Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchSocrates Had It Coming | Episode XCIX
Episode 99
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Socrates taught his students contempt for the gods, how to defraud creditors, and useless trivialities about flea-jumping. Or at least, that's how Socrates appears in the comedy Clouds.…
Published on 23 hours ago
Do "Christian" and "Classical" Go Together? feat. Calvin Goligher | Episode XCVIII
Episode 98
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In the 4th century AD, two Christian friends - Basil and Gregory - travelled from Cappadocia to Athens to go study Greek literature with Libanius, the leading rhetorician of the time. W…
Published on 2 weeks, 3 days ago
Jocks Versus Nerds | Episode XCVII
Episode 97
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We tend to think of the Athenians as philosophers, architects, and mathematicians. But their highest devotion was rather to sports and to music. These priorities are evident from their …
Published on 1 month ago
That Other Dorothy Sayers Lecture | Episode XCVI
Episode 96
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Everyone knows "The Lost Tools of Learning." But did you know Dorothy Sayers delivered another, longer, and even more interesting lecture on education, all about learning Latin? Sayers …
Published on 1 month, 2 weeks ago
Ahh, the Greeks! | Episode XCV
Episode 95
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"Παιδεία found its realization in παιδεραστία." This is how Henri-Irénée Marrou characterizes the relationship between paideia and pederasty. The latter fulfilles the former. Indeed, fe…
Published on 2 months ago
Is Christianity Kitsch? | Episode XCIV
Episode 94
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What if we find Norse myth or Greco-Roman myth more aesthetically pleasing than Christianity? Should we believe in the pagan gods instead? Is the Bible actually good art? Is Christian t…
Published on 2 months, 2 weeks ago
Sparta: Appalling and Enthralling | Episode XCIII
Episode 93
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THIS IS SPARTA. Xenophon said that, even in his day, the rest of the Greeks thought Sparta's laws wholly strange: "all men praise such institutions, but no state chooses to imitate them…
Published on 3 months ago
Sparta Before the Reactionary Turn | Episode XCII
Episode 92
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We think of Sparta as a grim place, more of a military barracks with some civilians attached than an actual city. Its inhumane marriage laws, nauseating eugenics program, brutal educati…
Published on 3 months, 2 weeks ago
How to Raise an Achilles | Episode XCI
Episode 91
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Plato called Homer "the educator of all Greece." But what is a Homeric education? What were the Greeks learning from their supreme bard? Furthermore, the phrase "Homeric education" cont…
Published on 4 months ago
Gamble, Marrou, and the Uses of History | Episode XC
Episode 90
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Why study history? To understand ourselves? To pass on the tradition of our ancestors to our progeny? To build something new? Jonathan and Ryan compare Richard M. Gamble's and Henri-Iré…
Published on 4 months, 2 weeks ago