[irrelig]Guest month is underway! To make up for Leighton’s horrible botching of the first Hinduism podcast, we captured a real-life Hindu and forced him to divulge all the secrets of this crazy religion. The majority of the podcast is essentially telling Leighton where he got it wrong, but the conversation ranges widely, from Shiva to Kali to a little bit of Islam for good measure.
Check it out here!
23 Responses to “65: Hinduism — And This Time We Really Mean It”
“Chuck”ling at the mp3 file name you’ve given this episode.
I’ll give it a listen tonight. Wondering whether Leighton ever will redeem himself.
Might post your guest’s name…
I’ve always had a soft-spot when it comes to Hinduism. The whole thing is like the most complicated soap opera ever. And the Hindus I’ve known have all been very honest about their religion and tend to have a sense of humor when it comes to the whole ridiculous nature of it all.
Certainly an interesting and rich topic that we need more podcasts on.
P.S. If you adopt some children in the U.S. and take them to a shanty in the mountains, I’m sure you could get at least a couple good episodes out of them before they die of thirst. That way you don’t have to spend the money shipping children over from an asian country.
I’m going to hold off posting any guest’s name that hasn’t explicitly given us permission to do so.
I suppose we could have asked, but that’s too easy.
I loved your podcast on Hinduism. It made me want to have a nice, big, fat juicy hamburger … with a slice of cheese on it just to tick the Jews off.
As a German whose mother is on her second Turkish boyfriend, I can attest to your guest’s observation. There are many Turkish immigrants who are living a traditional life and are surprised when they go home and find that time passes in Turkey, too. True, there are fundamentalists in Turkey, and don’t discuss evolution ;), but if you go to Istanbul the shopping avenue could be in almost any western nation based on the clothes, music, brands. Of course, we also know a young woman working in a bar in a small side street who has to hide that she’s Kurdish or she’d be fired.
This was a better overview of the living practice of Hinduism versus what Leighton got from Wikipedia. My wife is Hindu (born and raised in India) and your guest’s observations were much more in line with the accounts of experiences.
The only drawback to the episode was your guest’s thick Indian accent. I work with a lot of folks from India and have grown accustomed to the americanized dialect (my wife has virtually no accent), but even I had to “rewind” some spots to catch what he was saying. Still, he came across as very knowledgable and quite funny.
I’m holding you guys to the “man-god” episode.
Well, this episode suffered from one of the main problems of having a guest: the guest’s non-radio voice.
I live in Argentina and I have pretty good English skills (I listen to you guys, don’t I?), so maybe it’s just that I’m not used to listening to such a heavily accented English, but man, there were many parts where I couldn’t even follow the discussion.
This was the first Irreligiosophy podcast I had to rewind to understand something and also, the only one I stopped listening to.
When you pick a guest, please try and make sure that the recording can be understood. Maybe do a short audio test or try and make the guest speak more clearly.
I’m not embarrased to say I was only able to make out about 10% of what the guest was saying (maybe i should be).
I’m sure the talk was interesting but I learned nothing and wasn’t even able to laugh at the jokes.
So… yeah, just something to consider.
To be fair, our guest did warn us about his accent. But it didn’t bother me at all, I actually enjoyed listening to it.
I am now worried about listening to the episode since I never had to decipher my own accent in the past.
I offer to transcribe my parts for free …
I really enjoyed this podcast (even with the guest). The guest was knowledgeable and cack funny. If you haven’t listened yet, get it India.
I’ve been listening to Irreligiosophy for several months and love it. It’s my favorite podcast and this was one of my favorite episodes. Your guest was great…so smart and funny. And you two let his rentboy comment go right past you! As for the accent, I enjoyed it.
I’ve had a few years of training, so take this with a grain of salt, but I had no problem at all understanding Diganta. The low bandwidth of telephone audio is a confounding variable, by the way.
Enjoyed the podcast, learned a lot. I rarely had trouble understanding the guest’s (Digenta Das?) accent. His good sense of humor made it very enjoyable to listen to.
How do you two knuckleheads get such good guests? More like this.
This is a great episode! I’d go as far as to say it is in your top ten episodes ever… wait, there are only 10 good episodes. Invite this guy back and you may make it to 11!
Great episode. If you can get this guest back do so. I love his sense of humour.
Best moment was when Diganta’s call re: Westerners falling for the Eastern religious B.S.
Oh, Matthew. Your post is illegible to us in the States. Humour?
(Yeah, yeah…I know that’s how the British spell it.)
This guest was delightful. Agree with the other comments. A charming and effective spokesman for reason-based evaluation of religion – love him!
Nice show guys. “fuck the Fans” month is off to a good start.
I’m a new listener, I found you guys after a mention on Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe. I’m a former Mormon, I left the church when I realized it was retarded. I joined the Army as a medic and continue to deal with retarded Christians on a daily basis.
One of my pet peeves is the “No atheist in Foxholes” bit. It makes me crazy. I’ve had people bring that up more then Pascal’s Wager.
Your podcast on Islam was pretty good and filled in a lot of the gaps I had from talking to Iraqis. It’s hard to understand idealogical concepts when it’s being translated.
What do you guys think about Chaplains? Does it make sense that the Army pays those guys? I don’t feel discriminated against or anything emo like that, but that’s a lot of money. I could get a new aid bag, or a pay raise.
Kerwin- I agree. Chaplains shouldn’t be paid with our taxes. The bastards would be there, paid or not, so I opt for not.
Chuck & Leighton- I can hardly believe you left the Hindu eating cows topic alone. What the hell?!
It might be a little late but I have a skunk dick candidate for you… http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/sarahposner/2654/rand_paul:_we_wouldn't_need_laws_if_everyone_were_christian/
Mr Das, I have worked with people of the subcontinent whose accents were several orders of magnitude thicker. I enjoyed the podcast and I hope you come back again.
Hinduism is a cool religion that is also oriented towards peace and prosperity.`”