The podcast scene in Nepal must be in its most popular phase at the moment. Just a few years back, most of the people didn’t really dig this thing ‘cos the idea was still new. Cut to now, I think there must be at least two dozen podcasts that are currently releasing episodes on a consistent basis. And quite surprisingly, even though generally these episodes are over two hours long; people are still consuming them — that too in the 15-second-content era. That really is a pleasant surprise.

Of course, some podcasts are more popular than the others and people have their favorites among these. Based on the streams it gets, Sanjay Gupta’s “On Air” has to be one of the topmost podcasts in the country right now, and you can pretty much tell why. The host has been a media personality for almost a decade and half — from radio, to television and live shows and events; dude has been killing in everywhere — not just inside but outside Nepal too — having hosted Nepali shows, events and pageants in the States and Australia as well. So no wonder, he is good at what he does. Another thing that makes him good at it is his consistency; also a film actor, he is one of the busiest Nepali emcees, but yet he has already done 367 episodes of the podcast so far and he has no intention to stop anytime soon. You can imagine what kind of dedication, passion and effort he must put into it.

But no matter how good you are at something, you can never be flawless and people are gonna be there to point those flaws out to you. No wonder, there are many who don’t really dig his podcast. May be they think it’s too mainstream; or it might be the fact that he is heavily inspired by Joe Rogan and it shows.

Diwiz Piya Lama, another podcaster, hasn’t really been fond of Sanjay. At least that’s what the listeners of his podcast, Guff Guff Pass, believe as he has roasted the ‘Safar’ actor for being a Joe Rogan knock off. So I never thought that there’s gonna come a day when I will see him on Sanjay’s podcast. But that happened.

Also a Muay Thai and Jiu Jitsu fighter and coach, Diwiz recently experienced one of the biggest successful events in his life when his fighter, Rabindra Dhant, made his One Championship debut in Thailand with a victory. The two have been doing a lot of interviews together lately, mostly appearing on podcasts but as I said earlier, I didn’t think they will be on Sanjay’s On Air; but the latest episode of the podcast has them as the guests. In fact, it turned out to be one of the best episodes on the podcast so far — so inspiring and motivating, it just makes you wanna do great in life.

I also loved how Diwiz handled the “elephant in the room” like a pro by clearing that what he said about Sanjay in the past was mostly said in a fun way — like they did about many other artists. “We were just attention whores at that time, looking for everyone’s attention. We were like, teasing so many people including yourself.”

“We were just joking. We are like comedians, you know, podcasts and comedy go hand in hand”, he clarified. “That’s a cheap way of doing it but at that point, we were like, ‘F*** it, let’s just roast people’.”

“I mean no disrespect whatsoever. I have all the love for you. I just want to laugh about it”, he further added, to which Sanjay replied, “I know, I have all the love for you.” So yeah, they handled it so well.

Apart from that, the episode is filled with so many inspiring stories of Rabindra Dhant — who still hasn’t experienced a single loss in his pro MMA career. With a big family, the ‘Bajhang’ guy had a lot of hardships growing up. At an early age of 15, right after he gave his SLC exams, he went to the Indian state Uttrakhand to do some hard manual labor to support his family. He had to do this thing for a couple of years until he went to Delhi where he got a job as an Office Boy. It was there when he started to learn Karate and other fighting techniques. He then started taking part in pro fights — which he won — but it wasn’t sufficient for him to support his family financially.

After a lot of pressure, Rabindra decided to go abroad — like abroad abroad — and that’s when he went to Kathmandu for the first time. It was during those days when he was going to all these manpower companies to find a job for himself abroad that would also allow him to train during his off hours, he met his Guru Diwiz and well, the rest is history.

The two have been doing so well together to put Nepal on the map. It’s so great to see both of them have so much respect and love for each other. They just have so many great things to say about each other. At one point, Diwiz says, it’s him who has learned more from Rabindra and not the other way around. They simply make such a great team.

Rabindra, of course, is hella inspiring with quite a story of how he became what he is right now. But even Diwiz seems be such an amazing dude — full of positivity and he has his dream sorted, he wants to let the world know that Nepal too can give some of the best fighters in the world and he is actually working towards it.

This really turned out to be one of the best episodes, at least for me. I would love to see them on another episode in few months.

Here, watch it if you haven’t already. It’s worth every single second.