Explore every Culture article on Thoughtful India — in-depth reporting, analysis, and perspectives on culture across India.
26 articles
Worksheets drill compliance, gamified apps reward clicking — neither builds reasoning. How adaptive Socratic AI tutors could change the equation.
Bo French's 'foreigners displacing Americans' post targeted South Asian UT students. Why the bipartisan Texas backlash cuts deeper than one tweet.
Waking at 3 a.m. with a racing mind? Cortisol's early-morning rise and lighter second-half sleep explain most of it — the liver-glycogen story is only a
Ayurveda's vamkukshi advises resting on the left side after meals. Modern reflux studies back the left-side habit, but the heart and lymph claims don't hold up.
From Prada's Kolhapuri-sandal backlash to jhumkas on the runway: how luxury fashion borrows India's aesthetic, when credit is given, and when it is not.
Why simulation theory went from Bostrom's 2003 paper and Musk's 'one in billions' to a hypothesis physicists take seriously — and why it may be unfalsifiable.
Pokémon turns 30: LEGO's first sets, three ANA Pokémon Jets, a Tokyo skyscraper light show — how a Game Boy cartridge became the top-grossing media franchise.
Met Gala 2026: the 'Fashion Is Art' dress code, Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, and Venus Williams as co-chairs, and the Costume Art exhibition — everything about
A 1989 Miyazaki classic is selling out IMAX screens in 2026. Why Kiki's Delivery Service — and Studio Ghibli's whole catalogue — became Gen Z's comfort cinema.
Film cameras, paper notebooks, dumbphones: Gen Z's 'going analogue' trend is spreading on the very platforms it's reacting against.
37 million Instagram posts: why '2026 is the new 2016' became the defining trend — and what the nostalgia says about a culture exhausted by AI content.
From ashrams to Instagram: how yoga became India's most successful cultural export, what was gained in translation, and who captures the value.
Educated urban Indians under 35 are reading the Gita and Upanishads not as religion but as philosophy — a selective intellectual recovery of Hindu texts.
Ayodhya's Ram Mandir, the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor, Tirupati's pilgrim economy: India's religious tourism boom — development policy in sacred dress.
Bollywood's family advantage is real and structural — but new platforms are cracking it open. The nepotism debate is more nuanced than the binary suggests.
From ~1,400 tigers in 2006 to ~3,600 by 2022 — India now hosts 70% of the world's wild tigers. How Project Tiger reversed extinction, and why the success is
Section 377's 2018 fall decriminalized homosexuality — but the 2023 marriage-equality verdict shows how thin legal victories are without social acceptance.
Streaming made Indian classical music accessible — and stripped the context that makes it comprehensible. Raga on shuffle: democratization without transmission.
Hindustani and Carnatic are revered high art — yet command a tiny fraction of young India's listening time. Preservation kept them alive but elite.
