In this episode of Circa, I sit down with Kithmina Hewage — economist, former Political Adviser to the British High Commission in Colombo, World Economic Forum expert network member, and World Bank consultant who has advised governments across 17 Asian economies. Kithmina also happens to be the man who taught me debating and Model UN in school. He speaks here entirely in his personal capacity.We get into the forces reshaping the global economy and what they mean for a small island nation trying to recover from the worst crisis in its history. From resource nationalism and the AI race to the IMF, the civil service, and the affordability crisis squeezing ordinary Sri Lankans — this is an honest, unsparing conversation about why the country keeps making the same mistakes.Chapters:00:00 — Introduction03:00 — What debating teaches you about thinking06:00 — Resource nationalism and the end of free trade14:00 — The AI disruption debate: growth for whom?24:00 — Why developing economies are being left behind30:00 — The IMF: necessary medicine or double-edged sword?40:00 — The real problem with Sri Lankan governance50:00 — Politicized civil service and the cost of bad hiring60:00 — Customs, red tape, and why nobody wants to build here68:00 — The affordability crisis and the road to growthFollow Circa and subscribe so you don't miss an episode.📩 Subscribe to PEST on Substack: https://vipuleshthiyagarajah.substack.com🌐 Website: https://vipuleshthiyagarajah.com🔗 All links: https://linkin.bio/vipulesh#SriLanka #Economics #IMF #ResourceNationalism #Geopolitics #Podcast #SriLankaEconomy #SouthAsia #Trade #AI #PoliticalEconomy #Colombo #Governance #EmergingMarkets #CircaPodcast

The human body is the last great frontier of human technology. In this episode of Circa, host Vipulesh sits down with Tony Medrano—a tech founder, biohacker, Ironman athlete, and MBA—who treats his own body like an engineering problem to be solved. Tony shares how he maintains a high-performance lifestyle at 55, holding down a CEO role while completing grueling 16-hour Ironman triathlons. We unpack the massive shifts happening in the health tech market, why Google's Fitbit Air poses a critical threat to Whoop's IPO and business model, and the psychological downsides of over-optimizing your lifestyle. Tony breaks down a realistic, accessible 80/20 rule for supplements, why relationships trump extreme anti-aging routines, and his rules for building and exiting multi-million dollar companies without breaking your health.If you want to understand the future of health technology, the reality behind the peptide boom, and how to build a sustainable longevity plan, this conversation is for you.✨ Learn more about Tony's work and find free wellness resources at longevityplan.ai 📌 CHAPTERS / TIMESTAMPS:00:00 - Introduction & Tony Medrano’s Background02:44 - The Wearables Explosion: Taking Charge of Personal Health04:48 - Wearable Tech War: Is Google's Fitbit Air a WHOOP Killer?07:00 - The Shift from Subscription SaaS Models to Hardware11:15 - Biohacking vs. Common Sense: Unpacking Brian Johnson's Extreme Longevity13:58 - The Harvard Happiness Study: Relationships over Longevity Routines15:54 - The 80/20 Rule of Supplements: What You Actually NeedConnect with Us: All Links → https://linkin.bio/vipulesh🎙️ Listen to Circa on Spotify & Apple PodcastsYoutube → https://www.youtube.com/@CircaPodApple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/lk/podcast...Spotify → https://creators.spotify.com/pod/prof...---📖 **Read**Substack (P.E.S.T.) → https://vipuleshthiyagarajah.substack...Medium → https://medium.com/@vipulesh123Website & Blog → https://vipuleshthiyagarajah.com---📚 **My Book — Sonder: An Existential Manifesto**Amazon → https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DB2RQYNL---All Links → https://linkin.bio/vipulesh#health #podcast #viral #peptides #weightloss #ironman #marathon #athlete #harvard #stanforduniversity #mba #business #ozempic #ai #news #fitness

One company. JP Morgan acquisition. 100+ Sri Lankan millionaires in the making. Chalinda Abeykoon is the Managing Partner of nVentures — the first Singapore-regulated VC fund built to back founders from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and the tier-two cities of South and Southeast Asia that most investors can't even find on a map.He built Sri Lanka's first post-war startup incubator after graduating into the 2008 financial crisis. He went to Oxford on the Chevening scholarship. And his portfolio just had a company acquired by JP Morgan — bigger than any Sri Lankan startup exit before it.In this episode we get into:→ Why Chalinda stayed in Sri Lanka when everyone else left — and what that did to his risk tolerance→ The real story behind WealthOS being absorbed into JP Morgan's international consumer banking division→ Why he invests in "boring" B2B fintech — and why that's the point→ AI wiping out Chegg, destroying SaaS seat models, and what founders actually need to do about it→ Brain drain as a feature, not a bug — and why he's pro leaving Sri Lanka→ The trains vs. the rails: why everyone's building the wrong thing in the AI race→ What it takes to get a founder to unicorn statusThis is Circa — conversations at the edge of what's possible.─────────────────────────────────────🎙️ CIRCA is hosted by Vipulesh Thiyagarajah — entrepreneur, author of Sonder, Executive Director at Taian Lanka Steel, and Co-Founder of Getwin Group.─────────────────────────────────────📌 TIMESTAMPS00:00 — Introductionxx:xx — Building after a war and a financial crisisxx:xx — Why Singapore? The nVentures origin storyxx:xx — WealthOS × JP Morgan — what we can actually sayxx:xx — "Boring" B2B fintech and why it winsxx:xx — Chegg is dead. Is SaaS next?xx:xx — AI replacing people — who actually gets wiped outxx:xx — Brain drain: why leaving might be the best thing for Sri Lankaxx:xx — What gets a founder to unicorn status─────────────────────────────────────📲 FOLLOW CIRCA**********All Links → https://linkin.bio/vipulesh— new episode every Sunday.🎙️ **Listen to Circa Z**Youtube → https://www.youtube.com/@CircaPodApple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/lk/podcast/circa/id1552622208Spotify → https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/circa-z/---📖 **Read**Substack (P.E.S.T.) → https://vipuleshthiyagarajah.substack.comMedium → https://medium.com/@vipulesh123Website & Blog → https://vipuleshthiyagarajah.com---📚 **My Book — Sonder: An Existential Manifesto**Amazon → https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DB2RQYNL---LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/vthiyagarajahLinkedIn Newsletter: Subscribe on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7454097282641158144All Links → https://linkin.bio/vipulesh---*© Vipulesh Thiyagarajah. All rights reserved.*

In this episode, I sit down with Kusum Wijetilika—political commentator and SJB working committee member—to dissect the systemic rot inside the global financial architecture.

From the "spoofing" of the Sri Lankan Treasury to the geopolitical earthquake of the UAE leaving OPEC, we use Ray Dalio’s "Big Cycle" framework to explain why the world feels so volatile in 2026.

All Links → https://linkin.bio/vipulesh

Topics covered in this episode:

✅ 00:00 – Intro: The intersection of Finance, Media, and Politics.

✅ 05:22 – Treasury Fraud: Was it a hack or just pure incompetence?

✅ 11:00 – The NDB Scandal: How 13 billion rupees went missing for 18 months.

✅ 29:17 – Real Estate Crisis: Why Colombo is now the hardest city to buy a home in globally.

✅ 52:19 – Ray Dalio’s Big Cycle: Are we in the "Debt Death Spiral"?

✅ 01:00:19 – Tariffs & Inflation: Is the U.S. restructuring or just desperate?

✅ 01:28:10 – The Iran War: Oil at $117 and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

✅ 01:43:00 – Resource Nationalism: What the UAE’s exit from OPEC means for you.

All Links → https://linkin.bio/vipulesh— new episode every Tuesday.

🎙️ **Listen to Circa Z**Youtube →

https://www.youtube.com/@CircaPod

Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/lk/podcast/circa/id1552622208

Spotify → https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/circa-z/

📖 **Read**Substack (P.E.S.T.) → https://vipuleshthiyagarajah.substack.comMedium → https://medium.com/@vipulesh123Website & Blog → https://vipuleshthiyagarajah.com

📚 **My Book — Sonder: An Existential Manifesto**

Amazon → https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DB2RQYNL

All Links → https://linkin.bio/vipulesh

---*© Vipulesh Thiyagarajah. All rights reserved.*

Circa By Vipulesh Thiyagarajah.

On this weeks episode:

Raveen Kariyawasam went from a Sri Lankan school kid to a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, a Wharton graduate, and a two-time Y Combinator founder who has raised Millions in Silicon Valley.

In this episode, he sits down with Vipulesh Thiyagarajah for a wide-ranging, unfiltered conversation about what it actually takes to build at the frontier. They cover: firing an entire engineering team and replacing them with AI agents, why the real moat in today's AI landscape isn't your model — it's your taste, the "wrapper" debate and why calling something a GPT wrapper is a sign you don't understand the market, what AI job displacement actually looks like from the inside (it's not the workers you think), the quantum computing encryption crisis that could expose every bank, government, and crypto wallet within a decade.

Plus: Gary Tan's "boil the lake" framework, context rot in LLMs, AI guardrails and the Heretic repo, robotics timelines, and why storytelling has replaced engineering talent as the new startup moat.

Raveen Kariyawasam is the co-founder of a YC-backed robotics AI startup focused on communication layer optimisation for robotic systems, previously co-founder of a deep research AI agent company (before OpenAI's Deep Research), Oxford MSc, Penn + Wharton dual degree.

Topics: AI agents, YC, Y Combinator, startup founding, Silicon Valley, immigration, Rhodes Scholar, quantum computing, encryption, robotics, AI job displacement, LLMs, Claude, Anthropic, OpenAI, deep research, AI wrappers, founder storytelling.

Five years ago, this conversation hit #1 on Apple Podcasts in Sri Lanka. We're back. 

Wimarshana Wijesooriya — philosopher, author of Modern Heresy, and the man who introduced me to philosophy at seventeen — returns for the Circa Z relaunch. Two and a half hours on the ideas that actually matter. 

We get into René Girard's mimetic theory and why your desires probably aren't yours. How mimetic rivalry produces scapegoats — and why cancel culture is just us ritually hanging Louis XIV. The Harvard Grant Study's 75-year answer to what actually makes a good life. Why late-stage capitalism functions exactly like a religion, complete with its own clergy and confession booth. And why this age is not intellectually superior to any that came before it. 

Closing with Oscar Wilde: "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." Find Circa Z on https://linkin.bio/vipulesh

Exploring Plato's Cave and the crucial act of questioning the world around us.

The following post is an exploration of a passage from my book, "Sonder: An Existential Manifesto," and honestly, it’s one of those concepts that keeps popping back into my head, no matter what I’m doing.

Why You’ll Never Be Happy — and Why That’s Exactly the Point.

The ideas explored in this essay are drawn from a chapter I originally wrote for my book, Sonder: An Existential Manifesto (2024). The book dives deep into the hidden patterns of our modern condition — tracing how history, identity, and meaning interlace in our lives. What follows is a distilled meditation from that chapter, adapted for Substack. If you find resonance here, you might enjoy the broader philosophical arc the book attempts to draw.

https://vipuleshthiyagarajah.com/novel

 Vipulesh Thiyagarajah
Author of "Sonder: An Existential Manifesto"

Triple Triumph: Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds' Fairytale Rise from Non-League to the Championship

Inside the Veblen good that every luxury house envies.