Everything that counts

On a scale of emotional temperatures, it doesn’t get any hotter than the 2019 Indian election did. And with the summer comes another TV war, in the shape of the 2019 World Cup. The two offer similar opportunities to reflect, or riff, from a spot in the shade. On how we experience them as emotional or social beings, through symbolism and culture, essentially unchanged for millennia. But also in newer ways, through data, as supposedly rational humans.   

Built into both is their adversarial nature, an organised contest of minds and bodies. They are meant to produce not just a winning