R1 The Hunt for Justice | Plato's Republic, book 1
The second installment in our 11-part series on Plato's Republic. Use the following timestamps for easier navigation: 0:22 Introduction: virtues vs values 7:10 The beginning of the Republic 13:50 Ceph...
21 Feb 20211h 14min
R0 Plato's Republic, or: How to Stop a Civil War
A foundational text in both ethics and political thought, the Republic was shaped by Plato's traumatic experiences as a young man witnessing civil war and the collapse of Athenian democracy. This is t...
16 Nov 202059min
30 Rome's Most Lethal Weapon w/ Steele Brand
Rome conquered the Mediterranean world without a professional army, relying instead on its citizens to take up arms when necessary. How did these part-time soldiers defeat all the great powers of the ...
17 Mar 202055min
29 Penelope: Weaver of Fate w/ Olga Levaniouk
Penelope is one of the most compelling characters from ancient Greek mythology. And yet her intelligence and agency in Homer's Odyssey is seldom appreciated. Towards the end of the epic, Penelope come...
1 Feb 20201h 2min
28 Thucydides: A Historian for Our Time? w/ Emily Greenwood
The Athenian historian Thucydides observed and chronicled the greatest military conflict of his day: the epic contest between Athens and Sparta known as the Peloponnesian War (431-404BC). Much more th...
24 Nov 201958min
27 Oligarchy, Part 2: Nemesis w/ Matt Simonton
What methods and institutions do oligarchic regimes use to maintain their power? How do they fend off the threat of democratic revolution? What happened to the many oligarchies of the ancient Mediterr...
1 Okt 201940min
26 Oligarchy, Part 1: Genesis w/ Matt Simonton
How do ancient oligarchies compare with modern authoritarian regimes? How did civil war in oligarchies differ from civil war in democracies? What does the age-old ideological struggle between democrac...
1 Sep 201941min
25 The Origins of Philosophy w/ André Laks (Presocratics, Parmenides, Heraclitus)
According to the historical evidence, the first stirrings of philosophical inquiry began 2600 years ago in ancient Greece with a group of thinkers known as the Presocratics (or pre-Socratics). In this...
1 Aug 201955min
