# Episode 071 - Dictators, Cardinals & Playwrights ft. Ani

An episode of [Are You Quizzing Me?](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1663104901), 3 Jun 2024, 1 h 05 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/d7afa960/podcast/play/87511002/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2024-5-2%2F8b3edc4a-f652-e706-547b-3995eb57eb40.mp3

Do you know which American city got its name from a Roman dictator famous for giving up his dictatorial powers? Do you know what Cardinal Richelieu (villain of the three musketeers) invented which is part of our daily lives? Do you know which famous playwright who has punched up many film scripts has only ever been credited once, when he has acted as script doctor? 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 our 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 #71 prime
[0:22] number. Aditya and I are back for
[0:26] another round of quizzing on your favorite quizzing and
[0:28] trivia podcast show. And we also have Aniruta
[0:32] Sengupta returning from last week as our guest quiz master.
[0:36] For those who may have missed last week's episode, please go
[0:39] listen to that. But if you don't have time and
[0:41] it's more polite, I will introduce Annie again.
[0:45] Aniruta Sengupta, who popularly known as Annie, has been a
[0:48] journalist, communications designer, writer, and editor.
[0:51] Apart from other things, he's also currently the consulting
[0:54] editor with Comic Sense, a quarterly comics magazine.
[0:57] He's a true man of letters, master of puns, and one of my
[1:00] favorite quiz masters. He's been kind enough to join us
[1:04] for two episodes, and we look forward to another cracking
[1:07] episode with him. But before we do any of that,
[1:09] there is the small matter of the audience question for this week.
[1:13] And it's a straightforward question which I hope at least
[1:16] some of you will be able to guess by the end of today's
[1:19] episode. So the question that I'm going
[1:21] to ask ask now as your audience question is as follows.
[1:25] The letter that is never silent in any word in any accent in the
[1:31] English language is which letter?
[1:34] Let me repeat the question. Which letter is the only letter
[1:38] in the English language that is never silent in any word in any
[1:43] accent? I will answer this question at
[1:46] the end of today's episode. So, Annie.
[1:51] Yes. We are back for another round,
[1:54] how are you feeling? Great, excellent.
[1:57] I think we, I really enjoyed what we did last time and I'm
[2:00] going to be, I'm looking forward to more of it this time.
[2:04] So. Great.
[2:06] So, Annie, why don't you start us off with your question?
[2:09] All right, my first question today is a bit of a long 1 S
[2:15] again a little patience, but things will become clear.
[2:19] So on being ousted as British Prime Minister in September
[2:23] 2022, Boris Johnson said in his favours please speech like XI am
[2:30] returning to my plough. He was referring to Lucius
[2:34] Quinctius X, who lived around 5:20 to 4:30 BCE, a Roman
[2:41] citizen farmer who, when called upon to help repel invasion by a
[2:45] neighboring tribe, abandoned his plough and led the early Roman
[2:49] Republic to victory. And then, instead of clinging to
[2:53] power and privilege, he simply returned to his farm, thus
[2:56] becoming an emblem of selflessness and civic virtue.
[3:00] Now Fast forward male couple of millennia.
[3:05] In the newly formed United States of America, a group of
[3:09] veteran officers from the Revolutionary War, which is the
[3:12] war against the British, return to their agricultural pursuits,
[3:16] forming the Society of the Y in doing so, where Y is a romanized
[3:21] plural of X, The settlement where they did so, originally
[3:26] known as Lusanti Ville, was renamed Y in honor of the
[3:30] society. So what city is Y?
[3:34] So just to recap, Boris Johnson said in his fable speech like XI
[3:40] am returning to my plough. He was referring to a Roman
[3:44] citizen, farmer Lucius Quintius X, who after leading the Roman
[3:51] Republic to victory against a neighboring tribe, instead of
[3:55] clinging to power when simply returned to his farm and went
[3:58] back to farming and thus became an emblem of selflessness and
[4:02] civic virtue. In the USA, group of veteran
[4:07] officers from the Revolutionary War did the same.
[4:10] They returned to their agricultural pursuits after the
[4:12] war was over, forming the Society of the Y.
[4:16] Now Y here is essentially a Romanized plural of XX, being
[4:20] the name of that gentleman we referred to earlier.
[4:24] So the settlement where they did so was originally named
[4:27] Losanteville, but was renamed Y in honor of the society.
[4:32] What city is this? OK, I am going to bow out of
[4:37] this question in the beginning. Annie, I think I've mentioned
[4:40] before that we both have very similar interests when it comes
[4:43] to history. I am an avid listener of the
[4:46] History of Rome podcast, in which there's almost an entire
[4:50] episode dedicated to this gentleman.
[4:54] So I'm going to leave this to Aditya.
[4:57] All right. Thanks.
[5:00] Yeah. Such a gracious.
[5:05] Gracious step. Let me see.
[5:10] I do remember this, and I remember reading the news
[5:13] article about how Boris Johnson compared himself to this
[5:17] historical figure, and I know there is an American city named
[5:20] after him as well. I am.
[5:23] Just it's. The back of my head I cannot for
[5:26] my life remember the name of this person or the name of the
[5:29] city is. Did you mention which state is
[5:33] it in? Not that am I American geography
[5:35] is that good? But OK, no, I didn't.
[5:38] I felt that might make it too easy.
[5:40] Should I give you some clues? Yeah, definitely.
[5:43] Please. All right, so see, like many
[5:47] Roman names, X ends in the letters US, US, you know, as in
[5:52] Julius or protests. So when they wanted to name the
[5:58] society after themselves, the veterans went with what is often
[6:04] a version of like a pluralization of any Roman word.
[6:10] It doesn't actually apply to names, but they applied it to
[6:12] the name. And so like radius becomes radii
[6:16] and so on and so forth. They simply change that US to an
[6:19] I. So that gives you an idea at
[6:22] least, of what the last letter of the city's name is.
[6:27] And last liter of the city is I. Does that help?
[6:30] No, yeah. Because that's a very common
[6:33] ending for a city name, so therefore I thought that's a
[6:35] possible clue. Except for Indian cities like
[6:39] Delhi. And there's Mumbai.
[6:42] Yeah, luckily this is in the Usus there is of course several.
[6:50] Delhi is in the US as well. But yeah.
[6:52] All right, no. I'm assuming it's a prominent
[6:54] city because I remember it being one.
[6:56] Yeah, yeah. Ending with I I can't actually
[6:59] think of a single American city. Shall I give you something more?
[7:05] Yeah, give me another clue perhaps?
[7:08] All right. So I have possible clues in some
[7:12] sociological stuff, in some business things and in some
[7:16] sports thing. Which which area would you like
[7:19] your clue to be in? I'm not very good with sports,
[7:23] so I'm going to ask you for maybe a business clue.
[7:27] All right. Oh, is it?
[7:29] I was going to say, Miami is the only one I can think of right?
[7:33] Now, OK, but it's not Miami though.
[7:36] So my clue, my business related clue is scandal maker William
[7:40] Proctor and soap maker James Gamble set up the eponymous
[7:43] partnership company here. The city continues to be home to
[7:46] the PNG headquarters. Oh.
[7:49] PNG headquarters. Oh boy, I have so many good
[7:51] friends who work in PNG and thence I've heard this name so
[7:53] many. Cincinnati.
[7:54] My friend was in Cincinnati just now.
[7:59] That is perfect. It is Cincinnati.
[8:01] The Roman person was Cincinnatus.
[8:05] So yeah, that's what it. Is right, Right.
[8:08] Right. Yeah, I remember this.
[8:10] Yes. So Cincinnatus is as, as Annie
[8:13] mentioned, very famous for somebody who rejected power.
[8:17] He woke up because the the kind of contrast you can place
[8:21] between him and Julius Caesar is that Rome had this kind of legal
[8:26] position. I think I've mentioned this on
[8:28] the podcast before. Rome had this kind of legal
[8:30] position that when the city was in danger, they would not rule
[8:37] by consensus. They would, Rome would be ruled
[8:41] until the danger was over by a single person.
[8:44] And that was a legal appointment.
[8:45] It was like a magistrate like appointment.
[8:47] It was a legal appointment. And do you do you know what it
[8:50] was called? Yeah, dictator, right?
[8:52] Yes, it was called dictator. So Cincinnatus is one of those
[8:55] people who was given the position of dictator until the
[8:59] war was over and then famously went back to be a farmer.
[9:03] But I think in between he was called back again for service
[9:06] after a few years. Julius Caesar is the one who
[9:10] kind of how do I put this poison the well?
[9:14] Because after being declared dictator, he then declared
[9:17] himself dictator in perpetuity and then the emperor and
[9:23] whatnot, all those titles that Caesar, the title Caesar came
[9:25] after that. So this and again, this is an
[9:28] informal recommendation. I think I've mentioned it on the
[9:30] podcast before as well, The History of Rome.
[9:33] It's a fantastic podcast. If you're remotely interested in
[9:38] history, it's just wonderful. So.
[9:41] All right, yeah, that's a good recommendation, man.
[9:45] Check it out. All right, I'll convert one of
[9:48] my clues into a question. It's a very easy one now.
[9:51] OK, so the most famous sports team from Cincinnati shares its
[9:56] name with an Indian state. What is it?
[10:00] Bengals. Bengal.
[10:01] Yeah, that is correct. Just the Cincinnati Bengals
[10:08] because, I mean, it's actually named after the Bengal tiger.
[10:11] So yeah, that's nice. Nice.
[10:14] So fantastic question. Ani Aditya, why didn't you take
[10:17] over? What's your question?
[10:19] OK, well, last week you gave us a listicle we need, so here's
[10:25] one thrown right back at you. OK, But I'm going to give you a
[10:30] lot of context to the list as well.
[10:32] But let me just quickly give you the names that are on this list,
[10:35] and I'm not. It is an exhaustive list.
[10:36] I will not cover all the names. The exhaustive list includes
[10:41] Nelson Mandela, the children of Palestine, Fidel Castro, the
[10:46] children of Iraq, Hugo Chavez, Mahathir bin Mohammed, Daniel
[10:52] Ortega, and the last person was Recep type Erdogan.
[10:58] So these are people on the list and the last person on this list
[11:02] is Erdogan. And there are a few more names,
[11:06] but it is an exhaustive list right off the bat.
[11:09] Any clue whatsoever what I'm referring to?
[11:12] Just in case you know this trivia already.
[11:15] Nope. I think they might be the
[11:19] winners of some. I mean, like some awardees, you
[11:23] know, I mean, I have a vague recollection that the some
[11:27] award, I don't remember which one, but it's given in the Arab
[11:32] world and I think that this might be a list of those.
[11:36] Is it? Oh wow, you practically almost
[11:39] cracked the question. But yes, all of those things are
[11:43] very true. So just to get to the finish
[11:47] line, let me give you a little bit more context.
[11:50] The prize when he awarded is 250 thousand U.S. dollars.
[11:55] And and if there are multiple recipients, of course it is
[11:58] shared and it was given by an international committee, but it
[12:03] was established in 1988 in indebtedness and gratitude for
[12:09] X. So, and that is X, and X is who
[12:14] the prize is named after. So it's the X in Prize for Human
[12:20] Rights, the X International Prize for Human Rights.
[12:25] This is you said it started in 1988, right?
[12:28] Yeah, yeah. OK.
[12:31] Am I right in that it's from the Arabic world?
[12:34] I mean from somewhere. Oh yes, you are very much right
[12:38] on the mark. Yeah.
[12:40] Human rights and the Arab world. Not two things which go well or
[12:45] hand in hand, but. It's it's not Hussein, King
[12:50] Hussein, is it of Jordan? No. 1988 you mentioned, right?
[12:56] Yeah, it's a person's name, is it?
[12:59] Yes. I think we've played Twenty
[13:01] Questions. Is that person from?
[13:05] Many times our questions do devolve into that.
[13:08] Yeah. You know what, we can, we can do
[13:11] that and I will help you along over there.
[13:13] But before I say anything, the reason I ask this question
[13:16] because I mean any other award by an in and of itself is not
[13:18] that interesting. The reason this is interesting
[13:21] is because it is very ironic that this award is named after
[13:25] this person. Oh, OK.
[13:27] Oh, is it one of the AL Sauds? No, it's not.
[13:32] What time frame did you say 1990s?
[13:34] 1988 is when it was founded. T8 damn it.
[13:40] Neither can. I.
[13:43] Not the last. The last clue I'll give you is
[13:46] that it was discontinued in 2011.
[13:48] T11 Bin Laden No No. Bin Laden.
[13:55] I wouldn't be surprised. The Bin Laden family is known
[13:57] for philanthropy. To be to be fair, I think this
[14:02] person is probably guilty of a lot more destruction then Laden.
[14:08] Oh, really? Lot more destruction than Laden.
[14:13] Wait, is it? Is it a historical figure from
[14:16] the Middle Ages? No, no, no.
[14:18] It's a very much a contemporary figure.
[14:21] OK, because I was thinking of Salauddin in between a lot of
[14:24] destruction, Arab world contemporary figure Idi Amin,
[14:30] but then that's not Arab, but he was in Saudi Arabia.
[14:32] At the time discontinued in 2011.
[14:35] That should give you a cue. What happened?
[14:38] What? Happened in the Arab world in
[14:41] 2011. The Arab Spring.
[14:43] So one of the, let's say, victims of Arab Spring.
[14:47] Victims The Egyptian President. What was his name?
[14:50] Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak was one of them, but
[14:56] perhaps a bigger tyrant than Mubarak who went out in the Arab
[14:59] Spring. OK, my memory is coming.
[15:03] I'll, I'll, I'll help you out with this because basically you
[15:06] had almost gotten it entirely right.
[15:08] This is the name that was left. It is the AL Gaddafi
[15:10] International Prize for Human Rights.
[15:15] What fun. But remember reading that name
[15:17] and I just laughed for 10 seconds straight because I
[15:20] thought that was hilarious. Gaddafi had an international
[15:24] prize for human rights named after him that Libyan People's
[15:29] Congress established in 1988 and discontinued only in 2011 when
[15:33] he was overthrown and died. OK.
[15:35] And yeah, these are the awardees, a bunch of interesting
[15:38] people, some very controversial choices.
[15:42] Right. Interesting.
[15:44] Very interesting. OK, Annie, back to you.
[15:47] All right, how can I be left out?
[15:49] I'm going to give you guys a list.
[15:50] Again, this is a much shorter list and it's also an exhaustive
[15:56] list with regards to the history of these places.
[16:00] Or does this an exhaustive list of and you can obviously think
[16:05] of many things which might actually be connects, but like
[16:08] I'm saying, you have to tell me what is this an exhaustive list
[16:11] of? OK OK so the places there are
[16:13] four places I want to name Agra, Dhaka or Delhi and Chatsrapati,
[16:19] Sambaji Nagars. Wow, Aditya, what do you think?
[16:29] When in doubt, put it on Aditya's head.
[16:34] Chatrapati what? Sambhaji Nagar.
[16:37] Yeah. The guy after whom Sambar was
[16:40] named. That's actually true, yeah.
[16:45] Yes. Is Chatrapati Sambhaji Nagar
[16:50] something that because I've never heard of it before.
[16:52] Is it one of those recent things where old cities are being
[16:55] renamed? Yeah, it is OK.
[16:59] I have no idea which cities the neighbors renamed to Chatrapati.
[17:03] Sambaji Nagar. Yeah, I think that's going to
[17:06] help me either. It's.
[17:07] Been a couple of years, but yeah, obviously we almost almost
[17:12] anyone outside the realm of the kind of people who are making
[17:15] these changes will always refer to it by the older name.
[17:20] So yeah, I mean what I can tell you, OK.
[17:23] So I have AI have a guess here all right.
[17:26] Is it named after a person? And these other Agra and AKA
[17:31] were also named after that person and were renamed later as
[17:34] well? So were they all like something?
[17:40] OK, OK, OK. Is that person Aurangzeb?
[17:46] No. Well.
[17:47] That's not exactly correct, but you're almost there.
[17:50] You're almost there. But no, they wouldn't.
[17:53] They weren't all named after the same person, but they were.
[17:57] All it is to do with names that they had in the past.
[18:02] Oh, Mughal emperors? Were they all named after Mughal
[18:04] emperors? That is correct.
[18:07] That is exactly right. So Agra was at one point called
[18:11] Akbar Akbar Abad. Ah, yes, of course, yeah.
[18:15] Dhaka has been called Jahangirabad, and in fact, even
[18:19] now there's a portion of it we just still call Jahangirabad,
[18:23] and there's Jahangirabad University and stuff like that.
[18:28] Old Delhi, of course, began as Shah Jahanabad and Satrapati
[18:32] Shah. Bajinagar, as you guys figured
[18:34] out, is Aurangabad. So it is.
[18:37] Yeah. Places once named after Mughal
[18:39] emperor. The exhaustive list, yes.
[18:43] OK, lovely question, Vineet. You're up next.
[18:46] Yes, so I am going to ask you a fairly long question as always,
[18:53] and this is going to be slightly different from I think, no, this
[18:56] is not different from what I ask anyway, why do I make these
[18:58] segues that make no sense? So this is the question.
[19:03] Make of it what you will. X is an American playwright,
[19:07] filmmaker and author. He's won a Pulitzer Prize and
[19:10] received Tony Tony nominations for his plays.
[19:13] He's also been nominated for an Academy Award twice.
[19:16] His style of writing dialogue marked by a cynical street smart
[19:20] edge, has come to be called as ex speak.
[19:24] He himself has criticized his and others tendency to write
[19:28] pretty at the expense of sound, logical plots.
[19:32] Often he declines credit or uses a pseudonym if he is called upon
[19:38] only as a script doctor or on some films he doesn't direct.
[19:42] The only film that credited him by name was a movie Y, which was
[19:49] a 2001 American psychological horror crime thriller film
[19:53] directed by Ridley Scott and based on a 1999 novel by Thomas
[19:58] Harris. So I want you to identify the
[20:00] playwright X and the only movie that has been credited by name
[20:06] Y. Now that's interesting because
[20:09] that. Credited him by name when he was
[20:12] a script when he was a script doctor.
[20:14] Now, OK, all right. Because he has written and
[20:17] directed nearby other movies where his name appears.
[20:19] But he's been a script doctor on many, many films.
[20:23] But many of them don't. He either uses a pseudonym or
[20:26] his name is omitted. But if you go to IMDb, you'll
[20:28] still find his credits. Nothing.
[20:33] Hold you. I have.
[20:40] A guess. Sorry.
[20:42] Yes, I did go ahead. I was just thinking 2001 and you
[20:46] said American psychological thriller or what did you
[20:50] mention? Yeah, American psychological
[20:53] horror crime thriller film directed by Ridley Scott, based
[20:57] on a 1999 novel by Thomas Harris.
[21:01] I remember pre ordering this book when it was announced that
[21:04] it would be coming out in 99. Ridley Scott.
[21:08] This is the is the author of Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal,
[21:12] all those books. OK, so which one is the 1999
[21:16] novel? 19/9 I don't.
[21:20] Yeah, it's a trilogy, right? The movies are definitely a
[21:22] trilogy. So there is Hannibal Lamps,
[21:23] there is Hannibal, and then there is, I think is it Red
[21:26] Dragon only? What is it?
[21:28] Yeah, there's no Hannibal, there's Red Dragon, and there's
[21:31] something else I forgot. There's Hannibal as well.
[21:33] OK, so you you guys have already mentioned it.
[21:35] So it is Hannibal the movie is Hannibal in the order of writing
[21:41] the books. It's Silence of the Lambs
[21:42] followed by Red Dragon, followed by Hannibal.
[21:44] But in chronologically in the story, it is actually Red Dragon
[21:48] followed by Silence of the Lambs, followed by Hannibal.
[21:51] So the movie is Hannibal. That's the only movie where he
[21:53] was a script doctor, but he himself did not write the
[21:56] script. He just, you know, kind of
[21:58] Polish it up where his name has appeared.
[22:01] Now, who's this playwright I'm talking about?
[22:04] Pulitzer Prize winner Tony nominated, Academy Award
[22:07] nominated and he has his own adjective in the theatre world
[22:12] where his kind of dialogue writing dialogues have been come
[22:17] to known as ex speak. Very.
[22:20] Interesting, never heard of this before.
[22:22] Yeah, I'm also not very certain, but I don't know.
[22:26] When I first saw the question, I was thinking Aaron Sorkin.
[22:30] It's not him, is it? No, it's not Aaron Sorkin.
[22:32] That was going to be my blue whale buzzer, because that's
[22:35] where everybody goes to when they hear it.
[22:37] Actually, I was a little worried about putting this question
[22:42] because he's not somebody who's known to the Indian.
[22:45] Like in this particular kind of culture and zeitgeist, he's not
[22:49] very commonly known, but he is quite a big name, all right, in
[22:55] the West. He's a very big name in the
[22:56] West. I'll give you some of his other
[22:59] works if that helps. OK.
[23:03] So his some of his famous plays, actually his most famous player,
[23:06] at least to me with Glengarry Glen Ross.
[23:10] Oh, OK, OK. And he's also worked and
[23:14] directed in many other movies, including The Postman Also,
[23:18] Rings, Always Rings, Twice, The Untouchables, Wag the Dog,
[23:23] Hannibal, American Buffalo Glen Getty Grin Loss, Obviously the
[23:27] Spanish. Prisoner.
[23:29] I'm not sure I know him. Not Johnson Franzen, is it?
[23:33] No. I don't really have much of A
[23:35] guess after that. Same.
[23:37] I'm also out of guesses. OK, OK, so then I'll probably
[23:41] give you the answer I knew I had thought this might be a little
[23:44] because again, this is one of those indulgent questions that I
[23:47] put because I saw one of his movies made into a play when I
[23:50] was a kid, and I was just absolutely entranced.
[23:53] It was a movie called American Buffalo.
[23:55] It's entirely set within a shop, within a junk shop, and it has
[24:01] like just three characters. And there was a movie version of
[24:05] it also. That's the one I saw.
[24:08] So I found it quite fantastic. It was Dustin Hoffman was one of
[24:12] the characters. So that's the reason why it's
[24:15] actually David Mamet. The playwright I'm talking about
[24:17] is David Mamet. So his kind of dialogue writing
[24:20] is called as Mamet speak. And there are is actually the
[24:25] term Mamet play is now almost used as an adjective.
[24:28] So when you're describing a play which is very which is very
[24:31] realistic and the kind of street smart dialogue, you might say
[24:34] that you know, OK, that's like a Mamet play.
[24:38] Well, I'm glad I've at least heard the names, but yeah, I
[24:41] would never have come up with it for the answer.
[24:44] Good, nice learning. OK, so Annie, you're up next.
[24:50] OK. All right.
[24:52] This is a three-part question, this and that.
[24:54] It's got three questions in it. So the oldest municipal body of
[24:58] the Commonwealth of Nations outside the United Kingdom.
[25:02] It was formed in 1688. To begin with, its flag showed
[25:07] the sea, a boat, 2 fish and the three British Lions.
[25:11] After independence, the flag was changed to its current form
[25:15] depicting a fish, a tiger and a bow.
[25:17] So three questions. A.
[25:19] Which municipal body is this? It was set up to counter the
[25:23] growing power of which individual and from where were
[25:27] the symbols currently on the flag derived?
[25:30] So it's the oldest body of the Commonwealth outside the United
[25:33] Kingdom. It was formed in 1688.
[25:36] Its flag initially showed the sea aboard 2 fish and the three
[25:40] British Lions. But after independence, a flag
[25:43] was changed to its current form, which is, which depicts a fish,
[25:46] a tiger and a bow. So which municipal body is this?
[25:50] It was set up to counter the growing power of which
[25:52] individual and from where were the symbols currently on the
[25:56] flag derived Hit it. OK.
[26:00] The fish and the boat makes me obviously go to a coastal city,
[26:06] and since you said Commonwealth, I'm also inclined to guess this
[26:12] is because the three of us it's an Indian city that would
[26:16] probably be safe. But.
[26:21] Yeah, an Indian city, a coastal city.
[26:23] So Kolkata would be my first guess.
[26:26] I I would actually be going towards so because I've recently
[26:30] recently been the past few months actually reread the Pune
[26:33] and Selvan. So in Pune and Selvan, the
[26:36] Pandya Kingdom has the fish as their emblem and the tiger is
[26:41] that of the Chola Kingdom. I don't know if the bow is
[26:44] related to any other Tamil Kingdom, but two out of three
[26:46] doesn't is a good fit. So Madras or Chennai?
[26:51] That is correct Madra, it is called the Madras Corporation
[26:54] now the Chennai Municipal Corporation and you got C also
[26:58] covered. You answered the symbols part.
[27:01] So yeah, it is the Pandya, Chola and Chera symbols.
[27:04] Chera. OK.
[27:05] The chera is the Bo. OK, OK.
[27:07] Yeah. So that leaves which now should
[27:10] be quite easy that it was set up in 1688 to counter the growing
[27:14] power of which individual. Which individual 16 is it?
[27:19] That's a little too early for Hyder Ali or Tipu Sultan, isn't
[27:23] it? Yes, it is. 1688 that time I
[27:29] think that area, it would be the French, but it's too early for
[27:32] Napoleon either because he was the Napoleonic wards were in
[27:36] this 1800s. So which individual?
[27:40] Yeah, someone very closely connected with Madras, whom you
[27:45] don't know him very well. OK, so he's not Indian.
[27:50] Oh, OK, I'm just going to say, is it Indian?
[27:54] My when you say not Indian and a danger to that place, I would
[27:58] have guessed Clive of India, but then this being set up by the
[28:01] British, I don't think that's the case.
[28:04] No, he's not a danger to the place.
[28:06] It was his growing influence that they were trying to sort of
[28:10] counter. 1683, I'm trying to remember who were the regional
[28:15] players at that point. Travanco wasn't a huge threat
[28:19] because that was in the mid 1700s.
[28:21] For Marthando Arma, the Nizam of Hyderabad was already I think
[28:29] there. But then I don't think if that's
[28:31] the case, they would have to put him up.
[28:33] Not not an Indian, like I said. Not an Indian?
[28:35] Yeah, sorry. I mean, you know his surname.
[28:38] I mean, you know him for sure, but you know, everyone knows his
[28:41] surname because of something he set up far, far away.
[28:46] Oh, is this Elihu Yale? That is correct, yeah.
[28:51] He was the governor of Madras at the time, and he had started
[28:55] really gaining powers. So the British decided, OK, we
[28:58] need to do something about it. And they set up the municipal
[29:01] body as a counter to his. He was to his kind of growing
[29:05] influence. So that's what those.
[29:07] So I'll see. Yeah.
[29:08] Oh. Nice, nice, nice.
[29:10] All right, well done. Cracked it all, pretty
[29:13] straightforward. Yeah, I like that question.
[29:16] I really like that question. And thank you.
[29:19] Yeah, I think it's again pretty, you know, it's workout able.
[29:22] It's not really something you will need to know like you did.
[29:25] You knew what the fish, the tiger and and from a very
[29:29] interesting source, right? I mean.
[29:33] Is one of my favorite novels. I rewrite it like at least four
[29:37] times in the past 20 years. It's a huge thing to go through,
[29:42] but it's just fantastic. It is fantastic.
[29:45] I recommend it to everybody and everybody I see.
[29:47] But it's very difficult to get people to read it when they when
[29:49] they realize it's so, so many volumes and there are so many
[29:52] hundreds of characters. But it's fantastic.
[29:56] You do you read it in English or?
[29:58] Yes, I don't know how to read Tamil, so I read the English
[30:01] translation. All right.
[30:04] And is is a good translation available?
[30:06] Because yes. There's a one available, so I
[30:08] use my Kindle Unlimited subscription.
[30:10] There's one you can get for free on that.
[30:12] So that's what I used to read it.
[30:14] It's a decent translation. It's a decent translation, but
[30:17] then I also have a little exposure to Tamil as a language
[30:20] I can understand and how it's spoken.
[30:21] So when I read the translation, I can kind of get what it's
[30:24] supposed to mean. So the certain nuances can be
[30:27] filled in by the blanks. But even if you don't, I it's a
[30:30] there are, it's a fantastic transit.
[30:32] I don't remember the authors, the translator's name, but I
[30:35] remember the cover of it is It's a white cover with a colored
[30:39] outline of a few build a few chola buildings as the cover.
[30:43] It's a fantastic translation. I recommend it to everybody and
[30:47] I'll make it my pop culture recommendation.
[30:49] Pony and Salvin, please read it all.
[30:52] Right. What do you think of the movies?
[30:54] The movies were good, but I don't know they'd lost something
[30:58] in translation a little bit because I think it's when you
[31:00] read the novel and it's so epic in scale that you would probably
[31:05] require a ten episode series of one hour each to capture that
[31:09] scope. When you're having just two
[31:11] movies of two 2 1/2 hours, it just doesn't do it because there
[31:15] are so many tiny things which happened, which makes a lot of
[31:18] sense and affects the plot, which they completely ignored.
[31:21] Now Mani Ratnam did a great job because Pony and Seven for I
[31:25] think around 50 years, they said it would be unfilmable.
[31:29] Shivaji Ganeshan tried it, a couple of other people tried it.
[31:31] Mani Ratnam has been trying it for the past 20-30 years to try
[31:34] and get it to be filmed. But either way, they did a
[31:38] decent job and the music is fantastic.
[31:42] The second part of the depth of Aditya Karigalan is done
[31:46] beautifully in the movie. But overall I felt that the
[31:49] scope was a little lacking and that epicness didn't come out
[31:52] the way I wanted it. But then, that's always the case
[31:54] when you read a book before you watch an adaptation.
[31:57] Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I have not having read the
[32:00] books. I actually I did watch, I
[32:03] watched the first one. I intend to watch the second one
[32:05] at some point. And I thought it was
[32:07] interesting. I mean, it's sort of, it kind of
[32:09] drove me in quite a bit. So.
[32:11] And the only problem is with a lot of these Indian things is
[32:14] that the, you know, the SFX is so poorly done that it sort of
[32:18] really turns you off, you know? Yeah.
[32:21] This is decent. This is decent.
[32:22] Compared to the budget, it is decent.
[32:24] Yeah, yeah, exactly. OK.
[32:26] I have a follow up question. I mean, so I'll just quickly run
[32:29] that by you guys. It's an easy ish one.
[32:33] So, talking about independence, which is the only country in
[32:36] Africa that doesn't celebrate an Independence Day and why?
[32:40] It's a follow up to this question you mentioned, right?
[32:42] No, it's follow up to just to the extent that it's an
[32:45] independence. You know, we talked about
[32:47] independence here, that's all. Nothing else connects up.
[32:50] OK. So is it because it's never been
[32:53] colonized? That is correct.
[32:56] OK, so which country? I remember reading a list of
[33:01] countries which had never been colonized, but for the life of
[33:02] me cannot remember it right now. Is it Liberia?
[33:10] Is it Liberia? No.
[33:11] No, Liberia was formed by freed slaves from the US.
[33:16] That's what I thought. So not colonized?
[33:18] I guess so. Basically, it's that's true.
[33:21] Actually, you could say it was, but I think it anyway.
[33:24] I don't know enough about that history so but the Kingdom's
[33:29] army famously defeated the Italians at the battle and
[33:34] that's how they repelled the possible colonization.
[33:38] Defeated the Italian, so it's North Africa, or at least the
[33:43] Horn of Africa because Italians didn't go deep or to the West as
[33:48] far as I know. Exactly the Horn of Africa.
[33:52] Ethiopia, then. Yeah, that is right, Ethiopia.
[33:57] I thought the Italians had colonized Ethiopia.
[34:00] No, no, they unless a part of it which was Eritrea basically
[34:03] which became Eritrea, later Ethiopia, Yeah, Ethiopia itself
[34:08] was never called. Oh, OK, nice, nice.
[34:12] In fact, that battle, I've got the name of the battle now.
[34:15] It was one of those, you know, landmark things where and and
[34:20] your European power was sort of defeated by an African country.
[34:25] I don't think there was any other case that that happened.
[34:28] Yeah, it was not. There is a similar parallel I
[34:33] think in the mid 1700s in India, the first time an indigenous
[34:39] army defeated European power was at the Battle of Kolichil, where
[34:43] the Dutch were defeated by Martanda Verma's army.
[34:49] OK, interestingly enough they were called the Nair Para, so
[34:54] the. Lions are taking over.
[34:58] OK, Aditya, your turn. OK, so wow, those were some
[35:04] great questions. And I guess I'll use the segue
[35:11] of a battle and talking about battles and warriors.
[35:16] I'm going to talk about the possible origin of an item X and
[35:24] this is back in 1637 and I might be mispronouncing the name, but
[35:29] Cardinal Richelieu from France is credited with coming up with
[35:34] X or innovating to give us X. Cardinal Richelieu was irritated
[35:42] by the brutish behaviour of men at the dining tables of the
[35:46] time. So these are the men who were
[35:49] perhaps in armies or or had weapons upon them.
[35:53] And he was very irritated by the brutish behavior that these men
[35:56] brought to the dining tables, the dining halls that they would
[36:00] be eating in. So he decided just for both
[36:05] hygienic purposes and for, I guess the the keeping the class
[36:11] of the place intact, he decided to innovate slightly on
[36:15] something. And it gave us something very
[36:18] prevalent in the modern world. What is it that Cardinal
[36:22] Richelieu, the French cardinal, came up with in 1637?
[36:31] I love the way any of us, you know, when we come across the
[36:35] French, the way we have to say it.
[36:44] So I do have a guess. Vineet, Anything you want to say
[36:47] I. Actually also do have a guess
[36:49] because I have read this, I had recently asked a question to
[36:52] Aditya on The Three Musketeers and the works of Alexander
[36:57] Dumas. So when I gone down that
[36:59] particular rat hole, the rabbit hole, I had come across this so.
[37:04] So shall I give the Yes? Annie, please go ahead.
[37:07] Because mine's a very broad guess, So is it?
[37:10] Is it the fork? Oh, very close.
[37:13] Close, very close, but it's not the exact answer.
[37:17] OK, this one very close to the 4th.
[37:22] I, I I cannot give you a third attempt any at this point
[37:27] because that is basically the answer you get right.
[37:34] Now there were three possibilities that I got two and
[37:38] yeah, the third was last. So then I will say it is a
[37:43] plate. No, no, I'm kidding.
[37:49] It is in the pavement. As Annie has rightly said, there
[37:52] were three possibilities and the third one is the right one.
[37:54] It should be the table knife. Vineet, do you want to venture a
[37:58] little bit of a guess and tell us a little bit about it?
[38:00] Whatever you know. So Richelieu, basically Cardinal
[38:03] Richelieu, is the guy that we mention we see as the villain or
[38:08] the antagonist in most of the Alexander Duma romances
[38:12] regarding The Three Musketeers. So what happened, if I remember
[38:16] correctly, is that in those days before Rishlu devised or
[38:19] actually he standardized the knife that people would bring
[38:21] whatever they had at hand, right?
[38:23] So some of them would be having like bigger knives.
[38:26] Some of them the smaller knives. I think some of them had like,
[38:29] you know, they brought their own kind of sheath daggers.
[38:32] Also, certain kings were also known to use daggers at the
[38:35] table. And Richlou famously being very
[38:37] fastidious, decided to standardize cutlery.
[38:41] I don't think he invented the table, and he standardized the
[38:43] table into the table knife, but they called it like that.
[38:45] You know he invented modern kind of eating and etiquette with a
[38:49] knife and fork. Interesting.
[38:52] So that is very, very close to the actual answer that I was
[38:55] going for. I think the point was that there
[38:58] were a lot of daggers and different size knives that were
[39:00] being used and she was very irritated by that.
[39:03] So people will be using the daggers to eat the meat and
[39:06] stuff as well if they did not want to use their hands or will
[39:08] be stabbing that or like, you know, planting that into the
[39:10] table itself, which, yeah, unidentified to the cardinal.
[39:14] But looked very cool it. Depends if you were not cleaning
[39:20] it up later with with just random knife marks all over your
[39:23] table. Yeah.
[39:26] There was also another habit that irritated him was the
[39:29] people trying to pick their teeth after the meal was done
[39:32] using the sharp end of the knife.
[39:34] So what he did was he insisted that knives had their tops
[39:38] rounded off, so make them blunt in a way at the top, which would
[39:44] ensure that nobody could pick their teeth with those knives
[39:47] anymore. And that was the innovation that
[39:51] Rishulu brought to our culinary world and how he changed the
[39:57] table knife. Plus good good good fun now.
[40:01] Aditya, fantastic question. Let's go to Annie back again,
[40:04] but on to you. Alright, I think this might be a
[40:08] bit easy, but anyway, the word X was originally used to describe
[40:14] a person or state that made offerings to a more powerful
[40:19] person or state. Ancient China, for instance, had
[40:22] dozens of X states, with the emperor regularly receiving
[40:27] elephants from Siam or young girls from Korea.
[40:31] The usage with which we are more familiar comes from a from the
[40:35] similar way in which a smaller geographic entity offers a part
[40:39] of its wealth wealth in like double quotes to a larger one.
[40:46] So what is X originally used to describe a person or state that
[40:50] made offerings to a more powerful person or state?
[40:53] It's we are more familiar with it in the usage where it is
[40:58] refers to a geographic entity, a smaller one offering a part of
[41:02] its wealth still to speak to a larger one.
[41:06] So I have worked something out but I'm not sure if it's right
[41:11] Aditya. Do you have a guess or should I
[41:13] go ahead? I was going to say tribute, but.
[41:18] I was going to guess vassal state or vassal.
[41:22] So in the context of the question, what would the
[41:26] geographic entity be? Vessel is not correct, but
[41:30] there's almost there. Oh, geographical entity then
[41:36] Aditya. Tributary.
[41:39] Exactly. Yeah, that's correct.
[41:43] So they were they were tributary states or tributary.
[41:46] People. The people who actually made the
[41:48] offerings. And then it became part of the
[41:51] geographic thing of a tributary being a river which, you know,
[41:56] offers a part of its wealth, which is this water to a larger
[42:01] one. So, yeah, can you please
[42:02] correct? Well done.
[42:04] Very cool. Very cool.
[42:05] Yeah, Nice. Nice.
[42:06] Well, cracked. OK, I will pat myself on the
[42:11] back for that. Yeah.
[42:12] So I had a couple of other little bits of information if
[42:16] you're interested. Yes, yes, always.
[42:18] There's a river called the Iritish, which is in northern
[42:21] Siberia. It's the longest tributary in
[42:24] the world. It runs the length of 4248
[42:27] kilometers and merges with another river called OB, which
[42:31] then flows into the Arctic Ocean.
[42:34] And that's the longest tributary in the world, which that's what
[42:38] was an interesting part because we never heard of this river,
[42:40] but it is that's what it. Yeah.
[42:43] Even though Missouri is one of the longer tributaries.
[42:49] The Missouri is a tributary, isn't it?
[42:51] It's not like a river in itself. I mean your tributaries are
[42:54] effectively rivers in themselves also because like the longest.
[42:58] What is the longest tributary in India?
[43:01] Yamuna, I guess. Yamuna is correct.
[43:03] Yeah. So.
[43:04] So one would consider Yamuna as an independent river, but it's
[43:07] also a tributary because essentially it goes and merges
[43:10] with another river rather than flowing into a sea or whatever.
[43:15] Yeah, so. There's some distinction now,
[43:17] OK. Yeah, yeah.
[43:18] So the Missouri feeds into the Mississippi then?
[43:21] Exactly. Yeah, that's what it does, yeah.
[43:23] Oh, nice, nice. All right, great.
[43:26] I'm glad I cracked one at least, because I was pretty much
[43:31] sitting this one out. It was Vineet and his history
[43:35] and all of that that was taking charge of.
[43:37] I'm glad I got at least the geography down.
[43:41] Vineet, how about you? Do you want to give us the last
[43:43] question for this episode? Yes.
[43:46] So I have a question which is very workout able if you pay
[43:50] attention. And like by paying attention I
[43:52] mean like really pay attention. OK, so fair warning, here it
[43:57] goes. Have you heard of constrained
[43:59] writing? Yes.
[44:02] OK, Annie, do you want to tell the audience what constrained
[44:05] writing is? Essentially it's writing where
[44:08] you sort of, you know, you put some conditions on what you can
[44:12] and can't do. For example, the novel Gatsby,
[44:17] which is written entirely without any.
[44:19] You don't sell stuff like that. Yes, you're absolutely right.
[44:23] So constrained writing is a literary technique in which the
[44:26] writer is bound by some condition that forbids certain
[44:30] things or imposes a pattern. Like almost all kinds of poetry
[44:35] have formal constraints in both mainstream and experimental
[44:38] work. So familiar elements of poetry
[44:40] like rhyme, meter are often applied as constraints.
[44:44] Well established worst forms like sonnets, sistinas,
[44:48] millionaires, limericks, haiku, these are all variously
[44:50] constrained by meter, rhyme, repetition, length, and other
[44:53] characteristics, right? So like Annie mentioned, there
[44:56] are no entire novels where people have written it without
[44:59] an E or they have rewritten up the Bible using anagrams of
[45:04] original words in the Bible. So that kind of thing.
[45:06] So when you're writing it, you're writing it with some kind
[45:08] of restriction or which is imposed on your writing pattern.
[45:14] I'm going to ask you about one specific book.
[45:17] The author's name is Michael Keith, and the work is called,
[45:22] The book is called Not Awake, Not Awake, WAKE.
[45:29] Now, I'll read you a line from that.
[45:31] I think it's the first, the book.
[45:33] This is how the book opens. So I'll read you the line, and
[45:36] the answer is in this line and in the title, and I want you to
[45:42] see if you can figure out what the constraint is.
[45:45] OK, so this is how it opens. Now I fall a tired suburbian in
[45:52] liquid in under the trees, drifting alongside forests
[45:57] simmering red in the twilight over Europe.
[46:01] What's the constraint that the author has used?
[46:04] I know this one. Oh great.
[46:07] OK, so then Aditya struggle alone.
[46:14] The famous examples I remember of constrained writing in novels
[46:18] is usually like avoiding a letter and stuff like that.
[46:22] In this case I can't think of a letter that has been skipped, so
[46:27] I'm assuming it is some other forms.
[46:29] So I. Can tell you that all the
[46:30] letters are used in this book. In this particular book all
[46:32] letters have been you of the alphabet have been used.
[46:34] There is no constraint regards with the letter.
[46:37] Could you repeat maybe some of the the the section that you
[46:41] read again? Now I fall a tired suburbian in
[46:46] liquid in under the trees. Like forget the rest of it, just
[46:51] focus on that. Now I fall a tired suburbian.
[46:57] Suburbian in liquid in under the trees.
[47:02] I was going to say it's like only one syllable each, but
[47:05] suburban obviously is not. Can I give a clue?
[47:12] Yes, please. I think this may be a bit of a
[47:14] giveaway, so sorry we need, but yeah, no.
[47:16] Issues. No issues.
[47:18] So this would be great if this episode add on 22nd July.
[47:27] OK, that's a very good clue. That's a very good clue. 22nd
[47:31] July. Oh, now I what fall?
[47:36] What is it now I fall? Fall tired.
[47:40] Yeah. OK, OK, OK, OK, OK.
[47:43] Is is it all the pie? Digits, yes.
[47:47] Wow so this is this. Blew my mind when I heard about
[47:50] it. So the the book it's called the
[47:53] full name of the book is not awake, a dream embodying π's
[47:58] digits fully for 10,000 decimals.
[48:03] So it encodes the 1st 10,000 digits of π with text composed
[48:08] in various literary styles. So for our audience, just to
[48:12] keep you to make you understand. So when you say now I fall now
[48:16] has three letters, I as one fall has four, a tired suburbian,
[48:20] then you have 1/5, so you're looking at 3.1415 and so on
[48:26] going up to 10,000 digits of π. The entire book was written in
[48:31] concordance with the 1st 10,000 decimals of π.
[48:37] I cannot even imagine the kind of brain required to do that.
[48:45] Yeah, or the obsession required to do it, man.
[48:49] Exactly, My God and I, I looked up this fellow.
[48:54] Michael Keith, he was an engineer, He's worked at Intel
[48:57] at some point he was an engineer and he's done multiple number,
[49:01] multiple types of these constraint writing.
[49:04] So apparently he wrote one with π up to of 700 something digits.
[49:08] And then he went, you know, like one upped himself and went with
[49:11] π with 10,000 digits. Well.
[49:15] Crazy fellow, but it's, I'm like, what?
[49:18] That is a, it's a, it's a he's a different breed all together.
[49:22] Yeah. You know what?
[49:24] I would if I was writing this book at some point, at a few
[49:27] points in this novel, just to mess with things, put the wrong
[49:30] digit in just to see if anybody's paying attention.
[49:34] Like the the 3600 digit. Yeah.
[49:43] See, the point is, so a book like this is not really meant to
[49:47] be read right? I mean, no, there has no real.
[49:50] I mean, it hasn't something that people would want to read it
[49:53] for. It's just a bit of a novelty
[49:55] thing, no? Yeah, absolutely.
[49:58] I mean, like, I wouldn't pick this book for its literary
[50:00] value. I'd pick this book so that I
[50:01] could tell people I have a book on my shelf which has π to
[50:04] 10,000 digits. Exactly.
[50:09] But yeah, yeah, I mean, like, you really have to admire the
[50:11] guy for his fortitude. Seriously.
[50:14] Yeah, perseverance. Perseverance.
[50:17] Yeah, exactly. OK, so that's all the time we
[50:20] have for our regular questions this week.
[50:22] So let's start winding up and let me start off with answering
[50:26] the audience question, which I'd asked at the beginning of
[50:29] today's episode. So the audience question was,
[50:32] which is the only letter in the English language that is never
[50:35] silent in any word, in any accent.
[50:39] So do you guys know what the answer is?
[50:42] Sounds to me like it should be Q Q is always pronounced as far as
[50:46] I can think. No, that's not no.
[50:49] Q can be silent. There is only one letter.
[50:52] Yeah. OK, OK.
[50:55] Q is always Q is actually a pretty good guess because I
[50:58] can't, you know, the top of my head, think of a word that
[51:00] doesn't have. The word Q, Are you cueing me?
[51:10] No, I can't think of anything yet.
[51:12] Or a key. No, it's not a case.
[51:15] So I'll give you an example of where Q is silent lacquer
[51:20] LACQUER. Right, right, right.
[51:23] OK. Yeah, you're right.
[51:25] OK, very interesting. And K There are numerous
[51:29] examples of K to K to K to there.
[51:31] So many, yeah. K especially the beginning of
[51:34] the word is very often. Exactly.
[51:37] Yeah, yeah. Like knife.
[51:40] OK. Anyways, yeah, knife.
[51:42] Knowledge Knight OK, I'll give you a clue and this is a
[51:48] practically giveaway. The fact that this letter is
[51:52] never silent make sure that my name is always pronounced
[51:55] correctly or at least starts off correctly.
[51:59] I wonder what the letter is, man that is.
[52:02] So we then. Yeah, so you're right, it is we.
[52:10] There are no words with the silent we.
[52:13] This is the only letter in all accents that refuses to be
[52:17] silent. Wow, nice.
[52:20] We need, we need, we need, we need question.
[52:29] OK, OK. OK, so it's back and time for
[52:35] our pop culture recommendations. Annie, as our guest, why don't
[52:39] you go 1st? And what's your pop culture
[52:41] recommendation for this week? I, I'd mentioned in the previous
[52:45] episode that I'm a big fan of detective fiction and one of my
[52:50] favorite long running series is the Bosch are the Bosch novels
[52:55] by Michael Connolly, which have also been made into a very good
[53:01] OTT show with, with those three seasons of the show have come
[53:06] out so far called Bosch. And in fact, it's also led to
[53:11] sort of not a spin off, but continuing episodes under the
[53:15] name Bosch legacy. So that's one thing I strongly
[53:19] recommend people watch. The series is great and the
[53:22] books are also really lovely if you like to read.
[53:25] And the other thing I'd like to just quickly say is that the
[53:29] three I mean, I'm, I'm a writer and obviously a writer has to
[53:33] also be a reader and you tend to end up writing or at least be
[53:37] influenced by some of your favorite writers.
[53:40] And so I have 3 favorite writers whom I want to mention.
[53:44] Kurt Vonnegut is one of them. I really love Kurt Vonnegut's
[53:47] work. Then Thomas Pynchon.
[53:50] Thomas Pynchon has a very interesting history.
[53:52] And Italo Calabino. These are three, three novelists
[53:57] whose work I really enjoyed reading.
[54:00] So if you are into and if you have access to these, please
[54:04] read them. They're very good.
[54:07] For our audience, Annie, are there any, is there one book
[54:10] from each author that you would recommend as a as a gateway to
[54:15] their, you know, collective works?
[54:18] All right, so it I look as we know one of what I like about
[54:22] his work is that he he he really works with the structure of the
[54:26] book very interestingly. So he does all kinds of neat
[54:30] little tricky things with the structure of his books.
[54:34] And one of the books I recommend on that is Mr. Palomar.
[54:40] Mr. Palomar is a book of short stories.
[54:43] In fact, it was the first book of his that I read where each
[54:47] the whole book is basically it has nine stories and it's
[54:53] divided into three books, three main meaning 3 clunks of three
[54:58] chunks of three stories each. And within each set of three,
[55:04] the three stories follow a certain pattern.
[55:06] And that pattern is then repeated across the nine in the
[55:09] sense that the first three have a certain feel to them, the
[55:13] second three have a certain feel to them, and a third three have
[55:15] a certain feel to them, which is reflected in those individual
[55:19] trios as well. So Mr. Palomar by Taluk Albino
[55:24] good one I got. There are many, many books which
[55:26] are amazing reading. I guess if I were to recommend
[55:30] one, it would be Breakfast of Champions.
[55:33] It's a great book. And one of the things about Kurt
[55:36] Vonnegut's books is that he it's kind of somewhere between social
[55:41] satire and science fiction, and he kind of weaves back and forth
[55:47] in these themes very, very interestingly.
[55:51] And Thomas Pynchon is a much more sane, accessible writer.
[55:56] It's difficult to, I mean, you need to persevere to get through
[56:00] his books a bit, but I find his use of metaphor and all amazing.
[56:06] And his most famous book is Gravity's Rainbow, and that's
[56:09] the one I would recommend anyone who wants to read his books
[56:13] start with. Now, one interesting thing about
[56:15] Pynchon is that nobody knows what he looks like.
[56:18] He's never appeared in person anywhere.
[56:21] And there are these massive cult followings of his in many
[56:25] places, in particular in particularly in universities in
[56:28] the US. So there is one university, I
[56:30] remember, forget which one, which he which he's supposed to
[56:33] have attended that university as a student.
[56:36] And so students of that university have these annual
[56:42] readings of Gravity's Rainbow where they read the entire book
[56:47] in a public setting in a relay form.
[56:50] One person will read 10 pages, the next person will read the
[56:53] next 10, and so on, so forth. It's quite a thick book.
[56:55] And they are these marathon reading sessions of his book.
[56:58] And the there is this that he's always at those readings.
[57:04] It's just that nobody knows that he's there.
[57:09] That adds to his mystique. Exactly, Yeah.
[57:12] Nice. What's your recommendation?
[57:16] Is Pincher the same guy who also wrote Inherent Vice?
[57:23] Yeah. No, no.
[57:26] Inherent vice is pinch. Yeah, You know, it was.
[57:29] I think it's pinched. I'm not 100% sure it's not.
[57:32] It's not. Yeah, it is mentioned.
[57:34] It is mentioned, Yeah. Yes, OK, I haven't read the
[57:38] book, but I've seen the movie and I remember reading the name
[57:40] there. OK.
[57:42] I the Paul Anderson film. Yeah, Joaquin Phoenix, actually.
[57:52] That brings me to my pop culture recommendation.
[57:55] I'm going to give a few this time around because we mentioned
[57:59] in their advice, of course, there's work in Phoenix.
[58:03] It's an interesting movie. I won't call it a great movie.
[58:06] It's an interesting movie. It does have an actress that I
[58:09] love and she's been in a bunch of other films and I think she's
[58:14] criminally underrated. So her name is Hong Chow.
[58:17] Hong Chow It has. I think she's born Vietnamese.
[58:23] And of course now as an American actress.
[58:25] So I would recommend just watching Hong Charles films and
[58:28] just watching it for her performances.
[58:30] I loved her in in the HBO limited series Watchmen, a great
[58:35] limited series. Definitely worth checking out.
[58:37] She's also in yeah in the movie The Menu, a great film as well,
[58:45] a black comedy film. She is also, I think I already
[58:50] mentioned the past Bojack Horseman.
[58:52] She is there in Leave. Oh yeah, downsizing.
[58:56] She's in downsizing as well. She has a very short, small Cam.
[59:01] Yeah, small cameo in the How I Met Your Mother TV show as well.
[59:04] So All in all, basically my pop culture recommendation is an
[59:07] actress, Hong Chao. So to go check out Hong Chao's
[59:09] work, she's done some phenomenal work.
[59:12] My next recommendation is actually a YouTube channel.
[59:16] The YouTube channel that I'm going to talk about is Cracking
[59:19] the Cryptic. I have phases in my life and
[59:23] Sudoku is one of those phases that keeps repairing in my life
[59:26] and Cracking the Cryptic. Cracking the Cryptic is a
[59:30] YouTube channel which does a lot of Sudoku type of puzzles,
[59:33] especially Sudoku as well and they do some, they do some very
[59:37] fancy Sudoku puzzles. So if you are even remotely into
[59:40] that kind of stuff, I would say go check it out.
[59:42] If you are somebody who solves Wordle and connections on New
[59:46] York Times still, that is worth their time.
[59:49] The final two recommendations are actually Instagram accounts
[59:54] and the first one is Reading Room India, which is actually by
[59:57] my friend and it has a fair bit of following already.
[1:00:00] So if you haven't seen it yet. Wait, wait, wait, stop.
[1:00:03] The press is right there reading in Room India.
[1:00:06] Your friend runs Reading Room India.
[1:00:08] I devoured that Channel. Oh, it is a fantastic.
[1:00:11] Yeah, it is a fantastic. She is the one who runs it and
[1:00:17] great, great work all round. And so that that is my first
[1:00:21] recommendation in case you haven't checked out.
[1:00:23] And the second one, which is much smaller, which is much more
[1:00:25] recent, but is by one of my favorite people.
[1:00:28] His name is Shiv. He created this Instagram
[1:00:30] channel called fixing dot education.
[1:00:32] So education is something that he dearly cares about.
[1:00:35] So this channel is devoted to talking about education problems
[1:00:40] in India, about how the system might be bare broken and how we
[1:00:43] need to fix it and things along those lines.
[1:00:45] So yeah, these are the four things I would recommend.
[1:00:48] Hong Chao, the actress tracking the cryptic YouTube channel,
[1:00:52] Reading Room India Instagram page and Fixing dot Education
[1:00:55] Instagram page. Great.
[1:00:57] Nice, nice. I just want to also kind of add
[1:01:02] on to his recommendation of Reading Room India.
[1:01:05] I've been following that Channel for some time now.
[1:01:08] They do a great job in delivering news and trivia.
[1:01:12] I have actually a lot of points for questions from their
[1:01:15] channel, which I now realize must I must avoid asking on this
[1:01:19] podcast because Aditya is, you know, has an inside track to
[1:01:23] that Channel. So then thank you for telling me
[1:01:25] that I'll have to weed out those questions.
[1:01:31] So my pop culture recommendation, I've already
[1:01:33] mentioned in this episode, I'm going with those two because
[1:01:36] those two itself, those two will take time for you to go through.
[1:01:40] The 1st, as I mentioned, is a podcast.
[1:01:42] It's available on Spotify. It's called the History of Rome.
[1:01:45] It's a fantastic series. It's a, it's one of the older
[1:01:47] podcasts. I think it ended maybe around
[1:01:51] seven or eight years ago. But the podcaster who does the
[1:01:56] show, who did the show, he went through every single phase of
[1:01:59] Rome in detail. And if you're somebody like a
[1:02:03] huge history, not like me, who can listen to history podcast
[1:02:06] for hours and hours and an end, it's the perfect fix for you.
[1:02:09] So that's my first recommendation.
[1:02:11] And the second recommendation is, as I mentioned before, Pune
[1:02:15] and Selvin, which again is a historical fiction novel by
[1:02:19] Kalki Krishnamurthy. It released in the 1950s and I
[1:02:23] would say it is one of the best novels per SE to come out of
[1:02:29] Tamil literature or even in Indian literature.
[1:02:31] It ranks right up there. It's a fantastic novel.
[1:02:35] It is a bit lengthy. It's around five books or five
[1:02:38] volumes of it, and the cast of characters is huge.
[1:02:42] But what really attracted to me was the writing itself, the
[1:02:46] description of the Chola Empire. You actually feel like you're in
[1:02:50] the midst of the action itself. And the second thing I love
[1:02:53] about it is even though it's historical fiction, it's based
[1:02:56] on actual fact. There are certain mysteries of
[1:03:00] what happened during a certain period in the Chola Empire, and
[1:03:03] that forms the basis for it. And there is politics, love,
[1:03:07] war, violence. You had everything.
[1:03:10] If you love Game of Thrones, this is like a superior version,
[1:03:14] I believe, of Game of Thrones because it's actually based on
[1:03:16] actual history. So that's my second
[1:03:18] recommendation. Pune and Servant there is an
[1:03:20] English transition available on Amazon on Kindle, so there's no
[1:03:24] excuse for you not to try and read it.
[1:03:26] So that's my recommendation for this week.
[1:03:29] Very interesting. So that's all for this episode.
[1:03:32] Thank you guys for listening in. I'd like to offer my another
[1:03:36] tears thanks to Annie or Anita Sengupta if you're going to be
[1:03:41] more formal, for spending a lot of his time in recording these
[1:03:44] two episodes with us, even though he's a quite a busy man.
[1:03:47] So we really enjoyed the show with you Annie, and I hope it
[1:03:52] wasn't too painful of an experience for you either.
[1:03:54] No, thank you so much. I mean, this was really
[1:03:57] interesting and I mean, it's a completely new experience and I
[1:04:00] really loved it. Thank you.
[1:04:02] Great. So then I'll put you on the spot
[1:04:03] and say that we will be calling you back at some point.
[1:04:07] Sure, that'll be good. OK, great, great.
[1:04:11] So thank you our audience for supporting us for listening in.
[1:04:14] We hope you enjoyed the show. You learned something new
[1:04:17] because I certainly did. If you liked what you heard,
[1:04:19] please consider subscribing to our podcast.
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[1:04:55] We appreciate your support and look forward to sharing more
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[1:05:01] a great day. Thank you, Annie, and see you
[1:05:04] guys next week. Thank you.
[1:05:06] Bye.

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