The Five: A novel of existential rage, a silly game, and 4 hand piano

Every week, MPR News producer Stephanie Curtis choose five things to watch, read, or experience.

1. At the end of the calendar year I turn to short books to attempt to complete my reading goal for the year: 52 books. This year I picked up the shockingly modern novella, "Michael Kohlhaas," by German romantic Heinrich von Kleist. It's based on the true tale of a horse trader who believes in the rules and doing what's right. Then he runs into an unjust bureaucratic quagmire and LOSES IT. Read it the next time you are on hold waiting for customer service; think about how Kleist tapped into the same existential rage in 1810.

2. Play Superfight, a silly head-to-head card game this holiday season. Two players draw a character card and two trait cards and then argue about why their fighter would win a showdown.

You get, for instance, a fainting goat on a horse who who can stop time facing off against Gahndi literally wearing beer goggles driving the Pope Mobile. Luck of the draw is a part of the game, but what really matters is your powers of persuasion as the other players choose a victor. (Gahndi lost the battle to the goat at our Hanukkah party.)

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3. Listen to the podcast More or Less in which Tim Harford "explains - and sometimes debunks - the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life." You'll sharpen your critical thinking skills.

4. Writer Dan Nixon wants us to rethink about how we spend our time in the "attention economy."

"Talk of the attention economy relies on the notion of attention-as-resource: our attention is to be applied in the service of some goal, which social media and other ills are bent on diverting us from. Our attention, when we fail to put it to use for our own objectives, becomes a tool to be used and exploited by others."

Read the article in Aeon.

5. Jazz pianists Renee Rosness and Bill Charlap perform together. This lively, lovely song is "Chorinho."