“In the spirit of ancient Athens, where the greatest minds gathered to question the gods, challenge the powerful, and pursue the nature of truth, a new symposium rises.
“Four disciplines. Four extraordinary minds. Two days. One relentless pursuit of truth.“
From the marble halls of ancient Greece to the intellectual battlegrounds of the modern world, humanity has been driven by questions that refuse to die.
What is truth? What can we know? What should we believe? How ought we live? Who should govern, and by what right?
For two extraordinary days in San Francisco, Pangburn’s Symposium I resurrects the ancient tradition of intellectual confrontation, bringing together some of today’s most provocative and influential thinkers to examine the foundations of human understanding.
THE FOUR PILLARS OF THE SYMPOSIUM
PHILOSOPHY — Stephen Hicks
January 30 | 1 PM General topic to be announced.
SCIENCE — Steven Pinker
January 30 | 7 PM General topic to be announced.
RELIGION — Justin Sledge
January 31 | 1 PM General topic to be announced.
POLITICS — Steven Bonnell II (Destiny)
January 31 | 7 PM General topic to be announced.
NOT MERELY LECTURES. AN INTELLECTUAL ARENA.
Each of the four sessions features:
- One hour of lecture: A leading thinker presents their ideas.
- 90 minutes of debate and discussion: Ideas are challenged, scrutinized, and defended.
- 90 minutes of community discussion: The audience enters the arena, engaging in the questions and arguments themselves.
This is not a gathering for those who demand agreement. It is a gathering for those courageous enough to question their own convictions.
Here, no proposition is sacred. No thinker is beyond challenge. No question is forbidden merely because it is uncomfortable.
As Socrates demonstrated more than two millennia ago, wisdom begins not with certainty, but with the willingness to examine what we think we know.
The agora awaits. The thinkers assemble. The questions endure.
Come not as a disciple, but as a philosopher.
PANGBURN’S SYMPOSIUM I, January 30–31, 2027, First Unitarian Church, 1187 Franklin Street, San Francisco, USA.