Students
Thirty — max.
Seminar-sized. If the room doesn't fit a conversation, the number is wrong.
The one-year program · The shape we're building toward
The question the year is organized around is
The question the year is organized around is
the question of the year.
For the eventual one-year program, we chose one question. It will run through every seminar, every reading, every mentor conversation, and every capstone defense. Students will leave with a defended answer.
A note on timing. September 2026 is the one-month trial — four sessions in Amsterdam to find the founding cohort. What follows on this page is the program we're shaping with them. Apply via the home page →
Why this
question,
this year.
Most schools organize the year around a calendar. We organize it around a problem. The problem of the founding cohort is the one we think will define the decade: the quiet reshaping of what it means to have a mind, now that minds can be hired by the hour.
This is not a technology question. It is an older question — asked by Plato, Descartes, and Turing, each in the vocabulary of their own century. It's our turn.
You will not be taught the answer. You will be given the texts, the room, the mentors, and the year — and you will be asked to arrive at one, defend it, and live with the consequences.
How the theme moves
Three trimesters. Three moves. One argument.
Trimester I · Foundations
01
Read the mind.
Four months with the thinkers who defined what a mind is — from Plato's chariot to Turing's imitation game. Close reading, weekly seminars, short written arguments.
Trimester II · The world as it is
02
Read the machine.
Four months with the thinkers who explain our moment — Illich on tools, Arendt on action, Freire on learning, Haraway on the machine and the self. The books that make sense of the present.
Trimester III · Ship something
03
Defend an answer.
Four months to make the thing you will stake your year on — an essay, a tool, a company, a syllabus, a book. Defended publicly in front of the cohort and mentors.
Three lenses on the theme
We don't ask the question once. We ask it from three angles.
Philosophical
What kind of thing is a mind?
The metaphysics of thought. Consciousness, judgment, qualia, the mereology of mental life. We read the canon straight — no secondary literature, no shortcuts.
i.
Historical
How did we get here?
A close reading of the four papers and two books that explain how the transformer became a cultural event. Not a timeline — a genealogy. You will understand the machines, not just use them.
ii.
Practical
What should I do about it?
Every student answers this concretely. A thing built in public, defended in front of the cohort, and mentored by a working adult in the city you live in. This is the trimester that changes your career.
iii.
The twelve questions
Each seminar answers one.
i.Can a machine think? What would it take to know?
ii.Is the mind a kind of computation, or only sometimes?
iii.What is judgment, and can it be automated?
iv.Is language a tool we built, or a house we live in?
v.What does it mean to know something, versus to retrieve it?
vi.Who owns a thought produced with a machine's help?
vii.What is a good life when most labor becomes optional?
viii.Is education the transfer of skills, or the formation of a person?
ix.What does a city owe its young — and what do the young owe the city?
x.Should we trust a mind we did not raise?
xi.What is the honest work of a human being in 2036?
xii.Having read, argued, and built — what will you defend?
The founding reading list
Twelve books. Read closely. Discussed weekly.
- i.PhaedrusPlato — c. 370 BCETerm I
- ii.Meditations on First PhilosophyDescartes — 1641Term I
- iii.FrankensteinMary Shelley — 1818Term I
- iv.Computing Machinery and IntelligenceAlan Turing — 1950Term I
- v.The Human ConditionHannah Arendt — 1958Term II
- vi.Tools for ConvivialityIvan Illich — 1973Term II
- vii.Pedagogy of the OppressedPaulo Freire — 1968Term II
- viii.A Cyborg ManifestoDonna Haraway — 1985Term II
- ix.The Sovereignty of GoodIris Murdoch — 1970Term III
- x.Teaching to Transgressbell hooks — 1994Term III
- xi.Attention and InterpretationWilfred Bion — 1970Term III
- xii.— one book of your own choosing, defendedStudent-selected capstone textTerm III
The shape of the year
Four months each. One theme throughout.
Seminars
One hundred and forty-four.
Twelve per month, twelve months. One question per seminar.
Mentors
One per student.
A working adult, in your city, whose job is not to grade you.
Capstone
One defended publicly.
Thirty minutes of questions in front of the room. Pass or not.
Cost. The September 2026 founding cohort is free. Pricing for the full one-year program hasn't been set yet — we'll decide it with the founding cohort. No student will be turned away for inability to pay.
Applications open — through 30 June 2026
Apply to the founding cohort.
We start with the first month — September 2026. Four sessions in Amsterdam, online if you can't be there. The cohort that comes out of this is the one that helps us build the full year. There is no essay prompt. There is no application fee.
Amsterdam · Rotterdam · Berlin · Lisbon · Tallinn · +your city, if five of you apply