A list of good reads
- BBC News has an interesting look at the growing influence of Indian music and artists on K-pop music.
- Associated Press reports on how the Taliban are taking good care of Buddhist artefacts with an eye toward Chinese investment.
- Vidya Krishnan in Lithub has a very good essay on how Bram Stoker’s Dracula reflected the panic over pandemics in Victorian times.
- We enjoyed reading this unexpectedly lyrical Aeon piece by Sidarta Ribeiro that lays out how single-cell organisms, mollusks, insects, apes and our human ancestors dreamt in the past.
- Mind Matters has a provocative report on a new study that claims most of neuroscientific research linking brain imaging to human behaviour is just plain wrong.
- Myke Bartlett in The Guardian pens a lovely essay on the loss of his dog—and how it helped him experience grief.
- If you’re disappointed with the sex-less season of Bridgerton, Vanity Fair offers good company.
- Speaking of entertainment, The Atlantic defends ‘Turning Red’ against critics unhappy with its depiction of lusty teenagers.
- Gizmodo looks at the fierce debate over the decision to label “prolonged grief” as a clinical disorder.
- Also in The Guardian, an interesting book review that lays out the difference between “true” and “false” anxiety—the latter of which is rooted not in our mind but in our body.
- The New Yorker profiles Daleep Singh—the Indian American who is the architect of America’s sanction regime against Russia.
- Stratechery offers an intriguing analysis of how the internet—aggregates and widely distributes ideas as never before—is also vulnerable to censoring “bad ideas”—without much thought or foresight.
- People, not science, decide when a pandemic is over. Scientific American talks to historians who explain why.
- Fast Company mourns the death of a progressive company called Starbucks.
- Times of India has a good curtain-raiser on the IPL season—including all the new things, captains and teams included.