Read: “Meet the real screen addicts: the elderly,” in The Economist. I personally feel like my mother spends more time looking at a screen than I do as a millennial, and this piece confirmed my suspicion that this may be a growing trend. It’s filled with interesting nuggets on how and why people over the age of 65 have become some of the most enthusiastic adopters of digital gadgets. – Natalie J.
Read: “When We Cease to Understand the World,” by Benjamin Labatut. This haunting, genre-blurring non-fiction novel explores the discovery of cyanide and its profound fallout. It has been used in all sorts of areas: to make fertilizer, as an agent of chemical warfare, to kill Jews during the Holocaust, as well as for the discovery of quantum uncertainty. This boook made me think about how breakthroughs can unleash consequences no one fully grasps, and is less about explaining science than about confronting its psychological weight. I would recommend it to anyone trying to grapple with the emergence of another technology we scarcely understand the consequences of: artificial intelligence. – Riley
Watch: “Dhurandhar 1 & 2.” There has been an excess of spy thrillers in recent years in Hindi cinema, but Aditya Dhar has been the one getting it right with the Dhurandhar franchise. The films follow Indian spy Hamza Ali Ansari (Ranveer Singh) as he infiltrates gangs in Lyari, Pakistan, to feed sensitive intelligence back to home base. The story weaves in references to major India-Pakistan conflicts — the 26/11 Mumbai attacks of 2008, Uri attacks of 2016, the one in Pulwama in 2019, as well as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s demonetization plan. Parts of these films are grounded in fact; others very much aren’t. But as cinema, it works – the writing is sharp, the action sequences are mind-blowing (literally), the soundtrack is superb, and the acting is exceptional. The best way to watch it? As a movie, not a history lesson. – Suhani
Watch/Listen: You may know about NPR’s original Tiny Desk, but have you watched Tiny Desk Brazil? In this episode, singer-songwriter (and former culture minister) Gilberto Gil trades stadium-scale production for something that feels like music at home. Joined by his grandchildren Flor and Bento, he revisits favorites like “Desde que o Samba é Samba,” “Tempo Rei,” and the quieter “Se Eu Quiser Falar com Deus,” where the stripped-down playing really lands. – Natalie W.
