Mortimer Adler's two-volume index (1952) to the Great Books of the Western World, organizing the canon by its great ideas, from Angel to World, and listing where each author treats each one. It gives Syntopic its name and its model. Episode 01, at about 11 and a half minutes.
Across the episodes
Enters as the namesake and the model: the index of ideas Syntopic rebuilds for spoken word
The company declares its lineage in its name: an index of ideas across authors, now applied to ideas across conversations.
"so just the word Syntopic is an abbreviation of the word Syntopicon so there was an american philosopher in the middle of last century"Chad Nantais, Syntopic, Episode 1 (11 Oct 2026), 11:33
Chad recalls the scale from memory and flags it; the published Syntopicon indexes 102 great ideas.
"and he created something called the Syntopicon which was looking at i think he had 150 different core concepts"Chad Nantais, Syntopic, Episode 1 (11 Oct 2026), 12:01
The example shows the structure Syntopic borrows (Angel is in fact the index's first entry): one idea as the entry point, many authors' treatments gathered under it.
"and he created an index so for example there's one for angel the concept of an angel"Chad Nantais, Syntopic, Episode 1 (11 Oct 2026), 12:10
Chad's gloss turns the index into a method: one subject read from many vantage points, which is what an entity page does across episodes.
"and the word Syntopic Syntopicon is based on the concept of looking at something from different angles"Chad Nantais, Syntopic, Episode 1 (11 Oct 2026), 12:24
Connections
Adler edited the Great Books and its index.