The Bhagavata Podcast

Episod

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  2.6 You Cannot Know God. So Sing Anyway. | Bhagavata Podcast with Gopinathacharya Das 29.07.2026 1j 10min

  Brahma describes the entire process of creation and then admits he cannot know the Lord. His response to that admission is not silence. It is song. Canto 2, Chapter 6 continues the Virat Rupa meditation from the previous chapter, but shifts the emphasis. Where chapter 5 asked what the cosmic form is, this chapter asks what it generates: the faculties of the human body, each mapped to a presiding deity, each tied to the wider cosmos through what the Vedic tradition calls bandhus, hidden corres...
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  2.5 Who Created the Creator? | The Bhagavata Podcast with Sri Prahlada Dasa 30.06.2026 59min

  There are dozens of gods in the Vedic scriptures, and the texts seem to glorify some of them just as highly as Vishnu. For anyone raised in a tradition that insists Narayana is supreme, that is not an abstract problem. Sri Prahlada Dasa carried that question from his teenage years until a single line from the Bhagavad Gita answered it. Canto 2, Chapter 5 is built around exactly this kind of correction. Narada approaches Brahma as the independent creator, using the image of a spider spinning i...
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  2.4 I've Never Been Completely Satisfied with Anything I've Done | Bhagavata Podcast with Anuradha Devi Dasi 03.06.2026 55min

  Standing at Govardhan, Bhrigupada felt something deeply spiritual. A few minutes later it was gone. The Srimad Bhagavatam does not treat this as failure. It treats it as the starting point. Canto 2, Chapter 4 carries a misleading title: "The Process of Creation." The question about creation is asked in verse 9. The answer begins in the next chapter. What Shukadeva Goswami does instead, for more than half this chapter, is pray. Anuradha Dooney, who leads the Youth Education Programme at the Ox...
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  2.3 Chant Every Day and Still Feeling Nothing | Bhagavata Podcast with Manjari Devi Dasi 12.05.2026 57min

  What does it mean if years of sincere practice haven't changed you? Not for lack of effort, not for lack of concentration, but because something harder to name is holding you in place. The Srimad Bhagavatam calls this a steel-framed heart, and Canto 2, Chapter 3 is where it delivers that diagnosis. This episode explores one of the most densely cited chapters in the entire Bhagavatam. Of its 25 verses, Prabhupada quoted 19 in his writings and lectures, compared to just three from the 37-verse ...
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  2.2 What the Manosphere Gets Wrong About Worth | Bhagavata Podcast with Shaunaka Rishi Das 27.04.2026 56min

  A teenager thinks his father is a loser because he doesn't drive a Lamborghini. The Bhagavatam asks: when you can use your arm as a pillow, what is the necessity of a pillow at all? These two visions of the good life are further apart than they look — and closer together than you'd expect. Canto 2, Chapter 2 continues Shukadeva Goswami's answer to Pariksit's question: what should a person do who is about to die? Shaunaka Rishi Das, director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, joins host ...
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  2.1 What Should You Do When You're About to Die? | Bhagavata Podcast with Jayananda Dasa 14.04.2026 56min

  A well-known contemporary guru was asked, mid-event, how to prepare for death. He laughed — not dismissively, but his answer was: "You should be focusing on how to live." The Bhagavatam disagrees. And its answer turns out to be not about the future at all. Canto 2, Chapter 1 is where Shukadeva Goswami finally begins to speak. The first book of the Srimad Bhagavatam spent its entire length setting up one question: what should a person do who is about to die? Now, with Pariksit seated on the b...
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  1.19 What Would You Do If You Had Seven Days to Live? | Bhagavata Podcast with Sundar Gopal Das 29.03.2026 51min

  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) explo...
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  1.18 A King, a Curse, and a Seven-Day Deadline | Bhagavata Podcast with Manjari Devi Dasi 15.03.2026 1j 9min

  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 i...
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  1.17 If Evil Surrenders to You, What Do You Do? | Bhagavata Podcast with Krishna Ksetra Swami 27.02.2026 1j 8min

  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 spar...
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  1.16 The Age We're Living In and What It's Actually Doing to Us | Bhagavata Podcast with Gopal Hari Das 13.02.2026 1j 12min

  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, cle...
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  1.15 What Remains When Everything Is Taken Away? | Bhagavata Podcast with Radhika Raman Das 15.12.2025 1j 9min

  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...
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  1.14 Why Does Grief Feel Like Love? | Bhagavata Podcast with Jayananda Das 01.12.2025 48min

  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 A...
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  1.13 What Do You Do When Someone You Love Refuses to Let Go? | Bhagavata Podcast with Sundar Gopal Das 28.10.2025 1j 7min

  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, an...
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  1.12 The Child Who Survived a Nuclear Weapon | Bhagavata Podcast with Jayananda Das 22.10.2025 57min

  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 Par...
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  1.11 What Does It Feel Like When God Comes Home? | Bhagavata Podcast with Krishna Ksetra Swami 04.08.2025 1j 5min

  What would it actually look like if an entire city experienced devotional joy at the same moment? The Bhagavatam in Canto 1, Chapter 11 attempts to describe exactly that. Krishna Ksetra Swami (Dr. Kenneth Valpey) and host Bhrigupada Dasa examine what the text is doing when it describes Krishna's return to Dvaraka: the crowds, the flowers, the women on rooftops, the elephants and birds, all participating in a single moment of welcome. This episode takes seriously both the literary craft of th...
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  1.10 What Do You Do When the One You Love Has to Leave? | Bhagavata Podcast with Shaunaka Rishi Das 21.07.2025 1j 1min

  The war is over. The kingdom is restored. And Krishna is leaving. How do you say goodbye to the person whose presence has held everything together? In Canto 1, Chapter 10, the Bhagavatam slows to watch the citizens of Hastinapura stand in the street, unable to move, as Krishna's chariot disappears from view. Shaunaka Rishi Das and host Bhrigupada Dasa explore what the text is doing in this moment: theologically, poetically, and emotionally. The concept of viraha (loving separation) is introd...
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  1.9 How Do You Want to Die? | Bhagavata Podcast with Radhika Raman Das 20.06.2025 1j 12min

  Bhishmadeva has lain on a bed of arrows for fifty-eight days, waiting. He has the rare gift of choosing his own moment of death. What he does with that time is one of the Bhagavatam's most extraordinary scenes. In Canto 1, Chapter 9, the greatest warrior of the Mahabharata composes a hymn to Krishna in his final moments, watched by kings, sages, and the Pandavas themselves. Radhika Raman Das (Dr. Ravi Gupta) and host Bhrigupada Dasa examine what the text reveals about conscious dying, the re...
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  1.8 A Queen Prays for More Suffering | Bhagavata Podcast with Radhika Raman Das 06.06.2025 1j 11min

  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 dev...
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  1.7 Can You Forgive the Unforgivable? | Bhagavata Podcast with Jayananda Das 23.05.2025 53min

  Ashvatthama has just committed the most heinous act in the Mahabharata, killing the sleeping sons of the Pandavas. Now Arjuna has him at sword-point. What happens next is one of the most morally complex scenes in Sanskrit literature. In Canto 1, Chapter 7, the Bhagavatam refuses easy answers. Jayananda Das (Dr. Janne Kontala) and host Bhrigupada Dasa explore the tension between justice and mercy, the theological significance of Draupadi's unexpected plea for her enemy's life, and what it mea...
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  1.6 Why Does the World's Greatest Scholar Feel Empty? | Bhagavata Podcast with Radhika Raman Das 07.05.2025 1j 5min

  Vyasadeva has compiled the Vedas, the Puranas, the Mahabharata. By any measure, his life's work is complete. And yet a deep, unnamed dissatisfaction settles over him. What could possibly be missing? In Canto 1, Chapter 6, Narada arrives at Vyasa's ashram and delivers a diagnosis that reframes the entire Bhagavatam project. Radhika Raman Das (Dr. Ravi Gupta) and host Bhrigupada Dasa explore one of the text's most psychologically precise conversations: why scholarly achievement alone cannot re...