Greetings from Latitude 13° South and Longitude 77° West!

This website is your window on our curiosity. It’s where we share ideas, ask questions, interpret texts, and invite you to explore places like Peru, the Middle East and beyond. We also love ideas—we have seven academic degrees between us—so we’re almost as happy reading in a cafe as traveling the globe. As we said, our questions, arising from our travels and studies, are about history and culture, about leaders and followers, about battles and conquests, about sacred traditions and holy books. But beware: we prefer to linger with the questions than rush to an answer.

Our logo is an apacheta (or cairn) — a rock pile like those one encounters in the Andes of Peru, the sandstone highlands of Jordan, or the Sierra Nevadas of California. Sometimes they mark trails, sometimes they honor Mother Earth. Following an ancient tradition, ascending travelers add their own rock to the pile, expressing hiker solidarity and gratitude for a safe journey.
It is, for us, a symbol of ascent, of exploration, of community, and of tradition. Perhaps this website is a virtual apacheta, a rough-hewn assortment of ideas, some more jagged than others, gathered from along our path.