Salon Evening: Salt, Meaning, and the Shape of Human Life

Join us for an evening in the spirit of the classic salon—where history, ideas, and conversation meet over wine and shared curiosity.
This salon features two talks that explore how humans organize life, value, and meaning—first through one of the most underestimated resources in history, and then through the quiet unraveling of work as our central organizing force.
🍷Free (cheap wine) but BYOB for anything else you'd like to drink.
🧠 Talks followed by open conversation and socializing

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### Talk 1: Salt — The Hidden Engine of Civilization

with Alex Pantich
(inspired by the book Salt*)*
For thousands of years, salt was not just seasoning—it was power.
In this talk, Alex traces the surprising history of salt as a foundational economic, political, and social resource, shaping empires, trade routes, wars, taxation, labor systems, and even language itself. From ancient China and Rome to medieval Europe and beyond, salt quietly structured who had power, who worked, who ate, and who survived.
This is a high-level, story-driven exploration of how a single material resource helped organize human civilization—and what it teaches us about value, scarcity, and systems today.

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### Talk 2: MEANING — How to Survive the Death of Work

with Raul È. Sendìn El Segundo
In a world where work has quietly become our identity, clock, tribe, mirror, and compass, what happens when that scaffolding dissolves and time returns to us—unstructured and exposed?
This talk reframes the “post-work” future as a human problem before it is an economic one. Not the challenge of surviving without jobs, but of living without borrowed objectives.
We’ll explore:

• Why the mind craves coherence and structure
• Why attention becomes the true scarce resource once money binds less
• How modern systems—feeds, status markets, optimization culture, and infinite loops—are engineered to hijack meaning itself

From diagnosis, we move to design: how to consciously rebuild the hidden functions work used to bundle—time structure, community, learning, contribution, feedback, and financial calm—so freedom doesn’t collapse into drift.
This is not motivation theater or self-help clichés, but a practical architecture for turning free time into a life that feels authored, coherent, and genuinely yours.

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### What to Expect

• 🧠 Two intellectually rich but accessible talks
• 🍷 A relaxed, social salon atmosphere
• 🥂 Time before and after for conversation and connection
• 🌍 A curious, thoughtful, international crowd

👋 7:00–7:30pm – Arrival & Mingling
🧠 7:30–8:30pm – Salt with Alex
⏸ 8:30–8:45pm – Intermission
🎶 8:45–9:45pm – The Death of Work with Raul
🥂 9:45–10:30pm – Socializing
Everyone is welcome—whether you’re interested in history, philosophy, economics, culture, or simply enjoy being around people who like to think deeply about how we live.

Come for the ideas. Stay for the conversations.