Why Does American Give Automatic Birthright Citizenship?
Anyone born on American soil gets automatic citizenship. This isn't true in the rest of the world. Few other nations in the world practice jus soli (right of the soil). Rather, your parents have to be citizens. Why is this the case? It has to do with New World senses of identity and belonging. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
13 Loka 20178min
What Was It Like To Be Enrolled at the University of Constantinople?
The Pandidakterion (University of Constantinople) was the empire's imperial school. It can trace its origins to 425 AD to Emperor Theodosius II. Learn what it was like to be enrolled in the ancient world's premier "university." TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
12 Loka 20178min
John Birch-The First Death in the Cold War
The first death of the Cold War quickly became an anti-communist icon and symbol of the American far right from the 1950s onward. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
11 Loka 20177min
George Washington Wasn’t the First President. He Was the Ninth
George Washington was the First President of the United States. This is the most basic fact that an American school child can learn. Only it isn't true. He wasn’t the first. Nor the second. He was actually the ninth president of the United States. How can that be? It all has to do with the ad hoc, make-it-up-as-you-go nature of the United States government between the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the signing of the Constitution in 1789. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
10 Loka 20176min
Anthony Esolen on Translating Dante’s Divine Comedy and Dan Brown’s Supercilious Stupidity
‘Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them: there is no third’ —T.S Elliot The most towering epic poem in Western literature, save perhaps the works of Homer, is Dante's Divine Comedy. In this episode we are going to talk about the history of the poem, how it was understood across the centuries, and what it has to say to 21st man today. And our guest is perhaps the most qualified person on the planet to do so. Anthony Esolen is a literature professor and Dante scholar who released an acclaimed translation of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. He has been praised for marrying sense with sound, poetry with meaning, capturing both the poem’s line-by-line vigor and its allegorically and philosophically exacting structure. In our interview we discuss Esolen's translation decision to ditch systematic line-by-line rhyming in favor of blank verse to retain the poem's original “meaning and music,” why Dan Brown's Inferno is so transcendentally terrible a book, and what Dante has to say to a modern world that has exchanged an authentic culture for mindless mass entertainment. ABOUT ANTHONY ESOLEN Anthony Esolen is a professor of English Renaissance and classical literature, a writer, social commentator, and translator of classical poetry. He has taught at the university level for decades and joined Thomas More College of Liberal Arts this fall. Besides Dante, he has translated Lucretius' On the Nature of Things, and Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. Along with his academic work he has written more than 500 articles forThe Claremont Review of Books, First Things, and Touchstone magazine. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Anthony Esolen's translation of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise “Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture” “Dan Brown's Infernal Fiction” TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
9 Loka 201757min
Christopher Columbus Wasn’t as Good—Or as Terrible—As You Think
Depending on which account you hear, Columbus was either the bravest explorer of the early Renaissance or a mass murdered who subjected the indigenous population of the new world to death or slavery. Learn in this episode how Columbus was both and neither of these descriptions. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
6 Loka 20179min
How the 1565 Siege of Malta Led to the Golden Age of Piracy
The Knights Hospitaller were kicked out of Jerusalem following the Third Crusade, but they found a new home on the Mediterranean island of Malta. Their defense fortifications were so strong that nobody could invade, not even the might Ottoman navy in the late 16th century. Learn how this warrior order helped piracy thrive in the Eastern Mediterranean. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
5 Loka 201713min
Europeans in the Far East Before Marco Polo
Marco Polo is the most famous European explorer to the Far East, but he definitely wasn’t the first. His father and uncle came there years before. And they found a small colony of Europeans who lived permanently in China. Perhaps the most famous pre-Polo European in the Far East is William of Rubruck. This plucky monk did his best to convert the Great Khan to Christianity. He made his effort by debating Muslims and Buddhists as to which religion was the true one. See how that turns out in today's episode. TO HELP OUT THE SHOW Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes or StitcherSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
4 Loka 20178min
