Over 2500 years ago something happened that led to an explosion of existential angst. A question arose of urgent concern: why should we matter to ourselves, or anyone else? Our collective responses to the anguish of the Axial age have travelled with us through the millennia. One answer was the creation of a set of transcendental and absolute truths in the shape of religion. The other solution unleashed a protean intellectual energy that gave birth to the first philosophers. For writer and philosopher Rebecca Goldstein there has been no looking back, and now the times seem right for Plato to arrive again.