Welcome to The Interval
Hi there, this is Samarth, and I am writing to announce my new project. It’s called The Interval, a fortnightly newsletter to think deeply about the truth-seeking process and forces that distort it. Let me explain. Six years of professional journalism has taught me how hard it is to
Lessons learnt from my 52-week workout streak
Today, I have hit a personal milestone: cult.fit app [https://www.cult.fit/] informs me I was regular with my workouts for 52 weeks in a row — meaning, over the last year, I exercised every single week without exception. From being a high school student who bunked the sports
Why I am relearning statistics
I have finally started what I had been thinking of doing for at least two years now: relearning statistics. I am a freelance journalist/programmer, and I control the volume of work I want to hold at any point. To make time for this academic pursuit, I consciously reduced my
I don’t know how to resolve the tension between the desire to enjoy the world, the curiosity to understand it and the rage to change it
I wrote this note in my journal on the morning of 16, February 2021, recalling the events of the previous day. A young environmental activist was arrested, and it triggered a series of thoughts laying bare the inner conflicts I often deal with. I don’t have any meaningful way
Inside the five-year battle food companies have fought to resist stricter labelling norms
India’s food regulator proposed changes in labeling rules to empower consumers: if the quantity of fat/salt/sugar exceeds a specified threshold, food packets would have a front-of-pack warning label. But this policy is not moving, following fierce opposition from the industry. My interviews with scientists, government officials, independent
How I cope when it seems like the world is falling apart
Totally lost my cool yesterday evening. The trigger: a story published in the Washington Post [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/india-bhima-koregaon-activists-jailed/2021/02/10/8087f172-61e0-11eb-a177-7765f29a9524_story.html] . I posted an impulsive update on Instagram. This morning: I could not sleep well. One of those days when I woke
Turning politics into theatre
Tweets by an international pop star [https://twitter.com/rihanna/status/1356625889602199552]—five words, one hashtag, a linked article—and a teenage climate activist [https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1356694884615340037] on India's farmer protests have rattled thin-skinned Indians. What an irony: A citizenry perennially subjected to state-sponsored propaganda
Journalists refer to themselves as storytellers. Is that a mistake?
"Facts come in the way of beautiful prose," a colleague at the Wall Street Journal told me during my 2018 fellowship at the newspaper. It stayed with me. Every time I ponder over the limitations of journalistic methods to understand the world, I think about it. Especially in
How I approach and manage my freelance journalism career
"There is a lot of uncertainty in figuring out how this will work out," reads the seventh point in my journal entry titled "On Quitting", dated 13th January 2019—the day I resigned from my full-time job at the Hindustan Times. After two excellent years at
Thoughts and observations on data journalism in India
Today, I complete five years in journalism: one year at The Hindu (my first job, straight out of university), two years at the Hindustan Times—which overlapped with a five-month fellowship at the Wall Street Journal—and two years as a freelancer. 'Data journalist' was my official job
