SynTalk

Are you neutral? Is neutral inert? Do you practice hypocrisy? What does it mean to be (an) opposite? Are capitalism and socialism always incompatible? Do opposites always attract (even in natural systems) – why not? How might opposites be brought together? Are (certain) paradoxes culturally contingent? Can the cultural be told apart from the religious? Where did the very notion of religion emerge from? Does every enzyme always have a precise lock-key relationship with its specific substrate? How do proteins take their shapes, & what role do opposite charges/shapes play? Can certain mechanisms prevent extreme socio/political outcomes? Can democracy and authoritarianism co-habit? Is State the march of God on Earth? Might democracy be practised (merely) ritualistically? Why is social memory so poor? Is ‘balance’ fundamental to (only?) biological life? Can/must industries/we produce as efficiently as trees do? Does cosmopolitanism (truly) celebrate difference? Is living with true difference impossible? Do enzymes also vanish like how scripts do? What are we silent about? Is equilibrium worth searching for? What does the future hold…? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from chemistry (Prof. Kankan Bhattacharyya, IISER, Bhopal), history (Dr. Ananya Chakravarti, Georgetown University, Washington DC), & political science (Prof. Niraja Gopal Jayal, JNU, New Delhi). Listen in...