Step away from the everyday and enter a world of ideas. Expert-built courses on the big questions, read and talked through with a guide who never tires of yours, and who draws the line from each question to its neighbours as you go.
Plate ITen questions, one sky. Every course hands you to its neighbours.
Rest on any star to light the lines your guide can walk you across.
01What Makes Us Human?PHILOSOPHY · BIOLOGY
02Why Do Civilisations Rise and Fall?HISTORY · ECONOMICS
03How Do We Know What Is True?EPISTEMOLOGY
04The Story of Human LanguageLINGUISTICS
05Our Quest for MeaningPHILOSOPHY · RELIGION
06Why Do East and West Think Differently?CULTURE · PSYCHOLOGY
07Why Does the Universe Exist?PHYSICS · COSMOLOGY
08The Origin of LifeBIOLOGY · CHEMISTRY
09How Does the Mind Work?NEUROSCIENCE
10What Makes a Good Society?POLITICS · ETHICS
Ten questions to begin with. Each one a journey across several disciplines, at your pace, with as many detours as you want.
№ II
This term's featured volume.
From the catalogue · Volume the Second
Why Do Civilisations Rise and Fall?
Eight evenings. Four disciplines. One question that will not leave you alone.
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Contents
I.Rome, the morning afterWhat stopped working
We begin the morning after the fall and work backwards, the way a doctor reads a chart.
II.Coinage and trustHow an economy hollows
You will hold a debased denarius in your mind's hand and feel what it no longer buys.
III.Complexity's costTainter's ratchet
Every imperial problem hires a clerk; Tainter counts what all the clerks cost.
IV.The ecology of collapseSoil, climate, plague
The land and the weather get their say, and for two evenings history is a natural science.
V.The view from Chang'anThe Tang kept notes
The Tang watched their own storm gather, and kept better notes than Rome ever did.
VI.What stands todayReading our own moment
After this evening you will read the morning's news with Tainter at your shoulder.
№ III
How an evening with us goes.
I.
Immersion
The day's clothes come off at the door. You step into a subject the way Machiavelli entered his study: unhurried, absorbed, among the best minds on the question.
II.
Connection
One subject alone rarely satisfies a big question. Your guide draws the lines across history, science and philosophy as you go, and checks each idea has landed before the next goes on top.
III.
Enlightenment
The reward of the climb. The fog clears, the pieces fit, and you leave seeing the world a little differently than when you sat down.
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“I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them with affection, I feed on that food which only is mine and which I was born for.”
Machiavelli, to Francesco Vettori · 1513
№ IV
A page from a conversation.
A quiet room, late in the evening. A lamp, a chair, two voices. Outside, a clear sky.
The Guide
The world is full of questions worth getting lost in. Choose one, and I'll help you find your way deeper.
You
Why did Rome actually fall? I've heard a dozen reasons.
The Guide
All twelve are half-right, which is the interesting part. Before I argue for any of them, tell me: what do you think an empire needs to stay standing?
You
Grain in the stores, soldiers on the border, and a story everyone still believes.
The Guide
Hold those three. Over our first evening we will watch Rome lose them, in an order that surprises most readers, and an economist, a farmer and a bishop will each insist theirs went first. Shall we start with the coin in your pocket?
Leaf i of v
№ V
What your guide does.
❧Asks before it answers
Put your question to the guide and it will usually return one of its own. What you already believe is where every lesson starts, as the best tutors have always known.
❧Checks an idea has landed
Before the next idea goes on top of the last, you will be asked to say it back in your own words. If it wobbles, you stay with it until it stands.
❧Keeps your place across volumes
Leave off mid-chapter on a Tuesday and resume on a Friday. The guide remembers what struck you, including in a volume you finished months ago.
❧Draws the line between disciplines
Ask a history question and expect an economist's aside. The big questions have never respected faculty walls, and neither does your guide.
№ VI · Membership · Payable monthly or by the year
Terms of membership.
One subscription, every volume, every conversation. Your first question is free.
The Reader£19 a month
All ten volumes, your guide, and as many detours as the evening allows. First question free.
The Patron£180 a year
Everything the Reader receives, plus the print annual, bound and posted once a year.
Figures indicative · Confirmed on enrolment · London & Hong Kong