Desi Academia Podcast
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desiacadpod.bsky.social
Desi Academia Podcast
@desiacadpod.bsky.social
140 followers 350 following 140 posts
Join us, Megh + Vatsal + our researcher friends from all around the world, as we learn more about academic life, research methodology, politics, and survival.

https://open.spotify.com/show/2v6ymNb9uoxMc9gaCKJYLp
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desiacadpod.bsky.social
Desi Academia Podcast @desiacadpod.bsky.social · 20d
We start Season 11 and 2026 with insights into a serious question: what if your chosen research path is beyond a PhD ?

We are joined by Harsha to continue the story of his research journey- onto an industry career:

open.spotify.com/episode/16aF...

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...
S11E1: Pivoting from a PhD- navigating an alternative career path with Harsha
open.spotify.com
desiacadpod.bsky.social
Mood rn.
mandir ka diya bujhne ka dar tha yahaan toh koi moot ke hi chala gaya.
February 5, 2026 at 7:25 PM
Reposted by Desi Academia Podcast
kaustubh.bsky.social
In my new Substack post, I write about ‘this survived the brutal Portuguese rule’ hook for Insta reels and the algorithmic flattening of Goan history. open.substack.com/pub/kaustubh...
The Algorithmic Flattening of Goan History
The Instagram algorithm rewards retention and engagement.
open.substack.com
January 31, 2026 at 5:08 PM
desiacadpod.bsky.social
We start Season 11 and 2026 with insights into a serious question: what if your chosen research path is beyond a PhD ?

We are joined by Harsha to continue the story of his research journey- onto an industry career:

open.spotify.com/episode/16aF...

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...
S11E1: Pivoting from a PhD- navigating an alternative career path with Harsha
open.spotify.com
January 25, 2026 at 6:45 AM
desiacadpod.bsky.social
It's time for Season 11, and we start 2026 with a discussion on resilience and grace.

Harsha joins us again to share how he navigated a career shift when his academic program failed him, the harsh reality of funding games, and the price PhD students pay for systemic problems.
January 24, 2026 at 7:58 AM
Reposted by Desi Academia Podcast
chjoshi.bsky.social
Pre-print alert 🚨🐜!!!
I am really excited to share results from the first empirical chapter of my PhD. We ( @dornhaus.bsky.social and I) set out to examine how fire ants deal with perturbations to communication during foraging. Turns out their foraging is not robust to this perturbation. (1/5)
Persist or Give up? Fire ants motivated to search for a high-quality food source even if they don’t know how to find it
Finding resources for the colony is one of the most difficult and risky tasks for a social insect worker. A worker on a foraging trip can face a number of challenges, including interference from other...
www.biorxiv.org
December 29, 2025 at 11:03 PM
Reposted by Desi Academia Podcast
kaustubh.bsky.social
Settler branding in Goa - Of Khazans and Balcãos open.substack.com/pub/kaustubh...
Settler branding in Goa - Of Khazans and Balcãos
Why the settler elites love Goan words but ignore Goan realities.
open.substack.com
December 29, 2025 at 12:33 PM
desiacadpod.bsky.social
I would not have made this connection.
thewildlifesociety.bsky.social The Wildlife Society @thewildlifesociety.bsky.social · Aug 12
Can penguin poop chill the planet?

Gas released from Adélie penguin poop may increase cloud formation in Antarctica, generating a feedback loop that could help mitigate climate change.
Can penguin poop chill the planet? - The Wildlife Society
Gas emitted from penguin guano may be the oddest climate change hero
wildlife.org
December 29, 2025 at 4:18 AM
Reposted by Desi Academia Podcast
blaftrakesh.bsky.social
Species declared extinct in 2025.

Includes 3 bandicoots (marsupials, not closely related to the Indian bandicoot rat)
news.mongabay.com/short-articl...
Declared extinct in 2025: A look back at some of the species we lost
Some species officially bid us farewell this year. They may have long been gone, but following more recent assessments, they’re now formally categorized as extinct on the IUCN Red List, considered the...
news.mongabay.com
December 29, 2025 at 4:01 AM
desiacadpod.bsky.social
It's season 10 (Yes, we can't believe it either!) and the OG gang gets together after a long time to vent about all things academia.
In this episode of Desi "postdoctoral" podcast, we catch up with Aditya, talk about our lives post PhD and much more!

open.spotify.com/episode/50Uk...
S10E1: Desi Academia Podcast founders meet: Postdoc edition!
open.spotify.com
October 24, 2025 at 8:16 PM
Reposted by Desi Academia Podcast
olivia.science
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
September 6, 2025 at 8:13 AM
desiacadpod.bsky.social
Any researchers or scholars thinking about Return to India should first try and post in support of our peers.
scroll.in Scroll @scroll.in · Sep 2
On Tuesday, Delhi High Court denied bail to Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid and eight others in #DelhiRiots2020 case.
scroll.in/article/1079...
Were students & activists a part of a premeditated plot to destabilise the city?

Here's what a thorough examination of chargesheets revealed.
September 3, 2025 at 4:51 PM
desiacadpod.bsky.social
Have you ever wondered how an Islamic Studies scholar explains their research to an immigration officer?

Watch this space for our latest episode, where we find out more!
August 26, 2025 at 2:25 AM
desiacadpod.bsky.social
I would I would like to share this snippet from my dissertation's acknowledgements section. I cannot stress how IMPOSSIBLE academic success is in the Global South without disobedience.

Fuck academic paywalls forever.
Screenshot: Finally, a huge thank you to the institutions, networks and people who make science accessible. I thank all the scholars who shared their code, data, and research with me in the spirit of open science. I thank all the collectives that battle against the profit-motivated gatekeeping of science and made scientific research a reality for me in the Global South: the moderators, managers, and contributors of SciHUB, LibGen, Internet Archive, and ArXiv. Thank you, Aaron Schwartz. I am profoundly grateful to the tireless defenders and advocates of public-funded higher education in the United States and India, who raise their voices even in the darkest of time. Thank you for fighting the good fight.
August 26, 2025 at 1:22 AM
desiacadpod.bsky.social
Happy Friday.

hannahshelley.neocities.org/blog/2025_08...
Google Scholar Is Doomed
Academia built entire careers on a free Google service with zero guarantees. What could go wrong?
hannahshelley.neocities.org
August 22, 2025 at 8:59 PM
desiacadpod.bsky.social
There is something so ugly about a country desperate to claim a foreign prime minister or second lady as its own, while using its military might to displace and exile life-long residents.

There is no coming back from purging people's records and casting them out.
scroll.in/article/1085...
In today’s India, some will not be Indians no matter how many documents they possess
With processes like the revision of electoral rolls and the NRC, the state is going further down the path of sorting out who can and cannot belong in New India.
scroll.in
August 22, 2025 at 8:58 PM
desiacadpod.bsky.social
Delighted to share that the Desi Academia Podcast is now the "Desi Postdoc Podcast, PhD"!
💪😎

We balanced this production with two dissertations, research projects, international relocations and a whole lot of paperwork.
1/2
August 7, 2025 at 4:27 PM
desiacadpod.bsky.social
What does it take to fight against unethical behavior in research publishing?

Tune in to our latest discussion with the founder of India Research Watch, Achan Agarwal , in which we talk about his double career as an scientist and plagiarism sleuth.
July 27, 2025 at 9:48 AM
desiacadpod.bsky.social
Coming soon!
July 18, 2025 at 8:57 AM
Reposted by Desi Academia Podcast
jamesheathers.bsky.social
All retracted articles should immediately become open access.
July 12, 2025 at 3:04 AM
desiacadpod.bsky.social
This has to be the funniest first world problem:
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...
‘AI doesn’t know what an orgasm sounds like’: audiobook actors grapple with the rise of robot narrators
As demand for audio content grows, companies are looking for faster – and cheaper – ways to make it
www.theguardian.com
July 2, 2025 at 7:05 PM
Reposted by Desi Academia Podcast
minorrevision.com
#AcademicSky #SciPub #PeerReview #PhDSky #OpenScience #AcademicResearch #AcademicWriting #ScholarlyPublishing #AcademicPublishing #AcademicChatter 🧪
July 2, 2025 at 1:34 PM
desiacadpod.bsky.social
Indian scholars deserve better.

Making the constantly walk a tightrope between blatant exploitation and lack of opportunities is a reflection on our inability to give them value their contributions.
June 28, 2025 at 8:27 PM
desiacadpod.bsky.social
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/voices...
India’s retraction crisis casts shadow over science research
The three pillars of any academic institution are education, research, and innovation. Education equips students with foundational knowledge, while innovation drives societal progress by turning ideas...
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
June 21, 2025 at 7:42 PM
desiacadpod.bsky.social
What is vibe coding?

wrong answers only.
June 21, 2025 at 1:29 AM
Reposted by Desi Academia Podcast
viveknityananda.bsky.social
In March we put on an insect cabaret show I developed with Cap-A-Pie Theatre about insects and the threats they face. We've now uploaded the songs and everyone can now see how brilliant the actors and song-writer were. Thread of songs below 👇🧪 #Insects #cabaret #theatre #scicomm #songs
A poster for a play: "The Vanishing Act: A new cabaret about Earth's disappearing insects". On the right is a black and white ant in a top hat with one leg extended. Radiating from the finger are children's drawings of insect- bees, butterflies, beetles and so on.
June 16, 2025 at 5:19 PM