Learning by Proxy with Vivek Srinivasan

In this episode, I summarise two books that I recently read on the causes of Obesity. The Obesity Code written by Dr Jason Fung and Ultraprocessed People written by Chris van Tulleken. The two books play into each other with the obesity theme being central to both of them. This made it all the more interesting for me. Obesity is not a result of a person’s inability to control oneself, it is a resu...

Media organisations across the globe want Google and Meta to compensate them each time a user clicks on links to these organisations. People across the Internet have named it the Link Tax. Lawmakers who have been lobbied are beginning to pursue this idea as well. Australia enacted the law in 2021 and Canada enacted on this year. Both companies played ball in 2021 but no longer seem to be willing t...

The pandemic delivered a body blow to commercial real estate in many large cities. The white-collar workers who used to work in many of these cities have transitioned to hybrid work and are probably never going to go back to working 5 days a week in the office. This is resulting in many of these cities dying a slow death as a vast amount of commercial real estate lies empty. You can access my blog...

There was a time when it was normal for a city to catch on fire. This would often be a result of human stupidity. Poor and unplanned construction and lack of proper safety features were responsible for many of the fires. These were identified and fixed in the 20th century. In the 21st century, we ushered in an era of wildfire. And now these are turning into urban fires as we all saw in Hawaii. Cou...

The Incandescent bulb was 100 years in the making and it lit up the world. So much so that we cannot even see the stars these days thanks to the lights in the city. That bulb had a 100-year run which is now coming to an end thanks to greater energy efficiency. You can access my blog to see the images that I used as a part of the article here . Source of assets used - Intro Music Fillers - Here and...

There is a strike that is taking place in Hollywood. It is not a first and it is certainly not unprecedented. It is a clashing of an industry of artists against a paradigm shift that is taking place. At stake is their future earnings potential. Think of this like 2010 for Nokia, what they did would either make them or break them. Of course, Nokia did not understand the value of software and went b...

Exactly is a book by Simon Winchester about the world of precision manufacturing. He takes the reader on the journey of problems and inventions that resulted in the creation of the modern world as we know it. In this podcast, I briefly summarise the book and share some of my thoughts on it. You can read the blog at this link This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other su...

The Indian monsoon is a peculiar phenomenon which is made possible by the unique geographical positioning of the country. It ensures great harvest and has played a key role in ensuring that India has a thriving agricultural economy. That monsoon is being disrupted. It was a never-before recorded event that set off a series of dominoes that culminated in Delhi being flooded. Climate is changing, an...

India launched its latest attempt to land on the moon. No easy feat but a huge one if they are able to pull it off. The country is also working on putting a man in space in the next 2 years. In the meantime, China has already landed on the moon, almost at the same exact spot India is aiming at and it has also started building a space station. The ambitions seem similar but the budgets have a huge...

When a cargo ship navigates through the Panama Canal it is not going through a neatly cut waterway from one side to the other, it is mostly navigating a lake which covers half the country. That lake is located 26 Meters above sea level. So the ships need to be raised to the level of the lake and then dropped back into the ocean. Thanks to a drought the lake is drying up and making it harder for sh...

This is the Learning by Proxy podcast for Edition 102. If you do not enjoy reading long-form, get the gist of it in about 10 minutes (or that was the hope).  This time in the podcast -   India has been exporting software but most often it does not own that software it just makes it on others’ behalf. That has been changing over the last 10 years. But it seems like India’s greatest software export...

This is the Learning by Proxy podcast for Edition 101. If you do not enjoy reading long-form, get the gist of it in about 10 minutes (or that was the hope).  This time in the podcast -  Ukraine is at war with Russia. Perhaps the slowest boil war that anyone has seen. Why is this war even taking place? Why is the US so interested in a country which 99.99% of its population cannot place on a map? Wh...

I find that Google does not deliver my newsletters in the ‘Primary’ box if I send two emails back to back. So I will be publishing the podcasts on the RSS and the other platforms ( find them here ) such as Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Stitcher, etc. If you like listening to the podcast, please subscribe on any of those and it will drop on Friday as it always does. This is the Learning by Proxy po...

A couple of weeks ago I sat down and spoke with Christina Busch about his book The Serendipity Mindset , also printed as Connecting the Dots. My meeting with Christian was pure serendipity. I did not even know that I was connected with him over LinkedIn. I found a message in my inbox and responded to him. His book focuses on how Serendipity need not be sheer blind luck but something that you can m...

This is the Learning by Proxy podcast for Edition 98. If you do not enjoy reading long-form, get the gist of it in about 10 minutes (or that was the hope).  This time in the podcast -  The kids who grew up watching Jetsons are trying to turn that vision into reality. A dozen companies are trying their hands at flying cars. They are starting to get approvals as well as setting up demos to get the p...

This is the Learning by Proxy podcast for Edition 97. If you do not enjoy reading long-form, get the gist of it in about 10 minutes (or that was the hope).  This time in the podcast -  Supermarkets and retailers had it the hardest during the pandemic with all of the supply chain disruptions that they had to deal with. Now, they are looking at innovative ways to ensure that, that never happens agai...

This is the Learning by Proxy podcast for Edition 96. If you do not enjoy reading long-form, get the gist of it in about 10 minutes (or that was the hope).  This time in the podcast -  The 5G spectrum was auctioned in America during the fag end of the Trump administration. They ended up assigning a higher frequency spectrum to increase data speeds. Now, the airlines are left to deal with the probl...

This is the Learning by Proxy podcast for Edition 95. If you do not enjoy reading long-form, get the gist of it in about 10 minutes (or that was the hope).  This time in the podcast -  Inflation is the measure of price rise. The increase in price implies that workers would need more money to maintain their standards of living. Not increase, just maintain. The low inflation rate is a farcical creat...

This is the Learning by Proxy podcast for Edition 94. If you do not enjoy reading long-form, get the gist of it in about 10 minutes (or that was the hope).  This time in the podcast -  Mesh Networks have been around and have been used in WiFi applications for years now. They are being increasingly used with Bluetooth Low Energy devices to ostensibly track missing items. But the work and time that...

This is the Learning by Proxy podcast for Edition 93. If you do not enjoy reading long-form, get the gist of it in about 10 minutes (or that was the hope).  This time in the podcast -  Buy Now Pay Later is a financial weapon of mass destruction. There is a lot of money at play and a lot of profits to be made. Unfortunately, only those who cannot afford it are falling for it and getting caught up p...

This is the Learning by Proxy podcast for Edition 92. If you do not enjoy reading long-form, get the gist of it in about 10 minutes (or that was the hope).  This time in the podcast -  While there are way too many billionaires pretending to do good and giving away money under the garb of a foundation there are those who are actually managing to do it. This is great to know and a great way to end t...

This is the Learning by Proxy podcast for Edition 91. If you do not enjoy reading long-form, get the gist of it in about 10 minutes (or that was the hope).  This time in the podcast -  The internet is at the end software. Software that most of us do not understand and do not care about. But if that software were to break, then we can be sent back to the Stone Age. We do not realise how much of our...

This is the Learning by Proxy podcast for Edition 90. If you do not enjoy reading long-form, get the gist of it in about 10 minutes (or that was the hope).  This time in the podcast -  Cryptocurrency started out as a geeky experiment. It has become important enough to cause a lot of governments headaches. There seems to be a need to regulate it but the governments are not in a position to decide h...

This is the Learning by Proxy podcast for Edition 89. If you do not enjoy reading long-form, get the gist of it in about 10 minutes (or that was the hope).  This time in the podcast -  Fusion is the holy grail of energy. It is clean, abundant, safe and controllable. But over the last 70 years, the only way that we have been able to harness it is for destruction. After a period of almost little to...

This is the Learning by Proxy podcast for Edition 88. If you do not enjoy reading long-form, get the gist of it in about 10 minutes (or that was the hope).  This time in the podcast -  The wealth of the developed economies is forged on the back of immigrants. Those immigrants went away during 2020 since the West did not require their services anymore in a lockdown economy. Now they are having a ha...