Our word this episode is an Independence Day special. We’re going with revolution - expect all things revolutionary and all things revolving. 15th August is the Indian Independence Day. Which got us thinking - why isn’t the Indian independence movement referred to as a revolution? There’s a little bit about the famous White Revolution in India though, and a very famous ad mascot associated with it.

Quick question: Why do you think the Indian independence movement isn't called a revolution? Find out from an excited Ragini why that is! We also talked about the varied revolutions that India likes to do / have / orchestrate?! Unless you guessed gold or purple, there’s a revolution for most shades! Can you guess what odd combination of things the Pink Revolution is about?

We moved on swiftly to beloved Indian butter brand Amul taking us back to the times of clever advertising. Not that things are any worse off now, but we, like most others caught in the endless throes of ageing, like to romanticise the past. Anyhoo, did the blue-haired Amul girl define punny, tongue-in-cheek advertising in your childhood as well? Or is she an unfamiliar figure to you and we’re now forced to be jealous of how much younger you are? Regardless, you’ll learn a little about her and her creators.

Trying to claw our way out of emotional breakdowns, we moved on to discussing billboards and how they were painted back in the day, and again romanticised this. Damn it, we thought we broke the cycle!

Okay, definitely moving on, we talked about paradigm shifter Thomas Kuhn - also a science writer. Shar tried to explain Kuhn’s concepts while discussing her highly effective research method (hint: it involves taking naps). Anyway, the Structure of Scientific Revolution is a book that started so many arguments and brought a familiar phrase into the common man’s parlance. We focused on a simple explanation of the cyclical nature of research in the scientific world, by which we mean, if you could have a read of the book and explain it to us, that’d be great, thanks.

Completely on topic, Pluto has a super strange orbit (very revolution adjacent, adjacent enough for this episode anyway). We got into a little healthy orbit shaming, for reasons that you can uncover in the episode! Anyway, does it matter? Pluto isn’t in our solar system anymore, is it? So it's okay to ridicule it…nobody put us in charge, please.

Anyway, is Pluto throwing a tantrum? Probably yeah, the weirdo. Learn more about how it's "doing whatever the f it wants to" in Ragini's words.

Staying in the same region, but not as close to the word as someone who was very exacting would like it to be. We talked about the Keplar telescope, how it has gone bye bye and then we recapped some of its most notable findings - definitely didn’t discover any little green men, and we won’t hold it against little Kep Keps, but it's still pretty damn revolutionary. We also talk about planets stripping (and keplar watching), which is more terrifying than exciting really. And there's a little in there that could excite a star wars fan. Nothing sexual, just ‘spacesual’, if that's what you want to call it (please don’t call it that, we instantly regret it). Learn more about what it discovered through its unblinking gaze over 17 years.

Also, to keep the ‘spacesual’ mood going even after the episode is done, Ragini ended with an album recommendation from none other than Butthole Surfers! Listen to the album Weird Revolutions here.

Enjoy!

Links of Interest:

The Story of the Amul Girl

Pluto is a Weirdo

Thomas Kuhn

Little KepKeps, Big Discoveries

Episode Edited by: Mohit Shandilya

Music for the episode: Charita Arora