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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.
18 Episodes
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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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Vyasa had divided the Vedas, composed the Mahabharata, and written more scripture than any author in history. He sat down at dusk on the bank of the Sarasvati and felt empty. His guru Narada arrived and told him: not only have your works failed to satisfy you, they are actively misleading people. In this episode, host Bhrigupada Dasa reads Canto 1, Chapter 5 with Krishna Ksetra Swami (Dr. Kenneth Valpey), returning for a second conversation after their discussion of Chapter 2. This chapter i...
The Bhagavad Gita begins with Arjuna in crisis. The Ramayana begins with its author's grief. The Srimad Bhagavatam begins with Vyasa's inexplicable emptiness after completing every other text he had ever written. India's greatest literature keeps emerging from its authors' darkest moments. Why? Canto 1, Chapter 4 is a short chapter of 33 verses, but it carries a striking amount of weight. Host Bhrigupada Dasa reads it with Sundar Gopal Das (Simon H.), a doctoral candidate at Oxford Universit...
The Bhagavatam lists 22 divine descents and then, almost in passing, singles one of them out as different in kind from the rest. That half-verse, "Krishna is Bhagavan himself," became the theological foundation on which the entire Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition was built. Was that a legitimate reading of the text, or a creative imposition on it? In this episode, host Bhrigupada Dasa reads Canto 1, Chapter 3 with Radhika Raman Das (Dr. Ravi Gupta), Professor of Religious Studies at Utah State Un...
What would it mean to give yourself to something completely, with no expectation of return? The Srimad Bhagavatam names this "unmotivated, uninterrupted devotion" as the highest good for humanity. It is a remarkable claim, and a demanding one. 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 through Canto 1, Chapter 2 with Krishna Ksetra Swami (Dr. Kenneth Valpey), co-trans...
What do you do when a text of 18,000 verses refuses to be read as a simple rulebook, and instead keeps turning your assumptions upside down? In the very first episode of the Bhagavata Podcast, host Bhrigupada Dasa (Dr. Måns Broo) sits down with Shaunaka Rishi Das, Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, who first encountered the Bhagavatam as an 18-year-old Irishman walking into an ashram in 1979. What drew him in then, and what still holds him after decades, opens up one of the mos...
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