A list of good reads

• We stumbled on this older and excellent Atlantic essay on why reading a book is a necessary survival strategy during a pandemic.
• Madhushree Ghosh in Longreads pens a lovely ode to loss (of her parents) and memory (of the local maacher bazaar).
• Outside magazine profiles Iceman Wim Hof—the hottest wellness guru who advocates freezing your ass for a better life. Or you can watch this wildly popular Vice doc on him.
• We all love to mock Wikipedia, but Stephen Gossett over at BuiltIn argues that its success and credible reputation—amazingly immune to the kind of fake news proliferating in other parts of the internet—offers an important lesson for all of us.
• Vox explains why social media makes even young people feel old.
• Aeon has a thought-provoking piece on subversive Nordic children’s lit like Pippi Longstocking and Moomins—that rejected the prudery and pressure to teach moral virtue typical of the genre.
• This iNews piece offers a delightful look at the many contributions of the theatre to the English language. For example: ‘Stealing one’s thunder’.
• Kashmir has virtually disappeared from our national reporting. Watch: Al Jazeera’s weekly show Listening Post which looks at the competing narratives over Kashmir—and the story that is hidden out of sight. They look to all sides of this highly contested story.
• Harini Calamur in Voice of Fashion argues that the Tanishq controversy is also a blow to women’s rights.
• Scientists are totally intrigued by the mystery of the rotting Hostess Twinkie—an American ‘treat’ that is made almost entirely of artificial ingredients and never goes bad. NPR explains why.