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The Outlier Series with Jason Shen
Starting October 14
Judaism Is Psychedelic – Online Salon Series with Madison Margolin
Starting November 3
Our offline communities worldwide
Members only and offline events
October 22
The Power of Ideas: Barbie’s Philosophical World
OnlineHow are you here? You’re like an idea. A great idea. Sasha assumes, like most of us, that ideas are impoverished abstractions of material reality. Plato, however, held the opposite view—called idealism—in which ideas are more real than their mere material instantiations. In his dialogue Phaedo, set as a last discussion with Socrates before his execution, Plato…
Redefine Your Ambition
OnlineAre you striving to live someone else's definition of a good life? When you've got an atypical brain, you got to have atypical ambitions. Too often we unintentionally inherit an idea of a good life from our parents, cultural background, peers, and institutions. But it is always possible to reconnect with what would be most…
The Science of Hidden Motives – With Robin Hanson
OnlineAbout Robin Hanson's book Elephant In the Brain (co-written by Kevin Simler): "Human beings are primates, and primates are political animals. Our brains are therefore designed not just to hunt…
When Life Becomes Art: Fireside Chat with Kiubon Kokko (OSV Film-making Fellow)
OnlineIn 2023, Kiubon Kokko was awarded a $100,000 fellowship grant by O'Shaughnessy Ventures to create a feature documentary about his father's 10-12 hour swim from communist China to Hong Kong in 1973. In this salon, Kiubon will talk about what led to him undertake this project: the challenges he and his family faced in the…
DC IRL: October Meetup in Beautiful Old Town Alexandria
Alexandria, VAJoin us for an in-person Interintellect gathering where curiosity leads the way! As fall settles in and the seasons change, it’s the perfect time to come together in beautiful Old Town Alexandria. We’ll kick things off by exploring the themes of seasonality, friendships, and community, but as always, the conversation can go anywhere—from philosophy and…
Western Canon Book Club: Fathers & Sons: Turgenev and the death of liberalism
OnlineWriter Henry Oliver continues the Western Canon Book Club series with a salon about the birth of Romanticism. Turgenev's greatest novel is one of the greatest Russian novels of the nineteenth century. A response to the new generation of nihilists, who saw the world very differently from their liberal fathers, this is a very resonant…
A Return to Self-Compassion – Members’ Fireside with Gina Hafez
OnlineJoin Gina for a return of the Self-Compassion series this October! We will continue discussing Self-Compassion tips, insights, theories and more, diving more deeply into the relationships between Self-Compassion and Performance (physical, career and social!) For our first session, I encourage you to bring a piece of poetry or writing you adore or have written…
Why Foucault Matters – Reading Group with COMPACT’s Sohrab Ahmari and Geoff Shullenberger in NYC!
New York NYThis year marked the 40th anniversary of the death of Michel Foucault, by some measures the most widely cited academic of the past hundred years. Often vilified on the right and celebrated—though arguably poorly understood—on the left, Foucault has cast a shadow over recent debates ranging from gender and sexuality and pandemic policy to policing…
Artificial General Intelligence: A Discussion with Julian Togelius
OnlineJoin host Thomas Arnold with your questions, scenarios, hopes, and fears about AI, as we explore with Julian Togelius author of "Artificial General Intelligence", what the horizon of AI looks like today and what his book might help us notice. Amid so much hype about Artificial General Intelligence (whose arrival is now cast in thousands…
What Happened to Great Stories? – What TV and Literature Should Learn from Each Other
OnlineHollywood screenwriter Michael Sonnenschein, The Common Reader essayist, literary critic, and Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life writer Henry Oliver, and former screenwriter-playwright and now…
Solidarity – Author Talk with Leah Hunt-Hendrix & Astra Taylor | New Labor Book Series #19
OnlineSolidarity is often invoked, but it is rarely analyzed and poorly understood. Leah and Astra together developed the first in-depth examination and intellectual history of solidarity. We will discuss the…
Austin IRL: November Meetup in North Austin
Austin, Texas TXJoin hosts Alaka Halder and Benjamin Woosley for a casual meetup at Easy Tiger in North Austin! This Interintellect offline gathering is a casual meetups devoted to open group discussions of the topics that interest participants the most. From philosophy to science and art, there is nothing that escapes our inquiries! Come, forge new friendships,…
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Media highlights
Web3 and Cryptoeconomics
New Economic Fundamentals
with Alex Tabarrok and host Wes Chow
Alex Tabarrok, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, joins hosts Alaka Halder and Wes Chow to discuss cryptoeconomics – the combination of cryptography and economics – which provides a lens into how web3 is opening up fundamentally new ways of trading, cooperating, and communicating.
Status as a Service: Revisited
with guest Eugene Wei and host Nathan Baschez
Much like Clay Christensen’s theory of disruption, as a management theory becomes more well known, it can change the behavior of managers. Three years in, it feels like many of the most interesting trends in social networking are directly responding to the status as a service thesis.
On one end of the spectrum, we have Twitter actively monetizing status by charging for blue checks. On the other end, we have apps like BeReal seemingly in revolt against the idea that users crave status. What’s really going on?
Eugene and Nathan host a discussion where we attempt to gain clarity.
Building to Last: Past, Present and Future
with Elizabeth Barlow Rogers and Hailey Phillips
World-renowned author, landscape preservationist, and civic activist Elizabeth Barlow Rogers joins energy and infrastructure attorney, birth doula, and Interintellect host Hailey Phillips to explore what it takes to build timeless institutions of value, transcending contemporary political drama and lasting for generations.
Drawn to the Struggle
On WRITING and WRITERS
w/ Erik Hoel, Visa Veerasamy, Christin Balan and Anna Gát
Scientist, essayist, and novelist Erik Hoel joins Twitter creator Visakan Veerasamy, Interintellect editorial lead Christin Balan, and Interintellect founder Anna Gát to discuss talent, Substack, audience capture, community, controversy, gatekeepers, academic bureaucracy — why we need more and better fiction, why science is really not that different from art, and how there is a place for all of us. And publishers, practicalities, platforms, and more! An Interintellect special.