Be honest. When was the last time you logged off because you wanted to, not because your battery died?

In this brand new episode of Books & Beyond, Tara sits down with Anurag Minus Verma, influencer, writer, and podcaster, to trace how the Indian internet went from cyber cafes and Orkut scraps to algorithms that know us better than we do.

From going down random rabbit holes and getting emotionally invested in strangers we’ve never met, to collectively losing our minds over the next big controversy, it all points to the same question: when did being online become the default setting, and what has it done to us in the process?

Talking about his book The Great Indian Brain Rot, Anurag and Tara get into the TikTok ban and the madness around it, the influence of Sushant Singh Rajput, and why influencer fame doesn’t always mean anything outside the app. He also talks about why so many creators want to shift to film or TV, and how podcasts have suddenly become the format everyone wants in on.

If your day starts and ends with a screen, and “just five minutes” never means five minutes, this episode is for you!

So press play. Then maybe, just maybe, touch some grass.

Books and Documentaries mentioned in the episode:

Never Logged Out: How the Internet Created India's Gen Z by Ria Chopra
Morality TV and Loving Jehad by Paromita Vohra (2007)
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino
Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
Kasapa by Manohar Shyam Joshi

‘Books and Beyond with Bound’ is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D’costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India’s finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms.

9.5 Welcome to the Internet. It Sucks. ft. Anurag Minus Verma