Culture & Religion — January 1, 2011

The People Transforming India

Misal embodies the type of person who will truly transform India: not an engineer or a financier, but an average person who refuses to be satisfied with the status he was born to.

bigthinkeditor

In an article adapted from his new book, “India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking,” online columnist Anand Giridharadas writes about an energetic young man named Ravindra Misal. “Misal embodies the type of person who will truly transform India: not an engineer or a financier, but an average person who refuses to be satisfied with the status he was born to. He rejected tradition to become a self-made man. With his ‘personality contests’ and idiomatic-English lessons, he’s trying to help others do the same. …I began to see self-invention as a theme of India’s unfolding drama.

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

▸

7 min

—

with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

Up Next

Guest Thinkers

Essentials: Stieglitz, Steichen, and Strand at The Met

When you talk about Classical music, you often begin with the three Killer B’s: Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. If you talk about American photography, you need to begin with the […]