Rabbit holes in a box. Each one will turn you into a nerd about one specific thing — designed with someone who already is.
Three box concepts. Your vote helps pick which one we make first.
Why this exists
We are losing one of the most important human things society has given birth to: the ability to be an expert, a savant, a nerd about a topic.
Everything is a skim.Feeds give you a little about everything and a lot about nothing.
Answers are instant.Knowing something deeply used to be the only way to know it at all.
Nobody knows where to start.The interest is there. The door into it isn’t.
How it will work
A box shows up at your door with everything you need to become a nerd about one specific thing. You pick the topic.
A sample box
What we plan to put in it, and what you’d be able to do a month later. It’s a draft: an expert checks every fact before anything ships.
Dear future meteorite nerd,
I was nine when a man at a rock show dropped one into my hand. It was the size of a walnut and heavy as a fist. I asked where he found it. He pointed up.
The piece in this box spent four and a half billion years inside an asteroid. Then it fell through the sky over Argentina, about four thousand years ago, and waited in the ground until someone dug it up for you.
In a month you’ll be able to prove it came from space. You won’t look at a rock the same way.
— Your Nerd
Feel how heavy it is for its size. Hold the magnet near it. Look for the thumbprint-like dents under the loupe. Learn what it actually is: a chunk of metal core from an asteroid that broke apart.
By Sunday: you can explain where it came from.
Run the three tests every meteorite hunter uses: magnet, streak and density. Weigh it, drop it in water, and work out why iron from space is so heavy.
By Sunday: you can tell a meteorite from a “meteorwrong.”
Trace your piece from the asteroid belt to Campo del Cielo, Argentina, where a shower of iron left a scatter of craters and masses weighing tonnes.
By Sunday: you can tell its whole story, from asteroid to your desk.
Learn the three families (iron, stony, stony-iron), how meteorites get their names, and why Moon and Mars rocks cost a fortune. Then open the envelope.
By Sunday: you can read any meteorite listing and spot a bad deal or a fake.
The envelope holds three numbered rocks that people constantly mistake for meteorites. Use the magnet, the streak plate and the density test to prove what each one really is. Then film your verdict and post your nerd-out with #youneedtonerdout.
“Is this a space rock?”
“Iron meteorite, fell in Argentina 4,000 years ago. That one’s magnetite: look at the black streak.”
Three concepts
None of these exist yet. The most-wanted box gets made first, as long as we can source it well and find the right expert to design it.
A real iron meteorite, the tests that prove it came from space, and the story of the asteroid it broke off.
Raise living plankton that flash electric blue when you swirl them, and learn why whole beaches light up at night.
Program a pocket-sized console from scratch: make something move, give it rules, and hand a friend a game you wrote.
Ideas for later: Carnivorous plantsFossilsMechanical watchesMechanical keyboardsCartographyBird callsCodebreakingBonsai
Price
Estimated price
For the nerds
You know more about one thing than almost anyone alive. We’ll help you package it, and pay you every time someone falls in.
Tell us which rabbit hole you’d open first. It helps us pick the first box to make.
Estimated $55 per box. Shipping isn’t priced yet. Nothing to pay now.