By Priyanka Sacheti

“Scoop a spade through the soil beneath your feet and you could reveal eye-popping, fantastical proofs of creatures that existed a hundred, thousand, million or even a billion years before you.”  

So begins the introduction to the first episode of Desi Stones and Bones , a podcast by journalist Anupama Chandrasekaran that is excavating stories of archaeological and palaeontological finds and of the intrepid people behind the discoveries.

In one episode, Desi Stones and Bones introduces listeners to archaeologists who are experimenting with stone age tools to understand the dates of human migration to India. In another, it focuses on moonlighting palaeontologists who have found dinosaur egg fossils in Madhya Pradesh.

Chandrasekaran describes the podcast as “a road to an education about geology, archaeology and palaeontology” through her travels and conversations with antiquity and fossil hunters. “The listener gets to eavesdrop on my discussions and experiences,” she said.

Read the complete story here.

By Arushi Chaudhary

As one of the oldest civilisations in the world, India is a goldmine of archaeological and palaeontological treasures. A wealth that remains largely out of the mainstream focus, save for a few isolated ‘big’ discoveries making headlines now and then. Driven by her love for audio stories and a newfound passion for archaeology and palaeontology, journalist Anupama Chandrasekaran is endeavouring to effect a change in this arena through her podcast channel, Desi Stones and Bones. 

For a business journalist, the choice of her podcast niche is atypical. Talking about the journey that inspired this concept of a podcast that focuses on excavating palaeontological and archaeological stories as well as the people behind it, Anupama says, “I had always been drawn towards the audio format of story-telling. This interest led me to discover the world of podcasts. This was around 2013. At the same time, I chanced upon the book, Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent, by Pranay Lal and was fascinated by its insightful revelations that put a lot of things from our present existence into perspective as well. That’s how this love for podcasts and archaeology and palaeontology took form.”

However, it wasn’t until a couple of years later that Anupama decided to tap into this budding passion to embark on a new career path altogether. “I was already exploring the idea of a podcast venture but hadn’t found the perfect subject to base it on. It was then that I met Pranay Lal at the Hindu Literary Festival in Chennai. His enthusiasm and love for the stories from these two fields was infectious and acted as the nudge I needed to realise that these were the stories that I wanted to tell, because they became a part of my consciousness from moment I heard them,” Anupama says. 

Read the complete story here.

By Don Belt

August 02, 2019

As Paul Salopek walks on from India into Myanmar, he leaves behind a vivid narrative record of the past 18 months, including 22 online dispatches, dozens of videos and audio reports, hundreds of photographs, a multimedia tour of Kolkata, 12 Milestones, two major feature stories for National Geographic, and countless oral histories collected in notes along his 2,000-mile journey from Lahore to Manipur. 

But the walk's legacy in India also includes something even more indelible: a growing cadre of fellow storytellers, starting with the 55 young journalists who participated in the National Geographic/Out of Eden Walk Slow Journalism workshops in Delhi, Chennai, and Kolkata in 2018. 

Read the complete story here.

Far away from the comforts of air-conditioned offices, in the heat and dust and in extreme terrains, a few spend their lives looking for the traces of our origins. The world of paleontology is fascinating, to say the least, but rarefied, largely.

Chennai-based Anupama Chandrasekaran wants to lift the veil and let us witness the stories of paleontological and archaeological heritage through her podcast, “Desi Stones and Bones”.

You can read the complete story here.

By Ishita Tank

History is a subject majority of the students just bear through in school. It’s considered one of the most boring things ever and not a lot of focus is given to it in school. But journalist Anupama Chandrasekaran believes that these stories are important and need to be told, and through her podcast, titled ‘Desi Stones and Bones’, she aims to do just that.

Anupama used to be a business journalist and write articles on finance. “As a journalist, I was looking for people with stories and that was one of the reasons I chose to move out of financial journalism. I was tired of people telling me about their profits and losses and marketing strategies and things like that. It was becoming boring,” she explained. Her interest in archaeology primarily developed because of this book she’d read called ‘Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent’ by Pranay Lal. She couldn’t put down the book and that was her initiation into the world of archaeology.

Read the complete story here.

By Usha Raman

Who among us has not played with a fascination for fossils, those mysterious memories left in stone and peat, calling up the idea of a richer, less human-infested planet and the “ginormous” beasts that roamed it? Hollywood may have romanticised the deep past, and most certainly stoked the passion of six-year-olds, but it is to the many dedicated detectives of the earth that we owe the gradual unravelling of the histories hidden in its often inscrutable layers.

Some of these tales are deftly woven into 20-minute audio stories in Anupama Chandrasekaran’s fledgling podcast (six episodes and counting) Desi Stones and Bones, a series described on the web site as being “about ancient humans and fossils in India”.

Read the complete story here.

Modern Living

ANUPAMA CHANDRASEKARAN ON HER 6 FAVOURITE PODCASTS

03/08/2020

The podcaster behind the fantastic Desi Stones and Bones shares her favourite podcasts

The podcast scene in India has been steadily growing, and we’re big fans of the medium. Podcasters on Podcasts is exactly what it sounds like. It’s where we ask the people behind podcasts, whether seasoned or newbies, to share their favourite podcasts.

Journalist Anupama Chandrasekaran launched the podcast Desi Stones and Bones to spotlight stories of archaeological finds and fossil discoveries in India. These stories range from dinosaur egg discoveries in the Narmada Valley to bones of walking whales in Kutch and stone tools of ancient humans found in Tamil Nadu. Chandrasekaran’s recordings emerge from her travels with scientists to field sites, coupled with rich illustrations on the podcast’s website, offer listeners a first-hand sense of the place. She’s currently in the midst of editing her next story on “a gigantic sea-dragon find”. Here, she notes the podcasts that she recommends listening to.

Read more here.