This is a fabulous idea. I would love to go to a seminar like this every month. What new things I would learn!

“A Shotgun Seminar is a talk given by an Institute member to a volunteer audience. The subject of the talk is announced a week in advance, but the name of the speaker is not. Before the talk begins, the names of all people in the room are written on scraps of paper, the scraps are put into a box, the box is ceremoniously shaken and one name is picked out at random. The name picked out is the name of the speaker.”

Wow! Study for a topic, in this case in your own field at Princeton, but you could do it on almost anything people had an equal interest in… Then when everyone comes prepared, you all share ideas.

btw, the quote was from Infinite in All Directions by Freeman Dyson. It’s a wonderful series of lectures, now essays, from a physicist from Princeton.

I guess, in a way, that is what book clubs are doing. Only everyone reads one book and discusses it.