12 min listen
Juggernaut: Indian Temple Or Unstoppable Force?
FromScience Diction
ratings:
Length:
19 minutes
Released:
Nov 23, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
In 2014, a grad student in Kolkata named Ujaan Ghosh came across an old book by a Scottish missionary. And as Ghosh paged through the book, he noticed the missionary kept using a word over and over: Juggernaut. But the missionary wasn’t using it the way we do today—to mean an unstoppable, overwhelming force. He was using it to talk about a place: a temple in Puri, India. So Ghosh dug further, and as he grasped the real story of where the English word, juggernaut, had come from, he realized there was just no way he could keep using it.
A transcript of this episode is being processed and will be available within a week.
Guests:
Chris Egusa is an audio producer and 2020 KALW Audio Academy fellow.
Dylan Thuras is co-founder of Atlas Obscura, and host of the Atlas Obscura podcast.
Ujaan Ghosh is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Footnotes & Further Reading:
Read Ujaan Ghosh’s article on the origins of the word “juggernaut.”
Learn more about Jagannath Temple in Atlas Obscura.
Listen to more episodes of the Atlas Obscura podcast.
Credits:
This episode was a collaboration between Science Diction and Atlas Obscura. It was produced by Johanna Mayer and Chris Egusa, and edited by Elah Feder and John DeLore. Daniel Peterschmidt is our composer, and Danya AbdelHameid fact checked the episode. It was mixed by Luz Fleming.
A transcript of this episode is being processed and will be available within a week.
Guests:
Chris Egusa is an audio producer and 2020 KALW Audio Academy fellow.
Dylan Thuras is co-founder of Atlas Obscura, and host of the Atlas Obscura podcast.
Ujaan Ghosh is a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Footnotes & Further Reading:
Read Ujaan Ghosh’s article on the origins of the word “juggernaut.”
Learn more about Jagannath Temple in Atlas Obscura.
Listen to more episodes of the Atlas Obscura podcast.
Credits:
This episode was a collaboration between Science Diction and Atlas Obscura. It was produced by Johanna Mayer and Chris Egusa, and edited by Elah Feder and John DeLore. Daniel Peterschmidt is our composer, and Danya AbdelHameid fact checked the episode. It was mixed by Luz Fleming.
Released:
Nov 23, 2021
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (43)
Vaccine: For centuries, smallpox seemed unbeatable. People had tried nearly everything to knock it out—from herbal remedies to tossing back 12 bottles of beer a day (yep, that was a real recommendation from a 17th century doctor), to intentionally infecting themselves with smallpox and hoping they didn’t get sick, all to no avail. And then, in the 18th century, an English doctor heard a rumor about a possible solution. It wasn’t a cure, but if it worked, it would stop smallpox before it started. So one spring day, with the help of a milkmaid, an eight-year-old boy, and a cow named Blossom, the English doctor decided to run an experiment. Thanks to that ethically questionable but ultimately world-altering experiment (and Blossom the cow) we got the word vaccine. Want to stay up to speed with all things Science Diction? Sign up for our newsletter. "The cow-pock - or - the wonderful effects of the new inoculation" by James Gillray in 1802, featured at the beginning of this episode. (Libra by Science Diction