Sometimes it's a story, sometimes it's a random thought, and sometimes it's something that should've stayed in my notes app. Either way, here we are. New episodes every Thursday at 6 AM IST. Check out my other work: https://linktr.ee/rylanbanis
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This month’s Wildcard Episode is all about hot takes. I’ve collected a bunch of opinions from around the internet, but there’s a catch: I haven’t actually read them beforehand, so you’re getting my genuine first reactions as I try to figure out whether I agree, disagree, or have absolutely no idea what to think. We’ll go from relatively harmless takes about relationships, work, social media and…
I spent months building up the courage to approach a girl I admired during my college days. When I finally did, we ended up having one of the most engaging three-hour conversations of my life... only for her to start avoiding me the very next day. To this day, I still don't know what changed. In this episode, I tell the full story, from overthinking every opportunity to say hello, to finally…
Ever wondered what it's actually like to write a novel? In this episode, I take you through my entire writing journey, from random plot ideas scribbled into a document, abandoned novels, heartbreak-inspired stories, and brutally honest feedback, to the surprisingly nerdy systems I now use to plan every chapter, character, crime, and plot twist. Along the way, I talk about perfectionism,…
In this sequel to Episode 198, I revisit my life trackers 100 days later to see what changed, what surprised me, and what the data taught me. From gym consistency and weight gain to journaling, sleep, food, expenses and media consumption, I share updated stats, unexpected observations, mistakes like ego lifting and dirty bulking, and the changes I've made because of them. I also rank all my…
In this episode of Inside Rylan’s Mind, I turned my own writing into a game. The Rylan Test is a ten-round game show where listeners have to distinguish between real tweets, fake tweets, and sometimes no truth at all. It starts simple, then slowly breaks into Chaos Tier, where the rules shift, assumptions collapse, and even familiarity becomes unreliable. Each round pulls from my actual thoughts,…
I built a simple Excel habit tracker and slowly turned it into a full RPG system with XP, levels, ranks, milestones, and weighted scoring. What started as a clean way to track habits became an over-engineered game design experiment where I spent more time balancing progression than actually doing the habits. Eventually I realized I liked building the system more than using it, scrapped the whole…
For most of my life, I didn't know how to wash clothes. Then hostel life forced me into a bizarre journey involving possessed washing machines, a laundry company monopoly, missing clothes, broken zips, a two-month search for a lost hanky, and eventually learning how to do laundry myself. In this episode, I share the surprisingly chaotic story of how one of the most basic adult life skills finally…
A few years ago, a stock app created an offshore bank account for me. I forgot it even existed until the bank introduced a minimum balance policy, forcing me to close an account I no longer used. What should have been a simple request turned into a 50-day saga involving a dormant account, re-KYC, cancelled cheques, endless emails, customer service limbo, and far too much mental bandwidth for an…
I stumbled across a tier list containing over a hundred personality traits and started ranking them based on how attractive I find them in a potential partner. What began as a silly internet exercise quickly turned into a deeper question: what do our preferences actually reveal about us? In this episode, I explore the traits that instantly draw me in, the ones that push me away, the contradictions…
For the first 23 years of my life, I had never driven a vehicle. Then I decided to get both my bike and car license, and what I expected to be a straightforward process somehow turned into a full-blown saga. From choosing a driving school and studying hundreds of learner's license questions, to dealing with RTO bureaucracy, failing my bike test spectacularly, accidentally turning on windshield…
