A better quality national conversation? Conducted by clever people who know a thing or two? You're holding it in your hand. This annual journal of provocative, passionate and argumentative essays is made for anyone who thinks there's little to stimulate intelligent well-informed debate in the media anymore and who hungers for some brain food. Featuring: Morgan Godfery on identity; Jess Berentson-Shaw on social investment; Andrew Judd on racism; Carys Goodwin on climate change; Conor Clarke on dirt; David Cohen on Popper, Plato, Hegel and Marx; Emma Espiner on a tikanga Maori world; Gilbert Wong on growing up Chinese; Giselle Byrnes on why universities matter; Jo Randerson on dying; Mamari Stephens on our threatened marae; Victor Rodger on being actually brown; Maria Majsa on Johnny Rotten; Max Harris on dreams; Mike Joy and Kyleisha Foote on dams; Raf Manji on a new progressive agenda; Sarah Laing on menstruation; Sylvia Nissen on youth and politics; Teena Brown Pulu on three Tongan funerals; Tim Watkin on explaining Trump; Simon Wilson on a radical centre.

Matthew has a good job, a beautiful girlfriend, a nice car. He is an engineer at a well known company. He does all the things that society expects of him. So why does he feel so desperately unhappy? And if this is what life is all about, then what is the point? In an attempt to find out, he quits everything familiar and books a one way ticket to the other side of the globe. He finds his way to the small island of Skyros in Greece. He takes a job at a Holistic Holiday Centre teaching windsurfing. And as the warm dusty Greek days pass, he finds himself asking: "What am I doing here?" And "What is love?" He journeys through countries, and his own mind to try to find what it is that has been eluding him.