Podcasts - 2024

In 2024, I tried in small ways to “quantify my life”. Logging activities with Strava, books using Goodreads, songs in Spotify, good articles read manually. Not fully successful. Hope to make an app for myself someday to make it easier and instant, along with some notes or learnings. One such was podcasts. After experimenting Google Podcasts and Spotify, I am using AntennaPod app since last couple of years since it had playing history and it has only podcasts with no other distraction. I have subscribed to a few, scan the new episodes once in a while, add some to the queue and listen to it during commute, daily walk or house chores. I listen at 1.5x speed which is now comfortable speed for all accents.

I recently discovered that Youtube videos can be converted to podcasts. NotebookLLM from Google seem to be exploding now that can convert anything (articles, research papers etc) to podcasts.

I lost some of my listening history in August when my phone crashed. Apart from that listened to 90 podcasts. Top one was Lenny’s Podcast which is all things Product development. Others were – The Seen and the Unseen (long conversations with interesting people in India, but it is getting longer and longer), Invest like the best (I don’t listen for investment related ones, but for some good conversations), The Tim Ferris Show (again some interesting interviews or conversations), Infinite Loops, How I write (writing advice, some interesting conversations with good authors), Dwarkesh podcast (with some AI founders, historians).

Few episodes that I liked, if someone wants starting points.

1. What differentiates the highest-performing product teams | John Cutler (Amplitude, The Beautiful Mess)

2. The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG)

3. Build better products with continuous product discovery | Teresa Torres

4. The ultimate guide to OKRs | Christina Wodtke (Stanford)

5. Developer Experience is a Critical Issue for Organisations Today

6. Dare to Dissent (from NPR, good stories about dissent. When entire world is silent, how people find courage to speak up despite the risks)

7. Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott (for going from “being nice” to “being kind”)

8. Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt (author of one of the Strategy books. It is great to listen to the authors of the books we read.)

9. Freakonomics : The Curious Mr. Feynman (stories about the maverick scientist)

10. Radiolab - Stochasticity (Original GOAT for me – Radiolab in its early days was the one that introduced podcasts to me. This one about randomness.)

11. Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Robert Greene (again, listening to an author. Of “48 laws of power”)

12. Amor Towles: The Secret to Telling a Great Story (one more author, of one of the best novels I read in last few years, “A Gentleman in Moscow”)

13. Claire Hughes Johnson, Building Stripe from 160 to 6,000+ Employees — How to Take Radical Ownership of Your Life and Career (#724) (she wrote the book “Scaling People”)

14. Cyan Banister - Investing for a Higher Purpose (apart from investing side of it, some crazy stories from one’s life)

15. Sarah C. M. Paine - WW2, Taiwan, Ukraine, & Maritime vs Continental Powers (history and world today)

16. Product management theater | Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group)

17. Visakan Veerasamy — Expanding Our Possibility-Space (EP. 210)

18. Interview with Benjamin Labatut, Author of When We Cease to Understand the World (one more author, of “When we cease to understand the world”)

19. Opinion | How to Discover Your Own Taste - The New York Times (nytimes.com) (Taste is something I read quite a bit about in 2024, this was a good podcast on the subject)

20. The Agent Era - Colossus (on upcoming Agentic AI)

Articles read - 2024

I had been cataloguing long articles that I read. Below were some of the best that I read in 2024.

1. The Magic Loop - A framework for rapid career growth – doing your current job well, asking what you can do to help further

2. The end of 0% interest rates: what it means for tech startups and the industry – there was a low interest rate period where lot of hiring and spending happened and interest rate hikes changing spending behavior and team compositions

3. The Pyramid Principle – came across this in different forms this year. How to answer a question – direct answer, summarize the arguments, detail if necessary. Not the other way around.

4. How will you measure your life? – to re-read once in a while. To value family, relationships and community. “It’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time.“

5. The brand called you – again a classic to re-read. How to stand out.

6. Power laws in culture – few mega hits, and very very long tail. It is all a network effect.

7. An app can be a home-cooked meal – creating software just for us, for a small group to use, like home cooked meals. This may happen more in future, with Generative AI.

8. The State of the Culture, 2024 - heading towards distraction, addiction and dopamine nation

9. We Are What We Remember - remembering self vs experiencing self, fickleness of memories, journaling

10. How to remember everything forever-ish, Augmenting long term memory – about “spaced repetition” to remember what we learn

11. What I think about when I edit – good article on writing and editing

12. ‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything (ft.com) - companies are stopping to care about users, business and moving to maximize shareholder value. No fear of competition, regulation, self help (users finding alternate workarounds) or workers.

13. Enterprise cloud costs spiral despite FinOps adoption, report finds | CIO Dive - Cloud costs are balloooning

14. Benevolent sexism: a feminist comic explains how it holds women back | Comics and graphic novels | The Guardian - gut punch to read and realize. Don’t treat women like fragile creatures that must be protected. Gallantry, putting them in a pedestal, limiting them to tasks that are womanly or needing a women's touch.

15. Innerring - CS Lewis Society of California - know that there are inner rings in any group and we have yearning to enter that and it sometimes compromises our principles. Instead focus on the craft and form natural groups not to exclude others, but for the pure enjoyment of the group of friends.

16. Corporate Ozempic | No Mercy / No Malice (profgalloway.com) - Jobs are being cut year on year, slated for 270k jobs in 2024. But it is said it is not because of AI. But AI is reducing the appetite to hire more. And the companies to reducing people and still being more profitable - which maybe cutting the extra fat hired during pandemic years. Like Ozempic drug reducing the craving for food, AI is reducing the craving for hiring more people to grow.

17. The art of letting-go- Jeyamohan | Unified Wisdom - renunciation as a path of life

18. Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey? (hbr.org) – absolute best article about delegation. When someone talks to you, don’t let the monkey on their back jump on to your back, for you to carry around.

19. Calvin and Hobbes at Martijn's - Bill Watterson (mit.edu) – re-read once in a while for motivation

20. Reality has surprising amount of detail – brilliant writing. “if you wish to not get stuck, seek to perceive what you have not yet perceived.”

21. Notes on Taste – one of the most important reads in 2024. In the age of abundance (with AI), taste and judgment will become important.

22. Story Points are Pointless, Measure Queues | Brightball – why story points are not the right measure for productivity

23. A New Theory of Distraction | The New Yorker - sense of self - our random thoughts. Struggle for autonomy. Distraction vs Attention.

24. Algorithms we develop software by - write everything twice - gets to better solutions.

25. reflections on palantir - Nabeel S. Qureshi (nabeelqu.co) - A new way to think about how to do product development, talent development

26. Life Lessons from the First Half-Century of My Career – Communications of the ACM – a good list to do a self assessment

27. AI: A Means to an End or a Means to Our End? (substack.com) – beautiful writing, about possible ways to thinking about impact of AI

28. Quit Your Job (palladiummag.com) – read a lot about “Pathless Path” in 2024. How I wish.

29. How We Do the Small Things - by Amit Varma – daily habits matters

30. Are you serious? - by visakan veerasamy – inspiring stories

31. The OODA Loop: How Fighter Pilots Make Fast and Accurate Decisions - Observe, Orient, Decide, Act

32. Technology is the Problem - Shyam Sankar - Cargo cult companies are destroying value

Books read - 2024

I read 16 books in 2024, against a target of 30 which I hadn’t met for the last three years. I wanted to read 50-50 fiction and nonfiction, but couldn’t meet that too. I am also trying to diversify away from books written by American or British authors, partially successful in that – with some Japanese, Irish, Canadian, Malayalam and a Chilean author this time. Hoping to do better in 2025.

What you are looking for is in the library – Michiko Aoyama (5 / 5) : Japanese translation. A story of bibliotherapy, told well. Language was a bit bland, not sure if it is due to translation. But stories of right books giving answers to people for their difficult situations felt good. Whether it is to get out of a rat race, having parallel careers (a passion project and something that sustains life) etc.

Before the coffee gets cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi (5 / 5) : Japanese translation. Enjoyed this read. Was in my list for long, but knowing the plot, hesitated to pick up. But it turned out to be a good story. About people getting a chance to go back in time and maybe get closure on things that were left unsaid, unresolved.  

Small things like these – Claire Keegan (5 / 5) : Irish. Short book, but hits hard. About someone who stands up against great odds, to have that kind of moral courage. Told in a minimalistic way.

Intermezzo – Sally Rooney (5 / 5) : Irish. One of the authors that I am reading everything they write. Even though in this case, I resolve each time not to read more of her, having had enough of the troubles of Irish youngsters. But still it was a good read, I wanted some contemporary fiction. This was the book release event of the year, so much hype about a book release.

The Sampoorna kodakarapuranam – Sajeev Edathadan (4 / 5) : Malayalam. Set of stories. From the facebook era of good quirky, funny writers who wrote about the “nostalgic memories” and epic fails. Funny stories about the goodness of Kerala small town folks. How people remember so many details.

I came up on a lighthouse – Shantanu Naidu (5 / 5) : India / English. Read it in one go on the day Ratan Tata passed away, late into the night. Liked the writing. While I had seen some social media stories, I had ignored it thinking yet another PR, made-for-social-media stories. But it read like a fairy tale and a glimpse into the (later) life and ways of thinking of a great businessman. I took away some lessons.

The Glass Hotel – Emily St.John Mandel (4 / 5): Canadian. Another of the authors whose every book I am trying to read. After reading Station Eleven which is still her best. This one underwhelmed.

The 48 Laws of Power – Robert Greene (5 / 5) : Non fiction. It took a long time to finish. Tough read. Like the book written for a devil. How people acquire, retain, use power. Dark arts. But I think it is worthwhile reading, to know and not to be subjected to some of the same dark arts. We tend to recognize some of the games people play after reading this and it looks so obvious.

When we cease to understand the world – Benjamin Labatut (5 / 5) : Chile. Hard to say if it is fiction or nonfiction. It is a mixed genre. Of fiction, science, biography, philosophy. When it is mixed like this, one doesn’t know what is fact and what is fiction, it is unnerving. But still, fascinating to read how when the human mind reaches the edges of knowledge, it starts to lose its grip on reality. I came to buy this book after reading just one paragraph which was outstanding.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin (5 / 5) : American. A story of game developers. A unique background that I hadn’t read before. Enjoyable read.

Thinking in Systems: A Primer – Donella Meadows (5 / 5) : Non fiction. It was pending in my list for long. Must read for understanding the tools for systems thinking. A bible for the field.  

Tharakan’s Grandhavari – Benyamin (3 / 5) : Malayalam. An experiment of a novel that can be read from anywhere, each print starting somewhere else and in random order, making out the pieces of the puzzle as it goes. Good idea, but was frustrating.

The Song of Achilles – Madeline Miller (4 / 5) : American, but a retelling of Greek story. Historical fiction, fantasy. I hadn’t read any like this before, hence a good experience.

The Covenant of Water – Abraham Varghese (5 / 5) : American, but born in Ethiopia, to parents from Kerala. This book was on Obama's 2023 list. Surprisingly the story was based in my own town. It turned tragic at places and too long, but a good read.

Lessons in Chemistry – Bonnie Garmus (5 / 5) : American. Unique premise of a Chemist turned cooking show host. Enjoyable read.

Yellowface – R.F. Kuang (4 / 5) : American. Set in the world of the publishing industry, so sort of an inside job. Tragic story.