Shark Talk

This episode is close to my heart. One, because the topic of discussion is mental health, and two I will be discussing mental health with my dear friend, Dr. Shireen Stephen. 

Dr. Shireen Stephen has a PhD in Health and Industrial Psychology, and an M.Sc. and MPhil in Applied Psychology. She also has a diploma in Christian Counselling and is a certified Cognitive Behavioral Therapist and a Neuro-Linguistic Programming practitioner. Her areas of expertise over the past 15 years are in relationship counselling, marital counselling, stress management, anger management, anxiety and panic, grief, depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), among others.

She has also written six books focusing on understanding and improving memory. Her latest book is almost done, and it is expected to be out by August 2022!

Politics! Everyone's favourite topic!

Back after a break that seemed like an eternity!

In this episode, I am joined by Ritushree Panigrahi, India's first and only transgender woman stand up comedian! Of course Ritushree's body of work is way beyond stand up. She is a lawyer who works in the field of diversity, equality, and inclusion. She has more than a decade of legal expertise in the areas of constitutional, labour, and employment law, as well as business law.

She is also the co-founder of the Outcast Collective which helps organisations become inclusive in their everyday practices, and facilitate an inclusive thought process to harmoniously augment productivity.

As a queer rights activist Ritushree has been involved in several campaigns and problems affecting the LGBTQIA+ community. She routinely contributes to publications such as The Quint, Youth Ki Awaz, and Gaysi, raising awareness about issues affecting the LGBTQIA+ community.

She spearheaded the "Ungender Forms" movement to make internet platforms more transgender friendly. As a significant community change maker, she was featured in "Makers India."

In this episode of Shark Talk, we begin by talking about Ritushree's journey in stand-up comedy, our love for George Carlin, and the portrayal of queer people in comedy (with an Indian context). We also talk about various important topics like queerphobia, TERFs and how online activism works in the context of queer rights, particularly in relation to the rights of Transexual persons. Finally, she gives some solid advice for parents whose children may come out as queer.

Follow Ritushree on:

On the first episode of the new podcast, I talk to Prof. Sibin Mohan.

Sibin is an Associate Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Oregon State University. 

He’s also an adjunct faculty at the University of Illinois.

Sibin’s research interests are in the areas of systems, security, networking and autonomous systems and he has pioneered research to improve the resiliency and security of real-time, cyber-physical and autonomous systems.

We talk about cybersecurity in general and what it means today compared to about 20 years ago.

We also talk about Log4j vulnerability and its ramifications.

We discuss why privacy is so important, why are we not "careful", and what can we do to be safer?

We cover Bulli Bai and try to understand how or why the accused were caught so quickly, and the latest phenomenon - Tek Fog.

Finally, should we focus on digital literacy for children, to keep them safe online.

Special thanks to Sibin for not only joining me, but also giving the podcast its name!