Joining our Great Books Stream

Learn how to join @tldr & crypto friends as we livestream conversations about famous passages from the history of ideas.

Hosted by Tim Reilly (@tldr on Farcaster)

When is it?

Sundays at 3pmET (Stream #1 on Sun, May 14)

Livestreamed on Unlonely (unlonley.app/channels/tldr)

Who’s there?

This is an open conversation - anyone can come listen & chat during the conversation @unlonely.

Each week, 5-10 friends are on the video conversation itself, rotating based on interest and availability. Friends include farcasters like @grace, @ted, @aaina, @phil, @timdaub, et al.

What’s this like?

Best to check out recordings of previous conversations in this substack, or just stop by a stream some Sunday. But here are some abbreviated principles:

Core Opinion: By trying to understand primary texts on their own terms we can learn and/or get outside of our current frames of thinking on the most important questions of human experience. This process is most pleasant and fruitful with the help of friends.

Reading Selections: Readings will be excerpts of 10-15 pages, and will not be sequential. The idea is that a new person should be able to follow a given conversation without necessarily have attended previous ones.

Spirit of Conversations: Our conversations are about trying to understand, not about showing off “expertise”. No formal academic background is needed or even desired. Just passion and openness. 

Definition of “Great Books”: There’s no Official List™. In this group, we focus on the most famous and referenced texts in the conversation of ideas recorded by what’s commonly called western civilization. These texts may be philosophical, political, religious scientific, or even poetic.

Learn more

See this post for a fuller description of the project:

Introducing Great Books Stream