This list is meant to give you a start. Instead of falling into the frictionless scroll, when you don't yet know what to read, start with these six well-loved essays that you too will enjoy.
1. Cate Hall (Useful Fictions)
The Essay to Read: Maybe you're not actually trying Cate has a brilliant way of taking abstract, philosophical concepts about how we live and grounding them in rigorous, actionable logic. She doesn't write fluff and forces the readerto look hard at their behaviors.
2. Henrik Karlsson (Escaping Flatland)
The Essay to Read: Sometimes the reason you can’t find people you resonate with is because you misread the ones you meet. Henrik writes beautifully about... life. Alternative ways of living, parenting, art, philosophy,and how we learn. You can tell he is on a journey and taking us with him.His writing asks for a slow, deliberate reading pace. He forces you to step outside the conventional "flatland" of modern, optimized living and remember what it means to be intensely, obsessively curious.
3. Adam Mastroianni (Experimental History)
The Essay to Read: Underrated ways to change the world?. Adam is an experimental psychologist who writes about human behavior with an incredible mix of academic rigor and laugh-out-loud humor. He dismantles the things we assume are "just the way it is" and proves that life is actually much weirder and more malleable.
4. Shadowed Archive
The Essay to Read: An Existential Guide to: Making Friends In an internet obsessed with the current 24-hour news cycle, Shadowed Archive does the exact opposite. It pulls you deep into historical obscurities, and forgotten contexts.
5. Kyla Scanlon
The Essay to Read: The Vibecession: The Hidden Cost of Economic Vibes. Kyla writes about macroeconomics, but she approaches it entirely through the lens of human emotion and philosophy. When the financial news tries to reduce the world to robotic charts and graphs, she writes about the feeling of the economy.
If you like them, subscribe to them. The next time you feel the chokehold of scrolling tighten round your brain, open your inbox and find one of them. Read it slowly. Let the friction crunch between your teeth. If you want to protect your ideas and get out of the consumption trap, this will help. You need to read things that require effort, patience, and a willingness to sit with unresolved thoughts.
Are you ready to stop consuming and start making? Start your creative streak today.