The beginning

Learning has always been an incessant and integral  part of my life. I starting to take interest in podcasts when one of my cousin brothers shared that he listens to it everyday while cooking. This was a nice way of making a quotidian work interesting. I started listening to it before going to sleep and it acted as a soporific agent and I was learning something new everyday. Some of the podcasts I used to listen in my early days were Freakonomics radio, Hidden brains, Ted radio hour, invisbilia. Listening to this I always had a thought at the back of my head, can I make a podcast. 

I was in search of doing something creative at that time. I used to record myself talking in English in my phone just to see how my accent, voice was like. I was also thinking about starting a youtube channel, maybe about photography, or some educational videos. So at this time I was juggling with different ideas but none quite took shape. Once I had pitched this idea of podcast to my then girlfriend, she questioned me " what are you going to talk about?" in a belittling way. She had a point though, it made me think what am I good at? I don't really have any kind of expertise to talk about. After this realization I dismissed the idea and that was the end of it for the time being. I was not done though.

After a year maybe, I had a subject to talk about. I had a friend who had just admitted himself to a post graduate program in anthropology. There are a lot of interesting youtube videos and other educational materials about humans, world history, western ideas and past but a comprehensive educational material for casually curious people, like myself, about local history of Nepal and nearby regions, past anecdotes didnt quite exist. I pitched this idea of making a youtube channel about the history of this region, making animation about interesting but overlooked stories from the past And bringing a fact based, unbiased history to the general people. And for that I thought starting with a podcast would be a great way to finding these stories. We would talk about historical events, critic it, analysis its impacts on the present day. The end goal was to make a show about real stories from the past, a logical analysis of the history and giving young and general audience a window to our past. But sadly that friend and I could not coordinate very well on any thing (we were also involved in other activities together). The idea died just like that. Why didn't I do it alone you may wonder, I didn't have quite the motivation needed. The podcast idea had phased out of my mind and I was all busy with my studies.

After completion of my graduate level studies my friend and I started to prepare for GRE. This was going really good for me. I had always wanted to learn English, and coming from a engineering background the pressure was not that high. We used to talk about movies, politics, philosophy, relationship stuff for hours. I was reading 4 newspaper (including digital) on a daily basis. Every day I was learning something new and indulging myself in really interesting conversation. We used to talk about movies like parasite, the taxi driver. Hemmingway, Russian writers and van gogh used to be in our conversation making us forget about time with their interesting writing, their extraordinary life stories. The pathetic politicians of Nepal, the increasing religious intolerance in Indian sub continent, the rift between USA and China, climate change, culture all kinds of topics would accompany us during those chiya talks. Days were just passing by and corona virus was gradually beginning in Wuhan. We heard the news, we were talking about it but never in our dreams we thought this would take the form it has today. I had to come to my hometown for a family function, while I was here the insidious virus had already spread through Europe and had many countries under lockdown. Watching the situation get worse I didn't return to Kathmandu. After few days lockdown was announced in India and was followed by Nepal. I was with my family, with an uncertain future. The date at which I had initially planned to give the GRE exam had passed. The abroad studying plan was halted for now. Everyone's life had taken a break. Days were going by just like that, watching movies and series, trying to be productive and failing miserably. In this time of boredom a resurgence of the idea of podcast occurred. The exact moment was when I was scrolling through facebook feed and came across a post in this group called Nepalese in Art. The post had an artist's sketches from the past 4-5 years. We could clearly see the improvement in that artists skill over the years. This made me think, with persistence and a desire to learn we can develop any kind of skill. Being eloquent in any language is an important skill that is helpful in expressing one self in an effective way. Making a podcast and talking about the stuff we used to in Kathmandu bringing guests and discussing and learning new things excited me. I talked to Tim about this and he seemed interested. This would improve our language fluency and quench our thirst of doing something productive. Writing a blog along side our podcast episode would also increase our writing skill and make our podcast more organized. I also shared this with my brother and he encouraged me to just do it without thinking too much. 

The season zero which is our experimental season will be all about finding  our niche. I hope this is going to be a regular thing that will stick with us. This idea has failed to fly many times before but this time the baby bird has left its nest for good.

Author Nick

Complementing Season 0 Episode 1 'Corona'

The Talking Kathmandu