Curiosity lists: The serendipitous alternative to reading lists.
Most academic courses have reading lists. They often start unashamedly with the professor’s latest book. They are the beacons of truth, lighting the runway astride the runways of our intellectual endeavour.
The main problem I have with them is how damn linear they are. Everyone starts at the same point and finishes at a preordained conclusion at the same time, with prescriptive instructions on exactly how to get there.
It’s very ‘20th Century industrial’ to have a series of hurdles that the student jumps over to prove they have followed the predetermined path.
If we want to nurture smart, autonomous, self-directed leaders, who thrive in complex situations, how ever could we expect those behaviours to be the product of a clear, linear process?
We want autonomy! Creativity! Intellectual courage! The grit to stray from the path, into the murky forest to fight the conceptual beasts within!
Reality isn’t linear, it’s full of serendipity and chance. I‘d argue that serendipity is critical, therefore the behaviours of the learning itself should have some chaos embedded within.
Okay, what if students made their own reading lists and controlled the process almost entirely?
Lots of questions here…
- How would it work in practice?
- Who decides what makes it onto the list?
- What if there’s fake news or false facts along the way?
- How do we know students are actually learning?
- Are starting points better than end goals?
The central issue: Where to begin?
To me, most of these questions are answered via the starting points.
Good teachers help their students to avoid mistakes. This is good. But it can overcorrect into stopping students from making any mistakes.
This is part bias, part laziness, with a liberal sprinkling of the desire to have everything laid out ahead of time to de-risk the parent institution. 😳
Here’s an idea: Instead of specifying a list of “must reads”, we might specify a series of places to begin, which branch out wherever they might lead.
The curiosity list. 🏃♀️ 🏃♂️
Okay class, let’s begin. I’d invite you to opt in to a choose your own adventure of purposeless & purposeful exploration.
1) How to:
- Pick one item from the list(s) below. Just one.
- Explore the topic daily. Doesn’t matter for how long.
- At the end of three weeks, reflect upon what you’ve discovered.
- Choose a new starting point and try again. Do this three times.
We’ll take some time together to talk about what we’ve found along the way, and at the end of the nine weeks we’ll reflect together about what we’ve learnt and where we’ve landed.
2) Rules of the game:
- Stick with the topic, even when you’re not in love with it! Roam far and wide within the area, read Wikipedia articles, criticisms, counterpoints, dissenting and collaborating authors. Add people on LinkedIn, follow them on Twitter, go deep.
- Keep it playful, and make time. It shouldn’t be a chore, dive in joyfully. Read with coffee. Listen while cleaning or walking, or with a friend.
- If you skip a day, don’t stress! Be curious but not guilty about why you slipped up, and pick it back up again.
- The end goal is to discover things. Especially things you didn’t plan to discover. Keep that in mind and stay curious.
3) That’s it!
On to the lists…
Will’s list:
I’m still the boss of this class so I get to nominate a bunch of stuff. Hah!
- Television: The Wire is the best television ever made, about how we create and are trapped within social institutions. Brilliant, systems change 101 education in TV form. Beautiful, bitter joy, every time.
- Blog + Twitter: IndigenousX was a shared twitter account that has turned into a brilliant Aboriginal media organisation.
- Interactive: Nicky Case makes explorable explanations. Delicious!
- Podcasts: Ologies with Alie Ward, Rationally Speaking with Julia Galef, The End of the World and The Intelligence are all ace. Seriously special mention for The Intelligence, it’s a real pleasure.
- News: Michael West and Independent Australia are two of the few trustworthy news sources for Australians. Techmeme for tech news.
- YouTube: James Hoffman is a coffee nerd, Bus Huxley is building a house from trees. Get Hands Dirty makes things and Nerdwriter perfected video essays.
- Bonus YouTube: donoteat01. Woah. I am OBSESSED with this guy’s weird uhh… leftist political urban planning simulation game. Mesmerising.
Friends and faculty curiosity list:
I asked some clever peeps from our international community of doers for starting points. Yes, these are collected just for you! How exciting. 🥰
- Prashan Paramanathan: Read about abolitionists. Ruth Wilson Gilmore is great. Prison abolitionists are the best deep thinkers about systems change. Once you start questioning why we have something that’s so normalised as police/ prisons, it helps you see the structure we’re operating within.
- Celia Boyd: darimulut.substack.com is a journo based in Jakarta and its just very small regular snapshots, but really down to earth and her personal / casual style, I love it.
- Madeline Snow: The Happiness Lab. I’m a bit tapped out of new-related podcasts because it’s all so heavy, so this is great. The science of happiness, but in a pragmatic way, not a toxic-positivity way.
- Ben Tollady: The third industrial revolution. Start with this docco on SBS. It’s a MUST SEE. Watch it tonight. I’ve watched it 4 or 5 times.
- Cass Mao: Tim Flannery. His book Life to start. Amazing concept of an ‘environmental view of culture’ and an Australian identity defined not by bangers & mash or english people or whatever, but by the physical climate and environment of Australia, our soils, fires, droughts, etc.
- Victoria Cullen: Farnam Street blog comes to mind, all behavioural economics articles so looking at root cause stuff. They might have a podcast too.
- Michelle Evans: Subscribe to the National Indigenous Australians Agency federal government updates. Read Aboriginal journalists Allan Clarke (and his podcasts investigating cold case murders in Bowraville), Amy McQuire. Read and listen to Chelsea Bond — her podcast is Wild Black Women
- Alex Hughes-Smith: Favourite podcasts right now: the knowledge project, how’s work?, conversations with tyler, 99% invisible. For random curiosity: the browser, kyle westaway weekend briefing, mark manson, IPAs weekly links and I’d be remiss to not give our quarterly links a plug. [OMG yes, Mulago quarterly links = amazing. -Ed.]
- On Alex H’s list, Kevin Starr says: “You can’t go wrong with the knowledge project, or Tyler. Both are nebbish-y hosts who don’t talk too much and have wonderful guests.”
- Caroline Fiennes: 13 Minutes to the Moon (podcast) is pretty irrelevant to our sector, but quite amazing. Books: Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race and Nine Pints, about blood. What it is, the economics of it, the social taboos about it, STDs, people selling sex, people selling blood, the history of it. Very fascinating. [The Red Market is also good — Ed.] Lastly, be an activist with the authors you read.
- Simon Griffith: For podcasts, I really love 20VC because it puts you in the shoes of the investor (and on Fridays the founder) and the things they’re excited about. For new entrepreneurs, How I Built This is probably really good listening.
- Mitchell Hibbens: Pretty for an Aboriginal touches on so many different things, not just beauty standards, racism, the arts… but it’s lighthearted, easy to listen to. Also The Curtain which is about a battle for justice.
- Judah Pollack: Ourfinerfuture.com. Hunter Lovins is awesome and pops people’s heads open.
- Leo Flander: John Berger / Ways of Seeing For people who haven’t thought about how photos and cameras shape the world we live in, this video made me geek out. Everything I’m doing as an artist right now is because of this video series.
- Bryony Cole: womenofsextech.com. Since it started 4 years ago it’s grown from a few people in an apartment to 250+ globally building the future of sexuality, health and wellness.
- Issac Jeffries: Three things I actively seek out whenever they’re published are Seth Godin’s blog, Dave Trott’s blog, and Wait But Why. Admittedly these are less frequent but I find them really helpful. They’re all incredible writers, who are topical-ish without being in the news cycle.
- Ross Hill: Bobby Klein’s I Ching weekly readings. He writes them from his retreat in Tulum, and has been doing so for many decades. He sends a weekly free email to 20,000+ people, though I’d recommend you click the ‘listen now’ in the email and hear his words directly as it’s a very different experience to reading plain text.
- Caitlyn Cook: Film: Elder wisdom, indigenous perspectives on our world, supra materials solutions with The Twelve film by the Le Ciel Foundation. TV: Sense8, a contemporary exploration of telepathy and telekinesis, sexual fluidity, community.
- Djuke Veldhuis: If you could listen to country, what would you hear?
Where the idea came from.
Julia Galef once mentioned in her podcast the idea of an ‘Elephant Book Club’, where a small group of people read different books on the one topic. It’s based on that old parable from the Indian subcontinent of the Blind Men and the Elephant, except the hope is that multiple readers of multiple competing books might find more interesting perspectives.
According to the podcast Julia never tried it, so I did, with some friends.
It didn’t work because there was no real control or autonomy, just a choice of a handful of books on the same topic. The missing component was individual choice of medium and method. This is an attempt to try this idea again, better.
As with university lecturers, my students are unwitting test subjects.
That’s all, folks.
For students in my class: You will complete a reflection assessment at the end of the year, with some summative thoughts and feels.
Anyone else: If you try this yourself with friends, students or a community, please drop me a line (will@fitzroyacademy.com) to let me know!
Much love,
-Will. 🤓
