The Bhagavata Podcast

The Bhagavata Podcast
  • 3.8 (5)
  • HINDUISM

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.

  1. MAR 29

    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 chapter of the first book of the Srimad Bhagavatam, and it arrives like a carefully placed door: everything in Canto 1 has been building toward this moment.    In this episode, Bhrigupada Dasa (Dr. Mans Broo) and Sundar Gopal Das (Dr. Simon Haas) explore Canto 1, Chapter 19 of the Srimad Bhagavatam, in which King Parikshit, cursed to die by snakebite within seven days, renounces his kingdom and fasts by the Ganga. The great sages of the age converge not out of ceremony but out of omniscient foreknowledge: the Bhagavatam itself is about to be spoken. Sundar Gopal Das, joining from Costa Rica, draws on the commentary of Baladeva Vidyabhushan throughout, uncovering details that move quickly past in the text: the sages who could not reach agreement on what Parikshit should do, the tears and embraces when Shukadeva Goswami finally arrives, and the king's quiet, anxious gratitude that this wandering sage has agreed to stay longer than it takes to milk a cow.    The conversation ranges across the nature of the Bhagavatam as a literary structure (a text that ends every sequence on a cliffhanger), the contested identity of Shukadeva, the art of physiognomy by which the sages immediately recognise a great personality, and the Bhagavata Parampara: the lineage of instruction that does not pass through initiation but through teaching. The episode closes on a question the Srimad Bhagavatam poses in its first chapter and repeats here at the end of its first book: what is the duty of a human being, especially one who is about to die? The mortality rate, as Bhrigupada's teacher once reminded a Finnish audience, is 100 percent.    This episode covers Canto 1, Chapter 19 of the Srimad Bhagavatam.   The Bhagavata Podcast is produced by the Gaudiya Studies Research Programme at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Each episode brings together scholar-practitioners, trained in both Indology and lived Vaishnava devotion, to read this text closely and seriously. #Bhagavatam #BhaktiYoga #HinduPhilosophy #Parikshit #Shukadeva Send us Fan Mail The Bhagavata Podcast is produced by the Gaudiya Studies Research Programme at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Each episode brings together scholar-practitioners, trained in both Indology and lived Vaishnava devotion, to read this text closely and seriously.

    52 min

  2. MAR 15

    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 on which the Bhagavatam turns. In this episode, host Bhrigupada Dasa (Dr. Mans Broo, Senior Lecturer at Åbo Akademi University and Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies) reads it with Manjari Devi Dasi, PhD, of Bhaktivedanta College in Budapest, who spent six years translating Prabhupada's books into Hungarian. Manjari Devi Dasi brings both scholarly precision and lived practice to a chapter that raises some of the hardest questions in the text: Why would Krishna protect Parikshit as an unborn child and then arrange his death as a king? What does it mean for a devotee's mistake to be "the Lord's arrangement"? And what separates a curse from ordinary speech? The conversation covers a lot of ground. The chapter's unusual structure, which leaps forward to Parikshit's death and then circles back in what Manjari Devi Dasi calls "temporal oscillation," is examined as a deliberate narrative strategy. The famous verse Tulayama lavenapi, on the superiority of the devotee's association over even the Lord's direct presence, becomes an occasion for a close reading alongside Baladeva Vidyabhushana's commentary and a brief detour into J.L. Austin's philosophy of performative speech. The contrast between the boy Sringi's rash curse and his father Shamika's grief-stricken wisdom gives the chapter its moral tension, and the episode closes with Prabhupada's argument for trained, selfless leadership, read in light of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur's counter-claim that individual spiritual elevation matters more than any political arrangement. Send us Fan Mail The Bhagavata Podcast is produced by the Gaudiya Studies Research Programme at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Each episode brings together scholar-practitioners, trained in both Indology and lived Vaishnava devotion, to read this text closely and seriously.

    1h 9m

  3. FEB 27

    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 range of this chapter: the cosmic structure of Kali's four abodes (gambling, intoxication, illicit sex, and slaughter), the Bhagavatam's sustained case for non-violence including its application to food, and the question of whether Parikshit's decision to spare Kali and confine him is mercy, political realism, or both. The conversation also takes up the problem of evil in its Bhagavatam form: if dharma requires that Kali exist, what does that say about the nature of the age we live in and the choices available to us within it? Send us Fan Mail The Bhagavata Podcast is produced by the Gaudiya Studies Research Programme at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Each episode brings together scholar-practitioners, trained in both Indology and lived Vaishnava devotion, to read this text closely and seriously.

    1h 9m

  4. FEB 13

    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 the text's account of how the Kali Yuga began, and what it is. Gopal Hari Das (Dr. Gopal Gupta) and host Bhrigupada Dasa explore what the Bhagavatam actually means by the present age: its four characteristic symptoms (the collapse of truthfulness, cleanliness, mercy, and austerity), the allegorical figure of Kali himself, and why Parikshit does not simply kill him. The episode gives particular attention to a long and unusual digression in this chapter on the nature of truth, drawing on stories from the Mahabharata and Ramayana. The conversation asks directly: does the Bhagavatam's diagnosis of the present age still hold? And what does it recommend? Send us Fan Mail The Bhagavata Podcast is produced by the Gaudiya Studies Research Programme at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Each episode brings together scholar-practitioners, trained in both Indology and lived Vaishnava devotion, to read this text closely and seriously.

    1h 12m

  5. 12/15/2025

    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 spiritual life. Radhika Raman Das (Dr. Ravi Gupta) and host Bhrigupada Dasa trace the Pandavas' decision to retire from kingship and set out on their final journey. The episode gives careful attention to Arjuna's grief and the startling moment when he realises that everything he was capable of, he was capable of only because of Krishna. Without that presence, the gifts simply withdraw. The conversation also addresses Draupadi's departure (the Bhagavatam gives her genuine agency here), the reappearance of a key verse from the Bhagavad Gita in an entirely new context, and what it means for the Bhagavatam to succeed the Mahabharata as a literary and spiritual project. Send us Fan Mail The Bhagavata Podcast is produced by the Gaudiya Studies Research Programme at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Each episode brings together scholar-practitioners, trained in both Indology and lived Vaishnava devotion, to read this text closely and seriously.

    1h 10m

  6. 12/01/2025

    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. Jayananda Das (Dr. Janne Kontala) and host Bhrigupada Dasa examine how the Bhagavatam handles grief among those who have genuinely understood what they have lost. The episode explores the long catalogue of omens that Yudhishthira reads in the days before Arjuna returns, what the Vedic understanding of signs and portents actually involves, and why the Bhagavatam insists that even a perfected practitioner can and should grieve. The conversation draws out the text's central paradox: that separation from Krishna is not only painful but is, in the Gaudiya Vaishnava understanding, one of the most intensified forms of devotional experience. Send us Fan Mail The Bhagavata Podcast is produced by the Gaudiya Studies Research Programme at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Each episode brings together scholar-practitioners, trained in both Indology and lived Vaishnava devotion, to read this text closely and seriously.

    48 min

  7. 10/28/2025

    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. In Canto 1, Chapter 13, Sundar Gopal Das and host Bhrigupada Dasa trace the arc of Dhritarashtra's departure from the Pandava household: what Vidura tells him, why Yudhishthira cannot bring himself to ask the question he already knows the answer to, and what the text says about the nature of grief, attachment, and renunciation in old age. The episode gives particular attention to the famous verse on tirthas (holy places) and what it means that saints do not need sacred sites; sacred sites need saints. The conversation also examines Narada's subsequent arrival and his pointed instruction not to mourn those who understand what they are doing. Send us Fan Mail The Bhagavata Podcast is produced by the Gaudiya Studies Research Programme at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Each episode brings together scholar-practitioners, trained in both Indology and lived Vaishnava devotion, to read this text closely and seriously.

    1h 7m

  8. 10/22/2025

    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 Bhrigupada Das explore the birth narrative of Parikshit, the king whose impending death will eventually prompt the entire recitation of the Bhagavatam. The episode examines the Vedic understanding of birth omens and astrological signs, the significance of Parikshit's name (the one who examines), and what it means that he entered the world already searching for the divine light that had protected him in the womb. This chapter is the origin story not just of a king but of the Bhagavatam's central narrative frame. Understanding it changes how you read everything that follows. Send us Fan Mail The Bhagavata Podcast is produced by the Gaudiya Studies Research Programme at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Each episode brings together scholar-practitioners, trained in both Indology and lived Vaishnava devotion, to read this text closely and seriously.

    57 min
See All (19)

Ratings & Reviews

3.8
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    The Bhagavata Podcast
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    19
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Bhagavata Podcast
  • Show Website
    The Bhagavata Podcast

You Might Also Like