In this episode of Decoded, Aly Muhammad Dadwani sits down with Sita Slavov, a professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University who studies retirement, aging and Social Security. Sita has worked at the White House Council of Economic Advisers and at a think tank, and has testified before the Senate. It is Aly’s first solo episode as host.

The conversation starts with Sita’s cat, George Michael, and the Econ 5K, a virtual race run alongside the American Economic Association’s annual meeting where economists compete for artistic merit by running routes that sketch out economics graphs. From there, Sita explains why she sees an aging population as one of the biggest challenges society faces, and why, in her research with her mentor, she compares delaying Social Security to buying an annuity. She says it is a good deal for many people, especially higher earners in married couples, and explains why she is slow to call early claiming a mistake.

They also get into why she thinks younger workers should expect to work longer, what r-star is and why low interest rates and slow wage growth hit mid-career workers hardest, and why living mostly on Social Security can make sense for lifetime low earners but not for most college graduates. Sita talks through her research on why immigrants who arrive after 40 tend to retire later, how economists and politicians think differently when she has testified before the Senate, and what she says happens if Congress waits until the trust fund runs short in 2032.

The conversation ends on a question she thinks gets too little attention: beyond closing the funding gap, what should Social Security actually be for?Research and outreach by Panchu, Anubhav and Arif.

clarity before consensus.

In this episode of Decoded, Shrreya Loomba and Aly Muhammad Dadwani sit down with Ajay Shah, an economist and co-founder of the XKDR Forum who has worked in academia, policy research and the Ministry of Finance. He trained as an aeronautical engineer at IIT Bombay before moving into economics, and he co-hosted the podcast Everything is Everything with Amit Verma. It is also Shrreya and Aly’s first episode as co-hosts.

Ajay begins with his father, who died when he was 18, and the questions about what is worth doing that he says he inherited from him. He explains why economics felt like the right balance between physics and engineering, and why Manmohan Singh’s 1991 budget pulled him back to India. He talks about building research teams with Susan Thomas, what Bell Labs, RAND and the Cavendish Laboratory suggest about culture and incentives, and how XKDR chooses its problems. That includes the three questions he thinks matter most today: defending economic growth, climate change and populism.

A big part of the conversation is about AI and learning. Ajay argues that homework and projects no longer work as they used to, and that handing intellectual work to an LLM costs you your own growth. He describes two uses he thinks are worth it: AI as a tutor that suggests reading lists and runs diagnostic tests, and AI as a critic that finds mistakes in work you have done yourself. Drawing on Terence Tao, he also explains why he thinks proofs that nobody understands are not the same as mathematical knowledge.

The conversation ends on one question: if India could make a single reform for long-term growth, what should it be? Ajay’s answer is removing barriers to trade, capital, services and people, and having the state treat foreign and domestic firms the same.

Thank you to Deepanshu, Agrima, Anubhav, Aly Muhhamad, and Aarav for their help with research, outreach, and questions for this episode, and Nischay for help with Audio Production.

clarity before consensus.

In this episode of Decoded, Akshat Bhaskar and Amaira Akbar sit down with Dr. Mahendra Kumar Singh, Professor of Political Science at Deen Dayal Upadhyay Gorakhpur University and former journalist at The Times of India, where he spent over 13 years covering Parliament, national political parties, government policy, and the institutions shaping Indian public life.

Mahendra reflects on his transition from journalism to academia and how the two professions offer different ways of understanding politics. He explains why democratic political parties can still be controlled by a small group of decision-makers, drawing on the iron law of oligarchy and his experience reporting on both the BJP and the Indian National Congress.

The conversation then moves to India's place in an increasingly divided world. Mahendra discusses how India maintains relationships with Russia, Ukraine, the United States, and other competing powers, why BRICS is pushing for a more equitable international economic order, and how India's economic dependence on China complicates its strategic rivalry. We also explore India's relationship with Nepal, the consequences of the 2015 economic blockade, and why historical and cultural connections alone cannot guarantee diplomatic influence.

We then turn to Aadhaar and the transformation of India's welfare system. Having reported on the project since its early development, Mahendra shares his experiences interviewing Nandan Nilekani and following the decisions that shaped India's digital identity infrastructure. He discusses how Aadhaar changed welfare delivery, the strategy behind its gradual introduction, and the questions it raises about privacy, government power, and accountability.

The conversation ends with a question that feels increasingly difficult to answer: how do we distinguish genuine political analysis from propaganda? Mahendra reflects on the influence of ideology, the explosion of information on social media, and why understanding political history, reading beyond headlines, and listening to voices on the ground remain essential.

From the corridors of Indian Parliament to the changing dynamics of global politics, this episode explores how political institutions work, why governments make the decisions they do, and what it takes to understand the world beyond competing narratives.

Thank you to Deepanshu, Agrima, Anubhav, Aly Muhhamad, and Aarav for their help with research, outreach, and questions for this episode, and Nischay for help with Audio Production.

clarity before consensus.

In this episode of Decoded, Akshat Bhaskar sits down with Professor Sundar Sarukkai, philosopher and author of Homo Philosophicus, Philosophy for Children, and The Cracked Mirror, who studied physics at St. Joseph’s College Bangalore and IIT Madras before completing a Ph.D. in particle physics at Purdue University.

Sundar explains why his move from physics to philosophy was never a change of discipline. It was the same curiosity about how humans think and produce knowledge, pursued with different tools. He tells us about the barefoot philosophers project, which brings philosophy to children in rural India in Kannada and Tamil, including a Tamil Nadu classroom where a student compared atoms to God, and a classmate answered with a local possession ritual.

We then get into technology. Sundar argues that AI and personalized digital media push hyper-individualism, wear down what Ambedkar called fraternity, and are built around control, speed, and efficiency because of who designed them. We also talk about why lived experience belongs in social theory, how traditions like the Bhakti movement and protest songs carried philosophy into everyday life, and why paying attention to language is one of the most practical ways to reduce misunderstanding.

The conversation moves from particle physics labs at Purdue to village schools in Tamil Nadu, and ends on what he sees as the defining challenge of the next two decades: keeping human sociality intact.

Thank you to Deepanshu, Agrima, Anubhav, Aly Muhhamad and Aarav for their help with research, outreach, and questions for this episode, and Nischay for help with Audio Production.

clarity before consensus.

This is part two of our Decoded x HERizon event: a conversation and live student Q&A with Professor Cary Krosinsky, hosted by Akshat Bhaskar and Amaira Akbar. Cary teaches at Yale, Brown, and NYU Stern, co-founded the Carbon Tracker Initiative, and has written eight books on sustainable finance. He opens with his framework of the seven tribes of sustainable finance to tackle the core question of the conversation: can the financial system actually correct itself.

He argues that moral divestment has largely failed while strategies pairing real returns with real impact have worked, and points to asset owners like the New York State Common Retirement Fund and Temasek as models for how billions actually get moved. The conversation ranges from rethinking GDP to account for human and environmental costs, to why western cooperation with China on climate is unavoidable, to India's own distinct path forward. He and Amaira also dig into the energy footprint of AI and what it might take to offset the jobs it displaces.

He closes with his five levers of change, corporations, investment, innovation, policy, and people, and practical career advice for students headed into climate, tech, and finance.

Recorded live in partnership with HERizon. Part one, our associate team's session on ESG and decarbonisation, is up as a separate episode.

This episode opens our Decoded x HERizon event, recorded live with our associate team teaching before we sat down with Cary Krosinsky.

Vidyanshi breaks down ESG as a risk-assessment lens rather than a strategy, using Apple as a case study and digging into why ratings from agencies like MSCI and Sustainalytics rarely agree. She also covers the late 2025 backlash against sustainable funds and the rise of green hushing, where companies keep doing climate work while dropping the ESG language around it.

Aly Muhammad Dadwani follows with a look at global climate finance. Roughly two trillion dollars flowed into clean energy last year, almost double oil, gas, and coal combined, driven mainly by falling costs rather than policy. He also gets into the regulatory retreat happening on both sides of the Atlantic, from American banks walking away from climate pledges to the EU exempting most companies from detailed reporting.

Akshara closes it out with decarbonisation in practice, electrification, the shift to solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear, and why financial capital ultimately decides which technologies scale. She ties it back to Cary Krosinsky's book Transition Momentum, setting up the conversation in part two.

Recorded live at our event in partnership with HERizon.

In this episode of Decoded, Akshat Bhaskar and Amaira Akbar sit down with Professor Sandeep Juneja, Professor of Computer Science at Ashoka University and Director of the Safexpress Centre for Data, Learning and Decision Sciences, previously Senior Professor and Dean at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai.

Sandeep walks us through his journey from a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering at IIT Delhi to a Ph.D. in Operations Research at Stanford, and how that early grounding in applied probability shaped a career spent modeling uncertainty across finance, epidemiology, and climate.

We go deep on his time at TIFR Mumbai during COVID, when his epidemiological models were used to track and predict the spread of the virus through one of the world's most densely populated cities. The conversation then turns to the present: what the recent wave of AI progress actually changes, where the hype outruns the substance, and the specific case of AI being used to attack the Navier-Stokes equations, one of the longest-standing unsolved problems in mathematics.

A conversation that moves from IIT lecture halls to Stanford seminar rooms to the streets of Mumbai during a pandemic, and lands on the open question of what AI can and cannot yet do.

Thank you to Anubhav Bhattacharjee, Vidyanshi Mittal, Akshara Durugkar, Soujanya Banik, and Mohammad Arif Abdullah for their help with research, outreach, and questions for this episode. clarity before consensus.

In this episode of Decoded, Akshat Bhaskar and Amaira Akbar sit down with Professor M. Ram Murty, holder of the Queen's Research Chair in Mathematics at Queen's University and one of the most respected names in number theory.

Ram Murty walks us through a career spent studying the distribution of prime numbers, the deep and unexplained connection between mathematics and physical reality, and why he believes numbers might be the closest thing we have to a universal language. He talks about growing up on Star Trek, the lecture at MIT that pulled him toward philosophy, and why he still sets aside three hours a day just to think.

We also get into artificial intelligence. Ram Murty has used it to help disprove conjectures, but he is direct about its limits and concerned about what constant digital distraction is doing to how students learn.

The conversation moves between primes and the Gita, MIT lecture halls and Vedanta, without ever losing the thread. clarity before consensus.