Please Watch My New YouTube Show

It's called Everything is Everything. My co-host is Ajay Shah

As I often say, channeling Walt Whitman, we contain multitudes. In some domains, I am productive — like my weekly longform podcast, The Seen and the Unseen. In others, I am not — like this very newsletter, gentle readers so let down by my procrastinating self.

Some of it is because of a scarcity of time — though one definition of productivity could be the management of that scarcity. But most of it is because I am just a lazy half-Bong, always happy to chill for one more minute before I finally get to work. Bullet chess, here I come.

So I’m delighted that I’ve finally managed to kickstart a project I planned ages ago. Everything is Everything is a YouTube podcast I am doing with my friend Ajay Shah. It will release every Friday, and it finally has momentum. Here is episode 11, where the subject is… productivity!

The phrase ‘Kaator Re Bhaaji’ comes from a fantastic story Jerry Pinto told me in my epic 8.5-hour-episode with him. You can listen to me tell the story above.

People who have done my writing course would have heard me talk about the tradeoff between ‘getting it done’ and ‘getting it right.’ I believe that when we embark upon a new project, we should not let perfection be the enemy of production. Getting it done is often the way to getting it right. So we are now getting it done — please support us as we kaator re bhaaji and move closer to getting it right.

You can do this by watching, by sharing whatever episode you enjoy, by liking and subscribing. The show is a labour of love, and we would appreciate this!

What is the show about? The origin of the name ‘Everything is Everything’ comes from Bruce Springsteen’s great song, ‘You’re Missing.’ As we explained in episode 2, it is also our way to allude to the interconnectedness of everything. Ajay and I are interested in multiple fields, and try to use the frames we pick up along the way and apply them to everything. So the show won’t just be about economic policy, as one might expect from an economist of Ajay’s standing, but about anything that catches our fancy — from the profound to the profane.

Here are some episodes you may like. In episode 9, I spoke about all I have learnt about food and nutrition — and how I reversed my Type 2 Diabetes:

In episode 5, Ajay spoke at length about his hero, Oppenheimer. This was before the film released, and none of us had seen it yet. One viewer later wrote in to say he preferred our episode to the film! Be that as it may, I found it deeply moving:

In the episode right after this, I spoke about two of my heroes, Frédéric Bastiat and Friedrich Hayek. The two greatest Freddies of all time! Do watch:

Episode 7 was on Isaac Newton and Mohandas Gandhi. What do the two men have in common? You’ll have to watch to find out!

In episode 10, we looked at India’s economic history and spoke about the importance of freedom. We have short memories, and forget the lessons of history, so Ajay and I felt that this was an important episode to do!

I’d urge you to also check out our introductory episode, our furious argument about AI, our assertion that India has fought extremism in exactly the wrong way, our case for why talent comes in clusters, and our urging you to explore your own multitudes.

And what of this humble newsletter, you ask? Well, my intention has always been to be regular — but as I keep saying of public policy, we must judge based on outcomes, not intentions. If this newsletter was public policy, it would be a failure — but it is a private endeavour that I hope to redeem.

I hope you hear from me here again next week! Please subscribe to make sure that happens.

Also, do check out Everything is Everything. Comin’ at ya every Friday!

Update: I forgot to thank the crew! The brilliant Vartika Singh produces and edits Everything is Everything — basically a one-woman team. Gaurav Chintamani has helped with the sound, and Simahina does the chapter images.