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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.
The Bhagavata Podcast
1.8 A Queen Prays for More Suffering | Bhagavata Podcast with Radhika Raman Das
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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 is for. Radhika Raman Das (Dr. Ravi Gupta) and host Bhrigupada Dasa examine the theological logic behind her request, the literary craft of the Sanskrit verses, and why the Bhagavatam presents suffering not as something to escape but as a context in which devotion becomes most clear.
The episode also turns to the infant Parikshit, saved in the womb by a divine light when the Brahmastra was unleashed against the Pandava line. His survival, and what it prefigures, sets the stage for the entire narrative structure of the 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.