Is writing under threat from AI? Is reading a lost art? Did the invention of writing itself irrevocably change human nature? And are we entirely proscribed by language?

Concerns like these have a long history, and how we address them is not without consequences.

Out of Print was held at Verdurin in June 2026. The symposium was organised with Edmund King.

In the first part of the event, Scholar Daniel Hadas explores Homer’s transition from spoken to written text, as the pivotal moment in ancient Greco-Roman literacy. He thus historicises writing and literacy’s role in the Ancient world.

Hadas specializes in early Christian literature, medieval Latin, and the study of manuscripts.

Find out more about Out of Print.

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Welcome back, it’s been a while since we posted anything in this channel. If you’re hearing this in September 2026, this is likely because you once listened to my book interviews.

In 2024, I founded Verdurin in London. Verdurin is a cultural project, which offers everything you need to survive the cultural apocalypse. Our events, courses, exhibitions, and publications animate urgent and often challenging aesthetic, political, and philosophical issues affecting today’s culture.

While we did our best to record our nearly fifty events in the past two years, it has not been possible until now to release this audio. Now, my friend, the composer John-Robin Bold, has kindly agreed to edit the best of our archive, for which I’m very grateful. The music you heard is also his work.

Starting this week, we will begin releasing recordings from events at Verdurin. These include symposia, book discussion, literary readings, public criticism sessions, and the occasional roundtable.

Do check out our archive, as well as our events, courses, and publishing. You can also sign up to our newsletter.

https://verdur.in

Questions like “What does this mean?” are central to our encounters with art. “How are these signs connected?” or “how do all symbols fit into an unstated scheme?” are the foundational concerns of aesthetics. Yet, when the same concerns crop up regularly in almost any other part of life, we give a clinical, pathological name: paranoia.

These questions were the makings of ⁠Paranoia⁠, a symposium held at Verdurin in February 2025.

This episode is a recording of a talk by Justin Smith-Ruiu. Justin reflects on how conspiracy-quashing slogans like ‘trust the science’ are, in fact, only functional under very specific conditions. The procedures invoked by fact-checkers and disinformation specialists may already be in the first phase of their obsolescence.

Justin also touches on his recent dabblings in metafiction – in particular their experimentation with pseudonyms and heteronyms via his publication The Hinternet. This project proposes a way for writers to induce in readers a suspicion that the most basic anchors of a text, like the name of its author, might just be a lie.

Justin is a professor of the history and philosophy of science at the Université Paris Cité. He is the author of The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is and Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason.

He has authored monographs on Leibniz and Early Modern Philosophy. He is also a contributor to The New York Times, Harper’s, n+1, and The Point.

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⁠The Paranoia programme in full⁠.

⁠More events at Verdurin⁠.

Justin's Irrationality.