We have grown accustomed to not knowing. Information is either overwhelming, or in some cases, late to arrive. Most of us no longer know the components put together to power the world around us, or understand the incentives governing the people and powerbrokers moving the tectonic plates beneath our feet.
We can read about these issues. A Financial Times article detailing dual use movements in the High North with a beautiful graph may be forwarded about a Signal group. A Twitter thread on ‘the AI apocalypse’ forwarded to your WhatsApp by an aging uncle. TikToks from a traveller to Tajikistan telling us what we’re missing out on. YouTube documentaries on the new elite emerging on the West Coast. But these are not conversations – they are one way projections of information, some of it of poor quality – to you.
Some of the most enlightening conversations happen by accident, over drinks, when people who most need to be in the room coincidentally overlap. The problem is those conversations don’t always have a formal home.
Peripheries aims to fix that.
It’s a private dinner series in London. Each session centres on someone recently returned from a geography, industry, or event that most people in this city can’t access. Eight guests maximum in a private dining room somewhere in central London. No slides. Ninety minutes of structured conversation, designed to extract what’s actually happening rather than what should be happening according to the consensus view.
Speakers are selected for one reason: recently returned expertise. You’re either someone who’s been somewhere that matters, or someone whose work requires understanding what’s happening there. The format only works if everyone at the table can ask a sharp question and sit with an uncomfortable answer. Guests will be expected to ask meaningful questions and will be chosen, among other criteria, on that basis. In some cases, they will be more expert on the issue than the speaker: it is for them to draw the useful conclusions they can from the speaker’s observations. Guests will be from diverse backgrounds and specialities.
The first dinner will take place in the coming months. The theme is private military markets in Africa, and how they intersect with critical minerals.
If this sounds like something you need rather than something you’d merely find interesting, the waitlist will soon be open.