55] So is it like holidays having been Co opted?
[4:58] Like Christmas is a famous example.
[5:00] So things like that. Are we talking about something
[5:02] along the lines of festivals or holidays or something?
[5:05] Yeah, that's a very good sort of line of thought, but that's not
[5:11] quite what it is here. We, but it's not too far from
[5:14] what we're talking about here. It's kind of to do with the
[5:20] Roman gods, the ancient Roman gods and the German gods and the
[5:25] Germans trying to figure out an overlap between the two.
[5:31] So, you know, trying to superimpose, like you were
[5:35] talking about festivals and things.
[5:36] This is more about actually trying to do something,
[5:39] superimposing some of their gods on to something to do with the
[5:44] Roman gods. And like there's a very specific
[5:48] word in the question which is a big clue actually.
[5:52] So let me just repeat the question.
[5:54] Exactly what aspect of peoples everyday lives in the present is
[6:00] considered to be an outcome of the interpretation Germanica?
[6:04] OK, I think I. Have a guess.
[6:07] I got you, even I have a guess. So I think this is the naming of
[6:12] the days of the week. Days of the week.
[6:15] That is absolutely correct. That's exactly what it is.
[6:18] So yeah, I mean, so basically in the Romans they used to refer to
[6:23] the days of the week as, I mean, they use the names of different
[6:27] deities to refer to days of the week.
[6:29] So they had things like Diaz Lowness, which was the day of
[6:32] the moon, Diaz Martis, the day of Mars, D as Jovis, the day of
[6:36] Jupiter. And when the Germanic people
[6:40] sort of came into contact with the Romans, they adopted that
[6:43] basic structure of how to, you know, name days, but they sort
[6:50] of replaced the the Roman gods with gods that they were more
[6:55] familiar with. So for example, the day of Mars,
[6:59] for example, Mars is the God of War and the God of War in the
[7:03] Teutonic sort of frame of things is Tu.
[7:07] So it became Tuesday, DS Jovis, which is the day of Jupiter.
[7:14] Jupiter is a Thunderbolt guy. So that was replaced by Thor's
[7:20] day and so on and so forth. And that's how basically the
[7:24] names, the English names that we have for those, for the for the
[7:29] days of the week, that's essentially how they came into
[7:32] being. I mean, you know, the Angles and
[7:34] the Saxons who migrated to Great Britain, borough of Germanic
[7:36] origin, right? So they took this system with
[7:39] them over there. And that's how these days came
[7:42] up. So many of the Latin languages,
[7:44] I mean, like French, Spanish, Italians still retain the
[7:46] original Latin forms of the word.
[7:48] For example, Mardi for Tuesday, as in Mardi Gras, you know, that
[7:51] comes from Mars. So I mean, that's how the whole
[7:54] thing. That's how I mean, that's what
[7:56] this question was about, Yeah. Cracker question.
[8:00] Cracker question. I really like that the the
[8:02] putting that clue in their everyday lives.
[8:04] Very nice, very nice. Yeah, so I I think maybe you can
[8:11] sort of you keep your ears peeled a bit for such clues and
[8:15] future fictions as well. Yes.
[8:17] All right. Who's?
[8:18] Next. OK, I'll go next.
[8:19] This is a question that's a little close to my heart.
[8:22] So this is a listicle question which I traditionally hate but
[8:26] and is Aditya's favorite kind of question, but I'm going to
[8:29] appropriate it for today. So I'm going to give you a list
[8:31] of names. OK, It's a non exhaustive list.
[8:35] I'm going to give you a list of names and I need you to connect
[8:38] to them and tell me what the connect is.
[8:40] And I want a specific connect. OK so the names are Ariel,
[8:46] Umbrial, Belinda, Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Cupid, Oberon,
[8:57] Psychorax, Caliban, Juliet and Porsche.
[9:03] This is a non exhaustive list. The complete list would include
[9:06] 28 names and I've given you roughly around 12.
[9:09] I'll repeat the names again. Ariel, Umbrell, Belinda,
[9:14] Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Cupid, Oberon, Psychorax,
[9:21] Caliban, Juliet and Porsche. What's the connect?
[9:26] Well, right off the bat, obviously these are all.
[9:30] I mean, these are all names of characters in Shakespeare, but
[9:33] obviously it's not. I mean, yeah, what the connect
[9:36] is beyond that I'll. OK, so let me just tell you
[9:40] right there, these are all, not all, names from Shakespeare.
[9:44] Some of them are from Shakespeare, but not all.
[9:46] Really. Yeah, OK.
[9:48] So I can I'll give you a clue. As in, Umbrella and Belinda do
[9:52] not appear in Shakespeare. OK.
[9:54] All right. Aditya, you're considering going
[9:58] for this I. Thought it was Shakespeare and
[10:01] maybe a subset of it, like maybe people who die or something like
[10:04] that, women who die in Shakespeare's works.
[10:08] But that would be, I guess, two out of left.
[10:11] I think most of them are like Ariel and Kaliban and all many
[10:15] of them are fairies and stuff. But I have a second guest in.
[10:21] Are these like moons of Neptune? See, this is This is why we
[10:26] should not have people like, you know, Annie on the show.
[10:29] They get the answer so quickly. OK, it's not moons of Neptune,
[10:33] but it does. I'll give it to you.
[10:34] Go. You have the basic funda.
[10:36] It's These are the moons of Uranus.
[10:39] Uranus. OK.
[10:40] All right. Wow.
[10:43] Yeah, I'll give. You the funda behind this.
[10:46] Yeah, please. The current IAU that's the
[10:49] International Astronomical Union practice is to name the moons of
[10:55] Uranus after characters from Shakespeare's plays and
[11:00] characters from The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope.
[11:03] Right, right, right. Ariel appears in both
[11:06] Shakespeare and in The Rape of the Lock.
[11:10] Umbrella and Belinda only appear in The Rape of the Lock, so
[11:13] Cordelia is from King Lear, Ophelia is from Hamlet, Bianca
[11:17] from Taming of the Shrew, Cupid from Timon of Athens, over on
[11:21] from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Psycho, Rex and Caravan from The
[11:24] Tempest, Juliet from obviously Romeo and Juliet, and Porsche
[11:27] from The Merchant of Venice. So these are all moons of
[11:30] Uranus. So if anybody's interested,
[11:33] there are naming conventions for every planet and this moons.
[11:37] So moons of Saturn, for example, are named after mythological
[11:41] giants, right? So there are more I'm.
[11:44] So I'm not going to disclose all of them because I may put a few
[11:47] for a question in the future. All right, that was a pretty
[11:50] cool piece of trivia, Vineet. See, this is what I mean.
[11:53] I think everybody has a role in this podcast.
[11:55] I think Vineet comes up with great questions and he
[11:58] immediately cracks the answer. And I can make some, I can make
[12:03] some Uranus jokes if you want. That could be my role.
[12:07] I was, I was wondering if you're allowed to do that about,
[12:10] especially when you talk about wounds of Uranus, then you know
[12:12] there's order for jokes there. All right.
[12:22] Addie, your question, Nick? All right, I just realized that
[12:25] I also had a follow up question to the previous one I asked,
[12:28] which interestingly enough still works in the context that it
[12:32] also connects up in some ways with Vineet's question.
[12:34] So my follow up question is, and it's an easy straightforward 1,
[12:37] so I think we'll just answer this right away.
[12:40] But which is the only day in English which is named directly
[12:44] for a Roman God, Perhaps retained because there was no
[12:46] obvious German equivalent? OK, Wednesday is Odin Tuesday.
[12:55] You mentioned this to us. I then I think it's probably
[12:58] Saturday. Oh yeah, Saturday, yes,
[13:02] Saturday. Saturday.
[13:03] Yeah, that's yeah. Why didn't I think of that?
[13:05] It's Saturday. Saturn, it is Saturday and
[13:10] Saturn so nicely ties up with your previous question as well.
[13:13] Nice. I mean, that's just a
[13:17] coincidence, but good. All right, so I'll ask my second
[13:21] actual question now. So I'm going to do what you did.
[13:25] I'm going to give you a list of people, a list of names.
[13:29] They're both real name, I mean real people and a couple of
[13:34] fictional within. Within this list, I want you to
[13:38] connect these people to something in, you know, in
[13:42] literature. All right, I'll leave it at
[13:43] that. Right now they're part of a
[13:45] relatively limited list, like the names again would be maybe
[13:49] in maybe a list of 30 or 40, and these are 1516 of them.
[13:54] Alright, so I'm just going to name.
[13:56] I'm give you the names and then you tell me what you think
[13:59] connects them to something in literature.
[14:02] And I'm using literature in a very Broadway.
[14:04] Alright, here we go. Benito Mussolini, Mahatma
[14:07] Gandhi, Otto von Bismarck, Silvio Berlusconi, Jacques
[14:12] Chirac, Sigmund Freud, Julian Assange, Elaine Prost, Eddie
[14:19] Merks, The Beatles, Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier and
[14:24] Alec Guinness, Sean Connery, Laurel and Hardy, Thompson and
[14:29] Thompson. OK.
[14:31] This is limit. I mean this is a partial list of
[14:36] a certain. I mean of a list that could go
[14:40] on to about 30-40 people which is connected to something in
[14:44] literature. You.
[14:45] I need you to tell me what that is.
[14:49] Off the top of my head, I thought of autobiographies, but
[14:52] then I'm not sure Thompson and Thompson would come under that
[14:54] category. I did you any idea?
[14:57] So I was going to say some award or something, but literature.
[15:03] So then that makes you think, have they been but literature
[15:07] stretching it? When I think of like something
[15:09] like Simpsons, I was going to say, have they all appeared in
[15:11] Simpsons as characters or something like that?
[15:14] But I'm assuming you don't mean Simpsons when you say
[15:16] literature. No, but you're in the generally
[15:20] in very much in the right ballpark.
[15:23] It's literature, like I said, at a very broad level, and it might
[15:27] help you to think of things that I am into.
[15:30] Oh, I, I, I think I know this. I think I know this.
[15:36] OK, I think I'll get, let Aditya take a crack at it because I am
[15:39] now around 70% sure. Well, let's see if Aditya can
[15:43] crack it. I'm not sure.
[15:44] I might be embarrassing myself on the podcast, but still.
[15:47] We have enough instances of that captured when you it's I guess a
[15:52] loss in my own life that I don't know enough of what Annie yet.
[15:55] I hope that will change soon. But I'm trying to figure out
[15:57] what is Annie. I'm just saying to because I can
[16:00] see you on my video right now. I'm just trying to see look at
[16:02] Annie and what is the kind of stuff that Annie would be into
[16:04] this? Just me.
[16:04] Well. It was mentioned in the bio
[16:07] that. Yeah, that's what got.
[16:09] Me, that's what. Got me to the answer.
[16:12] Oh, there was something about comic books and comics.
[16:15] So OK, somewhere to try to think of comics.
[16:18] Comics which usually show characters something like Family
[16:23] Circus, Calvin Nov, Garfield, Lemon Curry, any of them I
[16:28] imagine. I don't think most of those have
[16:31] many real characters appearing in them.
[16:33] They are usually fictional characters.
[16:35] So beneath you want to tell us. OK, this is a guess again.
[16:39] I said 70%. So are these all people or
[16:43] caricatures who appeared in asterisks?
[16:45] That is absolutely right, exactly what it is.
[16:48] So yeah, it's a longish list of actual, I mean, real people or
[16:52] even fictional people who appeared in as caricatures or
[16:55] cameos in asterisks, comics, and these are some of them.
[16:58] Yeah, that's right. Well done.
[17:00] Aditya kind of lined it up for me when he said Simpsons and you
[17:03] said you're in the ballpark. And then the the comic thing
[17:06] just hit me and I'm like, OK, this has to be asterisks then.
[17:11] Lovely. I'll, I'll take credit for that.
[17:17] So now, now that you know it, is this something that I mean, have
[17:21] you is are you familiar enough with asterisks comics?
[17:24] I mean, you've read and read them.
[17:26] I can't claim to be a die hard fan, but I do love the comics.
[17:30] It is. It was from the phase where I
[17:31] was reading a lot of Tintin and asterisks at the same time.
[17:34] So yeah, it is definitely something I've read, and it does
[17:38] ring a vague bell. I probably have read a couple of
[17:41] comics with one or two of these characters in it maybe.
[17:44] Right, so I have a pretty simple follow up question to these.
[17:50] So obviously, like I said, there are a lot of real people and
[17:53] real who appear in as caricatures.
[17:57] So who are these obvious omissions from the list above?
[18:00] I'm going to just give you small two word descriptions and you
[18:04] tell me who are the real people who are whom I have not listed,
[18:07] because if I had, it would have been very, very obvious right
[18:10] away. So first of all, a Roman
[18:12] emperor. That'd be Julius Caesar.
[18:15] Of Caesar. An Egyptian queen.
[18:18] Cleopatra. Cleopatra.
[18:20] Yep, now it gets a little tougher.
[18:23] A Gaulish Chieftain. Gaulish Chieftain.
[18:28] Is it the chief of the village as well in the?
[18:30] Asterisk comic. No, that's why it was
[18:32] statistics, which but yeah, it appears actually he appears in
[18:39] like the, you know, in the intro section of every comic.
[18:44] OK. Oh.
[18:45] I guess then this should I, you know, I mean please, please.
[18:49] Go for it to go for. Yeah, So his name is Worsen
[18:52] Getterix. He's the actual Gallish.
[18:54] Yeah, you know that. OK.
[18:57] He was the actual gal Gallish Chieftain who was defeated by
[19:00] Caesar. So in the comics, he the wording
[19:04] is that he throw down his arms at Caesar's feet and the panel
[19:09] shows him throwing down the arms and sort of it landing on
[19:12] Caesar's feet and him going Yao. So that's the worst thing.
[19:17] And the last one again, I guess it's quite easy.
[19:20] A French writer, artist pair French.
[19:24] Writer, artist, pair, Aditya. Any ideas?
[19:28] No, nothing's cooking for me at all.
[19:31] Nope, no idea. No, no, it's it's self
[19:38] referential gossinian. They also appear in as
[19:41] caricatures. Couple of the com Oh nice nice
[19:44] so. I would not have been.
[19:45] Able to get that? OK, that's great.
[19:49] All right. That that lot, yeah, Next.
[19:52] So Aditya. Let's move from comics to
[19:55] whatever it is that you're going to throw at us.
[19:58] I. Guess another corner store of
[20:01] history because I'm going to talk about.
[20:04] The Union Club of the City of New York, which is a private
[20:08] social club in New York City that was founded in 1836.
[20:13] OK. It is.
[20:14] The second oldest city club in the US and the 5th oldest
[20:18] private club in the US as well, right?
[20:20] So there are a bunch of other clubs that also came up around
[20:23] the same time or maybe a couple of years earlier.
[20:25] But it is pretty old and pretty historic and almost a landmark
[20:29] for New Yorkers. So how do we remember this in
[20:34] today's world or what kind of imprint has it left in the
[20:37] world? Across the world, I would say,
[20:40] OK, Something that happened there in the 19th century and
[20:47] was immortalized, I guess, in some way in 1889, and since then
[20:51] has become pretty much ubiquitous across the world.
[20:56] Annie. Please go ahead.
[20:57] I don't have anything clear in my head right now.
[21:00] OK, I. Have one guess based on, I mean
[21:05] like just from these facts. Something that comes to mind is
[21:09] this the tuxedo. No, that is, we actually have
[21:12] done this in a previous episode where we talked about the club
[21:15] after whom tuxedo, after which tuxedo is named.
[21:20] But yeah, that's a great guess because it is pretty similar.
[21:23] It isn't in the world of fashion, if that helps.
[21:25] So this is into the world of fashion.
[21:27] Let me give you a little bit more of a clue, because right
[21:29] now it's a vague question. The earliest known reference to
[21:34] X that we tried to identify was in an article like I mentioned
[21:38] that appeared in The Evening World on November 18th, 1889, in
[21:45] which they mentioned Have you tried egg?
[21:48] Yet is this a cocktail you? Are close.
[21:53] You are close. It's not a.
[21:55] It's not a cocktail, it's not a drink, but you are close.
[22:00] OK, because I know the. Manhattan was from the Manhattan
[22:03] Club, so I was thinking maybe this was an Old Fashioned or
[22:06] something like that, but he said it's not a cocktail, just like
[22:10] Annie. I would say the answer is
[22:12] somewhere in the question itself.
[22:14] Then please repeat the question, OK?
[22:18] The Union Club of the City of New York is a private social
[22:21] club in New York City that was founded in 1836.
[22:25] How has it left a lasting imprint in today's world?
[22:30] All right. So let's see, the word imprint
[22:33] is the no, no, no, no, no. Not imprint.
[22:35] Whatever you can say any of the word, then that part of the
[22:38] sentence is useless. OK, so then what does that leave
[22:44] us with? Yeah.
[22:48] And your follow up clue was regarding the Evening News
[22:51] mentioning it in what, 1899? Yes. 18891880.
[22:58] Nine November 18th. Saying have you tried X yet?
[23:04] Have you tried X yet? So is it, I mean, OK, I'm just
[23:09] talking more to Vineet right now than you are there.
[23:12] So do you think it would be an activity of some kind?
[23:15] Yeah, I. Was thinking it might be some
[23:18] kind of food or or. You're closer with food.
[23:25] You're closer with food. Oh.
[23:29] OK, I think I have this one. Is this a club sandwich?
[23:33] It is. One of the possible or the most
[23:36] commonly accepted origins of a club sandwich?
[23:38] Yes. Oh, wow, very nice.
[23:42] Oh, that's lovely. Good question.
[23:44] They're beautiful and, well, so nice.
[23:47] Article. Mentioned Have you tried a union
[23:49] club sandwich yet? Two to six pieces of cram bread
[23:53] with a layer of Turkey or chicken and ham between them,
[23:56] served warm. So it was a recipe as well.
[23:58] And that's the most commonly accepted origin of a club
[24:02] sandwich are also called a clubhouse sandwich, which is a
[24:05] very common sandwich that you'll see across menus in a lot of
[24:09] places, including in India. Yeah.
[24:11] True, true. Excellent.
[24:14] Very nice, Nice question. Aditya, nice question, Annie.
[24:18] Again, the ball passes to you. Right, OK, a couple of my
[24:22] questions are a little long, so just bear with me.
[24:25] I'll re re emphasize the critical parts after I read out
[24:29] the question. So at the beginning of X's early
[24:33] 21st century book Y, an author's note, which in keeping with the
[24:39] tone of the rest of the book could be a fake memory, tells us
[24:43] that X went to India with the intention of writing a novel set
[24:47] in Portugal. Then he met the Indian who told
[24:49] him the tale of Y and Portugal was forgotten.
[24:53] The high mountains of Portugal Axis 2016 novel.
[24:57] Both 3 tales of an allegorical nature, the second of which the
[25:02] second of which is the story mentioned in the book Y many
[25:06] years earlier. So who is the author X and what
[25:10] book is Y? So early 21st century X wrote Y
[25:15] and in the in Y there's an author's note which says that he
[25:19] went to India with the intention of writing a novel set in
[25:22] Portugal. In his 2016 novel The High
[25:25] Mountains of Portugal, that story actually is stored.
[25:29] And that's like, as you can see, only 21st century to 2016, like
[25:34] maybe 15 years later. So I want to know who is the
[25:38] author X and what book is Y OK? I think I know this one.
[25:43] Oh well. No, I have.
[25:45] I have a decent guess OK, but before I kind of embarrass
[25:49] myself, if I said the name word Pondicherry, would that be
[25:53] connected to this? Yes, yes, it would.
[25:58] OK, so. Yeah, so I'll.
[26:01] Try. I'll try, I'll try, I'll try
[26:04] because we need. This is teasing me now.
[26:08] Pondicherry, an author who wanted to write about Portugal
[26:13] but instead wrote about I'm guessing did he say he wrote
[26:16] about India or because he said Pondicherry he.
[26:19] Met an Indian who told him a certain tale and as a result he
[26:25] forgot about, I mean dumped the ideal writing about Portugal and
[26:28] wrote that story in instead. Oh, OK, I was.
[26:35] Initially thinking Siddhartha, but Pondicherry doesn't feature
[26:41] in that as far as I know. I haven't read it, yeah.
[26:44] And this book is early 21st century.
[26:46] Oh, right, I mentioned 21st century a lot earlier.
[26:49] Yeah, yeah, fair enough, Indian. And you also said it has
[26:52] something to do with false memories.
[26:56] Very interesting. Maybe unreliable narrator would
[26:59] be. Yeah, yeah, that's I was.
[27:02] Thinking along the lines of unreliable narrator itself.
[27:05] Oh. Should I give some clues for the
[27:07] thing you would? Help.
[27:08] Yes, all right. In fact got like 5 clues lined
[27:12] up so I can the one of them is. Since Beneath has already opened
[27:18] that can of worms, I'll give that one first.
[27:21] So the book is about a sea journey that starts from
[27:24] Pondicherry and ends in Mexico. Does.
[27:26] That ring any bells? Life of Pi.
[27:28] Life of Pi. That makes sense, right?
[27:31] Yes. OK.
[27:32] Unreliable editor. Yeah.
[27:35] Right. Right.
[27:36] All that. Yeah.
[27:38] So the clues I had were that the main protagonist of the book is
[27:41] named for a swimming pool in Paris, that the book won the
[27:46] Booker Prize in 2001, that it featured a character named
[27:50] Richard Parker and that a movie was made with Gautam Belur,
[27:55] Ayush Tandon, Suraj Sharma and Irfan playing the protagonist,
[28:00] the eponymous protagonist at different ages.
[28:03] All right. That's what.
[28:04] It was Life of Pi by Jan Martellus for the answer for
[28:07] that Yeah, if Aditya. Wasn't able to crack it with
[28:10] that clue. Why?
[28:10] I was about to give a clue that was going to be just one word.
[28:13] The lassophobia. That's that's an.
[28:17] In joke, because we've discussed on the podcast before how many
[28:21] movies don't give us that kind of, you know, the vastness of
[28:25] the sea or the ocean is not something that you get in
[28:28] movies. But there about in the Life of
[28:31] Pi, the movie The Life of Pi, there is a one particular
[28:33] sequence when the ship is sinking.
[28:36] There is this amazing shot which kind of shows us the vastness of
[28:39] the sea and that really kind of creeps me out.
[28:43] So. We've discussed that before, so
[28:45] that that was going to be my clue to Aditya if he didn't get
[28:47] this one, OK. Perfect.
[28:50] Yeah, so great. I am up next and I have a
[28:56] question, which is again a slightly longer question.
[29:01] So you'll have, this is a long story, but the story kind of
[29:04] sets up the question itself. So audience and my fellow quiz
[29:08] members, please bear with me. OK, the Nava.
[29:12] Vihara were two Buddhist monasteries close to the ancient
[29:16] city of Balk in northern Afghanistan.
[29:19] The hereditary administrators of these monasteries became the
[29:23] influential Barmakid family after converting to Islam.
[29:28] So we're talking about the Barmakid family.
[29:30] They were influential in the formation of the Abbasid dynasty
[29:35] which was a caliphate which stretched from Sindh in the east
[29:39] to parts of North Africa and even Spain at one point.
[29:42] The legacy of this family stretches Steven to the modern
[29:45] day. They are credited as being the
[29:47] link between Indian science and the rest of the world.
[29:50] So Indian numerals, chess, Indian medicine, everything came
[29:53] to the Arabs through the Bamakids family.
[29:56] They have a lot of things which are credited to them apart from
[29:58] this, including the use of lamps and mosques during Ramadan, you
[30:02] know, even fashion, you know. The long neck which Bama kids
[30:05] possessed is said to have been responsible for the introduction
[30:08] of the customer wearing high collars.
[30:10] Today, the average person will be very hard pressed to remember
[30:14] or name any of the Bama kids except maybe one.
[30:19] X now X. Acquired great fame for
[30:23] eloquence, literary activity, and calligraphy, and chiefly
[30:27] because of him. Arab historians regard the
[30:30] Bamakids as the founders of the class, designated as people of
[30:33] the Pen or Al al Kalam. He had a reputation as a patron
[30:38] of the sciences and did much to introduce Indian science into
[30:41] Baghdad. He was credited with convincing
[30:44] the caliph to open a paper mill in Baghdad, the secret of
[30:47] papermaking having been obtained from Chinese prisoners.
[30:51] He met a bitter end when he was executed under the order of
[30:54] Harun Al Rashid. Fictionalized versions of X have
[30:59] appeared over the centuries, both as a hero or as a villain,
[31:04] as a detective, as an adventurer, and as an evil
[31:08] schemer. So I want you to tell me I don't
[31:11] need the full name, just his first name will do.
[31:14] Who this singular Bamakid person is whose name might be
[31:19] recognized by the average person today?
[31:22] OK. I have one guess I don't.
[31:26] It doesn't fit too well, but I have a guess.
[31:32] I have a very very bad guess. I was going to say Sinbad.
[31:37] No, it's not Sinbad, OK. Is it by any chance Abu Hamza?
[31:43] No, it's not. Abu Hamza, OK.
[31:48] OK, but I think we'll need more from you new Vinny.
[31:51] OK, so my. First clue would be children of
[31:54] the 90s. You definitely know this.
[31:56] We are not. Children of the 90s, that's the
[31:58] clue. So some TV show I guess, or
[32:10] movies from around that time? No.
[32:18] That's not it. Are you?
[32:20] There, say something. I was.
[32:23] Again, this isn't the right time frame at all, but suddenly I
[32:26] went to Kabuliwala. But again, that doesn't make to
[32:28] make a whole lot of sense. No, no.
[32:30] The family was originally from Afghanistan.
[32:32] They converted to Islam and then they were part of the, you know,
[32:37] revolution that replaced the Umayyad Khalifat with the
[32:41] Abbasid Khalifat. And then they served in major
[32:44] positions throughout that. But they and their story is
[32:47] pointed out as one of the things where pride goes before the
[32:50] fall. So Harun Al Rashid was very
[32:54] close friends with X and he was his right hand man, his vizier
[32:59] and he met a better end when he was executed under the order of
[33:02] Harun Al Rashid. And one clue I can give you
[33:06] apart from this is X appears in multiple places in the Arabian
[33:09] Nights, OK. Place in the Arabian Nights.
[33:16] So there is one story in the Arabian Nights, I can't think
[33:18] it's called The Three Apples, in which X is part of a mystery.
[33:23] He's a detective in that. There's another story, which is
[33:27] one of the first kind of examples of reverse causation,
[33:30] where X and Harun Al Rashid both appear, where he's an
[33:34] adventurer. And then what most people today
[33:37] would know him was was because of something that came out in
[33:41] the 90s. And that same character has also
[33:45] recently been seen on screen, maybe in the past 3-4 years.
[33:50] Oh. Really.
[33:51] OK. Is it?
[33:53] By any chance Aleph Lella? No.
[33:56] Oh. Man, I thought I'd track that.
[34:00] I put a few. Clues in this The Obama kids
[34:02] were famous for introducing high collars, right?
[34:05] I've told you that he was the vizier of Harun and Rashid, that
[34:10] he has been fictionalized as appeared as a hero, as a
[34:13] villain, as a detective, as an adventurer, and even as an evil
[34:16] schemer, and that this person's or this character appeared in
[34:22] the 90s and recently as well. These are the clues.
[34:25] And this is probably the only Bamakit person whom people would
[34:30] mean they would know without knowing that he was part of the
[34:33] Bamakit dynasty, right? Right.
[34:36] Yeah, you. I think you've given us a lot of
[34:38] information, but nothing is clicking my head.
[34:40] Not Nasruddin I guess. Not for John, no.
[34:44] OK, I don't think, I mean I can't think of who it could be
[34:47] one. Last clue.
[34:48] One last clue. OK.
[34:51] The last clue I'm going to give you is Iago Iago.
[34:55] So you mean Aladdin? OK, so who in Aladdin, Chafar?
[35:02] Yes, it is Jafar. Jafar.
[35:04] Oh, Jafar. OK.
[35:06] OK. Yeah, so.
[35:07] Jafar al yeah, interesting was a real life person.
[35:11] He was the vizier of his father was the vizier before him.
[35:15] He was the vizier for Harun Al Rashid.
[35:18] And they were a big of they were part of the Bamaki dynasty.
[35:22] And the depictions of Harun al Rashid and Jafar appear in
[35:27] multiple places in the Arabian Nights.
[35:29] There's a very that's a fantastic story about where
[35:32] Harun Rashid goes to the library, reads a book, which
[35:35] causes him to weep and become emotional, and he sends Jafar
[35:40] away. Jafar is disappointed, but then
[35:42] he goes to Arabia, has a lot of adventures in which he writes
[35:45] about those adventures, and then he comes back and then he finds
[35:49] the book that Harun and Rashid had read, and it was a book of
[35:52] his own adventures. So it was a kind of reverse
[35:55] causation kind of thing. Him reading the book caused him
[35:57] to have those adventures, which caused those books to be
[35:59] written. Yeah, that's really Robert
[36:03] Heinlein. So I found this fascinating.
[36:06] I mean, I'm completely fascinated by the Abbasid
[36:09] dynasty and the, you know, the Bamakids themselves.
[36:12] Indian numerals were brought to Arabia, to the Abbasid dynasty
[36:16] by the Bamakids. And there they were refined.
[36:19] And they were because they had influence in Spain and in North
[36:23] Africa and they had trade with Europe.
[36:25] Those numbers went to Europe and they came to be known as Arabic
[36:28] numerals, right? Chess, Yeah.
[36:31] Chess went to the Chess was invented in India.
[36:34] It went through again, the same Bamakid family, because they
[36:36] were originally Buddhist. I'm honest, you know, they were
[36:39] Buddhists before converting to Islam.
[36:41] So they had a lot of connection with the Sanskrit crowd in
[36:44] India, and those connections stayed.
[36:47] So Indian medicine, Indian numerals, chess, a lot of things
[36:51] went from India to the Arab world where it was, where it
[36:54] kind of transformed and developed and then went
[36:57] throughout the world through this one family.
[36:59] Oh wow. Amazing and.
[37:02] Their story is just fantastic. I would recommend anybody who's
[37:07] interested to just go read about the Abbasid dynasty.
[37:10] It reads like the Game of Thrones, basically.
[37:12] Some of it. The scheming and the killing and
[37:14] all that. Quite tricky.
[37:18] What did you say this person's name was?
[37:20] Jaffar. Jaffar.
[37:21] Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
[37:24] All right. OK, that's good.
[37:27] Nice. Nice.
[37:28] Learning, yeah, OK. So Ali, your question next, all
[37:33] right. So I don't know if this might be
[37:36] an easy one. What word that might have had
[37:41] exciting connotations in our youths?
[37:43] Mine at least my youth was obviously at a different time
[37:47] than yours. But what word that might have
[37:50] had exciting connotations in my youth comes from a three word
[37:55] French phrase meaning of good family or nature, Like of good
[38:01] family or of good nature. So what word comes from that fee
[38:07] word? French phrase which means of
[38:09] good family or of good nature. OK.
[38:12] So we're talking about a word that came from a phrase?
[38:15] Yeah. The phrase is actually almost
[38:19] exactly the word. Oh, just one.
[38:22] One letter at the end is dropped from the French phrase to get it
[38:26] when it came into English, and it's sort of joined up into one
[38:30] word, OK. I am completely lost.
[38:34] Aditya. Do you have any idea?
[38:36] No, I'm. Not at all.
[38:38] Word from phrase can't even a. French phrase.
[38:45] French phrase. OK, even if I go with a quick
[38:48] translation so good will be a born or born when When is a
[38:54] Spanish when born when is Spanish should?
[38:56] Be born, born, born. Born Vita.
[39:01] That's good life. That's true.
[39:05] No, that's not what it is. Good nature, good family.
[39:13] Yeah. I don't know the French word for
[39:15] nature. So no, no, you'll need to go to
[39:17] any. All right.
[39:20] So when the word was born into English in the 13th century, it
[39:22] basically meant courteous. And today it has a lot more of a
[39:29] meaning. I mean, it, you know, it has
[39:32] more nuances to it like charm and Polish and worldliness.
[39:37] And it's used may see mostly of men as a description for men.
[39:42] Debonair. Debonair is correct.
[39:45] Well done or. Debonair.
[39:48] Debonair makes so much sense. It's from the the as in, you
[39:54] know, of the born air. So that actually that basically
[39:58] meant of good nature the ball. And and in this case has an E at
[40:03] the end, but it's exactly the same word, which became the same
[40:08] same spelling, which became the boner after that.
[40:10] Yeah, nice. That's what it is.
[40:13] So, so you, you know what I was talking about in terms of
[40:16] exciting connotations in our youth.
[40:20] One of. The clothes I was going to give
[40:22] you is is the answer to a Riddle about what one might call a
[40:26] stylish Malayali like Vineet. You know that joke, right?
[40:32] I I don't. Know this joke?
[40:33] Please, Please expound upon it. So what would you?
[40:37] Call What would you call a stylish Malayali like Vineet?
[40:40] Oh, Devon. And oh God, oh God, that.
[40:46] Is the one the? Resident partner of this podcast
[40:51] has been dumped by that. You've been out today?
[40:56] No, I have. Been out, I have been out.
[40:58] Partner. All right, OK back.
[41:02] To any No, it's Aditya's now. No.
[41:05] Yeah, Aditya, take the baton. After being.
[41:08] Outpunned I need to gain some credibility back.
[41:12] So let me try with this question that hopefully because both of
[41:17] your tastes. I know it might for any time
[41:21] hoping it would for any as well. So I'm going to talk about.
[41:25] A certain 20th. Century theory, and I'm going to
[41:29] describe it in slightly vague terms, and as you go forward I
[41:32] can give you more clues. So the first would.
[41:36] Be a heavenly figure, then there is an undertaker, then there is
[41:42] a grave digger, and then there is the corpse.
[41:47] What am I? Referring to this is a.
[41:50] Theory. Yeah, OK, let's.
[41:53] Say it's. A conspiracy theory, OK.
[41:57] Can you repeat? Those things again once, please.
[42:01] Yeah, a heavenly figure, followed by the undertaker,
[42:06] followed by the gravedigger, and finally the corpse.
[42:11] Guru theory. Doesn't ring any bells at all.
[42:16] Grave digger, Undertaker corpse and that sequence.
[42:21] No Undertaker. Grave digger.
[42:23] Which was a sequence. Yeah.
[42:24] Anyway, he's nothing. I can't think of it.
[42:27] I think neither can. I for my, for some reason, yeah,
[42:31] my minds going to wrestling Undertaker, yeah.
[42:38] Actually clarify and let me let me correct actually correct
[42:41] myself a little bit, OK? The order is actually heavenly
[42:44] figure, followed by the undertaker, followed by the
[42:47] corpse and then the grave digger, which would.
[42:50] Logically be the right sequence anyway.
[42:53] Yeah, yeah, I. Realized I missed that.
[42:55] OK. The.
[42:56] Conspiracy theory. Like like in what?
[43:03] Like a broad subject area for the conspiracy theory?
[43:06] Like in what kind of stuff? Let's say there's a conspiracy
[43:09] theory to do with pop culture and.
[43:12] You said this is the what time period did you mention the time
[43:15] period 20th? Century. 20th century.
[43:19] So going by the names that you've given cops, Undertaker,
[43:25] Gravedigger, whatnot, this would have to be with regards to
[43:31] somebody's death. So.
[43:33] And you said conspiracy theory. So are you telling me Elvis is
[43:36] alive? No.
[43:38] No, no, no. I got it.
[43:39] I got it. All right.
[43:41] Shall I go? Yeah.
[43:41] Yeah, please. Go for it.
[43:43] The. Abbey Road, the, the you know,
[43:46] Paul is dead thing and the sequence of these guys on Abbey
[43:50] Road, on that road exactly. That is the conspiracy theory.
[43:54] Paul is dead. I was so.
[43:56] Close. Yeah, we're very close.
[43:59] We're very close. The conspiracy theory basically
[44:03] goes that Abbey Road is symbolic of the fact that Paul had died
[44:07] by this time and they had replaced him.
[44:08] Beatles had replaced him with somebody who looked just like
[44:12] him, a doppelganger. And they use the outfits that
[44:16] those people are wearing in the iconic cover picture of Abbey
[44:20] Road, the album, to sort of justify their conspiracy
[44:25] theories. So right in the front there is
[44:28] dressed in all white. We have Lenin, so he's supposed
[44:33] to be the heavenly figure. Then there is Ringo, dressed in
[44:37] black, who is supposed to symbolize the undertaker, after
[44:40] which Paul McCartney himself, who is, by the way, walking bare
[44:44] feet and. Yeah, and.
[44:47] Is out of step with the rest of them.
[44:49] It's only an out of step in the in the four of them, and hence
[44:52] is the corpse. And at the very end is George
[44:56] Harrison, who's dressed in denim and hence represents the grave
[44:58] digger. So it is the heavenly figure,
[45:01] the undertaker, the pops and the grave digger, which is how
[45:04] people justify the fact that Paul McCartney is dead.
[45:08] Yeah. That was nice.
[45:12] That was I, I, to be honest, I wouldn't have.
[45:14] I was going with Elvis because the moment I was thinking of
[45:17] dead person and conspiracy theory, Elvis is the first thing
[45:20] that comes to mind in pop culture.
[45:23] But yeah, definitely I, I did not know this piece of trivia.
[45:27] I knew about the pop Paul is dead thing, but I didn't know.
[45:30] I didn't know there was a complete, you know, so intricate
[45:34] theory about the photograph and everything.
[45:37] That's a great one. I mean.
[45:38] There's so many, you know, this whole, I mean, the way these
[45:42] fans who especially the conspiracy theory believing fans
[45:46] or various things are the number of symbols that they see and
[45:51] everything. I mean, you know, this Paul is
[45:52] dead and there's so many like this reference in this song
[45:55] means such and such and it's just crazy.
[45:58] I mean, these people, I don't know, the kind of time they have
[46:01] to work on all this stuff is crazy so.
[46:06] True, so true. OK, I think that's all the time
[46:09] we have now for this episode. Let's start winding up.
[46:12] Before we go to anything further, let me just ask the
[46:16] audience question and see if you guys can answer that.
[46:18] The audience question for today was a retired British Army
[46:21] officer. Captain Charles XX, being his
[46:24] last name, was managing the property of an absentee landlord
[46:28] in the late 19th century in Ireland.
[46:31] A rent dispute between him and the farmers tending to the land
[46:35] led the tenants to stop working the fields and to shun the
[46:38] Englishman en masse. Local businesses followed suit
[46:42] and soon Charles, rich in status with poor and access to useful
[46:45] resources like food, was driven out of town.
[46:49] So what does X stand for? Basically, I'm asking you, what
[46:52] was Captain Charles last name? So I think maybe our audience, a
[46:56] couple of them have figured it out, but Aditya and Annie, do
[46:59] you have any idea what Charles's last name was?
[47:03] Yeah. I do OK so.
[47:04] Then Aditya, you want to guess I.
[47:07] Think I heard of this? Is the etymological origin for
[47:13] or is it boycott Annie? Is that your?
[47:16] Answer as well. Yep.
[47:17] Yes, it is. Boycott.
[47:19] It was Charles boycott and that's where we get the term
[47:22] boycott. So that was the audience
[47:24] question for this week. Congrats to both Annie and
[47:27] Aditya for cracking that one. As usual, before we wind up
[47:30] there is the matter of our pop culture recommendation so our
[47:33] guests can go first. Annie, is there any pop culture
[47:36] recommendation that you want to give our audience?
[47:38] I know if this. Qualifies as pop culture
[47:40] specifically, but generally culture.
[47:43] So I'm, I'm big, I'm into two things.
[47:46] I'm I mean multiple things. Yeah.
[47:50] A lot of those things are I love science fiction and I love
[47:55] detective stories. So I'm going to talk a little
[47:57] bit about each of these. So as far as science fiction is
[48:01] concerned, I mean, I've read many, many different things, but
[48:05] one OTT show which I really enjoyed in the sort of in the
[48:11] past few years is The Expanse. There's a it's a 5 season show
[48:16] with and it has, you know, it's it's a beautiful it's got a
[48:21] very, very wide well expanse in terms of the way it covers
[48:27] politics and future dynamics and science stuff and crime and lots
[48:33] of things, you know, So I really enjoyed that one show and I
[48:37] would strongly recommend it to anyone who enjoys science
[48:40] fiction. Have you have either of you seen
[48:43] it? I have.
[48:43] Watched the first season, I haven't had time to explore the
[48:46] rest of it, but you're right, it's a great show.
[48:48] Yeah. It's very well made, yeah, and
[48:51] very well written also. So yeah, it's, it's a pleasure
[48:54] to watch, actually. Aditya, get on it.
[48:58] I shall. ASAP.
[49:01] All right. The second thing I want to say
[49:03] is in terms of I said I like detective fiction.
[49:08] And so there's this genre which I've discovered in recent times,
[49:13] like maybe a year or two years or Honkako.
[49:17] It's essentially a Japanese detective fiction genre which is
[49:23] largely locked room mysteries. And I really enjoyed this sub
[49:27] genre of locked room mysteries where you are a corpse is found
[49:31] in a locked room. And how, how did it sort of get
[49:35] killed and the person whoever killed over, I mean, the killer,
[49:38] how did the killer get out of that place?
[49:41] All those kind of questions arise.
[49:43] So I really enjoyed this Hong Kako.
[49:45] One reason I kind of have got into it is that there is this an
[49:50] imprint called Pushkin Vertigo, which has been trans, which has
[49:53] been publishing translations of some of these iconic Japanese
[49:59] Hong Kako in recent years. And apart from the fact that
[50:02] they were interesting to read, they've got really beautifully
[50:05] minimalist Japanese design covers which are really
[50:09] beautiful to see. So I've been, I mean, that's
[50:12] while I read a lot on my Kindle, I like to order books which have
[50:16] that kind of thing. So I've been getting a lot of
[50:17] those books and reading that. So that's my second
[50:20] recommendation read Hongkaku. Nice, very cool.
[50:26] That was a great. Recommendation.
[50:27] I am definitely going to check out Hongkaku.
[50:30] The thing is I actually am also a big fan of locked room
[50:34] mysteries. So this is just like a follow up
[50:35] or add on to what Annie said. There is an author by the name
[50:39] of John Dixon Carr. Is he from the mid 20th century?
[50:44] He I think is one of the best when it comes to career crafting
[50:47] some of these mysteries, the Harlem and I think this is Judas
[50:51] window. These are like some of the
[50:52] things if you want, if you're interested to start reading
[50:55] about locked room mysteries. They also make a lot of sense.
[50:58] But for those who are not so much into books and would prefer
[51:02] a visual medium, there is a show that I absolutely love.
[51:05] It's a little difficult to watch if you're in India, but if you
[51:08] can get your hands on it or if you have AVPN, you can watch it.
[51:11] It's available on BBC. The show is called Jonathan
[51:14] Creek and it stars Allen Davies. For those who are quizzers,
[51:20] Allen Davies is the longest running panelist on Qi.
[51:24] One of my favorite quizzing and trivia shows.
[51:27] So he plays a magician's, not assistant, he makes or creates
[51:33] illusions for magicians, and he lives in a windmill.
[51:36] And all the episodes are some form of locked room mystery or
[51:39] impossible mystery, which only Jonathan Creek can solve.
[51:43] So that's a show that I would also recommend for those who
[51:46] love locked room mysteries. And to add to anything, John
[51:49] Dixon Carr, one of my favorite locked room writers.
[51:52] But my actual recommendation of what I was planning to recommend
[51:55] this week is a book called Predictably Irrational.
[51:59] So this is a book by Dan Ariely and it's basically for business
[52:06] people. I mean, like it was written for
[52:07] business people, for marketers, and you know, that kind of crowd
[52:11] for the financial crowd. But it's, I find it quite useful
[52:14] for us to read it as well, the law, the layman to read it as
[52:17] well, because it kind of tells us how our decisions are formed,
[52:21] what kind of forces shape our decisions, right?
[52:25] So why sometimes we don't think twice about spending money on
[52:30] one thing, but then we find it very difficult to spend some
[52:32] money on something else, that kind of thing.
[52:34] The kind of forces that shape our decisions are discussed
[52:37] quite in detail in Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.
[52:42] So those are my recommendations for this week.
[52:45] Aditya, what's yours? OK, so I.
[52:48] Recently watched this movie again and I thought it is worth
[52:53] recommending because it really holds up and this is the 2010
[52:57] film Oran. So if you haven't seen Oran I
[53:00] would say this is a great film worth checking out.
[53:03] It was I believe the debut for the lead actor and Vikram Madhur
[53:11] and directed it. There's Rhonda Troy in it as
[53:13] well. So just an all around bunch of
[53:15] talented people who made this film.
[53:17] And it is one of my favorite films which I rewatched and I
[53:20] thought people should definitely check out another film that also
[53:24] I rewatched recently. So I've been watching some more
[53:27] films that I perhaps watched many years ago and I wanted to
[53:29] see if they hold up and this one also does.
[53:32] Is the film Anand? This is the 1971 film which
[53:38] stars Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan, both pretty much
[53:45] giving their best and having tracking chemistry together and
[53:50] often definitely worth your time.
[53:52] So I would recommend these two Hindi films Oran and Anand, both
[53:56] of which if you haven't seen before, definitely check them
[53:58] out. If you have seen before, watch
[53:59] them again. They hold up.
[54:01] And how so, Babu Mushai? You're right, I always remember
[54:07] that film for them. I think it was Amitabh
[54:09] Bachchan's character looking at an X-ray and saying
[54:11] lymphosarcoma of the intestine, which I found hilarious, but
[54:16] little in medical joke for people who know what I'm talking
[54:19] about. But you're right, it's a great
[54:21] movie. It's a fantastic movie.
[54:23] That's all for this episode. But fear not, Annie will be back
[54:28] for one more episode episode #71 as well.
[54:30] So stay tuned for that next week.
[54:33] Thank you all for listening in. We hope you enjoyed and enjoyed
[54:36] the show and learn something new.
[54:37] If you liked what you heard, please consider subscribing to
[54:39] our podcast and leaving us a review on your favorite podcast
[54:42] platform. Take 5 seconds after the My
[54:45] Spiel to subscribe to our podcast and leave us a 5 star
[54:48] rating. It helps us reach a wider
[54:50] audience, allows more people to discover and enjoy the show.
[54:53] We'd also love to hear from you feedback, suggestions, even
[54:55] trivia. If there are any questions, you
[54:58] are pieces of trivia that you want asked on the show.
[55:00] You can send us an e-mail at areyouquizzingme@gmail.com with
[55:03] the name of the quiz master in the subject line.
[55:06] You can reach us on Instagram at Are you quizzing me?
[55:09] We also have a community, a subreddit on Reddit, which is R
[55:12] slash are you quizzing me? So you can go there and post as
[55:15] well. We appreciate your support and
[55:17] look forward to sharing more episodes with you in the future.
[55:20] Annie, Aditya and Ibe will be back next week, so thanks again
[55:23] for tuning in. Have a great day.
[55:26] See you. Guys, next week, thank.
[55:28] You.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.