End of Year List - Podcasts I found in 2025

This is my customary end of the year list post, probably the only one this year. Somewhere along our evolutionary path in 21st century, I have also mutated into a headphone wearing biped like many you encounter on subways/buses/sidewalks. I have also became one of those people who listens to books or podcasts more than reading books – a development that would have horrified my younger self. But here we are. 

These days, with AntennaPod (a podcast app ) as my faithful companion, I'm satisfying my intellectual curiosities through my earbuds rather than turning pages. Maybe it's the multitasking appeal, I can absorb fascinating content while fixing dinner on weekdays or taking walks. Or maybe podcasts just hit that sweet spot between casual consumption and serious learning that books sometimes miss.

I've deliberately left out the podcasts I've raved about in previous year-end posts that I continue devouring – the usual suspects like Philosophize This, Memory Palace, 99% Invisible, The Fall of Civilizations etc. This year's list is all about my fresh discoveries, the shows that made 2025 intellectually richer.

Telepathy Tapes with Ky Dickens: This newer podcast had me questioning everything I thought I knew about consciousness and human connection. Dickens explores documented cases of non-speaking individuals with autism communicating telepathically, backing these extraordinary claims with scientific rigor rather than new-age hand-waving. As someone fascinated by the intersection of consciousness and quantum mechanics, I found myself completely absorbed by the implications. It's the kind of podcast that makes you stare at the ceiling at 2 AM wondering about life, universe and everything you think you know but you do not, even though you know the answer is 42, not 67.

The Civil War and Reconstruction with Richard Youngdahl: Sometimes you need a no-nonsense deep dive, and this podcast delivered exactly that. It methodically walks through the entire chronology of America's bloodiest conflict without getting bogged down in academic jargon or trying to be too clever. Perfect for someone like me who appreciates history but doesn't want to slog through a 900-page biography of Grant just to understand Vicksburg.

Heavyweight with Jonathan Goldstein: How did I miss this gem for so long? Jonathan Goldstein's approach to human interest storytelling is absolutely addictive, he helps people resolve decades-old mysteries and interpersonal puzzles with the persistence of a detective and the heart of a therapist. Each episode feels like emotional archaeology, digging up buried family secrets and forgotten friendships. I binged through multiple episodes like they were potato chips, still got a long way to go - which is a good thing.

The Neuron: Since I already subscribe to their newsletter, having the audio version felt like a natural extension. It's become my go-to source for understanding how emerging AI technologies are reshaping our world, delivered without the breathless hype or apocalyptic dread that plagues most AI coverage. Just solid analysis of how these tools are actually changing how we work and think.

The Pie: An Economics Podcast: Economics has become one of my late-blooming intellectual interests, and this offering from the Becker Friedman Institute at UChicago hits the perfect educational sweet spot. They tackle complex economic concepts through varied lenses without assuming you have an MBA, making it ideal for curious minds who want to understand how money actually moves through the world.

ThinkFuture: Chris Kalaboukis manages to marry technology and philosophy in ways that feel natural rather than forced. His exploration of how emerging tech intersects with age-old philosophical questions about human nature and society.

The End of The World with Josh Clark: This 10-episode series from the Stuff You Should Know co-host consumed my attention like an audiobook thriller. Clark examines various apocalyptic scenarios with scientific rigor and dark humor, making existential dread oddly entertaining. It is a very short podcast series which is more like an audiobook. I binged through it in a few days.

Tech Brew Ride Home: My daily dose of Silicon Valley water-cooler gossip, delivered with just enough snark to keep tech news from becoming unbearably dry.

Search Engine with PJ Vogt: Vogt's approach to making sense of our chaotic world one question at a time feels perfectly suited to our current moment of information overload and cultural confusion.

History of Religion by J.A. Graham: Currently working my way through his deep dive into Christianity's origins and evolution. It's academic but accessible. 

There are undoubtedly more podcasts worth mentioning. Maybe that's next year's list. For now, these podcasts have kept my brain happily occupied while my reading pile gathers dust.

Read More

Best of 2024: Movies, Music & Reading

Here are some movies, music and books that caught my eye/ears in 2024.

Movies: Most of the movies in the list are from Malayalam. Malayalam movies have seen a remarkable resurgence in the last decade. In contrast  Bollywood or Hindi movies appears to be in a state of creative stagnation, trying to lift themes and stories from the Telugu industry (Tollywood) and miserably failing. 

I found myself struggling to recollect any Hindi movies I had watched in the past year, let alone any that left a lasting impression. This is a far cry from the vibrant era spanning the early 2000s to the mid-2010s, when Bollywood flourished with an array of memorable works.

Some of the movies in my list below were not released in 2024, I happened to watch them this year. But most of them are.

Bhoothakalam (Malayalam, 2022): One of the best paranormal movies in Malayalam that I've ever watched. Here is my review.

Premulu (Malayalam, 2024) : A chick-flick, a light-entertainer, third in a series - you decide. My review is here.

Civil War (English USA, 2024) :  I have been burrowing deep into the annals of American civil war, abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln this year. Coincidentally I watched this movie, which is unrelated to 150+ year old original version of civil war, months before I started down the rabbit hole of the 1860s civil war. Same land, different time, similar divides. My review.

Kishkindha Kaandam (Malayalam, 2024): Probably one of the best films that Malayalam produced this year. 

Bramayugam (Malayalam, 2024): Shot in the same location as Kishkindha Kaandam, but set centuries apart and brilliantly shot in black-n-white. Mammootty lords over a mad dark mansion and the movie, my review is here.

Bougainvillea (Malayalam, 2024): A stylish movie from Amal Neerad with his wife and actor Jyothirmayi rocking grey hair and her character and Kunchako Boban presenting new dimensions to his actor persona. Both actors have given great performances in an unconventional story which fails to hold together towards the end. But I loved the slick, urbane presentation. Maybe the allure of Jyothirmayi's silver strands will urge older folks, esp. Malayali men with sagging jaws and creased cheeks to abandon the harshness of jet black hair-dyes and embrace the timeless sophistication of grey hair. Sthuthi!

Barbie (English USA, 2023) : Barbie is a visually captivating and cleverly subversive film, blending playful nostalgia with sharp commentary on identity and societal expectations. It’s a whimsical yet thought-provoking exploration that transcends its toy-doll origins, offering a refreshing take on modern femininity

Society of the Snow (Spanish, Netflix, 2023): Alive by Piers Paul Reed was one of the books that I read in my teens that left a deep impression in my mind. It was about a team of Uruguayan rugby players whose plane crashed in the remote Andes and narrated their resilience in the face of unimaginable odds. Hollywood made a version of this real life survival story in the 90s starring Ethan Hawke. But Netflix's take on this incident, Society of the Snow, is the best and gripping version of this raw survival tale till now.

Sector 36 (2024): This is the only Hindi movie in my list, a Netflix production starring Deepak Dobriyal and Vikrant Massey. 

Music:  One of my favorite bands from the past released a new album this year, after long. Linkin Park's From Zero has head bangers like Emptiness Machine and Heavy is the Crown, along with many other great tracks, which makes it an almost no-skip album.

Shaboozey is my discovery of the year. It is like he found a place in music we didn't know existed and made himself at home there, at the confluence of hip-hop, country and pop. My favorite song of Shaboozey is Let it Burn.

Books : I hardly read any books this year and I am yet to finish the last two, but do plan to finish them 

1. And There was Light  - Jon Meacham
2. Circe - Madeline Miller
3. The Covenant of Water - Abraham Verghese
4. How to Hide an Empire - Daniel Immerwahr

Read More

Dev Anand & Guide (1965) - Hindi & English

Guide is a movie far ahead of its time - an ultra liberal redemptive take on a taboo subject. A dose of (reluctant) spiritualism and its hit songs may have sold the movie to the masses and made the Hindi version a phenomenal success at Bollywood box office. 

Dev Anand, Waheeda Rehman and a group of actors playing the role a film crew in Guide

What I appreciate are all the bold attempts it makes to address the conservative norms of sixties India, all packed smoothly and skillfully into a song-dance-melodrama bundle of a Bollywood movie.

I might be the minority here but I liked the English version of Guide better than the Hindi version of the legendary Bollywood movie. The English version of the Guide was written by the renowned author Pearl S. Buck and directed by Tad Danielewski. 

Both are two different movies, shot by two different directors, with almost the same set of actors, at the same locations, months apart. Guide might be the only Indian movie who had two birth fathers, a semi-identical twin movie!

Guide follows on the footsteps of Raju, a tourist guide in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India, played by the evergreen actor Dev Anand. We get to ride with Raju on his life's journey where he meets and falls in love with Rosie, a young girl, married to an aging archeologist who has no patience for her youthful spirit. The beautiful Waheeda Rehman essays the role of ebullient newly wed Rosie with stars in her eyes and her husband Marco is played by the multi-talented Kishore Sahu.

Dev Anand, Kishore Sahu & Waheeda Rehman in Guide (Hindi, 1965)

Guide is based on the famous Indian writer, R. K. Narayan's novel, The Guide. The Hindi version of the Guide was directed by Dev Anand's younger brother and successful director, Vijay Anand (Goldie.) The female characters in stories Dev Anand and his production house - Navketan Films had chosen to make movies of, including Rosie, are strong, lively, independent and modern in their outlook. 

Dev Anand during his best period of movie-making and acting between 1950 - 1980 was always on a quest to introduce new topics and broaden the views of typical Indian movie audience through his creations. He and the female leads often played morally ambiguous characters in his movies. Had they been in any other Hindi movie of the time they would have been harshly judged. No such negative scrutiny befell his movies. Adultery, long distance lovers falling out of love, black marketing, marijuana use by hippies were all explained with maturity and the right kind of conviction to get the buy-in from Indian audience who lapped up his movies and their chart-topping songs.

Dev Anand sitting on the ledge with Waheeda Rehman and Guru Dutt flanking him (Courtesy: Indian Express Archives)

Guide has the leading man (Raju played by Anand) and the leading lady engaging in an adulterous relationship. But they are also independent individuals on their own journeys who do not depend a lot on each other. This was a concept indigestible by Indian public of the sixties. But not only did Guide become a super hit movie, it is also one of a handful of movies that has secured a permanent place in a variety of top 10 list of Indian films from any era. 

Here is to Dev Anand - Indian film's liberal visionary and an evergreen style icon, who never lost his zest for life or creativity. His death came in the form of a cardiac arrest at the age of 88, two months after the release of his last film, Chargesheet in 2011, which he had both directed and produced! 

Dev Anand with his wife, actor Kalpana Kartik (Mona Singha) whom he married over a lunch break during a movie shoot

Read More

Movies about afterlife, reincarnation and what lies beyond death

 In their own separate ways, all these movies deal with death or after life or questions what lies or could lie beyond the cessation of our physical being. I have watched all the 10 in the list, but have written reviews for only six.

Below are the six from me....

21 grams: Probably the one movie in the list that actually doesn't deal with after life directly Its only connection is the mysterious 21 grams.

Source Code: If we could right a code to sustain our yearning for life.

Happy Accidents: Love and time travel, life or afterlife you decide.

The Lovely Bones: Looking down from a heaven above - life lost, lives being lived, the play goes on.

Five People You Meet in Heaven: This review is of the book, but the movie also has the same name and can make you teary eyed the way only a Mitch Albom creation can.

Ditto(Donggam): Kind of like the Lake House(in the list below), Korean with younger actors.

and the five from IMDb

Flatliners: I was bowled over by the doctors experimenting with dying when I saw it twenty years ago. 

Sixth Sense - M. Night Shyamalan had arrived and you began to see dead people.

Abres Los Ojos or Vanilla Sky - Illusion and reality, life and death.

What Dreams May Come - The one film that directly deals with afterlife and shows you what it might be like.

Lake House - Communicating across time beating the life-death cycle at its own game.

and the three I want to watch.

Wristcutters : A Love Story

The Dark

Enter the void

Read More

Top Malayalam Movies of 2011

2011 was a milestone year for the discerning Malayali movie-goer, one who was tortured years on end with too many Dubais, Naatturajavus, Christian and Uppukandam Brothers. It goes without saying that I consider myself belonging to this category. This was the year I finally found some contemporary Malayalam films I can recommend to my film-buff friends (non-Indian and therefore non-Malayali) and did not have to go into hiding after the recommendation for fear of losing their friendship.

2011 was also the year when Malayalam cinema woke up and sniffed a new formula  and started playing with it – integrated multi narrative track, already perfected by Alejandro Inarritu, Wong Kar-wai and David Lynch, so there are plenty of places of draw 'inspiration' from. In the process of learning there were some misfires like The Train and The Metro, but some like Traffic and City of God hit the target.

Another surprise winner of 2011 is the non-superstar, in the line of Times Person of the Year – Protestor,  Malayalam cinema’s star of the year was not Mohanlal, Mammootty , Prithviraj or Dileep, (or not even Suresh Gopi,) it was the dependable second benchers, the reliable middle-of-the-pack actors like Lal, Jayasurya, Shweta Menon, Kunchako Boban, Indrajith, Asif Ali, Salim Kumar, Reema Kallingal, Indrajith, Vineeth Sreenivasan, Remya Nambishan, Fahad Fazil and Samvrutha Sunil who took the cake this last year. Also worth mentioning is the new crop of movie-makers who were instrumental in bringing a paradigm shift in the way we make movies in Kerala – Lijo Jose Pellissery, Samir Thahir, Aashiq Abu, Listin Stephen, Bobby n Sanjay, Rajesh Pillai and the like.

On to movies, my five favorite films of the year in no particular order,

Salt N Pepper (Woohoo! Malayalam has its first real…..Read more)

City of God (The end is the beginning is the end as….Read more)

Chappa Kurish (Chappa Kurish - Kochi speak for heads or tails, whatever the outcome of this coin flip…Read more)

Beautiful has shades of compassion and comraderie and gives Anoop Menon an opportunity to sling a guitar on his back and walk/ride the streets, which movie star has not dreamed of playing such a James Dean-ish character. Jayasurya as a paralysed millionaire with a  love for life gets to emote with his eyes and flirtatious talk. It is an interesting movie and yet another one which pays tribute to Malayali male’s endless fascination with that ageless Padmarajan classic – Thoovanathumbikal.(Read more)

 Indian Rupee has a good story and tight script. Though more laudable is the fact that it is the one and only movie which keeps Prithviraj (barely) in the ship that sailed from Kerala’s movie ocean in the second decade of twenty first century bearing the flag of new promise and hope. Prithvi is on the verge of becoming a latter day Mohanlal (not the Mohanlal of Nadodikkaattu but the Mohanlal of Natturajavu), if not for rare movies like Indian Rupee.

Also rans : 

Gaddama : (Women in flight (no, not Amelia Earhart), escaping their wretched existence make...  Read more )

Traffic: Probably the most commercially successful multi-narrative movie of 2011, it not only is technically sound but has drama and melodrama to top it off. Read more

Adaminte Makan Abu: A typical festival circuit movie, Malayalam budhi-jeevi(intellectual) directors have been churning out since the fifties and sixties, because third world poverty and desperation sells, tugs the heart strings of movie intelligensia at Cannes and Berlin and Toronto helping to bring home an award or two. Salim Kumar and Zarina Wahab have faithfully executed their roles as an aging couple waiting to go on a pilgrimage to Haj and the rest is textbook award movie stuff.

Pranayam, maybe.

Read More