This is a publication that focuses on what Shanu finds interesting that span markets, finance, investing, sustainability, politics, and more. This includes monthly newsletters or published pieces on sustainable investing! To follow along my writing, subscribe below:
Personal Updates: Welcome to the last Balance of the year! I hope everyone had a fantastic Holiday Season and is enjoying a bit of R&R before heading into 2026.
I made three additional podcast appearances to close out the year discussing AI, power markets, and sustainable investing - check them out below:
From Wall Street to Clean Energy: Investing in the AI-Powered Power Grid (Paces Build, Repeat)
AI and Power with Shanu Mathew (Sunya Stories)
📚 Best of 2025 — My Picks:
Sharing my annual roundup of the best content I came across this year. Full list here, but the highlights:
Book: Good Energy by Casey Means — a systems-level look at how daily choices (diet, sleep, movement) drive metabolic dysfunction and chronic disease. Changed how I think about health.
Show: Severance Season 2 (Apple TV) — all the stakes got higher. The finale was a spectacle and one of the best episodes of TV in recent memory.
Movie: One Battle After Another — innovative storytelling structure + incredible performances from Leo and Del Toro.
Podcast: Invest Like the Best — consistently the best long-form interviews in finance/tech
Album: Can’t Rush Greatness by Central Cee — UK drill’s best artist with the up-tempo classics + more range than anticipated
Song: Tie
“Which One” by Drake and Central Cee - Drake anthem + UK connection. Say less.
“So Be It” by Clipse — Hardest rap song of 2025 NO DOUBT.
🎯 Year in Review Template:
I do an annual review every December and have refined my template over the years. If you’re looking for a structured way to reflect on 2025 and plan for 2026, grab it here. Covers monthly milestones, core life areas, reflection questions, and goal-setting frameworks.
Must Watch/Read:
Entertainment Recs:
Stranger Things Season 5 (Netflix): It’s been getting mixed reviews but I’m shocked that Stranger Things Season 5 isn’t getting more hype. I’m genuinely impressed by it. It’s turned a what I thought was simple ‘kids fight the monsters’ sci-fi plot into a complex, intriguing story and that weaves in complex characters, backstories, and some science-theory even if imaginative. +The production is now Hollywood thriller/horror movie level at times. Have thoroughly enjoyed it and very eager to see the ending!
Beast in Me (Netflix): Gripping limited series focused on thriller/crime. ‘Author Aggie Wiggs, grieving the loss of her son, finds new purpose unraveling the mystery behind neighbor Nile Jarvis’ vanished wife and his suspicious dealings.’
Sean Combs: The Reckoning (Netflix): Timely documentary on the life of Diddy. Spoiler: his abuses extend over decades and to 100s of victims.
Coming Soon: Industry Season 4 Trailer | Odyssey Trailer
The 25 Best Ideas of 2025 (Sahil Bloom): Annual roundup of frameworks, mental models, and life advice. A great year-end read.
Source. “Are your 20s really the best years of your life? A new YouGov survey finds that 22% of Americans say their 20s will be their best decade, but about as many say their 30s. 12% say their 40s, 9% their 50s, 7% their 60s, and 4% their 70s.” Interesting to see how each age cohort tends to say “right now” is the best.
Source. “Pew Research Center surveyed more than 5,000 U.S. adults and found that YouTube (84%), Facebook (71%) and Instagram (50%) remain the most widely used social platforms.”
Source. Construction productivity has been flat or falling across most rich countries since the 1990s, despite decades of automation and evolving manufacturing practices. One of the more puzzling economic trends.
Source. “Per the most recent Pew Research Center figures, the average school day is around 6 hours in the US, meaning that the 40% of middle and high school students who spend 3+ hours on devices see at least half of their time in school consumed by tech.”
Source. “Major video streaming services have hiked their cheapest tier of ad-free subscription prices by an average of $6.69 since launch, according to an analysis by Axios’ Sara Fischer.”
Source. “American teens are similarly online, with a recent Pew Research Center study finding that a record number reported being on social platforms “almost constantly,” with 76% visiting YouTube and 61% visiting TikTok every single day. Perhaps more concerning: roughly two-thirds (64%) of surveyed American teens reported ever using AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Character.AI, with 28% saying they use the tools daily.”
Source. “Sports betting is just the beginning for prediction markets...” Kalshi weekly volume hit $1.5B in late 2025, up from $0.01B a year prior — sports betting drove a 10x YoY increase.
Source. “President Trump’s inauguration in January kicked off a relentless news cycle that sent Americans scrambling to keep up with the volume and velocity of change from the Oval Office and beyond.” Interesting visualization of how attention spiked and faded across 2025’s major stories.
Source. ChatGPT reached 1 billion users in ~1,100 days — faster than TikTok (~1,820 days), WhatsApp (~2,465 days), or Facebook (~3,165 days). Gemini’s slope is just slightly faster than OpenAI’s, though part of that is likely distribution via AI Overviews on Google search.
Source. “The data points to a troubling trend — America’s gambling boom is driving more people into financial and emotional distress, with young men at the epicenter. But the industry continues to expand at breakneck speed, powered by aggressive marketing, state budget incentives and AI.” Calls to the National Problem Gambling Helpline are up 148% since 2017 in states where sports betting is legal.
Source. “The Trump 2.0 White House has issued more executive orders in its first year than any Administration since FDR’s. T2.0 declared more first-year emergencies (9) than the seven prior Administrations combined.“
Source. “After only two years, California’s driverless taxis now transport passengers for more than four million miles per month — an eightfold increase in just one year.”
Seen via tweet | Source (famine/hunger). “Humanity has so thoroughly banished hunger that, as of this year, there are more obese kids than there are underweight kids — for the first time in history.”
🔥 AI & Big Tech
TIME magazine named the “Architects of AI” — including leaders like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and OpenAI’s Sam Altman — as its 2025 Person of the Year (TIME)
Netflix agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s movie and television business and the HBO Max streaming service for $72 billion, well above the company’s $60 billion market cap (Dealbook)
Meta reportedly plans to slash its metaverse unit budget by as much as 30% (Bloomberg)
SpaceX has authorized an insider share sale valuing the company at ~$800 billion while preparing for a potential 2026 IPO targeting a $1.5 trillion valuation (Bloomberg)
YouTube users streamed more than 700 million hours of podcasts on TVs and living room devices in October, up from 400 million last year (Axios)
💼 Business & Money
Michael and Susan Dell’s $6.25 billion pledge provides $250 to 25 million U.S. children aged 10 and under to seed new “Trump Accounts” for long-term savings (PBS)
About 45% of Americans will experience retirement funding shortfalls if they retire at 65; full retirement age is now steady at 67 (Morningstar, Axios)
“Harry Potter” franchise is worth more than $32B — the seven-book series has been translated into 80+ languages and sold 600+ million copies (1440)
🎭 Culture, Sports & Entertainment
Spotify Wrapped: Bad Bunny dethroned Taylor Swift as the platform’s most-streamed global artist in 2025 (AP)
The Joe Rogan Experience is Spotify’s most-listened-to podcast for the fifth straight year (Variety)
90% of Gen Z diners said they like sitting at shared tables, compared to 60% of baby boomers (Morning Brew)
🏃♂️ Lifestyle & Work
Work-life balance is now the #1 factor for talent when it comes to their current or future job (83%), surpassing pay (82%) for the first time in 22 years of Workmonitor surveys (Randstad)
YouTube is the most widely used online platform among both US adults (84%) and teens — Facebook came in second at 71% (Pew)
🎓 Education & Society
38% of Stanford undergraduates are registered as having a disability this year; 20% at Brown and Harvard; 34% at Amherst College — but at public two-year colleges, just 3-4% of students receive accommodations (The Atlantic)
Part 1: My Life Is a Lie — How a Broken Benchmark Quietly Broke America: Deep dive into how flawed economic benchmarks such as the poverty line have distorted policy and perception for decades.
Thoughts on AI Progress (Dec 2025) (Dwarkesh Patel): Dwarkesh’s year-end reflection on where AI capabilities stand relative to expectations, what’s been surprising, and what’s next.
Research on 100,000 people confirms heavy short-form video use is voluntary cognitive decline: Thread summarizing research showing we are actively training our brains to fail at hard tasks.
The Top Artists, Songs, Albums, Podcasts, and Audiobooks of 2025 (Spotify): Official Spotify Wrapped data release - global and US.
Best TV Shows of 2025 (NYT): NYT critics’ picks for TV shows of the year.
Nvidia v. Google, Scaling Laws, and the Economics of AI (Invest Like the Best): Gavin Baker is the Managing Partner and CIO of Atreides Management. We cover the infrastructure arms race between Google and Nvidia, the logic behind building data centers in space, and why SaaS companies are repeating the fatal mistakes of bricks-and-mortar retailers.
Travis Kavulla Explains Why Electric Bills Shot Up (Odd Lots): Useful explainer on the structural reasons behind rising electricity costs — relevant backdrop for AI/data center power demand.
Anthropic C.E.O.: Massive A.I. Spending Could Haunt Some Companies (NYT): Dario Amodei on the risks of the current AI capex cycle and the differences in approach between Anthropic and OpenAI.
LeBron Opens Up About His Prime and the Rise of Austin Reaves (Mind The Game): This episode features LeBron James identifying his most complete career season, Steve Nash detailing the organizational burnout of coaching, and a data-driven look at why the league is suddenly prioritizing the offensive glass again.
Bill Gurley — The AI Era, 10 Days in China, & Life Lessons (Tim Ferriss): Venture capital legend Bill Gurley delivers a wide ranging masterclass on surviving the Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution and China’s industrial surge to applying the obsessive self-learning of icons like Bob Dylan. Lot of variety in this one but the AI and China’s Industrial prowess parts are must-listens.
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