Did you know...
... that most of the content in the world is still found offline, in dusty, grubby-covered collections of papers called books! I derive my motivation from Maria Popova's Brain Pickings -- a blog that curates precious works like Camus' Lyrical and Critical Essays , Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark, Alain de Botton's How Proust can change your Life, and other gems that are lying under the sea of knowledge created so far. In Maria's own words, Brain Pickings is her "one-woman labor of love — a subjective lens on what matters in the world and why. Mostly, it’s a record of my own becoming as a person — intellectually, creatively, spiritually — and an inquiry into how to live and what it means to lead a good life."
An acclaimed radio show, On Being Studios also helps me trudge through the occasional slump in PhD life. The podcast shines light on exciting questions like "What does it mean to be human, and how do we want to live?". As a part of the journey, On Being helps me embrace poetry and nuance in living. Also, I cannot speak about poetry and not mention Button Poetry, and the brilliant poets featured there -- Sarah Kay, Brenna Twohy, Sabrina Benaim, Phil Kaye, Neil Hilborn to name some of my favourite poets. They are my personal heroes.
As must be evident, I am a voracious reader, and my favourite book reviewer is Sparky Sweets PhD of the Thug Notes fame. Shoutout to this original gangsta' of Classic Literature! I am an occasional photography and art enthusiast, and love humming a tune or two.