Half A Thought

In this episode, Ali and Abhi catch up with each other after a long time and share thoughts on life, productivity, lessons learned from college, and the way forward. Tune in for an exciting, casual chat. 

Sleep-like states have been defined in a wide range of animal taxa yet its fundamental function and regulation remains a mystery. To answer this question, Ali has been doing research for the past 3 years attempting to find the origin of sleep through one of the most primitive organisms known: the jellyfish. From understanding behavior to looking to molecular mechanisms, he shares the results he has found and where the future is for understanding sleep. 

The United States Healthcare system is unlike that of any other. While you may think that the richest country would have the best quality of care for its citizens, think again. With inequities through all social determinants of health, hear about the current problems we face in healthcare and the potential alternatives we can consider. 

Most of the time, we base our priorities on deadlines.  What happens when we don't have deadlines, what method do we use to prioritize tasks? The answer is in dependencies. This episode describes why dependencies are important and how even when prioritization fails, what support system we have in place to make priorities again. 

In this episode, Abhi talks about Sherlock and what we can learn from him. From A Study In Scarlet to why Sherlock is neither an expert nor a generalist to how Sherlock is guided by his gyroscope (and not compass), Abhi takes you through the journey of Sherlock's greatness. 

Ali has grown up in Silicon Valley all his life. His schooling and upbringing have been surrounded by an environment of constant growth, innovation, and technological development. Yet it wasn't until 2 weeks ago that he began to recognize problems he didn't see. What is income inequality and why is it important for the future of the San Francisco Bay Area?

In this longform episode, we talk all things media. With the rise of TikTok, the GameStop saga,  the influencer economy, and Clubhouse, we begin with understanding how we got here. The publishing bubble, the old and physical media, and information asymmetries of the past. 

Then came the Internet, which changed everything. Distribution, physical media's monopoly, was suddenly eaten up by the Internet. Multitemporality was the new norm. Here, we talk of media consolidation, shared experiences, Disney, and Buzzfeed.

The future will lead us into a Metaverse of sorts. What does that look like? Where are we headed? How does traditional media change because of new-age media? 

Tune in to listen to this rather comprehensive take on the past, present, and future of media.

History, history, history. A classic joke amongst history students is that history repeats itself; I hope that makes sense now. But also similarly important is because of this fact is we can use history as an accurate predictor for the future. With Ali reliving some past experiences, he thinks about how this dictates his future decisions. 

In this chat, Sid and I talk about thinking in systems, reading, setting deadlines (with caffeine), using primitive note-taking systems, and advice you should not take. (Hint: Don't build in public.) 

Sidhartha Jha is the writer of the weekly newsletter 'Sid's Sunday Snapshots', that talks about books, tech, psychology, and Chicago. It's a snapshot of his thoughts for the past week, and it's amazing. Check it out here: https://sss.substack.com/

A short inbetween-isode in coming of something big, Ali briefly talks about what happened about GameStop and the large wealth gap between those at hedge funds and those on Reddit.