Bride and Prejudice - Navigating the Institution of a South Asian Marriage

Bride and Prejudice - Navigating the Institution of a South Asian Marriage

South Asian weddings carry warmth, family, and fanfare. But behind the celebration, a quieter crisis of dowry deaths, women choosing to end their lives rather than endure abuse, and a social architecture rarely built for women to not just survive, but thrive. Anahita and Jesselina unpack what it really means to marry or consider marrying into a South Asian family. Are women being prepared for the marriage, or just the wedding? Are we shying away from the hard conversations? And how much time with a partner is actually enough, whether love, arranged, or love cum arranged. * The Business Family Blueprint in South Asia (02:36) * The Pessimism Built Into Marriage (07:10) * The Calculated Risk of Any Marriage (08:46) * "Love Cum Arranged" (11:32) * Marriage Is a Stool - How Do We Build the Limbs? (13:40) * Love Marriage as Reckless Passion - The Big South Asian Myth (15:32) * Gold, Grandparents, and Running Away (18:02) * Dowry By Any Other Name: Class and the Sanitization of a Crime (20:00) * Twisha Sharma (27:31) * Have You Built Your Ammunition for a Patriarchal World Before Marriage? (30:56) * Are You Ready for the Wedding or the Marriage? (36:29) * Biological Clock v. Risk Clock (42:50) * Women's Enmeshed Identity Post-Marriage (47:56) * Parallel Lives of Jesso and Ana (54:29) * Takeaway: Marry a Friend (55:37) * Wizard Liz and the Visa Trap (58:24)

A Dummy's Guide to Surviving Long Distance Relationships

What does it really take to survive a long-distance relationship without losing your mind, your identity, or your will to live? In this episode, Anahita and Jesselina get honest about the emotional chaos, quiet resilience, and very specific kind of character-building that comes with loving someone across cities, countries, and time zones. From cheating paranoia and mismatched communication styles to control, individuality, marriage, and the politics of not shrinking yourself for love, they unpack the things long-distance relationships tend to expose rather than create. This is not a neat guide, and definitely not an expert one, but it is full of lived experience, contradictions, and the occasional hard-earned insight. Call it a dummy’s guide, call it a survival manual, call it two women oversharing for an hour, but this one is for anyone who has ever tried to hold on to love across distance and come out with themselves intact. (00:35) We’ve been MIA, and Ana is graduating (05:39) Why people fear long-distance relationships so much (06:14) Is long distance really the problem, or something else? (08:14) Why women should not give up dreams just to avoid distance (12:16) Cheating fears, trust, and why control guarantees nothing (14:24) Live locations, passwords, and the illusion of security (19:39) Navigating Different communication styles  (26:22) Marriage, career choices, and being open to distance again (30:06) Are couples who cannot do long distance fundamentally weaker? (38:05) Marriage, surnames, and the politics of losing yourself (47:01) How to keep the spark, when you are so far away? (53:52) Should every relationship survive a long-distance test? (59:29) Ambition, movement, and not fearing distance * (1:01:06) Long distance is not ideal, but it is not always the villain

Episode 16: Where the hell have the Rom-Coms gone?

What if romance on screen once held our hands through feeling and belonging, and now lets go? In this episode, we linger over the slow disappearance of the romantic comedy in Bollywood and Hollywood, tracing what has been lost along the way. From starry-eyed classics to today’s hardened heroes, we ask how cinema stopped believing in love as something soft, sincere, and transformative. Moving between nostalgia and critique, Anahita and Jesselina unpack the rise of hyper-masculinity, the flattening of emotional vulnerability, and what that shift reveals about our cultural moment. This conversation drifts through old films that shaped a generation of romantics and lands firmly in the present, questioning why heartfelt storytelling now feels so radical. It is full of yearning for better love stories and for a cinematic language that dares to make us feel again. (00:00) New Year reflections and our grandma hobbies (03:12) Where did all the rom-coms go? (09:03) Perfect actors and sanitized scripts (16:41) Pyar Dosti Hai: how storytelling shaped social dynamics (22:53) Early-2000s journalist women leads and their influence on women in media today (23:46) How young people learned about desire and intimacy through rom-coms (28:42) Missing young adult and teen stories fueling hyper-consumerism (39:01) Rom-com gaps filled by hyper-masculine, nationalistic cinema (45:09) The future of romantic storytelling: what needs to change

30, Flirty and Thriving

So, you’re turning 30, congrats, welcome to the club! In this episode, Jesselina and Anahita, both now 30, dive into all the weird, funny, and unexpected parts of this new decade. Why does your body start sending mysterious signals you didn’t ask for? Did we really leave the weight of other people’s opinions behind in our twenties? And seriously, are we all supposed to become marathon runners now? We get real about health habits that actually stick, lessons we wish we’d learned in our twenties, and how we plan to navigate friendships, social life, and goals in our thirties. It’s honest, hilarious, a little messy, and we hope this episode helps you ease into your 30s. We’re all figuring it out, and there’s no one right way to live your thirties or life in general. 0:33 Jesselina’s Big 3-0: Leveling Up 7:27 Preparing for Your 30s: A Milestone Moment… or Not? 12:25 Leaving the Weight of People’s Opinions Back in Our 20s 16:52 Your 20s Are for Learning; Your 30s Are for Applying 24:03 Atomic Health Habits for Your 30s: Tiny Tweaks, Big Wins 26:01 Ana Starts “Strength Training” 31:35 When Your Body Starts Sending Weird Messages in Your 30s 41:03 Are We All Becoming Marathon Runners in Our 30s?

Eat, Pray, Exclude: The Politics of Food

What if every meal were a mirror reflecting belief and belonging? In this episode, we dive into the politics simmering beneath our plates. From fab food to fad diets, we explore how food can be both a bridge that brings us together and a weapon of exclusion. This conversation moves from the plate to the politics, from the intimacy of home kitchens to the hierarchies that shape entire cultures. Jesselina and Anahita discuss food purity, power, and the everyday practices that show how something as intrinsic as eating can reveal who we are and who we’re told to be in South Asia. It’s layered and maybe a little hard to digest, but that’s exactly the point! (00:31) Daylight Saving and the Doom Feeling (01:27) Champion’s Breakfast (03:27) Fad Diets or Dieticians? (11:51) Are Our Healthier Choices Making Us Boring? (16:40) Food Diversity in Nepal (19:45) The Politics of Food Starts at Home (26:37) Caste, Vegetarianism, and the Politics of Exclusion in Hinduism (32:52) Dr. Ambedkar on Food as a Tool of Hierarchy (38:58) Regional vs. Religious Food Practices( 44:50) Economic Liberalization and the Export of High Quality Food: Neocolonialism or Market Standards? (49:23) The Turmeric Biopiracy Case: Neocolonialism Through Legal Standards