So you wanna watch something...

Bob Biswas: The hired assassin from the iconic film ‘Kahaani’ gets his own spinoff—played by Abhishek Bachchan, no less. Except in this sequel, he is a killer with a slight problem: total memory loss. As usual with these things, there is no review, but Bachchan Jr loves it: “My personal opinion after having seen the film is that it is a very cool film.” It drops on Zee5 today, and ‘Kahaani’ is available on Netflix.

The Power of The Dog: This Jane Campion movie promises to be as talked about as ‘The Piano’—and it has a cast that is certainly worth talking about: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons. This is not a feel-good story, but a complicated tale of male self-hatred and arrogance. ABC News is already talking about potential Oscars. The Guardian describes it as “a western gothic psychodrama: mysterious, malicious, with a lethal ending that creeps up behind you like a thief.” It drops on Netflix from today. 

Cobalt Blue: Adapted from director Sachin Kundalkar’s Marathi novel of the same name, ‘Cobalt Blue’ is 90’s story of two siblings who fall in love with the same man—played by Prateik Babbar who is a paying guest—creating chaos and heartache in a conservative, middle-class family. Nope, there are no reviews so far. Releasing today on Netflix.

A list of good reads

• Evolutionary biologist and editor of Nature Henry Gee raised a lot of eyebrows when he published this Scientific American essay titled ‘Humans Are Doomed to Go Extinct’.
• Burnout isn’t the same as depression or other mental health issues. But it’s real. Popular Science explains how you can spot it and fix it.
• Mint looks at the fertility data from the latest National Household Survey and concludes we have hit a population peak.
• The New York Times tries to answer a very important question: Why does coffee make me poop?
• NPR answers another pressing question: Why is a turkey called a turkey?
• Slate, meanwhile, tries to figure out why the language learning app Duolingo’s sentences are so weird—and how translating “the groom is a hedgehog” helps your brain learn.
• Nope, we’re not done with important Qs. Huffington Post looks for answers to this big one: Does the 5-second rule actually mean it's safe to eat food off the floor?
• Also from the New York Times: The ten best books of the year.
• Scroll files a ground report on scrub typhus—a disease as widespread as malaria and often undiagnosed (see our explainer on ‘mystery illnesses’ in UP).
• Vanity Fair has the fascinating tale of Guru Jagat—a middle-class white girl who a spiritual guru in LA thanks to her yoga studio dedicated to spreading kundalini, no less.
• Fast Company profiles the busiest Muslim actor in Hollywood, Riz Ahmed—who is using his newfound power to increase diversity.
• Boom Live has a very good read on what it is like to do a startup in Kashmir.
• The Guardian looks at the bonenkai (forget-the-year) party season in Japan—and why so many employees hate it.
• C Raja Mohan in Indian Express argues that China has totally flubbed its foreign policy—and shown how not to do business with the world.
• Feryal Darakshan Banday has a wonderful essay in Bastion on Kashmiri folktales and what they tell women about their bodies and their selves.
• This fascinating BBC Future deep dive looks at the emotions experienced by insects. Yes, bees, spiders, beetles... they all feel stuff.
• Dave Pell in Fast Company explains why you need to turn off news notifications to save your sanity. (Our recommendation would be to delete them entirely and stick with splainer lol!)
• There’s even more gossip on the dysfunctional leadership style of Kamala Harris, and Politico has it.
• ‘Apocalypticism’—the belief that the end times are imminent—is not new, and it may even be real given the state of climate change. But all this worry has birthed a new philosophical approach called ‘Longtermism’—and it may be even more dangerous, according to Aeon. (h/t subscriber Srinath Sundareswaran)