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The Bhagavata Podcast
The Bhagavata Podcast invites listeners on an engaging journey through the Bhagavata Purana, more commonly known as the Srimad Bhagavatam. Each episode features conversations between scholars, many of whom are also practitioners, as they reflect on and analyze a chapter of this text together. The podcast offers a unique blend of academic rigor and personal insight, providing fresh perspectives that illuminate the beauty and uniqueness of the Bhagavatam.
In each episode, host Dr. Måns Broo, an esteemed scholar and Gaudiya Vaishnava practitioner, invites expert guests to reflect on a chapter of the Bhagavata Purana. Following a linear progression through the text, the discussions explore the philosophical, theological, and literary dimensions of the Bhagavatam, offering both traditional insights and modern academic interpretations. This thoughtful approach enables listeners to journey through the Bhagavata Purana chapter by chapter, uncovering the intricate teachings of this work.
The Bhagavata Podcast is an initiative supported by the Gaudiya Studies Research Programme of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, furthering the mission of connecting living traditions with academic exploration.
Episodes
21 episodes
2.2 What the Manosphere Gets Wrong About Worth | Bhagavata Podcast with Shaunaka Rishi Das
A teenager thinks his father is a loser because he doesn't drive a Lamborghini. The Bhagavatam asks: when you can use your arm as a pillow, what is the necessity of a pillow at all? These two visions of the good life are further apart than they...
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2.1 What Should You Do When You're About to Die? | Bhagavata Podcast with Jayananda Dasa
A well-known contemporary guru was asked, mid-event, how to prepare for death. He laughed — not dismissively, but his answer was: "You should be focusing on how to live." The Bhagavatam disagrees. And its answer turns out to be not about the fu...
1.19 What Would You Do If You Had Seven Days to Live? | Bhagavata Podcast with Sundar Gopal Das
What would you do if you learned you had seven days to live? Most of us would panic, bargain, or spend those days in dread. King Parikshit sat down by the river and prepared to die with complete clarity. This is the final cha...
1.18 A King, a Curse, and a Seven-Day Deadline | Bhagavata Podcast with Manjari Devi Dasi
A great king, exhausted and thirsty, makes an impulsive mistake. A young brahmin boy responds with a curse: die within seven days. What unfolds from that moment is the reason the entire Bhagavatam exists.Canto 1, Chapter 18 is the hinge...
1.17 If Evil Surrenders to You, What Do You Do? | Bhagavata Podcast with Krishna Ksetra Swami
Kali kneels before Parikshit and asks for mercy. What an emperor does in that moment, and why, is the subject of Canto 1, Chapter 17 of the Bhagavatam.Krishna Ksetra Swami (Dr. Kenneth Valpey) and host Bhrigupada Dasa examine the full r...
1.16 The Age We're Living In and What It's Actually Doing to Us | Bhagavata Podcast with Gopal Hari Das
A bull standing on one leg. A cow weeping in an empty field. A strange figure beating them both. Parikshit, the last great emperor, comes upon this scene on the road and has to decide what to do with it. Canto 1, Chapter 16 of the Bhagavatam is...
1.15 What Remains When Everything Is Taken Away? | Bhagavata Podcast with Radhika Raman Das
Arjuna's bow arm has failed. His powers are gone. The warriors who once fled before him now barely trouble him. The Bhagavatam in Canto 1, Chapter 15 asks what this means, not just for Arjuna but for the entire question of identity and spiritua...
1.14 Why Does Grief Feel Like Love? | Bhagavata Podcast with Jayananda Das
Arjuna has returned from Dvaraka. One look at his face and Yudhishthira knows. Krishna is gone. What the Bhagavatam does with that knowledge, across Canto 1, Chapter 14, is one of the most carefully constructed passages in the entire text.<...
1.13 What Do You Do When Someone You Love Refuses to Let Go? | Bhagavata Podcast with Sundar Gopal Das
Vidura has returned from years of pilgrimage. He has seen enough of the world to know what he needs to say. And what he says to Dhritarashtra in the palace of the Pandavas is one of the most direct and uncomfortable speeches in the Bhagavatam.<...
1.12 The Child Who Survived a Nuclear Weapon | Bhagavata Podcast with Jayananda Das
Before he could be born, the last of the Pandava line was nearly destroyed by a weapon of devastating power. What saved him, and what that survival meant, is the subject of Canto 1, Chapter 12.Jayananda Das (Dr. Janne Kontala) and host ...
1.11 What Does It Feel Like When God Comes Home? | Bhagavata Podcast with Krishna Ksetra Swami
What would it actually look like if an entire city experienced devotional joy at the same moment? The Bhagavatam in Canto 1, Chapter 11 attempts to describe exactly that.Krishna Ksetra Swami (Dr. Kenneth Valpey) and host Bhrigupada Dasa...
1.10 What Do You Do When the One You Love Has to Leave? | Bhagavata Podcast with Shaunaka Rishi Das
The war is over. The kingdom is restored. And Krishna is leaving. How do you say goodbye to the person whose presence has held everything together?In Canto 1, Chapter 10, the Bhagavatam slows to watch the citizens of Hastinapura stand i...
1.9 How Do You Want to Die? | Bhagavata Podcast with Radhika Raman Das
Bhishmadeva has lain on a bed of arrows for fifty-eight days, waiting. He has the rare gift of choosing his own moment of death. What he does with that time is one of the Bhagavatam's most extraordinary scenes.In Canto 1, Chapter 9, the...
1.8 A Queen Prays for More Suffering | Bhagavata Podcast with Radhika Raman Das
What kind of prayer asks for more calamity? And what does it tell us that the Bhagavatam treats this as one of its most beautiful passages?In Canto 1, Chapter 8, Queen Kunti offers a hymn that inverts every assumption about what prayer ...
1.7 Can You Forgive the Unforgivable? | Bhagavata Podcast with Jayananda Das
Ashvatthama has just committed the most heinous act in the Mahabharata, killing the sleeping sons of the Pandavas. Now Arjuna has him at sword-point. What happens next is one of the most morally complex scenes in Sanskrit literature.In ...
1.6 Why Does the World's Greatest Scholar Feel Empty? | Bhagavata Podcast with Radhika Raman Das
Vyasadeva has compiled the Vedas, the Puranas, the Mahabharata. By any measure, his life's work is complete. And yet a deep, unnamed dissatisfaction settles over him. What could possibly be missing?In Canto 1, Chapter 6, Narada arrives ...
1.5 What If Everything You've Accomplished Still Isn't Enough? | Bhagavata Podcast with Krishna Ksetra Swami
Vyasa had divided the Vedas, composed the Mahabharata, and written more scripture than any author in history. He sat down at dusk on the bank of the Sarasvati and felt empty. His guru Narada arrived and told him: not only have your works failed...
1.4 Why Does Despair Produce the Greatest Wisdom? | Bhagavata Podcast with Sundar Gopal Das
The Bhagavad Gita begins with Arjuna in crisis. The Ramayana begins with its author's grief. The Srimad Bhagavatam begins with Vyasa's inexplicable emptiness after completing every other text he had ever written. India's greatest literature kee...
1.3 Is Krishna Just Another Avatar — or the Source of All of Them? | Bhagavata Podcast with Radhika Raman Das
The Bhagavatam lists 22 divine descents and then, almost in passing, singles one of them out as different in kind from the rest. That half-verse, "Krishna is Bhagavan himself," became the theological foundation on which the entire Gaudiya Vaish...
1.2 Can Devotion Ever Really Be "Without Motivation"? | Bhagavata Podcast with Krishna Ksetra Swami
What would it mean to give yourself to something completely, with no expectation of return? The Srimad Bhagavatam names this "unmotivated, uninterrupted devotion" as the highest good for humanity. It is a remarkable claim, and a demanding one.<...
1.1 Where Do You Begin With 18,000 Verses? | Bhagavata Podcast with Shaunaka Rishi Das
What do you do when a text of 18,000 verses refuses to be read as a simple rulebook, and instead keeps turning your assumptions upside down?In the very first episode of the Bhagavata Podcast, host Bhrigupada Dasa (Dr. Måns Broo) sits do...