Deep reading

I have a new cool thing that I want to do.

From Tyler Cowen on a recent podcast: “I actually put on a whole two day seminar to read through [Henry George’s] Progress and Poverty with a number of people, including Peter Thiel. This was just a phenomenal event. We had a small group, everyone was totally dedicated to the book. Just, like, sessions all day long. We had some Georgist specialists there, some historians. I had a blast. That was great.”

I had previously heard from someone at Founders Fund that Peter Thiel once locked himself in a boardroom with a small group of experts for a whole day to dissect and discuss just one chapter of Renee Girard’s Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World.

The closest I’ve come to organizing something like this was inviting Garett Jones to talk about his latest book, 10% Less Democracy, for a small group of friends and employees in Toronto. It was really excellent, and spurred a tonne of interesting discussion and debate.

But that was just for a few hours. We could have gone much deeper. The thought hadn’t even occurred to me until I came across these two anecdotes.