What is a random topic generator?

It gives you something to look into when you cannot decide what to research. This one is a split-flap departure board. Press the button, it lands on a single subject, and it hands you a Wikipedia link to start from. It will not tell you what the subject is. The only way to find out is to open the link.

How does it choose a subject?

Not by picking at random. A purely random draw clumps, and clumps feel broken. The board rejects any subject sharing a theme with your last ten results, a domain with your last two, or a kind with your last three. Those rules only relax when nothing else is left, and it never serves you the same subject twice.

How many subjects are there?

Thousands, spread across nineteen domains including history, science, medicine, architecture, music, law, economics and war. Every subject is available to every visitor from the very first spin. Nothing is held back and nothing unlocks later.

How do you actually research a topic properly?

Build a map before you read anything: open the Wikipedia contents box, read only the section headings, and see where the dates bunch up. Then leave the article for its References. Search the subject on Google Scholar with the word review after it, because a review article summarises a whole field for newcomers. Read one proper source using the preface, contents, introduction and conclusion rather than front to back. Then find where the experts disagree, and finish by explaining the whole thing out loud with everything closed. The full version of that is on this page.

Yes. No account, no sign up, no limit on how many times you can spin.

What am I supposed to do with the subject I get?

Open the link and give it an hour or two. Follow whatever catches your attention. The point is to end up somewhere you would never have chosen to go, which is exactly why the board tells you nothing up front.

How is this different from a random Wikipedia article?

Random Wikipedia sends you to whatever happens to exist, which is usually a footballer, a village, or a species of beetle. Every subject here was written to be worth a couple of hours, sized so a good book could be written about it, and framed to give you a way in without giving away what you will find.

Hyperfixation Rotation

A rabbit hole you didn't pick.

Spin the board. It lands on one subject and gives you somewhere to start. No summary, no preview, no idea what you're getting.

1One of 10,000+ subjects, and a link to open.
2Give it an hour or two. Follow whatever catches.
3A new one goes out in the newsletter every week.

The method

How to actually research it.

Opening the Wikipedia page is the easy part. This is a two hour route from knowing nothing to holding a real view, and it tells you which buttons to press.

First 10 min

Get the shape before you read a word

Do not start at the top and read down. Open the contents box on the Wikipedia page and read only the section headings.
Look at the dates in those headings, because they tell you where the story bunches up. If four of the eight sections cover a thirty year stretch, that thirty years is the bit everyone argues about, and it is where your two hours should go. The rest is context.
Note the three or four names that keep reappearing. You will meet them all afternoon, and knowing them now stops you rereading the same introduction three times.
You are building empty shelves. Everything you read next has somewhere to sit instead of sliding off.

Next 15 min

Get off Wikipedia and onto its sources

The article is a summary of other people's work. The useful part is the list at the bottom.
Scroll to References. Skip the news links. You want journal articles, and books from university presses (Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton, Yale). Those are the load bearing ones.
If the page has a Further reading section, that is a shortlist somebody already curated for you. Start there and save yourself the sorting.

Same 15 min

Use Google Scholar properly

Go to Google Scholar and search your subject followed by the word review, or the phrase a survey of.
A review article exists to summarise an entire field for newcomers. One good one is worth twenty ordinary papers and it will name everyone who matters. This is the single biggest shortcut on this page.
Under every result is a Cited by number. A big number means everyone in that field has had to deal with that work. Open the two or three biggest and ignore the rest.
Click the Cited by link itself to see what has been published since, building on it. That is how you get from foundational to current in one click.
The year filter is down the left side. Free PDFs show up as a link on the right of each result.

Next 30 min

Read one proper thing, and not front to back

You are not reading a book cover to cover this afternoon, so do not start one.
If you found a review article, read that. Twenty pages, written for someone who knows nothing, and it does the job of a whole book.
If the best thing you found is a book, borrow it free on Internet Archive and read the back cover, then the contents, then the introduction, then the conclusion. In that order, never page one. Then read the first and last paragraph of any chapter whose title mattered.
That is Adler's inspectional reading. Half an hour gets you the author's argument, who they are arguing against, and whether the middle is worth your time.
If you would rather listen while you do something else, In Our Time puts three academics on one subject for 45 minutes and has over a thousand episodes.

Next 20 min

Find the fight

Every subject has an argument running through it. Until you know what that argument is, you only know trivia.
On Wikipedia, look for a section called Historiography, Debate, Reception or Criticism. That is the fight, already written down for you.
Or search the book or paper you just read on Google Scholar and read a review of it. Academic reviews are short and they say plainly where the work is considered weak.
When two sources contradict each other, that is not a problem to solve. That is the most interesting thing you will find all session, and it is what you want to be able to explain at the end.

Last 10 min

Say it out loud with everything closed

Shut the tabs. Explain the subject out loud, in your own words, to an imaginary person who has never heard of it. Two minutes.
Every time you hear yourself say something like, or I think, or basically, you have found a hole. Those are the only bits worth going back for.
Doing this once holds better than reading the whole lot through again twice. It is one of the most replicated findings in the research on studying.

Where to look

Google Scholar

Search your subject plus the word review. Sort your attention by the Cited by number underneath each result.

Internet Archive

Free account, then borrow most standard books an hour at a time. Search the exact title.

BBC In Our Time

Three academics, one subject, 45 minutes, no adverts. Over a thousand episodes, so search the archive for whatever you span.

JSTOR

Open Library

The catalogue behind the Archive. Useful when you know the subject but not which book to want.

Libby

Your library card on your phone. Free ebooks and audiobooks for the titles the Archive does not hold.

If you want the method itself

How to Read a Book

Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren

Where inspectional reading comes from, and syntopical reading, which is reading several sources on one subject to build a view. That is this whole exercise.

Ultralearning

Scott H. Young

The map first idea, plus why going straight at the real thing beats warming up on easier material.

Make It Stick

Brown, Roediger and McDaniel

The evidence that testing yourself and spacing it out beats rereading and highlighting, which feel productive and are not.

While you're down there

The hard part isn't finding the rabbit hole.

It's still being in it forty minutes later. Most research sessions don't end because you got bored. They end because you opened one more tab that was almost related.

Say what you're on

Type the subject in before you start. That becomes the goal for the session.

Every new tab gets checked

Not against a blocklist. Against the thing you said you were doing.

The drift gets caught

The tab that's genuinely interesting but isn't this one. That's the one that ends sessions.

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