You're Dead to Me - The Mughal Empire (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: January 6, 2021

Greg Jenner is joined by historian Dr Mehreen Chida-Razvi and comedian Sindhu Vee to explore the Mughal Empire and its legacy in art and architecture.We learn why an Emperor always needed to be wary of his siblings and how a zebra came to cause disbelief in court, and we hear the real story behind the wondrous Taj Mahal.A Muddy Knees Media production for BBC Radio 4.

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. All day long.

Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Hiya, Greg here. Hope you're doing all right. We are making Series 3 right now. In the meantime, we've been making these Radio 4 versions of the previous episodes. We are putting them in the feed here permanently. They will be alongside the long versions. So make sure you scroll down and choose which version you want.

So you can have the shorter, punchier, swear-free versions or the long, rambling, sweary versions. So make sure you scroll down and choose which version you want. So you can have the shorter, punchier, swear-free versions or the long, rambling, sweary versions. Up to you. Thanks very much for listening. Take care. Bye. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the history podcast for everyone. For people who don't like history, people who do like history, and people who forgot to learn any at school. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author, and broadcaster,

and I'm the chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories. You might also have heard my Radio 4 series Homeschool History, although that's mostly for the kids. In this podcast, we mash together top-notch academics and comedians at the top of their game to transform you, the listener, into a connoisseur of historical know-how. And today we are mounting our war elephants and travelling back 500 years to 16th century India

as we get to know the Mughals. No, not the unmagical people in the Harry Potter universe. We're talking about the Mughal Empire. And to help us do that, I'm joined by two very special guests. In History Corner, she's an expert in the art and architecture of Mughal India and is a research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. It's Dr. Maureen Cheetah-Rasvi. Hi, Maureen, how are you? Hi, I'm very well, thank you.

And in Comedy Corner, she was nominated for Best Newcomer at Edinburgh Fringe in 2018 and since then has skyrocketed to success in things like Live at the Apollo, QI, The Tezza Clock Show and lots more. She is ridiculously brainy and according to her Twitter bio, she is both crazy and classy. What a combination. It's Sindhu V. Hello. Hello. In fact, my Twitter thing says I'm a crazy but classy comedy cow. I mean, I didn't want to say that. No, I know. You can't say it, but I can. So, what do you know? I know, you can't see it, but I can.

So, what do you know? We begin, as ever, with the So What Do You Know? This is where I summarise all the things that listeners at home might know about today's subject. And let's be honest, you probably know very little, really, about the Mughal Empire. You've probably heard of or even visited the Taj Mahal, which is a glorious feat of architecture and not your local curry house. Or you're familiar with perhaps Indian cinema. You might have seen the 2008 historical epic Jodha Akbar.

It stars Aishwarya Rai and the Times of India's most desirable man of 2010, the horrific Roshan. Is that right? That's right. By the way, he's desirable across time. I don't know why we're stopping at 2010. It says here 2010 on my screen. He's such a hottie. And by the way, he's got two thumbs, which is a sign of good luck. Yeah, he has two thumbs. If you ever look in any of the movies, I don't know which hand, but he's got two thumbs.

So three thumbs in total. Very interesting. Yeah, one on one hand, two on the other hand. Yeah, and my mother, I remember saying, oh, that's because he was twin and then he ate the twin. I'm like, what? Well, the film is a lot of fun. But if we're talking Indian history in general, people at home are probably conjuring up images in their heads of war elephants and bejeweled turbines and huge white marble buildings. But is that sort of a romanticised Orientalist view of the world or is it true? Let's find out. Dr. Mehreen, some very basic stuff, please. Where and when was the Mughal Empire and how big is it?

empire and how big is it? So the Mughals were a Muslim dynasty. The empire was founded in 1526 by Babur, who was a Timurid princeling actually from the Valley of Fergana in Central Asia today. The empire lasted until 1857, so about 330 years. Pretty good. At its height, the empire encompassed almost the entirety of South Asia. So it's bigger than India now? Yes, absolutely. Population wise, around 1600, so very early in the history of the empire, we have a population which was estimated to be between 100 and 145 million. And that's before the Mughals then conquered the Deccan and push all the way south to the end of the peninsula. So the number at its heights would have been much, much higher. That's absolutely vast.

I mean, Tudor England at this point is 4 million people. Yes. And you're saying 145 million people. That is, yeah. That's the estimate around the year 1600. And then it gets bigger. And then it gets bigger. And you've mentioned Babur, who is kind of the first great name.

Sindhu, does his name immediately in your head go, yeah, of course, Babur. Everyone says he came from Persia. I'm sorry, I'm talking in the accent of all the teachers I've ever had. But he came from Persia. And according to my mother, he was so beautiful. I don't know how she knows that. We've only seen these Mughal miniatures.

But it's because the Persians were fair. They had these beautiful features. What we learned about him, Dr. Mehreen, correct me if I'm wrong, but Babur, he wasn't the most gracious, laid back, super artsy Mughal emperor as we then came to see later in the dynasty. He was a street fighter. And he is the one that stayed. And the reason that we were taught that Babur was special and different was he didn't come, ravage and leave. He came and he stayed. He cared. The conqueror who cares. He cared about conquering. But you know, he didn't take it back. And also he didn't take it back because he had nowhere to go.

Babur starts, he's a Chagatai Turkish ruler. I mean, he's from that, as you say, that wider part of the world. Kabul becomes his power base. And then he peeks into essentially what is now Northern India and things. That feels like my territory. I'll have a bit of that. And he succeeds in conquering it. He's awesome. And he's rawsome because he's the tiger. But he doesn't just descend from Timur the Great. He also descends from Genghis Khan. Yes, on his father's side, he's a descendant of Timur.

And from his mother's side, he's a direct descendant of Genghis Khan. Yeah, Babur has the blood of these two great conquerors going through him. His first great enemy in northern India is Ibrahim Lodi. There was a huge battle called the Battle of Panipat, is that right? Yes. In 1526. And now forgive me if I'm, you know, being a bit silly here, but like, it sounds like Lodi should win that battle. He seems to have a much larger army. The 100,000 men, 1,000 war elephants, which is too many war elephants. I mean, that's a real logistical challenge, just feeding them. And then Babur has like 12,000

men. So how did he win that then? Let's put that in perspective. 250 Britishers showed up on our shores and look what happened. It's not numbers. Babur has the latest artillery and the latest weaponry. And he knows from experience that the cavalry is no It's not numbers. cannons and this latest artillery warfare, which he's bought from the Ottomans. But he also combines that with Mongol flanking techniques with his cavalry. And this combination, Ibrahim Lodi's army can't deal with. The guy's a gangster. All right. He has the advantage where you have

local people who are not happy with, you know, the people around them. So then they let, you know, they kind of let the enemy in and they never realized how bad it's going to be. So completely treacherous on the inside we've been to ourselves. He had huge ambition. And again, the Lodis, like any empire that is at its end, they were a bit cocky. Well, I mean, the Delhi Sultanate never really recovered from Timur's invasion. When Timur came through in 1398 and sacked Delhi, it was devastating.

So they're sort of a wounded, not fully at strength. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Babu was allowed to sort of turn up and he's got people letting him through the gates. And he's got a very loyal following. And then his next enemy, I mean, this sounds like bullying to me, is a one-eyed, one-armed man with 80 scars on his face called Rana Sangha.

His official name was Maharana Sangha Masingh. And he's the leader of the Sisodia clan of the Rajputs. Now, the Rajputs are groups of Hindu warrior clans. They were ruling over their own territories. They were coexisting with the Delhi Sultanate. Rana Sangha was the leader of one of the most important of these Rajput clans based in an area called Mewar. He combined the different Rajput clans together,

and he was their leader. So the two armies meet in March of 1527 at a site called Kanwa, and it's Babur who ends up being victorious. He then proclaims himself to be a Ghazi, and it becomes part of his official title. It means a warrior of Islam. It's this first inkling we have of how religion can be used in this new context of the region. And then he's established this empire and then sadly he dies because that's what happens to humans. We all die. And his son takes over and his son is called Humayun and is not very good at being an emperor. I mean, it's not gone well quite quickly. 1540, he has to flee. So Humayun is Babur's eldest son. He's got three stepbrothers as well. And what Babur does before

he dies is he follows the classic Timurid tradition of dividing his lands between his sons. So as the eldest, Humayun gets this new region and the other brothers get other parts on the periphery of this. And they're not happy about it. So from the very beginning, Humayun has to contend with his brothers trying to replace him. And at the same time, he also has to contend with two key individuals in South Asia as well. One is the sultan of Gujarat, Bahadur Shah. And the other is Sher Khan, who was one of Babur's generals and then became the governor of Bihar. And his best friend is not Baloo.

Every time someone says Sher Khan, everyone's like, is that a tiger? It's like, it is a tiger in a book that Rudyard Kipling wrote much later. But he does sing songs, yes? Yeah, he sings songs and he doesn't like fire. So actually, he's got several enemies. He's got several enemies, yeah. Balboa made him promise before he died that he would never raise a hand against his brothers.

And this proves quite detrimental because his brothers, especially his brother Qamran, are constantly scheming against him. And it's only after he's been run out of the region and once he comes back with help from the Safavid Shah that he realizes he has to be a bit more ruthless with them. Yeah, and he does. Does he kill them? He blinds his brother, Kamran, and his brother, Asgari, basically gets put in chains. Blinding somebody was a key way of then saying, no, you cannot be a ruler.

So it was a way of taking them out of the picture. You don't see murders happening for the throne until Shah Jahan actually comes to the throne. So Humayun does return. He does essentially end up conquering what he'd lost. So fair play to him. But he does die in quite a slightly dramatic way. Did he fall off something? He tripped. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like one of those lame things, which was like growing up,

you were like, you were an emperor. You could have done better. He was at the top of a tower in one of his palaces, this kind of tall two-story tower. They had a lot of beautiful palaces and towers. Oh, absolutely. And he heard the azan, the call for prayer. And then he starts down the steps

and he trips on his robe and he falls, bashes his head. And a few days later, he dies. And this is only a year after he has come back and been able to reconquer Delhi and these lands that his father had left him. But it was good because who came next? Ah, well, who comes next? Akbar. There we go.

Shahanshah Jahapana. Akbar the Great comes to power aged 13. Presumably, he's not like immediately like, hi, guys, I've got this. Presumably, there's a sort of phase of him going, all right, what do I do? Before Humayun dies, he's already set one of his generals, Bayram Khan, to be kind of a guide.

And also his mother, Hamid ibn Ubaidah, is a very important figure as well. And he gets to the point a few years in where he's then able to dismiss Bayram Khan and take the reins of rulership properly to himself. I mean, we call him the great because presumably he's then able to dismiss Bayram Khan and take the reins of rulership properly to himself. I mean, we call him the Great because presumably he's pretty good. Well, Akbar also means the Great. Oh, really? He's Great the Great?

Yeah, he's Great the Great, yeah. Wow. I mean, that feels unnecessary, but fair play. He didn't call himself Akbar the Great. The British did. So why is he great? What is he doing that's so significantly better than other kings of the time? Well, when we talk about the Mughal Empire, we're really talking about an empire that Akbar is the one to establish. Because what Babur conquered from the Lodhis was this small region.

So that's what Akbar inherits. And then from that, he conquers. And he then ends up taking the entirety of the northern part of South Asia. It's a Muslim minority ruling over a non-Muslim majority. And that creates, obviously, some very interesting dynamics. And for that to work, you have to have a tolerant attitude, which then permeates the society. He actually marries into the Hindu nobility as well. He behaved more like the ruler of the whole place as opposed to a foreign ruler who has just come in. It's a bit problematic if you're going to tax your father-in-law. There you go.

Very awkward family gatherings. So in that way, Akbar really has a wonderful place in the mind of those people. Prior to him, everyone else was a foreign leader and was there doing terrible things. At least that's how the history was taught to us when we were little. He was just the bomb. He was so great. Okay, but then we get to some bad guys.

Then Akbar dies and we have Jahangir, who is not chill. I'm going to challenge that one. Oh, really? Come on then. He's my favorite Mughal emperor. Oh, well, okay, come on then. So Jahangir is born Prince Salim. Jahangir, he's very fond of opium. He's an alcoholic.

He's a bit of a drunkard, yeah. He does this classic, you know, rebellion against his father about five years before Akbar dies. Jahangir goes off to Allahabad, sets up a rival court, starts calling himself Shah, which is treason. But then they're reconciled before Akbar dies, and he becomes the next ruler. And he takes as his reinal title the name Nur ad-Din Muhammad Jahangir. Jahangir meaning the world's Caesar or the world grasper. Like his father, he's very interested in other religions. He's interested in Christianity. He's interested in European imagery. And these are things which arrive at the Mughal court during Akbar's reign.

He reigns from 1605 to 1627. And it's a time when the world is coming to the Mughal court. Ambassadors and diplomats and merchants and visitors from throughout Europe and Asia are coming to this court. He's very interested in depicting the reality of the world around him. So we get this really amazing thing in the artistic production of the time where you have proper portraits of people being produced. But also he has a very scientific mind. And so you see portraits of animals. There's this great painting in the V&A of a zebra, which he ordered to be painted for inclusion in his autobiographical history, the Jahangir Name. The zebra was being taken from the port through the Mughal Empire

as a gift to the Safavid Shah. Jahangir hears about it, has it brought to the court first, doesn't believe it's real. He thinks it's a painted horse. And so it's not until he has people washing it that he realizes it's not paint. It's actually the fur of the animal. That's amazing. He tries to scrub down on it. He tries to scrub it off. I once dated a French guy who was like this

where they were really intellectual, drank a lot, drank too much, did some drugs, but really a fascinating mind. I feel like Jahangir was like that. Some of the most amazing arts of the period came out of his reign. Did they already have miniatures at that point?

Yeah, absolutely. The miniature tradition is very strong by this point. But it gets transformed under Jahangir. That visualization of power starts in his reign and then becomes ubiquitous in Mughal material culture. But not everything's rosy under Jahangir. He has two sides of his personality. He could be open and tolerant and he was a great estate, but he could also be tyrannical and cruel. When he comes to the throne, his son, Khosrow, actually rebels against him. And there's a couple plots which are really not very nice. Jahangir won't hurt his own son now. But two of the key conspirators of Khosrow are sewn up in fresh skins, one of a donkey, one of a ox, and are sat backwards on a donkey, which is a very insulting position to be in, paraded around the city for a day in the hot Indian sun.

And so these fresh skins start to constrict and dry out, and one of them suffocates to death as a result. You know, you get the message loud and clear. If you're going to do that against your dad, and your dad's the emperor, you're going to expect some, I mean, if you get caught, then bad things are going to happen. You know what I mean? Just the other day I was saying to my kid,

I came into the room and she hid her iPad under a cushion. And I just stopped and I said, look, man, we've got some clear rules about iPads here. And you know I don't play. Next time I come in here and you're not studying and you're on your iPad, things are going to get hairy, man.

Like, you're probably going to lose your iPad for three years. She was like, she's very young. She's 10. That's a long part of her life. She's like, three years?

My husband's like, this is not a threat you can carry out. I'm like, it's a threat I can make. At least he kept his life this time. Well, for now. That's what I'm saying. For least he kept his life this time. Well, for now.

That's what I'm saying. For now. No, no, but I mean, come on, how many times can you do that? I mean, eventually you're going to get killed. And eventually he does.

Khosrow is ultimately blinded to remove him from being, you know, and then he's given into the protection, I put in air quotes, of his brother, Khurram,

the future Shah Jahan, who's like, ha, ha, ha, come here, my blind brother. The Khusrow does not survive for very long after that. Shocking. Let's talk about Shah Jahan, perhaps the one name that might resonate. And he built the Taj Mahal, which is the most iconic building, perhaps, in India. Why does he build it? A combination of things.

I mean, the story is that it's for his deceased beloved wife. Yes. No, no. And that is absolutely true. So Shah Jahan is married to Arjuman Banu Begum. She was his favorite wife. He basically ignores the rest of his wives once he marries her. It was while giving birth to their 14th child that she dies. So Arjuman Banu Begum gets titled Mumtaz Mahal, the crown of the palace. He orders the construction of this incredible mausoleum for her. And construction starts in

1632 in Agra. I think by the time of her first death anniversary, her body is moved from the Deccan to Agra and buried. It's one of these buildings, which is just so iconic that when I went to see it for the first time, I was really afraid of being disappointed. It does take your breath away when you see it. Of the Mughal mausoleums, it is the most perfect one. And we can actually consider it to be like the zenith of Mughal architecture. Taj Mahal ultimately becomes an imperial tomb when Shah Jahan is also buried there. Alongside his wife. Alongside his wife. But he was never intended to be buried there. It's a perfectly symmetrical space. It's got all kinds of things going on, like the turrets kind of are built coming in. The

architectural part, it looks beautiful, blah, blah, blah. But the things they've done, the sort of geometry and math and stuff around it is amazing. The concept of building for Shah Jahan, architecture was his greatest form of self-expression. And he was very good at it. And we can actually consider him to be one of the architects of all of his constructions. He was very involved in the planning. So he would have loved Lego. He was a master builder. There was this notion for Shah Jahan that the perfection of what he built represented the perfection of his rule.

And so when we talk about the Taj Mahal, yes, it's built for this wife that he loved dearly. But it's very much a political statement as well. Okay. The whole conception of the Taj Mahal complex is that you are creating paradise on earth for Mumtaz Mahal. You also had the establishment of a waqf, a deed, which tells you how the upkeep of a space is going to be kept. And for the Taj Mahal, it's something like the revenue of 18 villages around Agra was given for the continuous upkeep of the monument. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing about Taj Mahal. It looks beautiful, but for pretty much everyone

else involved in the building of it, some of the people really had to go through a lot. Like, it wasn't the easiest thing to be a construction worker on the Taj Mahal. Am I right? Where did the marble come from? The marble came from Makrana in Rajasthan. So it's local, and the best sandstone came from a quarry outside of Feth-e-Bursikri. And so these were the kind of key materials used for the imperial monuments. So Shah Jahan's peak, the 17th century Mughal, where

really everything is going great. We've already mentioned Aurangzeb before who is not quite as chill and cheerful when it comes to... Dude, he's the worst. He's the worst. I was trying to be gentle in my introduction. No, he's the worst and his rule has a lot to do with

a lot of things weakening in India to the point where when the East India Company shows up and says, hi, can we just hang out a little bit? Yes, Aurangzeb has this reputation. So Aurangzeb is Shah Jahan's third son. He is an Orthodox Sunni. So he's, you know, much more religious character, Orthodox religious character than any of the rulers we've had so far. rulers we've had so far. And it does impact elements of his rule and of his policy and politics. But this reputation he has of being completely anti-Hindu and destroying temples and all of that, that's not true. I mean, you still have artistic production. You do still have music for a period of time and dancing. It's, I think, important to remember that he gets this reputation because he is more orthodox and because, yes, he kills his brothers and prisons his father. At the end of the day, it's politics.

Can we say that the 18th century is an era of discord and of troubles? Aurangzeb was obsessed with conquering the Deccan, pushing the borders of the empire as far south as they could go. And it's under him that the Mughal Empire reaches its greatest extent. But the thing is, is that he didn't prepare his sons for rule. And so when he did die, this myth of the power of the Mughal Emperor dies with him. So you have this period of these five rulers who are there for just short periods of time. And then another ruler comes in, Muhammad Shah. And he has a relatively long rule from 1719 to 1748. And he tries to kind of reclaim this power. But you have an immediate shrinking of the borders after Aurangzeb's death. He took the south, he took the Deccan, but then it gets lost

very quickly. And you also have individuals who are ruling over spaces as governors and they start to proclaim their own independence. At the exact same time, you have the rise of the British East India Company. Hello. Yes, hello. The British East India Company actually gets its first fairman to set up factories and to officially trade with the Mughal Empire during Jahangir's reign. When the ambassador from James I, Sir Thomas Rowe, is sent during Jahangir's reign. When the ambassador from James I, Sir Thomas Rowe, is sent to Jahangir's court, but he's actually there more as an agent of the East India Company rather than an agent of James I, he gets the official right to trade. But then what

happens is that the British East India Company is also given permission to have their own standing army. Because they said they needed to protect their interests from the Portuguese. And what happens once we get into the 18th century is that that army becomes a bit more powerful, a bit larger. And they start to become puppet masters themselves and pull strings. The French are around as well at this time. Everyone's coming. There's a lot going on. One of the key events which happens is that the Battle of Plassey.

1757. 1757. We all know it very well. My history teacher said, 1757 Battle of Plassey. It was the end because we had no self-respect in front of British. That's how we learned history. We were like, it's our fault. But 1757 Battle of Plassey, that is seared into my brain as that moment when we didn't do the right thing.

The East India Company finally then is in political control of this incredibly important province. And can levy taxes. And they're taking that finance away then from the Mughal ruler. I mean, if 1757 hadn't happened, we could all have been sitting here speaking Urdu. And then Bengal was actually formally conceded to Clive in 1765.

And of course, this means that you don't have an empire anymore of the Mughals. You don't have an emperor. You have a figurehead who is sitting in the fort in Delhi. Just sort of playing his Xbox. Not pathetic so much. It's very sad. And then obviously this all culminates in 1857.

Yeah, which is the first Indian War of Independence. 1857 is essentially the end of the Mughal Empire, except it hasn't been an empire for a long time, nearly. And this is all before Victoria showed up and took it all over and it became just a massive money-making machine. The ATM of the subcontinent. The Nuance Window! That brings us really to my favourite part of the podcast,

which is called The Nuance Window. This is where Sindhu and I go quiet and we allow our experts to go full mega drive into the stuff that we need to know. Mehreen, you are an art and architectural historian. I know you also have something you really want to say here. So two minutes on the clock. Here we go. The nuance window. In light of what's happening in India today, I want to use this to stress how incredibly syncretic the Mughal court was, particularly during the reigns of the first six rulers. The current

BJP government is pushing a Hindu nationalist agenda, which is amongst other things, actually rewriting history in order to effectively remove India's Muslim past. Yet you have as a resounding symbol of the country, the Taj Mahal,

which is a Mughal Muslim tomb. The American president was in India. He was gifted a portrait of him and his wife in front of this monument by one of the BJP politicians. But this really emphasizes that this building is a symbol of India still, and it's used by the government to promote their country. It's the same government which is trying to remove from the country's history this culture and society which constructed it. The Mughal court came to be defined by many things. And today, it seems that the Indian government wants to define it solely by religion and by othering them to make it okay that it becomes expendable. In the Mughal Empire, there was a Muslim minority ruling over a non-Muslim majority, and things weren't perfect.

But a balance was created and maintained between the different religious groups and sections of society. And that's true even during Aurangzeb's reign, who, despite his reputation as being an ultra-Orthodox Sunni, was not anti-Hindu. Hindus worked alongside Muslims in many walks of life, in the court administration, on the battlefield, in the artistic workshops. And it's in this material culture that the promotion of different religions by the Mughal rulers is evident. For example, the great Hindu epics of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Akbar had them translated from Sanskrit into Persian. He also had translated into Persian a history of the life of Christ. Jahangir utilized European and Christian imagery in his paintings and architecture.

And then Dara Shikoh, Shah Jahan's eldest son, had many Sanskrit religious texts translated into Persian. But there's so many more examples of this type of religious freedom. And I think it's important to keep them in mind when certain narratives are being pushed in India today. Thank you very much. You used the word syncretism there, which people at home might not know. When we mean syncretism, we mean parallel ideas working together.

Yeah, different ideas coming together or being utilised at the same time. This idea that you can live side by side with people who are not the same as you, who practise different religions, but you meld together and you mesh together. Lovely. Well, sadly, that's all we have time for today. Join us next time as we uncover more secret histories hidden from you by the UK Curriculum. If you've enjoyed the show, make sure to subscribe to

You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds, because the episodes there are longer. But for now, let me say a huge thank you to my brilliant guests. In History Corner, Dr Marine Chida-Rasvi from SOAS, the University of London. And in Comedy Corner, the hilarious Sindhu V. But for me, I'm done now, so I'm off to go and build a Lego Taj Mahal. I reckon it'll take me about, I don't know, three months? That sounds about right. Bye!

Hello, Louis Theroux here. And I just wanted to hijack this podcast to tell you that I'm back with another series of my podcast, Grounded with Louis Theroux. In case you hadn't noticed, COVID hasn't gone away, and because of travel restrictions, neither have I. So I've rounded up the likes of Michaela Cole, Frankie Boyle, Oliver Stone, Sia, and FKA Twigs for another set of eclectic and thought-provoking conversations. Yes, I'm still grounded with

me, Louis Theroux, available on BBC Sounds. We'll be right back.