Episode 65 with Linda Thomas

Reuben's Podcast

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Episode 65 with Linda Thomas

Reuben N

Nov 14, 2023

Transcript

This week I published my conversation with Linda Thomas. We talk about religion, life in Bombay vs. Sydney, working on PR and Content, the future of OTT in India, Reality TV, Home, MBA, Traveling, and more.

After a lot of procrastination, I finally recorded a new intro and outro for the podcast. Unlike a lot of people I know, I don’t hate listening to my own voice, but I found the part around “makes me happy” a bit cringy - so that’s out! The audio is also much clearer in the new one - minor adjustments.

I also managed to get the video podcasts out in time along with timestamps. I’ve realized that the exercise of adding timestamps helps me with deciding a title and description for each episode - something that would take a lot of mental bandwidth to come up with. Now I’m just one step short of uploading the entire podcast on ChatGPT and asking it to come up with a title. Actually, it might not be that bad an idea.

00:00 Church and Religion 17:40 What Linda has been up to over the last decade 22:15 Favorite memory from St. Stephen's College 29:15 Life in Bombay vs. Sydney 41:15 First Job in PR 46:00 Working at Tata Sky 53:30 Working at Shemaroo 59:30 Future of OTT in India 1:03:45 Reality TV 1:06:55 Content the works 1:11:45 Home 1:15:40 MBA and working in hospitality 1:22:25 Traveling 1:27:00 Advice for younger self 1:32:00 Question for Reuben 1:36:23 Wrapping up

On Travel

In our conversation, we talked about traveling and how that’s something Linda wants to do more of. Here’s a snippet -

Growing up, even though I never took flights, I loved going to the airport - trying my best to get a glimpse of a plane taking off or landing. The airport was like a gateway to new lands that I could only imagine. Over the past few years, I’ve been very fortunate to have had the opportunity to travel and visit different countries. I’d like to believe that this has helped me broaden my mind and widen my perspective.

However, I’ve also come to realize one more thing - Travel is no cure for the mind. Lawrence Yeo has a great essay with that title, which was his adaptation of Seneca’s letter to Lucilius on the subject of travel. Here’s a snippet that captures the idea -

Are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind?
You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate.Though you may cross vast spaces of sea, and though, as our Vergilremarks -Lands and cities are left astern - your faults will follow you whithersoever you travel.