One hundred paths.

The old questions, taken seriously. Schools, not soundbites.

• Live
  Stoicism, the foundations

  A week with Marcus, Seneca, and Epictetus — the dichotomy of control, voluntary discomfort, memento mori.
• In progress
  Philosophy, an introduction

  Three deep sessions with Plato, Russell, and de Botton on examining your assumptions and knowing the limits of what you know.
• In progress
  The Stoic triangle

  Meditations, then Letters, then Discourses — fourteen days through the canonical Stoics, from most accessible to most demanding.
• In progress
  Practical wisdom

  Naval, Taleb, Frankl — three aphorists on the inner locus: judgment, antifragility, meaning under pressure.
• Planned
  East meets West

  Meditations, Tao Te Ching, and the Striking Thoughts of Bruce Lee. Three traditions converging on the same suspicions about the self.
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  Aristotle on friendship

  A patient reading of Books VIII and IX of the Nicomachean Ethics — the three kinds of friendship, why most adult friendships are the lesser two, and what to do about it.
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  Spinoza in plain English

  A week inside the Ethics without the geometric scaffolding — necessity, joy, the absurdity of free will, and what Damasio thinks Spinoza got right.
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  Existentialism for skeptics

  Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard — read by someone who finds the word "existentialism" slightly embarrassing. Freedom, absurdity, the leap.
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  How to read philosophy

  A short course in the moves: how to follow an argument, when to stop and re-read, how to tell a real disagreement from a vocabulary problem.
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  Confucius and the Analects

  A patient first reading of the most influential book most Western readers have never opened. Ren, li, and the question of what it means to become someone.
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  Modern Stoicism

  Ryan Holiday's Obstacle / Ego / Stillness trilogy. The same argument from three angles — adversity, ambition, peace.
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  Hume and the limits of reason

  The Treatise made readable. Why induction is a problem, why is doesn't imply ought, and why the most modest philosopher in the canon is also the most disturbing.
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  Mortality and meaning

  A Stoic-Existentialist crossover. Marcus and Camus on the same shelf — the brevity of life as raw material rather than threat.
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  A short course in argument

  Logical form, common fallacies, and the higher art of charity. How to disagree with someone without misrepresenting them.
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  Wittgenstein, slowly

  The Tractatus and the Investigations as two attempts at the same problem. Language games, family resemblances, what philosophy can and cannot dissolve.

How the mind actually works — the embodied, social, occasionally unreliable thing it is.

• In progress
  Psychology, an introduction

  Goleman, Burns, and Brown on the basics — thoughts are not facts, emotions are information, naming what you feel.
• In progress
  How your mind actually works

  Kahneman, Ariely, and Cialdini layered — two systems, choice architecture, social engineering. With honest replication-crisis caveats throughout.
• In progress
  The body and the mind

  Van der Kolk, Walker, and Gottlieb — the embodied half of psychology. Trauma, sleep, the therapeutic relationship, with the books' real limits surfaced.
• In progress
  Meaning under pressure

  Frankl, Tolle, and Manson — three temperaments on suffering. Measured, contemplative, irreverent, converging on the same argument.
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  Why we mis-explain ourselves

  A patient tour through the introspection illusion. We do not have privileged access to our own motives — and what to do with that fact.
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  A short history of attention

  From William James to Cal Newport. What the word means, what it costs, and what the slot machine in your pocket is doing to it.
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  Behavioural economics, seriously

  For the curious-but-busy reader. Loss aversion, framing, mental accounting — and a clear-eyed look at which findings replicated and which didn't.
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  The science of mood

  Light, sleep, movement, food, social contact. The boring, well-evidenced inputs to a stable inner weather — and how few people actually run them.
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  Therapy without jargon

  A short course on what the major modalities (CBT, IFS, psychodynamic, ACT) actually do — and how a non-clinician should think about which one might fit a friend.
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  The inner critic

  Where the voice comes from, why it sounds so confident, and the practical moves that loosen its hold without trying to argue with it.
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  Memory, and what it is for

  Endel Tulving onward. Why memory is a tool for the future, not a record of the past — and what that means for how we revise the stories of our lives.
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  The lonely century

  Noreena Hertz, Robert Putnam, the surgeon-general's advisory. Why loneliness is a public-health problem, and what reading the data does to the self-help framing.

The long arc. The kind of history that changes how you read the news.

• Planned
  History, an introduction

  Three sessions on what history is for — not the names and dates, but the discipline of reading the past as a foreign country with its own logic.
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  A short history of the book

  Scroll to codex to print to ebook. How the physical object shaped what could be thought, and what we lose each time the form changes.
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  The Enlightenment, contested

  Pinker on the case for it, Gray on the case against, Israel on what actually happened. A patient three-way argument about the inheritance.
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  Sapiens, then the pushback

  Harari's bestseller read alongside Graeber and Wengrow's Dawn of Everything. The big story, and the one that complicates it.
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  The Industrial Revolution, up close

  Why it happened in Britain, why it happened when it did, and why economic historians still argue about it. Mokyr, Allen, McCloskey.
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  A short history of money

  Coinage, paper, the gold standard, fiat, crypto. Felix Martin, David Graeber, and the question of what money has always actually been.
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  The twentieth century in five

  Five hinge moments — Sarajevo, Versailles, 1945, the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1989 — read for the shape of the century rather than the chronology.
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  The Cold War, without the swagger

  Gaddis as the foundation, Westad for the global view. The forty years that made the world we still live in, told without triumphalism.
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  How empires end

  Gibbon's Rome, Ferguson's modern empires, the case studies most pundits don't actually know. The shapes a decline can take.
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  The history of capitalism

  From Smith to Polanyi to Piketty. Three angles on how markets came to organise modern life — and on the things they cannot price.
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  Why nations succeed

  Acemoglu and Robinson, with the counterweights — geography, culture, contingency. A patient argument about institutions.
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  The slow Reformation

  MacCulloch's account, MacCulloch's caveats. How a quarrel about indulgences became three centuries of remaking Europe — and what it means that printing made it possible.

The unglamorous middle layer between intention and outcome.

• In progress
  Habits, an introduction

  Seven foundational moves from Duhigg, Fogg, and Clear. Tiny anchors, the celebration, the never-miss-twice rule.
• In progress
  Habits, the science

  Duhigg to Fogg to Clear. The habit loop, then design, then identity — three layers of the same problem, sequenced.
• In progress
  The will to persist

  Twenty-one days with Duckworth, Dweck, and Newport. The length of the path is itself the lesson.
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  The science of how habits form

  The neuroscience layer underneath the popular books. Basal ganglia, dopamine prediction error, the difference between learning a habit and breaking one.
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  Deep work, in practice

  Cal Newport's argument, then a week of trying to actually live it. The four philosophies of depth, the shutdown ritual, the empty calendar.
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  Slow productivity, seriously

  Newport's third book, in the company of Pieper, Odell, and Burkeman. Why fewer things, at a natural pace, with obsessive quality.
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  The four thousand weeks

  Burkeman's argument, in full. Finitude as the precondition for taking your life seriously — and why most productivity advice is a denial mechanism.
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  The case against motivation

  Why feeling like it is the wrong target. A week with the people who have written most clearly on showing up regardless — Pressfield, Tharp, Currey.
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  Walking, as a thinking practice

  Rebecca Solnit, Robert Macfarlane, Frédéric Gros. A short course on why the people who have thought most clearly all walked a lot — and what the research now says about why.

Personal finance and the cleaner-thinking layer underneath it.

• In progress
  Money, an introduction

  Seven foundational ideas — paying yourself first, compound interest, the true cost of debt — for someone starting from scratch.
• In progress
  Money is mostly behaviour

  Housel, Robin, and Stanley/Danko. Personal finance as a study of the person, not the spreadsheet.
• Planned
  The Bogleheads path

  Collins, Larimore, Malkiel. The case for low-cost index investing, from the most accessible voice to the most rigorous.
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  Wealth as freedom

  Naval, Ferriss, Robin. Money read as autonomy rather than status — the slow accumulation of optionality.
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  A primer on game theory

  Schelling first, then Nash, then the experimental literature. The minimum you need to read most current commentary on conflict and cooperation.
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  What economists actually disagree about

  The honest disagreements at the centre of the discipline — minimum wage, immigration, monetary policy, growth. With the IGM Forum data as the spine.
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  Decision-making under uncertainty

  Annie Duke, Philip Tetlock, Daniel Kahneman. How to think about a decision that hasn't happened yet — and how to grade it after it has.
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  The Munger toolkit

  First principles, inversion, second-order effects, lollapalooza. The mental models that made him useful — read patiently, in the order he would have read them.
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  Forecasting, like a superforecaster

  Tetlock's research distilled. Probabilistic thinking, base rates, the inside and outside views, the discipline of updating.
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  Effective altruism, fairly

  Singer, MacAskill, the post-FTX reckoning. The strongest version of the argument and the strongest version of the objections, in the same week.

The grown-up version of soft skills. How to be understood; how to disagree well.

• In progress
  Sales, an introduction

  Seven foundational moves from Pink, Carnegie, and Rackham — for the person who has never thought of themselves as someone who sells.
• In progress
  Communication, an introduction

  Listening first, observation over judgment, the genuine question, the hard thing said clearly. With Carnegie, Rosenberg, and Patterson.
• In progress
  The three schools of negotiation

  Voss, Fisher/Ury, Diamond. Three definitive voices who disagree about what negotiation actually is — read in conversation.
• Planned
  The influence foundations

  Carnegie, then Cialdini, then Pre-Suasion. Persuasion as a ninety-year arc — from etiquette to social psychology to behavioural economics.
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  Hard conversations

  Stone, Patton, Heen, then Patterson. The patient discipline of saying the thing without breaking the relationship.
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  Public speaking without performance

  Chris Anderson's TED book, then Quintilian. The case that the best public speech is closer to honest conversation than to theatre.
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  Writing to be understood

  Steven Pinker's Sense of Style, Helen Sword's Stylish Academic Writing, William Zinsser. The classical case for plain English.
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  Storytelling, as a craft

  McKee, Truby, Booker. Three frameworks for the same problem — and what working writers do with the disagreements between them.
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  The art of listening

  Kate Murphy's You're Not Listening, the IFS-influenced therapists, the journalists who interview for a living. Listening as a discipline rather than a personality trait.
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  Giving and receiving feedback

  Kim Scott's Radical Candor, then the gentler counterpoints. How to say something true without making it a referendum on the person.

The quietly central work. Friendship, attachment, the long-term partnership.

• In progress
  Attachment and the long game

  Levine & Heller, Sue Johnson, Esther Perel. Three modern voices on adult romantic partnership — diagnosis, repair, the security-desire tension.
• In progress
  The inner game of dating

  Manson, Glover, Branden — explicitly anti-PUA. The argument: attractiveness is downstream of self-respect, not upstream of it.
• Planned
  Friendship after thirty

  The literature is thinner than it should be. Aristotle, Robin Dunbar, Lydia Denworth. Why adult friendship needs scheduling — and what it takes to keep one alive.
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  Parenting, thoughtfully

  Emily Oster, Alison Gopnik, Adam Mastroianni. Three temperaments — the data-driven, the developmental, the irreverent — on raising small people.
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  Conflict, well

  Gottman's research, Tatkin's clinical work, the IFS layer underneath both. The four horsemen, the repair attempt, the inner critic showing up in someone else's voice.
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  Sex, seriously

  Emily Nagoski's research, Esther Perel's clinical voice, the honest data on long-term partnership. For adults, written like adults.
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  Being a son or daughter

  The relationship with parents in adulthood — Kornfield, Lerner, the IFS clinicians. Forgiveness without erasure, distance without contempt.
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  Grief, and the long after

  Joan Didion, C.S. Lewis, the contemporary clinical literature. Grief as a slow remaking of the self — not the five-stage tidy version.

For the people quietly contemptuous of hustle culture. The case for less, done better.

• In progress
  The resistance trilogy

  Pressfield, Rubin, Gilbert. Same problem — the inner block on creative work — three temperaments: military, monastic, playful.
• Planned
  Creative practice, an introduction

  A first path into the work — showing up, the daily quota, the page on the wall. For someone who has never finished a creative project.
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  Practitioners on practice

  Stephen King's On Writing, Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, Twyla Tharp's Creative Habit. Working artists describing what they actually do at eight in the morning.
• Planned
  The studio mindset

  Ed Catmull's Creativity Inc., Seth Godin's The Practice, Austin Kleon. Creative work as systematic, daily, shippable — rather than waiting for a muse.
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  Reading fiction, seriously

  Why novels matter for the work of becoming a person. Iris Murdoch's case, James Wood's craft notes, the contemporary research on theory of mind.
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  The case for slow learning

  Why ten minutes a day beats a Saturday afternoon. Spaced repetition, the testing effect, and the patient case against cramming.
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  Solitude, on purpose

  Anthony Storr, Cal Newport, Sara Maitland. The neglected case that being alone — frequently, well — is a precondition for a thinking life.
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  The attention diet

  A week of unwinding the modern stack. Newport's Digital Minimalism, Hari's Stolen Focus, Odell's How to Do Nothing — practiced, not just read.
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  Living with fewer things

  Not the Marie Kondo version. Cain's Quiet, Becker's Minimalism, the actual ascetic tradition. Why less stuff is mostly less anxiety.
• Planned
  Cooking as a practice

  Samin Nosrat, MFK Fisher, Michael Pollan. The case that cooking is one of the last domestic places where attention still pays off — and how to take it seriously without becoming insufferable.

The popular-science shelf, taken patiently. What the actual experts actually think.

• Planned
  Science, an introduction

  Three sessions on what science is for — how a working hypothesis becomes a result, what peer review actually does, where the replication crisis came from.
• Planned
  Carl Sagan and the long view

  Pale Blue Dot, The Demon-Haunted World, Cosmos. Sagan as a stylist and as a steward — the case for science as a kind of patience.
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  What complexity theory actually says

  Beyond the buzzword. Melanie Mitchell, Stuart Kauffman, the Santa Fe Institute. Emergence, adaptive systems, the limits of reductionism.
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  Quantum mechanics for the curious

  No equations. Carlo Rovelli, Sean Carroll, Sabine Hossenfelder. Three working physicists who disagree about what's going on — and what that tells you about the state of the question.
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  Evolution, beyond the cartoon

  Dawkins is the starting point, not the destination. Stephen Jay Gould's contingency, Lynn Margulis on symbiosis, the contemporary picture of how it all actually fits.
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  The brain, without the hype

  Lisa Feldman Barrett, Anil Seth, the careful contemporary neuroscientists. Why most popular neuroscience is a generation behind the field.
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  What sleep actually does

  Why Walker's bestseller has been criticised, what the field actually agrees on, what a working adult should do with that. The honest version.
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  Nutrition, uncertainly

  A patient walk through what nutritional epidemiology can and cannot tell you. Pollan's defensible rules, the few RCT findings that survived, why almost everything else is contested.
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  Climate science, cleanly

  What the IPCC actually says, where the genuine disagreements are, what a serious adult should and shouldn't be worried about. Hayhoe, Mann, Hausfather.
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  AI, beyond the hype cycle

  What's actually new since 2022, what isn't, and what serious people who disagree about the trajectory are arguing about. Christian, Marcus, Hassabis.

The unsentimental version of career advice. What a working life is for.

• Planned
  So Good They Can't Ignore You

  Newport's argument against the passion hypothesis, in full. Craftsmanship over passion, career capital, the slow build.
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  Working identity

  Herminia Ibarra's research on how people actually change careers. The orthodox model is wrong — you act your way into a new self, not think your way into one.
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  The case against ambition

  Agnes Callard, the Tao Te Ching, Pieper on leisure. Three patient arguments that the unexamined ambitious life is also not worth living.
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  On forming a real opinion

  The discipline of holding a view that you can actually defend, change, or surrender. Tetlock, Aaronson, Russell. For people exhausted by the takes economy.