Five Slices #19: Five Substacks worth your time
What I've been reading in the last two months
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If you read my newsletter only as an email (which is totally fine!), you might not know that it’s hosted on
. There are a lot of interesting writers on this platform and I spend a lot of time reading their work, not just writing. So today, I’m recommending five writers whose work I really enjoy. I kept some conditions in mind while picking this list:I’ve read at least 3 essays by each writer
They have a lot of their work available for free
They write regularly
I’ve also tried to keep a good mix of topics here, so you’ll find something that appeals to you. Hopefully.
1. Escaping Flatland by Henrik Karlsson
Theme: ????
How do you design a life that makes you happy?
One way to do it is to tick things off some arbitrary list and hope for the best.
has another suggestion: Identify the few constraints that really matter to you and let that context shape your life. Your life might turn out in a way you’ve never imagined, but uniquely fitted to you. Henrik discusses how he applied this to his writing, relationship, and raising his children in “Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process” (a lot of his essays have really long titles. That’s partly what got my attention).Henrik’s writing is special because it’s really hard to classify. He writes at the curious intersection between lived experience, introspection, and extensive reading that I really enjoy. In Looking for Alice, he wrote about how he met his wife. The series talks about finding, building, and nurturing a relationship and it’s a moving read:
His essays are great places to find new ideas. How to think in writing introduced me to Imre Lakatos, Looking for Alice introduced me to Werner Herzog’s interviews, and Rationality is an underrated way to be authentic introduced me to John Stuart Mill. Henrik has built a universe of ideas that he keeps returning to, so the more time you spend here, the more rewarding it gets.
2. Personal Canon by Celine Nguyen
Theme: Books, writing, and personal experience
’s work is fascinating to me, mostly because her writing is so good but also because she’s managed to craft her own road into the world of literature starting from a STEM background (she works as a product designer, and it shows in her beautifully designed newsletter). Celine writes about books, writing, and her personal experiences.Everybody should read her essay about Agnes Callard’s book “Aspirations”:
Why? Because it talks about something we’re all trying to do – becoming. We’re trying to become an original artist or a better parent or a perceptive lover or an aspiring leader or maybe all of this at once. And as humans, we learn to do so by imitation. We look at other models and try to not just imitate what they do, but we to also be the kind of person they are (e.g you don’t just write novels, you become the kind of person who writes novels). The essay describes every aspect of this journey through Celine’s personal experience, from the feeling of being an imposter to easing into the daily practice of becoming what you want to.
She has a lot of other great essays, but I’d highlight two other favorites: mere description, which talks about the surprisingly tricky task of describing your experience and how that’s at the core of art, and How to Begin, a great guide for writers learning to write like by intelligently copying the people you admire.
3. The Honest Broker by Ted Gioia
Theme: Culture and Business Models
“Google is now the East India Company of the Internet” is such a killer title. I clicked on the article and couldn’t stop reading till I reached the end. It’s an essay with a clear, scathing idea: Google once innovated its way to the top of the Internet food chain, but has now become a bloated parasite leeching off the value that millions of creators are producing without actually making anything new.
The article got me fired up. But what’s great about
’s blog is that he didn’t write just one sensational piece and stop – he’s been chipping away at this idea for a long time through other articles like “If AT&T had managed the phone business like Google” or “The world’s largest search doesn’t want you to search.” Each article takes a single idea and goes deep into it with persuasive, imaginative writing, but they all connect to create a larger point.Ted’s main body of work isn’t even about business/tech – he’s a writer and a musician, and he considers himself a “broker” for books and music. But I really like his insights into the human side of business.
4. The Prism by Gurwinder
Theme: Sociology and Media Studies
recently shot to fame for an essay describing a conversation he had with Luigi Mangione before he (allegedly) killed the United Healthcare CEO. But slotting his writing to just that one article is doing it as disservice. His newsletter, The Prism, dives deep into how fragile human psychology is and how we are being shaped by the information we consume and the system we live in, in ways we aren’t even aware of. My favorite is “Why Everything is Becoming a Game.”
The essay is divided into three parts:
B.F. Skinner’s experiments on psychological conditioning
Ted Kaczynski (The Unabomber)’s philosophy
What we can do to beat the system
If you think a lot about why things are the way they are or feel powerless about your inability to get a grip on things, it’s a gripping read with some hope at the end.
5. Experimental History by Adam Mastroianni
Theme: Practical Psychology
Turn on the TV and you’ll see psychologists: In Treatment, Lie to Me, Criminal Minds, Mindhunter, The Sopranos. Go on the internet and you’ll see psychologists: of the top 25 most-viewed TED talks of all time, five are by psychologists (seven if you count psychiatrists and neuroscientists). Talk to humans and you’ll hear words psychologists made up: cognitive dissonance, emotional intelligence, grit, growth mindset. Visit Google, Apple, Amazon, or Facebook and you’ll find psychologists tinkering with the tools that govern our lives.
Psychology is successful because people are naturally more interested in what’s going on in their minds than what’s going on in their small intestines. We fall in love with humans, give birth to them, work for them, vote for them, buy things from them, and sometimes get killed by them, so understanding them a little better seems like a good use of time. Yet most people don’t really understand what psychologists do.
So goes Adam’s About page.
has a PhD in psychology from Harvard, he’s gotten second place in a British cooking show, does improv comedy on the side, and also writes about psychology… which has been published in The New York Times and The Atlantic. What’s special about his writing? Adam combines his interest in research with practical insights. I found Adam through his viral essay Good conversations have lots of doorknobs. No matter who you are, being able to have better conversations will make your life better in every way. So if you feel like you’re the one who’s always talking or always listening in any conversation, check this out:
You might also like the post “Your favorite newsletter’s favorite newsletters” by
. Let me know if there are any other Substackers whose writing you enjoy or bloggers whose work I should check out.If you enjoyed reading, drop a like and share this with a friend. It helps the newsletter grow:
In the last issue, I wrote about India seen through the eyes of outsiders. You can find the complete list of issues here.