Short read: How Korea became cool: Misconceptions played a role
Over the past couple of decades, Korea has emerged as a global manufacturing hub for cars, electronics, memory chips, cosmetics etc. However, what is even more remarkable is its emergence as a global soft power with Korean movies winning Oscars, Korean TV dramas getting a global audience, its music bands or K-pop going viral as […]
Short read: André Béteille (1934-2026): Sociologist who made India see itself clearly
André Béteille was the Virat Kohli of Indian sociology i.e. a legend who transformed the way we understand social relationships, inequality and conflict in Indian society. He “passed away on February 3, 2026, after five decades of teaching and research at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. His contributions to […]
Long read: Something Big Is Happening
The last two weeks have been remarkable in the world of AI with many seeing it as a giant leap in its capabilities and what it means for jobs and business models across a whole host of industries involving white collar work. Anthropic, a leading AI company, whose founder’s alarmist essay we featured here a […]
Long read: ‘They’ve probably been untouched for 49 million years’: The New Mexico cave expanding our search for alien life
In a stellar piece of science reporting, Jasmin Fox-Skelly informs us about a finding which challenges some of the foundational principles of modern biology and astronomy which we have been taught in high school. The setting for this reportage is dramatic by itself: “Beneath the deep rocky canyons of the Chihuahuan Desert in southern New […]
Long read: When water kills: The cracks in the urban supply story
Even as India strides confidently towards becoming the world’s third largest economy, it still hasn’t figured out how to get the basics of a decent life delivered to the vast majority of its population. The recent deaths in Indore – all 25 of them – from drinking sewage infected water are not an aberration. As […]
Profiting from Defence & Aerospace in this Age of Rage
As a bipolar world reorients itself around two superpowers – USA and China – global spending on arms, fighter jets, drones and commercial aircraft is growing annually at double digits in $ terms. Order books in Europe & America are already loaded with a decade’s worth of orders. Our Global team has made several investments […]
Short read: The death of the corporate job
Despite the tragedies that Covid brought upon us, we have heard friends and colleagues reminisce the lockdown period, when it came to enjoying their work. Working from home and avoiding the arduous commute aside, there was something else that seems to have struck upon people, especially the corporate types in that period. Alex Mccann aptly […]
Short read: How can we defend ourselves from the new plague of ‘human fracking’?
Plenty has been written about how smartphones, social media and short video addiction or some such slop is resulting in human degeneracy. “In the last 15 years, a linked series of unprecedented technologies have changed the experience of personhood across most of the world. It is estimated that nearly 70% of the human population of […]
Short read: Shakti Samanta centenary: ‘There wasn’t a moment when he wasn’t thinking of films’
If you have watched the 1972 Bollywood superhit ‘Amar Prem’, you have watched the legendary film director Shakti Samanta (1926-2009) – whose centenary is being celebrated this year – at the peak of his powers. And what a peak that was. For those of us who love Bollywood, Amar Prem is a collection of the […]
Long read: The Adolescence of Technology
The progress of AI hasn’t been linear. It involves periods of stagnation interspersed with breakthroughs which catapult it to the next level. The most recent one to go viral has been Anthropic’s Claude Code and Clawdbot/Moltbot, which according to experts makes human software programmers almost entirely redundant. Anthropic is amongst the leading AI labs in […]
Long read: Review of ‘The Mattering Instinct’ by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
The award-winning philosopher & writer Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s latest book looks beyond happiness as the goal of a well-lived lived life and in doing so simplifies some of the most complex ideas in modern philosophy. Ms Goldstein’s central idea is that “We all want to feel connected to others and know that we matter. The […]
Long read: What animals can teach us about overcoming tyranny
In this riveting read packed with great photographs, Chris Baranuik first helps us understand why despotism & tyranny flourishes in many parts of the animal kingdom and then zeroes in on those species who live in a more fraternal way. Mr Baranuik then produces takeaways for us humans who tend to oscillate between tolerating despots […]
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