Indicast #252: The solar eclipse saga

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.

How does it feel to witness a solar eclipse? Aditya tells us his experience in this podcast where we dig into trivia and history of this beautiful astronomical phenomenon. Bangalore faces a water crisis. How can a country as big as India deal with water shortages? Generative artificial intelligence is and will remain in the spotlight in a year when countries with a collective population of 4bn go to polls.

The Candidates Tournament is among the world’s most recognised Chess contests. This time round India has as many as five grandmasters competing for the top prize. That’s a big deal given that for around 30 years, it was Vishy Anand, the sole Indian grandmaster who represented India. In politics, “washing machine” trended for a while on Twitter in the context of corruption probes which, the opposition argued, could be washed away if one joined the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. And in business, Tesla scouts sites in India for a big plant. What does that mean for the giant and for the country?

Florida just passed a bill proposing to ban access to social media for kids under the age of 14. What does social media addiction do to our brains? We talk about the subject which is close to our hearts given that both of us have kids aged ten and five. The great Indian general elections are round the corner. What is the BJP up to? And in the world of cryptosphere, which we barely understand, Sam Bankman-Fried, the former boss of FTX, a defunct cryptocurrency exchange, gets 25 years in jail.

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.

It’s the end of an era. Ameen Sayani recently passed away. His voice lives on. In this podcast we talk a bit about how he started in the radio industry and made a mark for himself across four decades. And he is as humble as they come. Fali Nariman, a doyen of law in India also died. And Open AI recently dropped its text to video model called SORA. What does it mean for all of us?

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.

India's Supreme Court vetoed a scheme that allowed folks to donate to political parties anonymously. Among the more popular vehicles was the electoral bond scheme introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2017. Whereas the BJP figured it might make the whole thing more transparent by doing away with cash donations, critics retorted that it made the process more opaque. In business, Paytm is in big trouble after the Reserve Bank of India ordered the outfit's payments bank to wind down operations in light of "persistent non-compliance" and "continued material supervisory concerns". And in science, scientists are exploring an idea to stop global warming by sending umbrellas in space to shield the sun's rays.

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.