Akshat Rathi

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Last post: Jan 26, 2026
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Just add a little friction
Jan 26, 2026 · original
One thing about modern life that’s a given is that we try to make things as efficient as possible. We are all busy and we all want to do as much as we can in the limited time we have. It’s clearly a worthy pursuit. Managers at work will praise you. Friends at dinner will boast about their latest hacks. Our social feeds are filled with influencers and marketers pushing the newest product that will help you save time, especially at the start of a new year. Everything around us reinforces the idea of becoming more efficient. Just for a moment though, step off the treadmill, and ask yourself: why do you want to be more efficient? What is the point of this efficiency? What do you want to do with the time you save if you achieve it? I was surprised by some of the answers I got, and I bet you will be too. On reflection, there are still plenty of things in life I’d like to be more efficient at.
One tree. One grand success story.
Jan 19, 2026 · original
It’s January and you deserve stories of how good actions can lead to grand outcomes in the long term. I’ve got just the one based on this one tree in London’s Hampstead Heath. The kinds of mosses, lichen, algae and other epiphytes growing on trees in London is directly the result of the Clean Air Act of 1956 and 1968. That’s because those acts put restrictions on sulfur pollution, which was killing epiphytes. London had become a “lichen desert” says Jeff Duckett, emeritus professor of botany at Queen Mary University of London. In the decades since, lichens have made a come back. (As a side: some lichens can live for more than 8,000 years .) Then later, further growth of epiphytes — essentially any plant-like thing growing on a plant — that is commonly seen on tree barks around London resulted from low-emissions zone introduced in 2008. That regulation led to reduction in nitrogen (NOx) e
Three messages for India’s green future
Dec 14, 2025 · original
On Nov. 29, my book Climate Capitalism won the business book of the year award at the fifth Green Literature Festival. Here’s my acceptance speech: Thank you to the organizers of the Green Literature Festival and to the jury of judges for this award. I’m really pleased to receive it and sad that I can’t be there in person with you. I’d like to take this opportunity to leave you with three messages. They are linked to the three factors that I lay down in Climate Capitalism that are necessary for success in fighting climate change: people, policy and technology. Let me start with technology, because it’s perhaps the easiest. The vast majority of the emissions problem can be tackled with two steps: electrify as much of the economy as possible and decarbonize electricity. Most of the technologies that India needs to get itself on track to take these two steps now exist, which is more than th
What is the point of literature?
Sep 27, 2025 · original
There are many. I found this compelling, from the writer Karl Ove Knausgaard: Saying what is self-evident is repetitive; the repeated is the already-known, and the already-known is the enemy of literature, its nemesis and true opposite. The self-evident confirms; literature challenges the confirmed. It is easy to describe what I see; it is easy to describe what I think. But why do I see what I see? Why do I think what I think? That is harder to grasp. For what I see is the world; what I think is me. What literature can do is establish an outside. Source: The Reenchanted World : On finding mystery in the digital age, Harper’s Magazine, June 2025
In praise of the Persian melon
Oct 5, 2024 · original
Once in a while, life presents you with a perfect. That is the story of the Persian melon for me. It’s perfect from the moment you see it. It’s unmissable, even as it sits among seven different types of melons at our local Eastern European grocery in north London. The Persian melon is shaped like a rugby ball, with light orange skin that has ridges. Even though it’s large (weighing about three kilos), it’s easy to hold and drop into the tote bag. It’s nothing like the smooth, round and all-too-heavy watermelon. You don’t have to clench your stomach and tighten your sphincter before you lift one. You don’t have to worry that it will accidentally slide out and splatter on the shop floor, splaying its insides in places hard to reach. And the Persian melon smells good: sweet and summery. You can be sure it’s ripe and soft enough. Just give it a firm squeeze and a satisfying sniff. Unlike mos
20 health lessons from “Trust me, I’m a Doctor”
Aug 2, 2015 · original
The BBC ran an excellent third series of three episodes of “Trust Me, I’m a Doctor”. You can dig into all their conclusions here . Here are the take away lessons from it: Marinating meat in beer (or wine) can help reduce the formation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons—known are known to be cancer-causing agents—during barbecuing. Cramps are only caused by exhausted muscles, not because of lack of salt or water. Best way to relieve it is to stretch the muscle that is cramping. To prevent more cramps from happening, try putting a pillow under the muscle, which will gently stretch it. More than one in four health supplements don’t contain what they claim to contain. Don’t think high price indicates high quality. In the UK, look for the THR certification mark. Ear buds don’t remove ear wax. If anything, they make it worse. We should leave ear wax where it is. Rosemary aroma can improve mem
Contemporary journalism philosophy packed in a few chat lines
Jun 11, 2015 · original
This is a lightly edited Slack chat with my colleague Solana Pyne, Quartz’s senior video producer. The chat kicked off because of an article about how top publishers are using Facebook for their video strategy. Probably because we’d both been thinking about what journalism means today, we managed to distill our ideas down in just a few chat lines. akshat : Separately here : “Al Jazeera’s Jigar Mehta nails it: “When we produce video for Facebook, we have to assume that the audience is going to be watching on their mobile phones with NO SOUND, so we have to optimize video to tell the story with no sound. Facebook, we know that we are competing for time on a platform where content FOMO [fear of missing out] is rampant, so we strive to make our videos very engaging from the start, and not waste any time getting straight into the stories we tell.” solana : I read these things and feel like ev
It’s becoming increasingly hard for American women to get abortions
May 23, 2015 · original
A bill introduced in Republican-controlled Wisconsin to ban abortions 20 weeks after conception is likely to become law in the next few weeks. That would make it the 38th new law across 11 US states set this year to restrict women’s access to abortion. Republicans’ slow attack on the right to abortion is working. Find out how on Quartz , published May 11, 2015. Image by ashley rose under CC-BY-NC-ND
What you need to know about Facebook’s “proof” that it’s not a political echo chamber
May 22, 2015 · original
When nearly half of US internet users are getting their political news from Facebook, it rightfully raises many worries. Chief among them is that Facebook’s powerful algorithm creates a “filter bubble” in which users mainly see posts they agree with, reinforcing the heavily polarized nature of American political discourse. In research recently published in Science, researchers from Facebook and the University of Michigan suggest that the news feed algorithm is less influential than some people have made it out to be. Instead, they claim it is mostly users themselves who, through their decisions about what to click on or who to be friends with, are responsible for the creation of any ideological bubbles. Don’t be so quick to let Facebook off the hook, though. Despite being published in a reputable science journal, the researchers’ conclusion appears to be questionable. Read more on Quartz
More quakes are coming for Nepal, scientists say, they just can’t predict when
May 21, 2015 · original
Nepal was again hit with a major earthquake again. Only three weeks ago a much larger earthquake had hit the country. Together they have left more than 8,000 dead, scores injured and millions displaced. Sadly, scientists had predicted that another earthquake was coming—and many more will come in the future in this seismically active region. Read more on Quartz , published May 12, 2015. Image by DFID under CC-BY .

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