The Wisdom Tradition | a philosophy podcast · Alexander Sachon

Dissecting the Timeline of the Kali Yuga with BIBHU DEV MISRA | Interview

·2 hr 11 min

The host opens by introducing Bibu Dev Misra and his book, The Yuga Shift. It quickly moves to the book's central claim: the Kali Yuga may need to be dated differently than the usual account. That timing question sets the frame. The host links the discussion to a new book manuscript on the origin and evolution of American empire, and to the sense that the present world is passing through a phase change. He treats the visible crisis of empire as part of a larger age-ending pattern rather than something separate from it. Misra then lays out a chronology built around 2,700-year ages and roughly 300-year transition periods. In that model, the transitions are not gentle. Older civilizations are wiped out, either by major cataclysms or by a sequence of them, and new kinds of civilization rise in their place. The conversation keeps returning to that pattern as the key to reading both ancient history and the present. They discuss the Dwapara age, which is described as running from about 6700 BC to roughly 4000 BC, with one transition period ending in 3676 BC. That transition is followed by Bronze Age civilizations. The host presses on what happens inside those windows, and the answer is blunt: collapse first, then rebirth. A long exchange follows about climate upheaval, including the collapse of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, the flooding of glacial lakes, and a resulting rise in global sea levels of about four to five feet on average. Those shifts are tied to a new wave of civilization in Anatolia and southeastern Europe, where pottery and artistic design show a clear developmental leap. The episode also notes the limits of the record, since there is not always data for other regions in the same time period. That uncertainty does not blunt the argument. It becomes part of the argument's texture, because the show keeps moving between evidence, inference, and larger pattern. By the end, the exchange has widened from ancient chronology into a broader account of civilizational decay and renewal. It lands back on the book, the timing problem, and the idea that the Kali Yuga may not be as distant as standard readings assume. The tone stays probing and patient throughout, with the interview built less like a quick Q&A than like a long attempt to make a cosmological model coherent.

As heard by us

A close look at Kali Yuga timing, American empire, and an ending that feels close.

The discussion follows the Kali Yuga through a detailed argument about timing, then extends that frame to American empire and the sense of a phase change now underway.

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Why you'd press play

If you want a serious case for the Kali Yuga being closer to a turning point than most timelines allow, start here.

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