The Seen and the Unseen - hosted by Amit Varma

After a successful career as a banker, he decided to devote himself to making his country better off. Luis Miranda joins Amit Varma in episode 446 of The Seen and the Unseen to discuss banking, India, education, healthcare, parenthood and the joy of working.

(FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.)

Also check out
1. Luis Miranda on LinkedIn, Twitter, ISPP, CCS, Forbes and his own website.
2. The Indian School of Public Policy.
3. Centre for Universal Health Assurance.
4. HDFC Bank 2.0 -- Tamal Bandyopadhyay. 
5. Gautam John is Figuring it Out — Episode 437 of The Seen and the Unseen.
6. Testaments Betrayed — Milan Kundera.
7. The Rooted Cosmopolitanism of Sugata Srinivasaraju — Episode 277 of The Seen and the Unseen.
8. The Case For India -- Will Durant.
9. The Life and Times of Gurcharan Das — Episode 425 of The Seen and the Unseen.
10. Where Has All the Education Gone? — Lant Pritchett.
11. Lant Pritchett Is on Team Prosperity — Episode 379 of The Seen and the Unseen.
12. Fixing Indian Education — Episode 185 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Karthik Muralidharan).
13. A Deep Dive Into Education — Episode 54 of Everything is Everything.
14. Biju Rao Won't Bow to Conventional Wisdom — Episode 392 of The Seen and the Unseen.
15. Can Economics Become More Reflexive? — Vijayendra Rao.
16. Fund Schooling, Not Schools (2007) — Amit Varma.
17. Samaaj, Sarkaar, Bazaar — Rohini Nilekani.
18. Rohini Nilekani Pays It Forward — Episode 317 of The Seen and the Unseen.
19. The Closing of the American Mind -- Allan Bloom.
20. The Armchair Economist -- Steven Landsburg.
21. The Importance of the 1991 Reforms — Episode 237 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan and Ajay Shah).
22. The Life and Times of Montek Singh Ahluwalia — Episode 285 of The Seen and the Unseen.
23. The Forgotten Greatness of PV Narasimha Rao — Episode 283 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vinay Sitapati).
24. Why Freedom Matters -- Episode 10 of Everything is Everything.
25. The Reformers -- Episode 28 of Everything is Everything.
26. The 1991 Project.
27. Indian Liberals.
28. Sixteen Stormy Days — Tripurdaman Singh.
29. The First Assault on Our Constitution — Episode 194 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tripurdaman Singh).
30. Nehru: The Debates that Defined India — Tripurdaman Singh and Adeel Hussain.
31. Nehru's Debates — Episode 262 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tripurdaman Singh and Adeel Hussain).
32. Shruti Rajagopalan's YouTube talk on constitutional amendments.
33. Saving Capitalism From The Capitalists — Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales.
34. India After Gandhi — Ramachandra Guha.
35. Luxury Beliefs.
36. Stay Away From Luxury Beliefs — Episode 46 of Everything is Everything.
37. On Inequality — Harry Frankfurt.
38. India's Problem is Poverty, Not Inequality — Amit Varma.
39. On Bullshit — Harry G Frankfurt.
40. Economic growth is enough and only economic growth is enough — Lant Pritchett with Addison Lewis.
41. Pandemonium in India's Banks — Episode 212 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tamal Bandyopadhyay.)
42. The Innovator's Dilemma — Clayton Christensen.
43. The Evolution of Everything — Matt Ridley.
44. The Evolution of Everything — Episode 96 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Matt Ridley).
45. The Nature of the Firm -- Ronald Coase.
46. Naval Ravikant on the size of a firm.
47. Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities — Alain Bertaud.
48. The Surface Area of Serendipity — Episode 39 of Everything is Everything.
49. The Luck Factor: The Scientific Study of the Lucky Mind -- Richard Wiseman.
50. Fire Bird -- Perumal Murugan.
51. Billion Readers.
52. Factfulness -- Hans Rosling.
53. The Better Angels of Our Nature -- Steven Pinker.
54. The Progress of Humanity -- Episode 101 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Steven Pinker).
55. Capitalisn't -- Podcast by Luigi Zingales and Bethany McLean.
56. Is a River Alive? -- Robert Macfarlane.
57. Black Butterflies -- Priscilla Morris.
58. General Brasstacks -- Probal DasGupta.
59. In Praise of Floods — James C Scott.

This episode is sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader and FutureStack. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off.

Amit Varma runs a course called Life Lessons, which aims to be a launchpad towards learning essential life skills all of you need. For more details, and to sign up, click here.

And have you read Amit's newsletter? It's madly active right now! Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free!

Also check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing.

Episode art: 'Stay Alive' by Simahina.

She's one of the best writers on science today, combining optimism about progress with a realist understanding of the messiness of our world. Saloni Dattani joins Amit Varma in episode 445 of The Seen and the Unseen to discuss science, medicine, data, academia and how to make the world a better place.

(FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.)
 
Also check out:
1. Saloni Dattani at Google Scholar, Twitter, LinkedIn, Our World in Data and Works in Progress.
2. Scientific Discovery -- Saloni Dattani's newsletter.
3. Hard Drugs -- Saloni Dattani's podcast.
4. Saloni's guide to data visualization -- Saloni Dattani.
5. Four charts to understand causes of death across the lifespan -- Saloni Dattani.
6. What I've learnt about writing -- Saloni Dattani.
7. In praise of the Covid superforecasters -- Saloni Dattani.
8. The decline in cancer mortality is about much more than smoking -- Saloni Dattani.
9. Death rates from cardiovascular disease have fallen dramatically — what were the breakthroughs behind this? -- Saloni Dattani.
10. The golden age of vaccine development -- Saloni Dattani.
11. Why we didn't get a malaria vaccine sooner -- Saloni Dattani.
12. The first cancer vaccine -- Transcript of a Hard Drugs episode.
13. Measles vaccines save millions of lives each year -- Saloni Dattani.
14. Why the total fertility rate doesn't necessarily tell us the number of births women eventually have -- Saloni Dattani.
15. The rise in reported maternal mortality rates in the US is largely due to a change in measurement -- Saloni Dattani.
16. How do global statistics on suicide differ between sources? -- Saloni Dattani.
17. How many people die from snakebites? -- Saloni Dattani.
18. The Demographic and Health Surveys brought crucial data for more than 90 countries — without them, we risk darkness -- Saloni Dattani.
19. We don't have to sit back and just watch the horror unfold -- Saloni Dattani.
20. Childhood leukemia: how a deadly cancer became treatable -- Saloni Dattani.
21. Will AI solve medicine? -- Transcript of a Hard Drugs episode.
22. Real peer review has never been tried -- Saloni Dattani.
23. The speed of science -- Saloni Dattani.
24. Medical breakthroughs in 2025 -- Saloni Dattani.
25. Scientific progress is at risk of slowing down. Saloni Dattani is making sure it doesn't. -- Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg.
26. Innovation is not linear -- Jason Crawford.
27. Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech -- Sally Smith Hughes.
28. Missing Markets for Innovation: Evidence from New Uses for Existing Drugs -- Eric Budish, Maya Durvasula, Benjamin Roin and Heidi Williams.
29. The 100% CI.
30. Superforecasting — Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner.
31. How Long Do We Wait for New Inventions? -- Brian Potter.
32. Million Dollar Secret.
33. Woolly mice designed to engineer mammoth-like elephants -- Pallab Ghosh.
34. Age of Invention -- Anton Hause.
35. Million Death Study.
36. Science Fictions -- Stuart Ritchie.
37. Outliers -- Malcolm Gladwell.
38. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen with Rukmini S: 1, 2, 3.
39. Fortress and Frontier in American Health Care — Robert Graboyes.
40. Strong Medicine -- Michael Kremer and Rachel Glennerster.
41. The Practice of Medicine — Episode 229 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Lancelot Pinto).
42. Project Resource Optimization.
43. Giving What We Can.
44. Coefficient Giving.
45. 1493 -- Charles Mann.
46. The Collapse -- Mary Elise Sarotte.
47. How to Survive a Plague -- David France.
48. The Mole.
49. And the Band Played On -- Randy Shilts.

This episode is sponsored by The Six Percent Club. Join them to go from content idea to launch in just 45 days!

Amit Varma runs a course called Life Lessons, which aims to be a launchpad towards learning essential life skills all of you need. For more details, and to sign up, click here.

And have you read Amit's newsletter? Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free!

Also check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing.

Episode art: 'Salonium' by Simahina.

He is best known for writing The Family Man and Farzi, but his journey to being a storyteller was far from smooth. Suman Kumar joins Amit Varma in episode 444 of The Seen and the Unseen to discuss the highs and lows of his life, as well as the craft of writing, directing and telling stories.

(FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.)

Also check out:
1. Suman Kumar on IMDb, Instagram, LinkedIn and his own website.
2. The Family Man -- Season 1 :: Season 2 :: Season 3.
3. Guns and Gulaabs -- Season 1.
4. Farzi -- Season 1.
5. Raghu Thatha -- written and directed by Suman Kumar.
6. Ranga Half-Pants -- Suman Kumar.
7. Scientific Advertising -- Claude Hopkins.
8. The Ghost and the Darkness -- Stephen Hopkins.
9. You've Got Mail -- Nora Ephron.
10. Angrezi Medium -- Homi Adajania. (CHECK)
11. The return of small-town creators on Instagram -- Shephali Bhatt.
12. lifeofpuja on Instagram.
13. Gangs of Wasseypur -- Anurag Kashyap.
14. On Writing -- Stephen King.
15. The Refreshing Audacity of Vinay Singhal — Episode 291 of The Seen and the Unseen.
16. Stage.in.
17. Gopallapurathu Makkal -- K Rajanarayanan (Ki Ra).
18. Madhu Babu and his audiobooks on YouTube.
19. Yandamuri Veerendranath on Amazon and YouTube.
20. Yerramsetty Sai.
21. Ilaiyaraaja on Spotify and YouTube.
22. The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction -- Pritham Chakrabathy and Rakesh Khanna.
23. Advanced History of India -- KA Nilakanta Sastri and G Srinivasachari.
24. Sowmya Dhanaraj Is Making a Difference — Episode 380 of The Seen and the Unseen.
25. Pehla Nasha and More Than Words.
26. The Design of Everyday Things -- Don Norman.
27. Phantoms in the Brain -- VS Ramachandran.
28. The Reith Lectures -- VS Ramachandran.
29. Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale.
30. Aranyer Din Ratri — Satyajit Ray.
31. Days & Night In The Forest -- Sunil Gangopadhyay.
32. Train Dreams (the book) -- Denis Johnson.
33. Train Dreams (the film) -- Clint Bentley.
34. As Good as It Gets -- James L Brooks.
35. Crime and Punishment -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
36. The Vigil Idiot.
37. The Dream Is No More a Dream -- Suman Kumar.
38. Notting Hill -- Roger Michell.
39. All the President's Men -- Alan J Pakula.
40. Hrishikesh Mukherjee on Wikipedia and IMDb.
41. Adolescence — Created by Stephen Graham & Jack Thorne.
42. Oppenheimer -- Christopher Nolan.
43. Tumbbad -- Rahi Anil Barve.
44. Mayasabha -- Rahi Anil Barve.
45. On Film-Making --  Alexander Mackendrick.
46. Maheshinte Prathikaaram -- Dileesh Pothan.
47. Trance -- Anwar Rasheed,
48. Manjummel Boys -- Chidambaram S Poduval.
49. Romancham -- Jithu Madhavan.
50. Jaya Jaya Jaya Jaya Hey -- Vipin Das.
51. Su From So -- JP Thuminad.
52. No Country for Old Men -- The Coen Brothers.
53. The Shawshank Redemption -- Frank Darabont.
54. The Devil's Own -- Alan J Pakula.

This episode is sponsored by The Six Percent Club. Join them to go from content idea to launch in just 45 days!

Amit Varma runs a course called Life Lessons, which aims to be a launchpad towards learning essential life skills all of you need. For more details, and to sign up, click here.

And have you read Amit's newsletter? Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free!

Also check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing.

Episode art: 'Story' by Simahina.

An Indian lawyer in 2000 could not have recognised the legal ecosystem of today. One firm took India marching forward into a new world. Akshay Jaitly joins Amit Varma in episode 443 of The Seen and the Unseen to describe the rise of the firm he founded, Trilegal -- and the lessons he learnt during that journey.

(FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.)

Also check out:
1. Akshay Jaitly on Twitter, Linkedin and Nicheless.
2. Trilegal: The Making of a Modern Indian Law Firm -- Akshay Jaitly.
3. TrustBridge.
4. Climate Change and Our Power Sector — Episode 278 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Akshay Jaitley and Ajay Shah).
5. Blood on the Tracks -- Bob Dylan.
6. The Art of Reading -- Episode 120 of Everything is Everything.
7. Scrivener.
8. The Creative Act -- Rick Rubin.
9. Testaments Betrayed — Milan Kundera.
10. Amicus Curiae: Khaitan & Co is 100 -- Aditi Roy Ghatak.
11. The Broken Script — Swapna Liddle.
12. Swapna Liddle and the Many Shades of Delhi — Episode 367 of The Seen and the Unseen.
13. The Tocqueville Effect.
14. The Age of the Partial Outsider — Janan Ganesh.
15. Rahul Matthan Seeks the Protocol — Episode 360 of The Seen and the Unseen.
16. Privacy 3.0 — Rahul Matthan.
17. Letters To A Young Poet -- Rainer Maria Rilke.
18. Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia -- Sam Dalrymple.
19. A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders -- Jonn Elledge.
20. The Beginning of Infinity -- David Deutsch.
21. The Fabric of Reality -- David Deutsch.
22. A Gentleman in Moscow — Amor Towles. (Also watch the series!)
23. Mobland -- Ronan Bennett.
24. The Diplomat -- Debora Cahn.
25. Fontaines DC, Joy Division, Massive Attack, St Germain, Kruder & Dorfmeister and Tosca on Spotify.
26. Rock en Seine.

Amit Varma runs a course called Life Lessons, which aims to be a launchpad towards learning essential life skills all of you need. For more details, and to sign up, click here.

And have you read Amit's newsletter? It's madly active right now! Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free!

Also check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing.

Episode art: 'Disrupt' by Simahina.

We keep using the terms 'regulation' and 'deregulation' -- and now it's time for a primer. Shruti Rajagopalan joins Amit Varma in episode 442 of The Seen and the Unseen go discuss first principles AND get into the weeds. What is regulation? When do we need it? When do we not? What's India's journey been like? And finally, why is deregulation both important and difficult?

(FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.)

Also check out
1. Shruti Rajagopalan on Twitter, Substack, Instagram, her podcast, Ideas of India and her own website.
2. Emergent Ventures India, which is run by Shruti.
3. The 1991 Project.
4. Shruti Rajagopalan Remembers the Angle of the Light -- Episode 410 of The Seen and the Unseen.
5. The Importance of the 1991 Reforms — Episode 237 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan and Ajay Shah).
6. Shruti Rajagopalan Dives Into Delimitation -- Episode 336 of The Seen and the Unseen.
7. All past episodes of The Seen and the Unseen w Shruti Rajagopalan, in reverse chronological order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21.
8. Urinal regulation in the Factories Act, 1948.
9. Four Seasons in Rome -- Anthony Doerr.
10. Premature Imitation and India's Flailing State — Shruti Rajagopalan & Alexander Tabarrok.
11. Elite Imitation in Public Policy -- Episode 180 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan and Alex Tabarrok).
12. The Curse of Knowledge.
13. Every Act of Government Is an Act of Violence -- Amit Varma.
14. Understanding the State -- Episode 25 of Everything is Everything.
15. The Wealth of Nations -- Adam Smith.
16. The Double 'Thank You' Moment — John Stossel.
17. Profit = Philanthropy — Amit Varma.
18. Traffic -- Tom Vanderbilt.
19. Tonight Is the Night I Fell Asleep at the Wheel -- Barenaked Ladies.
20. Driving in a Foreign Country -- My Italian Diaries: 7 -- Amit Varma.
21. Marching For Salt -- Amit Varma.
22. The Transitional Gains Trap -- Gordon Tullock.
23. Interventionism: An Economic Analysis -- Ludwig von Mises.
24. Mises's dynamics of interventionism: Lessons from Indian agriculture -- Shruti Rajagopalan.
25. Gandhi -- Richard Attenborough.
26. Anton Howes on Trade, Innovation, and the Forgotten History of Salt -- The Ideas of India podcast.
27. Age of Invention, by Anton Howes.
28. A People's Constitution -- Rohit De.
29. The Life and Times of Montek Singh Ahluwalia — Episode 285 of The Seen and the Unseen.
30. The Forgotten Greatness of PV Narasimha Rao — Episode 283 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vinay Sitapati).
31. The Life and Times of the Indian Economy -- Episode 387 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Rajeswari Sengupta).
32. The Road to the 1991 Industrial Policy Reforms and Beyond: A Personalized Narrative from the Trenches -- Rakesh Mohan.
33. The Use of Knowledge in Society -- Friedrich Hayek.
34. Four Papers That Changed the World -- Episode 41 of Everything is Everything.
35. A Sixth Of Humanity -- Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian.
36. Entry and Exit in Agriculture -- Episode 1 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Pavan Srinath and Karthik Shashidhar).
37. Bootleggers and Baptists-The Education of a Regulatory Economist — Bruce Yandle.
38. Farmers, Technology and Freedom of Choice: A Tale of Two Satyagrahas -- Amit Varma.
39. The State of Our Farmers — Episode 86 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Gunvant Patil).
40. Talking to an Empty Room -- Sharad Joshi's speeches in the Rajya Sabha.
41. Raees: An Empty Shell of a Gangster Film — Amit Varma.
42. The Loneliness of the Indian Woman — Episode 259 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shrayana Bhattacharya).
43. Public Choice Theory Explains SO MUCH -- Episode 33 of Everything is Everything.
44. Public Choice Theory -- Episode 121 of The Seen and the Unseen.
45. Blendjet.
46. The Whole Truth Foods protein powder that Amit has.
47. The Reflections of Samarth Bansal — Episode 299 of The Seen and the Unseen.
48. The Bad and Complex Tax -- Episode 74 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan).
49. India's Supreme Court -- Episode 123 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan).
50. Restaurant Regulations in India — Episode 18 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Madhu Menon).
51. India's MSME Landscape — Some Useful Frameworks -- Episode 419 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Sudhir Sarnobat and Naren Shenoy).
52. What Ails Indian Manufacturing? -- Episode 104 of Everything is Everything.
53. Commands and controls: Planning for Indian industrial development, 1951–1990 -- Rakesh Mohan and Vandana Aggarwal.
54. Futures Markets in Agriculture -- Episode 12 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Karthik Shashidhar).
55. Naushad Forbes Wants to Fix India — Episode 282 of The Seen and the Unseen.
56. The Life and Times of KP Krishnan — Episode 355 of The Seen and the Unseen.
57. The Reformers -- Episode 28 of Everything is Everything.
58. The Economics of Derivatives -- TV Somanathan and V Anantha Nageswaran.
59. Sorry, Wrong Number -- Shruti Rajagopalan.
60. Reforming Agricultural Land Conversion Laws in Indian States -- Shruti Rajagopalan, Shreyas Narla, Ankita Dinkar, Kadambari Shah and Ankit Bhatia.
61. The Case for Nuclear Electricity -- Episode 78 of Everything is Everything.
62. Nuclear Power Can Save the World -- Joshua S Goldstein, Staffan A Qvist & Steven Pinker.
63. The Right to Property — Episode 26 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan).
64. India's Agriculture Crisis — Episode 140 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Barun Mitra and Kumar Anand).
65. Economics in One Lesson — Henry Hazlitt.
66. That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen — Frédéric Bastiat.
67. The Candlemaker's Petition -- Frédéric Bastiat.
68. Marginal Revolution University.
69. Public Choice – A Primer — Eamonn Butler
70. Micromotives and Macrobehavior -- Thomas Schelling.

Amit Varma runs a course called Life Lessons, which aims to be a launchpad towards learning essential life skills all of you need. For more details, and to sign up, click here.

And have you read Amit's newsletter? It's madly active right now! Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free!

Also check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing.

Episode art: 'The Regulated' by Simahina.