About us
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The BIG IDEAS book club is a monthly meetup for members wanting to discuss important or intriguing ideas and issues in society and our lives. Originally called the 'Phil-Psyc' book club, the discussions include not only big ideas in philosophy and psychology but also from economics, politics, sociology, and science.
Each month a big idea or key thinker will be selected for discussion. For example, a topic could be something like ’free will’, ‘identity’, ’meritocracy’, ‘the simulation hypothesis’, ’post-capitalism’, etc. Similarly, the key thinker could be someone like ‘Carl Jung’, ‘Michel Foucault’, ‘Daniel Kahneman’, etc.
For each topic, a key book and video material will be suggested. The attendees are not required to have read/watched these in order to attend and are welcome to engage in their own reading/viewing material. However, I do strongly encourage reading the set book as it helps in creating focal points for the discussion.
This monthly Meetup will be hosted by Paul T. Many thanks to Dr Steve Mayers who started this book club (and who also started Café Psychologique Sydney) but who unfortunately has moved on from Sydney. Hopefully, the meetup organizer pool will expand so as not to rely on one person.
During the post-Covid restart of this book club (late 2023), it may take some time to find a favourite meeting venue, and hopefully members will have some promising ideas on venues. Being relatively quiet, having food and drink, being approximately central to Sydney and close to public transport are at least four criteria that make sense to me. As a starting place, we can test the 2nd floor (one below the rooftop) of the Keg & Brew Hotel, 26 Foveaux St, Surry Hills. It’s close to Central Station and the light rail. But make sure to check the actual event location.
Come along and join in the conversation!
Keywords: Book club, philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, politics, science, critical thinking, intellectual discussions, conversation.
Upcoming events
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The Death of Death: Should We Choose To Live Forever?
Keg & Brew Hotel, 26 Foveaux St, Surry Hills, NS, AUWhat if ageing were optional? A small, extraordinarily wealthy group of people — Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel among them — are betting billions that it could become so within our lifetimes. They are funding gene therapies, plasma clinics, AI drug discovery programmes, and private city-states designed to sit beyond the reach of ordinary regulation, all pointed at a single goal: the abolition of death. Some of this is serious science. Some of it is alchemy with a better press team. But before the science catches up with the ambition — if it ever does — the personal, social, and political questions are already here.
Would you choose five centuries of life, or even to live indefinitely — more time to love, to learn, to taste everything the world has to offer? Or would you find, on reflection, that something essential about a human life depends on it being finite? What happens to marriage when it lasts for centuries? To democracy when the same people hold power for hundreds of years? To inheritance (that might never arrive!), to ambition ('I can always do it later'), to the feeling that today is precious rather than just one more day in an endless supply? So join us as we pull apart this fascinating and unsettling territory, where Silicon Valley hubris meets some of the oldest questions in philosophy.
Book: The Immortalists: The Death of Death and the Race for Eternal Life (2025) by Aleks Krotoski
Companion reading: A Guide to the Personal, Social, and Political Questions of Radical Life Extension (prepared for this meetup)
The Immortalists is a sharp investigation into the people, science, money, and politics behind Silicon Valley’s war on death. Krotoski — a psychologist, BBC broadcaster, and veteran technology reporter — takes us from immortality cults in the Arizona desert and biohacking clinics in Los Angeles to the corridors of Washington and a private city in Honduras where unapproved gene therapies are on the menu. Along the way, she meets the geroscientists doing genuinely important work on the biology of ageing, the billionaire investors pouring huge sums into longevity start-ups, the lobbyists rewriting FDA regulations in their own interests, and the true believers who have concluded that death is not a fact of life but a failure of engineering. The result is gripping reported journalism, a sober account of what the science has actually established, and a serious political warning about what happens when the people trying to live forever start writing the rules for everyone else.
In addition, we’ve prepared a 35-page companion document that draws out the personal, social, and political questions raised by radical life extension. The Krotoski book spends considerable time on the science and on the people pursuing it, but our discussion is likely to centre on the human consequences: whether we would actually want vastly longer lives; what they would do to relationships, work, inequality, democracy, and meaning; and who would benefit if the technology ever became real. The companion document is intended to give us a shared map of these issues, so the conversation can move beyond the biology and into the questions most likely to matter around the table.
As always, we strongly encourage you to do the reading before you attend; it will enrich both your own experience and the discussion as a whole. We’ve also included some further resources below for anyone who wants to go deeper.
We’ll meet for a drink — and an optional meal — at 6:30pm on Monday, 7 September, on the second floor of the Keg & Brew Hotel in Surry Hills. The venue is close to Central Station and the light rail.
We look forward to seeing you there!
P.S. If you RSVP yes and later find you can’t make it, please update your RSVP so someone else can take the spot if there’s a waitlist.
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These are just optional links to consider to supplement the reading of the book and document. Feel free to pass on other useful links in the discussion section.Videos
- Interviews and Podcasts with Aleks Krotoski:
Intelligence Squared – Could Billionaires Cure Ageing (1 hr)
BBC Radio 4 World at One (18 mins) - A collection of 15 min BBC Podcasts by Aleks Krotoski:
The Immortals Podcast - Venki Ramakrishnan on the biology of death and aging and why the immortalists' timeline is wildly optimistic:
Sean Carroll's Mindscape with Venki Ramakrishnan - Four Corners (ABC iview) The Race to Reverse Ageing (July 2026)
- Science documentary: Longevity Hackers (2024) This is a mostly enthusiastic doco about the possibility of radical life extension; not a rigorous investigation but provides a useful sense of the different areas of research.
- Netflix documentary: Don't Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever (2025). A documentary on the daily routines, family plasma exchange, and the "Don't Die" philosophy of tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, who appears prominently in the book.
- An explainer video on the science and ethics of radical life extension:
Billionaires Trying to Live Forever - Honest Truth
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- Articles on radical life extension:
The Ethics of Radical Life Extension
Three arguments against extending the human lifespan - Reviews of The Immortalists:
The Guardian - The Immortalists - An article version on the ABC Four Corners episode on biohacking and anti-aging science:
ABC - The Race to Reverse Ageing - An unfortunate update on biohacker Bryan Johnson (from Netflix series above):
A recent health update on Bryan Johnson - Two other relevant books for those wanting to dig deeper into this topic:
- Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science (2026) by Saul Newman. To be released in August, the author uses dark humour and rigorous evidence to expose the systemic data errors and corporate grifting behind popular anti-aging trends like "Blue Zones" and youth-blood transfusions.
- Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality (2024) by Venki Ramakrishnan. This book provides a lucid and authoritative look at the biological mechanisms of cellular degeneration, balancing the realistic limits of our current biotechnology against the hyped promises of the immortality movement.
52 attendees- Interviews and Podcasts with Aleks Krotoski:
Manipulation: What It Is, Why It's Bad, What to Do About It
Keg & Brew Hotel, 26 Foveaux St, Surry Hills, NS, AUHow often are your decisions really your own? Every day we are surrounded by advertising, social media, political campaigns, news headlines, influencers, sales techniques and well-meaning advice — all competing for our attention and trying to shape what we think, feel and do. But where is the line between persuasion and manipulation? Can manipulation ever be ethical, or is it always something to resist? And in an age of personalised algorithms and increasingly sophisticated AI, are we becoming easier to manipulate than ever before? Come and join us as we explore these fascinating and relevant questions of modern life.
Book: Manipulation: What It Is, Why It's Bad, What to Do About It (2025) by Cass R. Sunstein
Companion Reading: A Guide to Understanding Manipulation (prepared for this meetup)
Cass Sunstein is almost uniquely placed to write this book. He is the co-creator of nudge theory (with Richard Thaler), a former senior adviser in the Obama White House, and one of the most cited legal scholars in the world. He has spent decades studying how human psychology shapes decisions, and has seen from the inside how governments and corporations exploit that knowledge. The result is a book that is simultaneously rigorous and readable: part philosophy, part law, part behavioural science, and part catalogue of the tricks being played on us every day. Sunstein moves from abstract definitions — what exactly separates manipulation from persuasion, and why does it matter? — through case studies of dark patterns, deepfakes, deliberate bureaucratic friction, and the social pressure traps of platforms like TikTok, before arriving at what may be the book's most important question: as AI makes manipulation more precise and more powerful than at any previous point in history, do we need a new legal and moral right — a right not to be manipulated — in the same way that a previous era recognised, for the first time, a right to privacy?
This is one of those discussions where prior reading is not just encouraged but genuinely necessary — the conversation will move quickly into territory that only makes sense if you already understand Sunstein's conceptual framework. The companion reading guide is designed to make that framework accessible quickly, so even if time is short, a read-through of it will set you up well. But if you can get hold of the book itself, we think you'll find it genuinely easy to read or listen to — and it comes with a notable endorsement: Tim Wu, whose book we discussed just a couple of months ago, has named it as one of his top book recommendations.
So join us for a drink (and optional meal) at 6:30pm on Monday, 5th October, on the 2nd floor of the Keg & Brew Hotel in Surrey Hills (i.e. up two flights of stairs). The venue is conveniently located near Central Station and the Light Rail.
We look forward to seeing you there!
P.S. Please adjust your RSVP if you have indicated that you will come but are no longer able to do so. This is courteous to others if there is a waitlist.
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These are just optional links to consider to supplement the reading of the book and document. Feel free to pass on other useful links in the discussion section.Videos
- Cass Sunstein in a seminar and podcast:
Online Seminar - Fifty Shades of Manipulation (43 mins)
Sunstein on Manipulation vs Influence - 5 Insights on the book (The Next Big Idea Club) by Sunstein. Note that the audio version is more detailed than the written summary below it:
These Are the Silent Manipulations Most People Don’t Notice
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- The Guardian Review:
Why we need a right not to be manipulated
19 attendees- Cass Sunstein in a seminar and podcast:
Past events
46
Group links
Members
2,200
