I spoke to Pramit Bhattacharya an independent data journalist about India's statistical system. We talked about How did Indian statisticians adapt their statistical methods to account for India's informal sector? How are India's GDP numbers constructed? Why it's so hard to outright manipulate GDP numbers The case for optimism --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pradyumna-sp/message ..read more

I talked with Harry Law of the University of Cambridge and Google DeepMind about AI regulation We talked about Me vs Harry on open source AI regulation Being humble when regulating AI Why a "Manhattan Project for X" is overrated --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pradyumna-sp/message ..read more

I spoke with Derek Wong about the adaptive markets hypothesis, macro investing and investing in cryptocurrency markets We talk about Why investors should consider the financial markets as a complex adaptive system How investing in China is very different from investing in the West How he invests in crypto without fundamental anchors --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pradyumna-sp/message ..read more

I spoke with Devashish Dhar, the author of the excellent book India's Blind Spot which talks about India's urbanisation crisis and solutions to it. We talk about Why does India have a much lower reported rate of urbanisation than the rest of the world? Explaining the global bias against cities “Extremely high levels of traffic is caused by poor land policy” Why are there so many floods in Indian cities? How to climate-proof Indian cities “India’s biggest unfulfilled promise is local government” and much more! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pradyumna-sp ..read more

I interviewed one of the most interesting thinkers today, Tyler Cowen. We talked about Why there are such few Singaporean famous people What Singapore can do to get more weird Why he's sceptical of an AI-driven singularity What happens to kids in a post-GPT world What happens to public intellectuals in a post-GPT world Why he's optimistic on Kenyan economic growth And so much more! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pradyumna-sp/message ..read more

I spoke to Rohit Krishnan the author of the blog Strange Loop Canon about why he is sceptical about the idea that AI will kill us all We talked about Why he’s sceptical of AI regulation proposals Why AI “timelines” are not as meaningful as you think AI deployment is harder than you think! The value of incrementalism in AI policy Why he thinks instrumental convergence is unlikely to happen --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pradyumna-sp/message ..read more

I spoke to Soham Sankaran who runs PopVax, an Indian mRNA vaccine company. Their goal is to build low-cost broadly-protective vaccines to protect against the entire sarbecovirus species. Read Soham's experience here (https://chronicles.popvax.com/p/three-meetings-and-six-million-funerals) as a complement to this episode. Also check out their jobs page (https://jobs.popvax.com/) for opportunities. This episode includes How he started PopVax and (went bankrupt in the process) Why there hasn't been a successful Indian mRNA vaccine yet Why developing countries can't afford drugs for rare disease ..read more

I spoke to Joey Politano, who writes the popular newsletter Apricitas . We did a deep dive into monetary policy where Joey talked about Quantitative Easing, Yield Curve Control and stablecoins. Other topics include Measuring the stance of monetary policy  Which country would benefit from using dogecoin as currency? What can economists learn from political science --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pradyumna-sp/message ..read more

I talked to Puja Mehra, a journalist and author of the book The Lost Decade about India's economic history of the years 2008-2018. We talked about The reasons for India's jobs crisis Should the Finance Ministry be split into two? The farming crisis Has India's Big Government really receded?  --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pradyumna-sp/message ..read more

I talked to Matt Darling, an Employment Policy Fellow at the Niskanen Institute  We talked about Cognitive tax of poverty Behavioural economics and the replication crisis What question does he wish people asked him? --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pradyumna-sp/message ..read more