If you could put Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Marcus Aurelius in the same room, what would the outcome be?
In the year 180, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius gave a dinner at his winter headquarters in the town of Sirmium, in modern-day Serbia. Present were his son and future successor Commodus, several of his close friends and senior officials--and a farmer who had traveled all the way from southern Italy to attend.
This farmer had acquired the rare ability to speak across time and space, and his patron, the consul Bruttius Praesens, had thought it prudent to bring this...

On Election Day 2020, voter turnout in the United States is at an all-time low, along with public confidence in the government as a whole. Philanthropist Alexander Soren decides to capitalize on this growing swell of popular dissatisfaction by launching a radical new project: a Parallel Congress. Composed of ordinary men and women selected at random from the entire population of the country, it is a statistically perfect representation of all the various backgrounds and opinions that make up American society. Unlike its elected counterpart, it is a young, vigorous institution. Millionaires...