Type a question and pick a level. You get a course split into chapters of 10 short cards, with a quiz at the end of each one. The first chapter of every course is free.
Free to try. No card needed.
Someone askedWhy did the Roman Empire fall?
The textbook date is 4 September 476, when a Germanic officer called Odoacer removed the teenage emperor Romulus Augustulus. Not one contemporary writer describes it as the end of anything.
Odoacer did not take the throne. He packed the imperial regalia into a crate and shipped it to Constantinople.
Card 1 of 50. Read the first chapter
Here’s the outline the app wrote for that question. Chapter 1 is free to read on this site, and chapters 2 to 5 are in the app.
It starts by going through what’s wrong with the usual story, then spends the rest of the course on what happened instead.
Read chapter 1Chapter 1 · free on this site
Chapters 2 to 5 · in the app
Most cards are a couple of short paragraphs. Some are a timeline, a chart or a table, when that’s easier to follow. Here’s card 2 of the Rome course, and the quiz from the end of chapter 1. Have a go.
Julius Nepos becomes western emperor, recognised by Constantinople.
Orestes drives Nepos out and installs his son, Romulus Augustulus.
Odoacer deposes Romulus and sends the imperial regalia east.
Nepos is murdered in Dalmatia, still the recognised emperor.
Gibbon blamed Christianity for the fall of Rome. What is the strongest objection to that argument?
Pick one to see the answer.
The first chapter of 5 courses, free to read here. You don’t need an account.
HistoryWhy did the Roman Empire fall?Card 1: Nobody alive in 476 thought the empire had endedWhy 476 is the wrong date, why Rome was not the capital, and what actually stopped working.
HardwareHow does a computer processor actually work?Card 1: The chip that handles everything and understands none of itHow a chip made of tiny switches ends up running everything on your phone.
ScienceWhy do we sleep?Card 1: Sleep is an extremely bad ideaEvery animal does something dangerous for a third of its life, and nobody can say for certain why.
EconomicsWhat actually causes inflation?Card 1: Nothing got more valuableWhy "too much money" is only half an answer, and why expectations do most of the work.
TechnologyHow does GPS know where you are?Card 1: The satellites have never heard of youYour phone works out where it is by timing radio signals, and relativity matters more than you’d think.Anything from quantum physics to why bread rises. Broad or very specific, it’s up to you.
Beginner, Intermediate or Advanced. Courses come in 50, 125 or 200 cards.
The whole course is planned before any cards are written, so later chapters build on earlier ones. There’s a quiz every 10 cards.
The first chapter of every course, quiz included. After that you get 5 new cards a day, at Beginner or Intermediate.
No daily limit, plus Advanced level and the 200-card courses. You’ll see the price in your own currency in the app before you pay.
The courses are written by AI. It’s good at explaining things, but it does get facts wrong sometimes, so check anything that matters against a proper source. How the courses are made.
Partly. The first chapter of every course is free, quiz included, and your very first course gets two free chapters. After that, free accounts get 5 new cards a day.
Pretty much. You pick the subject, the level and how long you want the course to be. We block requests that are unsafe or inappropriate.
Reading is. Creating new courses is capped at 20 a day, because writing a new course costs us a lot more than you reading one. Free accounts can create 5 a day.
Yes, it’s on the App Store and Google Play.
The first chapter of every course is free.
Free to try. No card needed.
