The Point Blank Show

Gregory Zukerman writes for the Wall Street Journal. Over the last few decades he has written several books. In 2019 he wrote "The Man Who solved the market: How Jim Simons Launched The Quant Revolution" which became a runaway hit. It tells the story of a genius mathematician who used modern quantitative techniques to make money for himself and his investors. Since 1988 one of the fund’s operated by Mr Simons generated average annual returns of 66%. Legendary investors like Warren Buffet, George Soros and Peter Lynch, too, cannot claim to have made these outsized profits with such consistency. How did Mr Simons go about his business? How did he manage a stellar team while keeping them movitated? How did he use machine learning, artificial intelligence, data and analytics in an era when these terms were unheard of in the industry? Gregory Zukerman explains it all in this podcast.

Alex Duff talks about how Brentford football club used data and analytics to improve and retain its spot in the English Premier League. His book, "Smart Money: The Fall and Rise of Brentford" is a fascinating account of how the club instilled new values and respected number crunching to make key decisions on deciding plays on the field and in the transfer market.

Ananyo Bhattacharya's "The Man from the Future: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann" is a fascinating book about the Hungarian-American mathematician. It's a shame that most of us know little about the man. Dr Bhattacharya digs deep into the mathematician's early days and how he went on to have a lasting impact in different fields including nanotechnology, game theory, artificial intelligence and quantum physics.

In this podcast Prof Dennis Yi Tenen, a software engineer turned literary scholar, leans on history of computer programming to tell modern tales of Artificial Intelligence. How did robots learn to write so quickly? Is it a good thing? Do technologies like ChatGPT make us lazy? Not quite, says Prof Tenen. He argues that such advances do not diminish our capacity to think. It may just make us better writers, on an average. Previously machines learned from human outputs but now they learn from machine outputs. What does this mean for us? He believes AI is neither Jesus nor a Terminator-like force as long as both the makers and users use it responsibly.

In February this year Facebook celebrated its 20th birthday. Tom Wainwright, tech and media editor of The Economist has written a brilliant cover story on the company's evolution since it began in a dorm room at Harvard. With a market capitalisation of $1.2trn and 3bn users, Facebook operates in a new social media order. Tom writes that "public posting is increasingly migrating to closed groups, rather like email. What Mr Zuckerberg calls the digital “town square” is being rebuilt—and posing problems." How is the outfit grappling with these changes? Over the years it has mastered the art (and science by relying on data) of cloning features and sometimes copying competition while managing to stay relevant. What does the future hold for the behemoth? How is Artificial Intelligence changing the industry? Tom covers a lot of ground in the podcast.

Do nice guys finish last? Not quite. David Bodani’s brilliant book, “The Art of Fairness:The Power of Decency in a World Turned Mean” is filled with anecdotes of leaders from various fields who may have been fair and firm to get the job done but never mean or condescending. In this podcast David shares some of his thoughts on why it might be worth emulating the Satya Nadellas of the world instead of the Steve Ballmers. Drawing from examples on the sports ground to battlefields, David makes a convincing argument that you can indeed succeed without being a jerk.

The cryptosphere is, well, cryptic. Even the best of the best find it hard to explain the whole thing without fumbling. Zeke Faux has managed to put it all together in his fascinating book, "Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall". Zeke planted himself within the crypto-mad community to learn more about the trade. He has interviewed Sam Bankman-Fried, among others, to understand what the biggies were up to. Incidentally, "Number Go Up" was referenced a few times during the former crypto king's recent trial where he was charged with multiple counts of fraud. To research the wider consequences, Zeke visited Cambodia to uncover the underbelly of the industry where people are being held captive or trafficked. We are yet to see a solid application of the technology that powers cryto. When that will be is anybody's guess. Until then, if there is one book that you should read to understand where we stand so far, read this one.

We spend almost a third of our lives sleeping. Give or take. And yet until fifty years ago, scientists didn’t know much about sleep. Kenneth Miller shines a spotlight on the subject in his fabulous book, Mapping the Darkness: The Visionary Scientists Who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep. Why do we sleep and why is it important that we get enough of it? What happens when we don’t? Who are those scientists whom we owe some amount of gratitude for helping us understand something that can literally be a matter of life and death? In this podcast Mr Miller, relying on years of research, takes a crack at explaining what was an esoteric topic not too long ago.

In this podcast, Daniel Knowles reflects upon a world with fewer cars. The use of a car becomes less effective once everyone has got one. Anyone who has been stuck for hours in Mumbai or New York traffic should know. Are electric cars a solution? What can we learn from places like Singapore, Tokyo, Amsterdam and London? It is reassuring that most of these cities made amends over the course of many decades. Today, the younger folk in some Western countries prefer taking the public transport wherever possible. But there is still a long way to go.

Kiran Verma has pledged to walk a staggering 21,000 km across India to raise awareness around blood donation in the country. His NGO, Simply Blood, world's first virtual blood donation platform, connects donors and seekers in real time. In this podcast Kiran talks about what got him to quit his day job and pursue his cause. "Nobody should die waiting for blood", he says. Many believed him to be crazy at first. Today, with over 15,300 km across 16 states, his walk has prompted officials to change things on ground. Thus far 26,252 people have donated blood to support his walk at 123 blood donation camps. "You have to be a little crazy if you wish to change the world".