Starting late

The high school education I never gotI say this as a 43 year old, who have always read widely and been precocious, but is finally now beginning to backfill my cultural knowledge - Greek and Roman history, Chaucer, the Islamic conquests, the Renaissance... So much I've read and barely understood because of this lack.Adult beginnersUneducated rogues, happy amateurs and a study that should have been done: how adults get started with literature, art and music.One thing led to anotherFrom a poster on Crete to Greek, Latin, Shakespeare, Racine and opera. It snowballed, one thing led to another.The anchor strategyCrete, the fog-of-war map, Charlemagne as an anchor, why hooks need a skeleton, and reading by the fireplace. Excerpts about method from a 2026 essay.Reading Plato where it happenedThirty days in Athens in the summer of 2025: an 1872 Plato from an auction, a bookbinder, Elektra and Oedipus in Epidaurus, and the dialogues read on the spots where they are set.

Looking and listening

I turned my year pass at the National Museum into an art appreciation class for myselfOne year. Thirteen visits. Four to six pictures each time, with something to hear or watch before, and a voice note afterwards.It all started with Kirsten FlagstadThe Flagstad festival, a book from the library, a recording from Stockholm on Youtube, and a year later Copenhagen with my son.How to read a playFrom «I find it very hard to read and enjoy a play» in April 2024 to twenty plays a year later, and the one piece of advice that helped: be patient, keep reading, it comes together.Still an atheistMatthew in Greek at Easter, Bondestudentar with no background knowledge, Wergeland's "Mennesket", and the plan for the Old Testament. The Bible as literature, for someone who quit the church at sixteen.A map for one readerSicily in June with a guide that exists in no app store — and the Norman king, the Arab geographer and the Athenian actor who kept turning up in it

Children

Opera with a ten-year-oldKid (10): Dad, can we watch an opera before I go to bed? Sure.From 1885, and just as exciting for itRobin Hood from 1938, a boys' book from 1931, Little Lord Fauntleroy from 1885. About old books and movies for an eleven-year-old, and what rubs off.

Languages

100% inputSince I started learning Latin 7 months ago, I've literally never produced anything. I haven't written down a single Latin word or phrase, and I haven't spoken a single Latin phrase.The language learning holy grailParallel texts, Anki verses, the New Testament in Greek, and a method for reading in another language.Learning effectively with podcastsWalks, a lecture series of 50 episodes, voice notes, and how the notes are processed days later.How an Iraqi Play About Cain and Abel Led Me to Build My Own DuolingoTesting twenty years of ideas about language learning, finally building the ultimate app for myselfThis is the Babel fish we've been waiting forHow AI lets us find, follow and join conversations in languages we don’t speak

Reading, school and the rest of us

Cricket in AustraliaYou feel like you understand every word, but you have no clue what's going on. About E. D. Hirsch, background knowledge, and why the gap between kids grows after they've learned to read.Never heard of Hirsch thereWhat is even the point of lots of fancy theories and PhDs when you don't do the absolute simplest thing possible?Reading, togetherOne concrete idea I've been carrying for fifteen years and still haven't built — a way to read hard things with other people that doesn't collapse the moment someone's schedule gets tight.