Indicast #236: How prodigies work

Rishi Rajpopat, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge solved a 3,500 year old Sanskrit puzzle. We scratched our heads to understand how folks like him and Pragg, the teenage chess sensation, who recently won the Arjuna award, function. And in sports, Argentina wins the world cup.

The World Cup is round the corner. The world's biggest spectacle is also mired with controversies, some of which we talk about in this episode. A village in Sangli, western Maharashtra goes offline for a couple of hours daily in the quest for a digital detox and in international news, more than 150 people perish in Seoul in a crowd crush.

As 2022 drew to a close, another sporting legend passed away. We pay a small tribute to Pele who brought football to millions of homes and made it the beautiful game we know of and grew up to. Closer home in India Mukesh Ambani just completed 20 years as the boss of the Reliance empire. And internationally, Elon Musk just lost $200bn along with a few of his peers including one Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, a crypto exchange which went bankrupt in November. The madness has only begun as has 2023 and we wish you a great year ahead.

RB Ramesh started coaching when he was just 22 years old. His training institute "Chess Gurukul" has spawned champions who have brought over 100 medals for India in various competitions. Just last year his student, Praggnanandhaa or Pragg became the youngest player to defeat Magnus Carlsen, a giant of the game. In this podcast RB Ramesh talks about his experience of teaching folks from across different generations. What separates world beaters from the rest? How much of it all is psychological? How does he help his students deal with stress during big competitions? Did he have any superstitions during his playing career? And lots more.

After a year-long nap, we are back to cover some familiar ground by talking a bit about the ongoing ICC T20 Men's Cricket World Cup. Zimbabwe and India pulled off improbable wins in the tournament. Whereas players get cracking on the field, viewers place their bets on a number of gambling apps, a rather big business in India. So big that a few agricultural workers in Gujarat recently duped Russian gamblers by accepting bets on a fake contest that mimicked the IPL. And in international news, Britain gets a new prime minister in Rishi Sunak. We talk about British politics, which is in a shambles.

As Covid-19 ravages China, many countries, including India, brace themselves and start taking adequate measures. Whereas the death toll from covid may not be as high as before, Indians in the country continue to find other oddly terrifying ways to die. In related news a report reckons that the most dangerous time to drive on the road is between 6 to 9 in the evening. And since everyone and their cousins are talking about ChatGPT, we thought we may blabber about it as well. What do you make of the newfangled chatbot?

Few people have had more access to Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s charismatic founder, than Stephen Witt. In his book "The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip", Witt traces the company’s three-decade journey under the leadership of a man he describes as sometimes “neurotic”, a founder who, despite being at the top of his game, constantly fears going out of business. And yet, his team remains fiercely loyal. He rarely fires those who face his ire. So how does he lead a company in an industry where every few years the technology is upended and replaced by something entirely new? And how does he stay grounded while working relentless hours? Stephen spoke to hundreds of people to find the answers, many of which he shares in his book and in this podcast.

Why do humans go to war? Is peace ever truly possible? In this podcast historian of the Second World War and expert on totalitarian regimes and military conflict joins us to talk about his latest book, "Why War?". Drawing on decades of research, Prof Overy talks about organized violence from prehistoric times to modern state conflicts. He explains how war has evolved and what drives it and how leaders can use provocative language to brainwash their people before invading another country. What we can learn from nations, including India, that have managed to avert a full-scale war despite decades of conflicts with their neighbouring countries? Despite all the grim violence around us in Gaza and Ukraine, Prof Overy remains hopeful and says that fears of a third world war may be overblown.

Charlie English is the author of "The CIA Book Club: The Best Kept Secret of the Cold War". In this episode he talks about a little-known chapter in Cold War history where the CIA smuggled banned books into the Eastern Bloc in an effort to challenge communist ideology. Charlie shares how the CIA ran this literary operation for over three decades, why even detective novels had political weight in Soviet-ruled countries, and what it meant to grow up under state censorship so tight you needed permission to buy a sheet of paper.

Ludwig Siegele, senior editor AI Initiatives at The Economist talks about how Chinese AI companies like DeepSeek and Alibaba are disrupting the status quo. They are building high-performing models at lower costs and releasing some of them as open source. How did they manage to pull this off and what does this mean for the global AI race? Ludwig joined The Economist as a US technology correspondent in 1998 and has covered the Silicon Valley since the Internet, as we know it, was born.