New Delhi: Launched in November, The Wire‘s new podcast series ‘Extra Salty’ is now five episodes old. The hosts – academics Amrita Ghosh and Bhakti Shringarpure – dissect a different question that’s been plaguing them.

Ghosh is Assistant Professor of South Asian literature and cultural studies at the University of Central Florida and the author of Kashmir’s Necropolis: Literary, Cultural and Visual Texts. Shringarpure is a writer, editor and creative director of the Radical Books Collective. She is the author of Cold War Assemblages: Decolonization to Digital.

“Extra Salty begins where so many unfinished conversations trail off when you’re with friends, family or at work. We wanted a space to explore topics that are in the air but might be seen as too serious, too trite, too silly, too political, too unpopular and thus, often ignored. Every episode asks a question floating around in the zeitgeist and looks at it from all the different angles. Guests join us to spark up the debate and add more fuel to the fire. We dabble in the personal, political, cultural and intellectual but always with a dash of humour and more than just a pinch of salt. At the end of the day, we’re two disgruntled women who really enjoy extra salty and killjoy takes on everything,” Ghosh and Shringarpure say about why they started this podcast.

So far, Extra Salty has covered a range of topics that were on the hosts’ minds – why the Barbie doll is so popular in South Asia, whether Bollywood has a political agenda, whether (and how) women can travel alone, what Palestine means for India and what happens when caste representation enters popular media. For each episode, an expert guest has come in to share their thoughts and broaden the debate. And from lyricist and poet Hussain Haidry or author to rights activist Suchitra Vijayan, they’ve all had thought-provoking, detailed and often funny answers to some off-the-cuff questions.

There’s lots of great moments in these free-wheeling conversations, but the hosts summarise what they’ve liked best so far: “The best part about these podcasts is that we’ve already been having these kinds of passionate conversations as good friends. But then a guest gets to join the party which forces us to focus and really delve into these burning questions. What we find exciting is that we start out with fairly adamant takes on the question but are often surprised or even converted to the opposite point of view by the end of the episode. And our truly favourite part is the stories that spontaneously unfold between us hosts as well as the guests. It was unexpected to hear Suchitra Vijayan speak about the hospitality and warmth that she experienced in conflict ones while travelling alone as a woman or to understand why Hussain Haidry graduated from a top MBA programme but ended up choosing an uncertain career as poet and Bollywood lyricist and we loved Bina Shah’s story of the little boy who defied gender roles to play with Barbie dolls.”

There’s lots more in the pipeline – episodes on sleep, translation, ghost stories and reading will be coming your way shortly. So stay tuned!

You can listen to and follow Extra Salty on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and other listening apps.