For iPhone · Coming soon
Short, carefully written lessons on history, science, philosophy, art, economics, and more. Read one, or listen to it, in about twelve minutes.
Conversant is a library of short lessons on the subjects an educated person is expected to know something about. Each one tells a real story, explains the ideas behind it, and names its sources.
Over time the pieces join up. The passing reference to Venice, or Hume, or Bach, at dinner or across a meeting table, becomes something you can take up rather than let pass.
The range
History and economics, physics and philosophy, painting, music, law, literature, and the living world. One hundred lessons across twelve fields today, growing toward five hundred. Each goes far enough to be worth repeating, and to survive the follow-up question.
The writing
Every lesson follows a single editorial standard: a real story told in order, ideas explained rather than asserted, sources named. Each includes something to do as well as read: a chart to explore, a construction to draw, a piece of music to follow.
The time
Most lessons take ten to fifteen minutes: long enough to understand something properly, short enough for a train, a lunch break, or the end of the day. A new lesson of the day is chosen each morning.
Listening
Every lesson is narrated in full, with the script adapted for the ear. Download a pathway before a flight or a commute, and listen with the screen off.
The library
Titles from the current library of one hundred lessons.
From a lesson
How a textbook printed in Venice taught the world to keep accounts.
Luca Pacioli, a Franciscan friar, published a vast textbook of mathematics in Venice in 1494. Most of it dealt with arithmetic and geometry. Tucked inside, in thirty-six short chapters, was a guide to how a merchant should keep his books.
Pacioli did not invent the method. Merchants in Genoa, Florence, and Venice had used it for nearly two centuries. What he did was write it down plainly, in Italian rather than Latin, at the moment printing could carry it across Europe.
The idea at its center is simple. Every transaction is entered twice, once as a debit and once as a credit. Buy wool for ten ducats, and your stock rises by ten while your cash falls by ten. Because the two sides must always agree, the books check themselves: if they fail to balance, a mistake is hiding somewhere, and can be found.
In one of Goethe’s novels, a merchant calls it among the finest inventions of the human mind. Five centuries on, almost every company in the world still keeps its accounts this way.
The app
Generous type, quiet color, and nothing competing for your attention. Conversant follows your iPhone’s text size, and turns to a dark page when your iPhone does.
Availability
Conversant is in its final stages of preparation. The lesson of the day will be free, and the full library will be available by subscription, with a free trial.
Coming soon to the App Store