The Podcast Corner: Diamond podcast sheds new light on empire

“Isn't that where they got the Koh-i-Noor diamond from?,” Afua Hirsch, host of the startling six-part Audible series We Need to Talk About the British Empire, asks of the Indian region where her guest on episode one Anita Rani’s family hails from. “I read about that in history.”

Rani deadpans, “Some would say it was gifted”; the Koh-i-Noor diamond now sits among the British crown jewels. Rani’s line evidences the reason for this provocatively titled podcast: There is the history you’re told about from a certain (British) perspective and then there’s the reality on the foreign soil of empire.