Three stories, one minute each
Every Lorelight story is a short film. Here are three of them, condensed. Press play.
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Philosophy, strategy, courage and folly. Every film ends with a lesson you can use tomorrow. The first ones are ready to watch; many more are in the making.
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And many moreNew stories every weekSeven chapters. One lesson.
Every Lorelight film follows the same arc, so you always know where you are. Pick a chapter to preview it.
I · THE HOOK
The strongest walls fall from the inside.
The Trojan Horse · TroyWatch. Read. Keep.
A short film
Painted worlds, a narrator who draws you in, and a score that makes you forget you're learning.
For centuries, Troy was thought to be pure myth. Then, in the 1870s, Heinrich Schliemann began digging into a hill called Hisarlik, in what is now north-west Turkey. Beneath it lay not one city but nine.
Continue reading in the appThe real story in 3 minutes
What really happened, what is legend, and why historians still argue about it.
Three books to go deeper
Troy by Stephen Fry, Homer's Iliad in Emily Wilson's translation, and Michael Wood's In Search of the Trojan War.
A short film
How a flower from the Ottoman gardens drove a whole country into a frenzy, and what it still teaches us about hype.
The famous stories of ruined merchants come mostly from pamphlets written to warn people. Historian Anne Goldgar searched the archives and found far fewer bankruptcies than the legend claims. The crash was real. The disaster was smaller.
Continue reading in the appThe real story in 3 minutes
What happened in the taverns of Haarlem, and how the legend grew bigger than the bubble.
Two books to go deeper
Tulipmania by Anne Goldgar, the historian who corrected the legend, and Mike Dash's lively Tulipomania.
A short film
The most powerful man in the world meets a man who owns almost nothing. Only one of them leaves impressed.
Not quite. Diogenes slept in a pithos, a huge clay storage jar of the kind Greeks used for wine and grain. The barrel came much later, when painters and storytellers imagined the scene in their own times.
Continue reading in the appThe real story in 3 minutes
Who Diogenes was, why Athens called him a dog, and what is legend in his meeting with Alexander.
Two books to go deeper
Diogenes the Cynic: Sayings and Anecdotes (Oxford World's Classics) and Plutarch's The Age of Alexander, where the meeting is told.
Free stories, every week
Full films on YouTube, short stories on Instagram. The whole library is in the app.
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Good to know
How long is a story?
Two to three minutes. Every story also has a 3-minute read and three book tips.
Is it true history?
Yes, checked by our editors. When a story is a legend, like the Trojan Horse, we say so.
Is there an Android app?
Yes. Lorelight is on iPhone, iPad and Android (Google Play).
How often are there new stories?
One new story every night, seven a week.
How do I cancel?
Any time: on iPhone in Settings under Subscriptions, on Android in Google Play under Payments & subscriptions. Cancel before day 7 of your trial and you pay nothing.