Anti-Brainrot Culture Collective
The Culture Jasoos started as a podcast about films and books worth dissecting. Now we are taking those conversations offline.
We are living through a moment that produces enormous amounts of opinion and very little actual thinking. Every cultural debate moves fast, runs hot, and leaves most people either performing a position or tuning out entirely. This is a space for something more deliberate.
Drop into a Culture Jasoos session if you want to:
- Read feminist literature rooted in South Asian histories and the Western tradition
- Watch arthouse cinema from India and abroad
- Meet writers, filmmakers, and creatives who take culture seriously
- Think more carefully about the culture you are already consuming
Check out the theme for the First Edition and the Second Edition here
Each month:
Twenty people gather at a venue around one theme — a book, a film, a question worth two hours of genuine discussion. A week before, you get a short excerpt in your inbox. You read it, arrive with something to say, and we spend two hours actually working it out together.
For those who want to go further: after each gathering, a small group of twelve carries the conversation onto the page. Over four weeks you write one piece of critical writing on the month's theme — with structured prompts and peer feedback — that finds a home on this site when it is done.
Gatherings are ticketed, monthly and will take place offline at different venues in Bangalore.
If you want to write alongside the reading, the writing strand runs parallel to each edition – just let us know when you sign up or after the first session.
Our first gathering is in June 2026. Sign up to get the month's theme in your inbox and be the first to know when registrations open.
What you take with you
From the gathering: a sharper way of reading culture, and connections with writers, filmmakers, and creatives in Bangalore who are genuinely thinking things through.
From the writing strand: a finished personal essay, written at your own pace, read by people who actually care about what you have to say.
About
Preeti Prakash is a writer and the creator of The Culture Jasoos podcast. Her debut book Outlaws Without In-Laws – narrative non-fiction on urban Indian women navigating marriage, divorce, and everything in between – is out next year with HarperCollins. She has an MA in Media Studies from The New School in New York, and is the founder of Neurospicy.in, a community for neurodivergent Indian creators that is still in stealth mode. She has been a resident outsider everywhere she has lived, which turns out to be excellent training for asking uncomfortable questions about culture.