Good Morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

I mentioned this a few editions ago, but Two by Two turned a year old this month. 

It’s been an exciting journey so far—sometimes frustrating, but always rewarding. Not even a fraction of that would have been possible without the support of our loyal listeners, and that of the scores of insightful and contrarian guests who’ve come on our podcast so far. So before we get to anything else, thank you! 

This week, our hosts Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar chose to take a moment to reflect on our journey. We’ve evolved constantly, becoming more comfortable in diversifying our focus. Our discussions now span a wide spectrum—from timely, “newsy” topics to evergreen questions from the world of business and beyond. Here are a few 2x2s (it shouldn’t surprise anyone how much we love 2x2s here) from some of my favourite episodes.

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When we sat down Wednesday evening to look back on the past year, Praveen arrived (as usual) fully prepared to deliver another one of his signature top-down analyses: a sweeping review of all the topics we’ve covered and predictions we had made. I’ll spare you the details, you can hear them all in the episode (it’s free!), but here are just a few of those themes:

The Great Career Existential Crisis

Big Tech’s India Humbling

The Desperation-Driven Convergence

The Artificial Constraint Economy

India’s Livability Crisis

Two By Two • EPISODE

No Explainers, No Takeaways: One Year of Two by Two

The hosts of the show reflect back on the first year of the podcast

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Two by Two was The Ken’s first premium business podcast—a concept that is still a novelty on Indian shores, limited to a few creators’ Patreon channels and Youtube community memberships. It’s allowed us to experiment extensively, and develop and expand our premium podcast slate, the latest entry to which is 90,000 Hours, a podcast on work and careers hosted and produced by our wonderful colleague Rahel Philipose. 

But this episode isn’t just us tooting our own horn; we also dived into many things we could have done better. For instance, one recurring request from our regular listeners is to have more women leaders and operators on the show. This is definitely something we are actively working on. 

Going forward, we also want our community of loyal listeners—who write to us, comment on our episodes, and regularly engage with this newsletter—to have a stronger role in shaping our discussions. Whether that’s through polls, surveys, call-ins, or even the occasional session where we invite some of you to join us as guests. (FYI, we’ve done this before!)

This listener-driven approach will be one of our next big experiments, and we are all really excited to see how it unfolds. 

Now, if you are a regular Two by Two listener, you know this is not a scripted show. We outline the stakes of the discussion, yes, but then let curiosity guide us where it will. We try our hardest to limit episodes to between 70–90 minutes, but discussions often grow so passionate that we breach the two-hour mark. 

As a producer of the show, it’s been a privilege to witness this magic unfold live. 

Which brings me to my other big announcement. We are looking for a new producer to join the Two by Two team. 

As a podcast producer, you’ll be working closely with our hosts Rohin (The Ken’s CEO) and Praveen (our COO), and the talented audio team that brings all our podcasts to life. If you are one of our regular listeners, you already know the terrain intimately, so if you feel up to the challenge and want to throw your hat in the ring, please write to [email protected] and tell us how you could help take Two by Two to the next level. 

We’ll be back to regular programming next week, but in the meantime, we’d also love to hear from listeners about our journey so far—your criticisms, your suggestions, and of course, what you loved about your favourite episodes! 

Regards,
Hari Krishna

P.S. Also a huge thank you to our resident sound engineer, Rajiv CN, who makes every episode sound the best it possibly could, and our first producer, Anushka Mukherjee, who taught me the ropes and was pivotal to the launch of Two by Two.

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