My Candy Jar

This is my candy jar — i.e. where all the sweetest things in life are.

I have listed (in no particular order) things you should read, watch, listen to, or generally indulge in for a better life.

Each item in this list has the “Arunabh Stamp of Approval”.

I will continue to add to this list as I continue to encounter things on our magnificent planet.

last updated: 1/1/2023

Things to Read:

Books

• The Innovators - Walter Isaacson
• Hit Refresh - Satya Nadella
• Freakonomics - Steven Levitt
• Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
• Life of Pi - Yann Martel
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - Ken Kesey
• A Promised Land - Barack Obama
• Five Point Someone: What Not to do at IIT - Chetan Bhagat
• Where the Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls
• The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri

Short Stories

• Loki’s Wager - Prose Edda
• The Most Dangerous Game - Richard Connell
• Fences - August Wilson
• Demosthenes’ Stones - unknown

Things to Watch:

Documentaries

• The Last Dance
• Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates

Film

• Interstellar
• Good Will Hunting
• The Big Short
• Lagaan
• 3 Idiots
• The Imitation Game
• The Social Network
• Whiplash
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
• Get Out
• Taare Zameen Par
• Barfi
• Parasite

TV Series

• Designated Survivor
• The Good Doctor
• The Queen’s Gambit
• Narcos

TV Sitcoms

• How I Met Your Mother
• Seinfeld
• The Office
• Kim’s Convenience

Things to Listen To:

Music

• Fred again.. and other misc. house music
• anything modern pop punk

Podcasts

• Galaxy Brains
• Worldly by Vox
• The Daily by NYT
• 80,000 Hours by Rob Wiblin

Things That Don’t Fit Anywhere But You Should Check Out:

Art

• The Wedding at Cana - Paolo Veronese
• Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity’s Gate) - Vincent van Gogh

Cool People

• John von Neumann
• Srinivasa Ramanujan
• Jennifer Doudna
• Robert Smalls

Great Speeches

• Hacking into the Indian education system
• Let’s Dance
• The future we’re building — and Boring
• 2005 Stanford Commencement Address
• The Man Problem
• 3 questions to ask yourself about everything you do
• The surprising habits of original thinkers
• The Speech that Made Obama President
• 88th Academy Awards Monologue
• history of the entire world, i guess

Sports

• 2016 NBA Finals — Final 3:39 of Game 7
• The Best Nike Commercial Ever: Winner Stays On
• Ronaldinho Highlights
• Kobe Bryant Final 3 Minutes vs. Jazz

Technology

• The Future of Neuroscience: BMI/BCI Systems
• An Introduction to Machine Learning
• Teaching AI to Paint
• Artificial Intelligence is the New Electricity
• The Ultimate (and free) Guide to Computational Science & Mathematics
• The mathematician who cracked Wall Street