Channel Research

For each major thinker, concept, or institution, try to capture:

• the human problem in plain language
• the historical pressure or social context around it
• one real event, recurring condition, or institutional setting that makes the problem concrete
• one usable analogy
• one scene, mini-story, or thought experiment
• one sharp sentence the script can reuse
• one overstatement to avoid

Source Stack

Prefer sources in this order:

1. primary texts
2. authoritative reference works such as SEP
3. strong secondary scholarship or institutional references
4. modern bridge sources only when they clarify a concept used in the episode

Workflow

1. Lock the episode question first.
2. Pull the minimum primary texts needed to answer that question well.
3. Pull the relevant historical and social context, especially the pressures present when the thinker or institution was operating.
4. Add secondary sources to prevent crude or outdated readings.
5. Separate what the text says from what the channel is inferring.
6. Build comparisons only after each side is individually grounded.
7. Translate the result into concrete teaching handles: analogy, image, scene, mechanism, or historical anchor.

Citation Rules

• Prefer direct chapter or section links over homepages.
• If using Chinese Text Project, treat it as a locator first. Do not rely on it mechanically for final quoted wording.
• If a claim is contested, say so instead of smoothing it over.
• If a label is historically messy, mark that explicitly instead of presenting it as settled.

Default Deliverable Shape

Use a structure close to this:

• problem framing
• source-grounded analysis of each thinker / concept / institution
• historical pressure / lived context
• comparison section
• low-load translation layer: “how to explain this simply”
• analogy / story / visual hook bank
• modern bridge, if needed
• pitfalls / overstatements to avoid
• reference list

Quality Bar

• Research must help write a better episode, not just accumulate notes.
• Strong sections usually end with a sentence the script can actually use.
• Prefer explanations that begin with a felt coordination, power, or trust problem before naming a doctrine.
• When the subject is a philosopher, do not detach the argument from the world the philosopher was trying to survive, interpret, or fix.
• Avoid dumping quotations without explaining why they matter.
• Avoid flattening different traditions into one “they all care about order” summary.
• Preserve the channel language rules from docs/channel-plan.md.

Handoff

When research is strong enough, move to channel-episode-building.