Reset checks in with Scott Collis for his recommendations on what to read, watch and do this week.

What to read

1. The Predator Cities series by Philip Reeve - “It’s a highly imaginative series of books based in the future where … cities have been mobilized and bigger cities prey on smaller cities. Everything’s really industrial.”

2. New York Times - “Moving to the United States and being an immigrant, I like to read a lot about the country which I’ve adopted. And so, I very much like reading analyses and especially opinion pages on both sides of politics, just learning about the different opinions of people across the nation and basically how this country operates and how it works.”

3. Bread by Paul Hollywood - “You can’t make bread quickly. It’s a chemical, biological process. I just love this book because it’s laid out in exquisite detail how to achieve the kind of results that you would get in a professional bakery, and it just makes me hungry reading it.”

What to watch

4. The Great British Baking Show (Netflix, PBS) - “It’s a competition show with a real difference. There’s none of the viciousness that you see in other cooking competition shows. It’s really, really wholesome and the characters are just phenomenal, especially the presenters and announcers.”

5. Somebody Better Feed Phil (Netflix) - “Phil Rosenthal is one of the producers on the old series ‘Everybody Love Raymond’ and he just has this effervescent character that he could go anywhere from Istanbul to Australia to America… and he just seems to get on with everybody and everybody just wants to feed Phil.” 

6. Soul (Disney and Pixar) - “It is what it says, it’s soul. And it’s so soulful about finding that inner connection, and in this case it’s music. But we all have that spark, that soul that makes our life special.”

What to do

7. Social distance, wear a mask and, when it’s your turn, get vaccinated

8. Go outside - “Chicago has some of the most amazing parklands, the forest preserves of Cook County, DuPage County are phenomenal. One of the things I really love to do outside is ride my bike through the forest preserves, especially some of the mountain bike trails around Palos.” 

9. Brew beer and bake bread - “I love the chemistry, the engineering and the biochemistry of brewing beer. I started with grains, I crushed my own grains and I boiled with my own hops. I find it a very satisfying experience. The same with bread. You can take these very basic ingredients — flour, yeast, water and salt — and make something that you can live off.”  

10. Bring nature home - “We have native prairie plants all through our property which attract birds and insects (plant milkweed for monarchs) and we have built outdoor water features and we have an outdoor fire ring for campfires when it is warm enough and outdoor cooking.”

GUEST: Scott Collis, atmospheric scientist at Argonne National Laboratory