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PODCAST

The Subverse

The Subverse, presented by Dark ‘n’ Light is a podcast that uncovers the hidden and marginal in stories about nature, culture and social justice. From the cosmic to the quantum, from cells to cities and from colonial histories to reimagining futures. Join Susan Mathews every fortnight on a Thursday for weird and wonderful conversations, narrated essays and poems that dwell on the evolving contingencies of life.

society & culture

All Episodes

42:11

Currents of Change

The Subverse ·

2025/10/02

We kick off season five of The Subverse, focused on the element of ‘air’, with host Susan Mathews in conversation with Dr. Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, India. Roxy has made breakthrough contributions to the research, monitoring, and modelling of climate and extreme weather events over the Indo-Pacific region. His work has advanced the scientific understanding of monsoon floods and droughts, terrestrial and marine heatwaves, and

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35:42

Sami Ahmad Khan

The Subverse ·

2025/09/29

In episode three of season four, host Anjali Alappat sits down with writer, academic and documentary producer, Sami Ahmad Khan. He is the author of Red Jihad: Battle for South Asia (2012), Aliens in Delhi (2017), and the monograph Star Warriors of the Modern Raj: Materiality, Mythology and Technology of Indian Science Fiction (2021). Sami was shortlisted for the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar and his fiction has been the subject of formal academic research and a part of university syllabi in India

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13:24

The Amazing Morphs of the Golden Cat

The Subverse ·

2025/09/25

In this final instalment of Cataplisms, we join conservation anthropologist Sahil Nijhawan and his collaborator Iho Mitapo in the Dibang Valley on a journey that is both spiritual and scientific. Iho and Sahil are founding members of the Dibang Team, a biocultural conservation initiative led by the Idu Mishmi, the indigenous inhabitants of the Dibang valley, that takes a multi-pronged and multi-disciplinary approach. It has established an ancestral storytelling program (Taju Taye), piloted a program

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43:48

Rashmi Devadasan, Rakesh Khanna & R.T. Samuel

The Subverse ·

2025/09/22

In episode three, we chat with Rashmi Devadasan, Rakesh Khanna, and R.T. Samuel, the brilliant minds behind The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste SF, which has been making waves in the Indian speculative fiction scene. Rashmi Devadasan is a writer with over twenty-five years of experience in indie publishing, Tamil feature films, and Indian English theatre. At Blaft, she has been part of the selection, editing, design and production of the company's fiction in translation, comic book anthologies, original

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40:55

Gautam Bhatia

The Subverse ·

2025/08/21

In episode two of season four, lawyer, author, and editor Gautam Bhatia returns! When we last spoke to Gautam, he had just published The Horizon, the much-anticipated sequel to The Wall. Since then, he’s published a variety of non-fiction books, helped curate and edit a new anthology, Between Worlds, for Westland Books, and published a new sci-fi novel: The Sentence. The Sentence is genre crossing, with elements of political thrillers, murder mysteries, and old school science fiction. In it, the

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38:17

Arcx - Gigi Ganguly

The Subverse ·

2025/08/14

In the first episode of season four, host Anjali Alappat sits down with Gigi Ganguly, to discuss her debut collection of short stories, Biopeculiar: Stories of an Uncertain World (Westland Books, 2024). Gigi began her career as a journalist and, after some years of writing for newspapers, she decided to study creative writing at the University of Limerick. Her first novella, One Arm Shorter than the Other, published in 2022, got her nominated for the Subjective Chaos Kind of Award in 2023

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07:53

Crooked Cats: The Truth Behind Beastly Encounters

The Subverse ·

2025/05/28

In this episode of Stories from the Subverse, Nayanika Mathur, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies at the University of Oxford, delves into the conflict between big cats and humans. Nayanika’s book, Crooked Cats: Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene (2021), was a key source of inspiration for Cataplisms, which examines the intersections of capitalism through a feline lens. In this piece, Nayanika focuses on the governance of nonhuman animals, their entanglements with humans, and what

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17:58

Fragmented Forests: Raza Kazmi Talks Capitalism,...

The Subverse ·

2025/03/27

In this episode of Stories from the Subverse, we present our first Cataplisms audio story. The Cataplisms project examines our multispecies entanglements, critiques capitalism, and acknowledges the cataclysms at our doorstep, all through a feline lens. In this episode, we hear from someone personally and professionally invested in the fate of big cats and the forests they live in. Raza Kazmi is a conservationist, writer and wildlife historian, who focuses on East Central India. His childhood in

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01:01:52

Botanical Reckonings: Reclaiming the Embrangled...

The Subverse ·

2024/12/11

In this episode, we're discussing plants, their exuberant multispecies sexualities and what we can learn from them, how botany is always interlinked with its cultural and historic context including colonialism, and an interdisciplinary approach can make one a better scientist. Host Susan Mathews is in conversation with Professor Banu Subramaniam, the Luella LaMer Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. Trained as a plant evolutionary biologist, Banu engages the feminist studies

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48:42

History, Naturally: Earth, Climate and Human Cycles

The Subverse ·

2024/11/28

In the eighth episode of the season, host Susan Mathews talks to Pranay Lal, a natural history writer and climate change advocate about the dearth of interest in publishing books on natural history, the climate crises, the need for natural history museums, how the story of climate is intertwined with all other histories, and more. Pranay Lal is a natural history writer, public health expert, and climate change advocate. He is the author of two books on natural history. Indica: A Deep Natural

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01:01:02

Plastic Worlds: From Synthetic Universality to Queer Kin

The Subverse ·

2024/11/14

In this episode host Susan Mathews talks to Heather Davis, the author of Plastic Matter (2022) about plastic and how it has completely permeated our world. They cover a wide range of topics from synthetic universality, technocapitalism, chemical legacies, queer kin, reproductive questions raised by plastic, and hauntings created by the aftermath of slavery and settler colonialism. Davis is a member of the Synthetic Collective, an interdisciplinary team of scientists, humanities scholars, and

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38:45

A Creature Called Earth: Movers, Shakers, and Rainmakers

The Subverse ·

2024/11/04

In this episode, host Susan Mathews is in conversation with Ferris Jabr, author of Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life (2024), and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and Scientific American. The interview focused on the central question in the book: in what ways and to what extent has life changed the planet? From microbes to mammoths, life has transformed the continents, oceans, and atmosphere, turning a lump of orbiting rock into the world as we’ve known it. In the

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45:16

Earthly Matters: An Ecosophical Approach

The Subverse ·

2024/10/17

We're back with The Subverse. In this episode of the season, host Susan Mathews talks to writer and ecological thinker Aseem Shrivastava about the current crises in modern cosmology. Ecosophy, which acknowledges the living earth, is a way to address this arrythmia and our current alienation from the earth to which we belong. Aseem Shrivastava is a writer, teacher, and ecological thinker with a doctorate in Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has lectured across the world on

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45:14

Arcx - Vajra Chandrasekera

The Subverse ·

2024/10/03

Vajra Chandrasekera returns to Arcx for our season finale. Since we last spoke, Vajra has won a Nebula award, as well as Crawford and Locus awards for his debut novel, The Saint of Bright Doors. He has also been nominated for Le Guin, Ignyte, Hugo, Lammy, and British Fantasy Awards—and we’re sure there are more in the pipeline! Vajra’s short stories, poems and articles have appeared in many publications over the years, including Clarkesworld and West Branch. He has also worked as an editor for

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41:04

Arcx - Vandana Singh

The Subverse ·

2024/09/26

This week, host Anjali Alappat chats with SF author, physicist, and transdisciplinary scholar of climate change, Vandana Singh. A professor of physics, Vandana’s writing combines science and social issues in thought-provoking ways. In recent years, her work has been climate focused, a stark acknowledgment of the crisis we are currently enduring. Her work includes Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories (2018), the first work by a South Asian author to be a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award; The

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43:52

Arcx - RR Virdi

The Subverse ·

2024/09/11

In today's episode of Arcx, we're in conversation with sci-fi and fantasy author, R.R. Virdi. Virdi published his first book, Dangerous Ways, an urban fantasy novel, in 2016. He is also the author of the Grave Report series, and Star Shepherd, a space western. The First Binding, the first in his new epic high fantasy series, The Tales of Tremaine, was released in 2022. The sequel, The Doors of Midnight, will be out in August 2024. Join us as we discuss stories within stories, the beauty and breadth

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42:45

Arcx - Kritika H.Rao

The Subverse ·

2024/08/30

Kritika H. Rao, speculative fiction and children’s book author, joins us to discuss her critically acclaimed novel, The Surviving Sky, and its recently released sequel, The Unrelenting Earth. Having lived across the world in India, Australia, Canada, and the Sultanate of Oman, Kritika’s stories are heavily influenced by her own experiences. In her books, she often explores deep philosophical themes such as self vs. the world, the nature of consciousness, and the vagaries of identity. Join us as

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38:40

Arcx - Gourav Mohanty

The Subverse ·

2024/08/22

In this episode, host Anjali Alappat sits down with Gourav Mohanty, lawyer, writer, and stand up comedian. Born in Bhubaneshwar, the City of Temples, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Gourav seeks to reimagine and redefine the myths and magic of the past. In his first novel, Sons of Darkness, Gourav plunges headfirst into the grimdark genre with an epic retelling of the Mahabharata. Filled with political power plays, ambiguously grey characters, mythical monsters emerging from the mist, history being

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41:11

Arcx - Bina Shah

The Subverse ·

2024/08/08

Today’s guest is award winning author and journalist, Bina Shah. Her first sci-fi novel Before She Sleeps was published in 2018, followed by the sequel The Monsoon War in 2023. Bina’s work explores women’s rights, societal issues, technology, education, and freedom of expression. Additionally, Bina has authored four novels as well as two collections of short stories. Her work has been translated into several languages including English, Spanish, German, Chinese, Vietnamese, Urdu, Sindhi and

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45:48

Arcx - Manjula Padmanabhan

The Subverse ·

2024/08/01

Arcx is all about literary inspiration. In epiode two of this season, host Anjali Alappat speaks to Indian sci-fi legend, Manjula Padmanabhan. A prolific author, playwright, journalist, and comic strip artist, Manjula’s latest collection, Stolen Hours and Other Curiosities (2023), is filled with short stories written between 1984 and today - and more relevant than ever. We discuss the collection in depth, wherein a vampire discovers an endless feast in the subcontinent, an atheist reporter attends

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71 results

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