New Humanists
Episodes
117 episodes
Nationalism and High Culture | Episode CXI
T.S. Eliot argues that cultural vitality depends in part upon a balance of unity and diversity in a nation with respect to its various regions. But this raises all sorts of questions: What distinguishes a nation from a region? Isn't a nation ju...
BONUS: A Quarrel in a Far-Away Country
Everyone knows Sparta, as well as its ally - the leading naval power of the Peloponnesian League - Corinth. But what about Corinth's colony to the northwestwest, on the eastern shore of the Ionian Gulf, Corcyra? How about Corcyra's colony, even...
Plato the Educator | Episode CX
Two ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:Download and subscribe to Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/Subscribe to New Humanists+ for bonus episodes: buzzsprout.com/1791279/subscribePlato's Academy was not just a ...
BONUS: The Road to War
The rise and fall of Cimon, the Spartans snubbing the Athenians during the helot revolt, the Athenian expedition to Egypt.In this New Humanists+ bonus episode, the fourth installment of the "Greece Occidens" megaseries, Jonath...
Socrates and the Sophists, feat. David Talcott | Episode CIX
Two ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:Download and subscribe to Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/Subscribe to New Humanists+ for bonus episodes: buzzsprout.com/1791279/subscribeIn his comedy Clouds...
BONUS: The Real Odysseus (Greece Occidens 3)
Did the Odysseus of Homer's poetry really exist? Whether or not he did, Classical Athens had its own, real-life trickster-hero: Themistocles. Like Odysseus, Themistocles engineered victory in war by a combination of cunning and bravery. Even af...
The Case Against Meritocracy | Episode CVIII
Two ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:Download and subscribe to Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/Subscribe to New Humanists+ for bonus episodes: buzzsprout.com/1791279/subscribeWhat's the matter wi...
BONUS: Did Sparta and Athens Have to Fight? (Greece Occidens 2)
Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War is perhaps the greatest work of history the ancient world produced. It tells the story of the long and savage destruction that Greece wreaked upon itself, led by Sparta on the one side, and Athens on the other....
Defining "Culture" | Episode CVII
Download Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/Subscribe to New Humanists+ for bonus episodes: buzzsprout.com/1791279/subscribePop culture. Cancel culture. Judeo-Christian culture. Everyone likes to talk about "cult...
BONUS EPISODE: Golden Hour for the Greeks (Greece Occidens 1)
We begin in Greece at the height of their power and elegance. The fractious cities of Greece had united to defeat the massive army and navy of Persia. In the years of relative peace that followed, Greece prospered. As Donald Kagan writes, "It w...
Technology Versus the Classics, feat. Timothy Griffith | Episode CVI
When the Loeb Classical Library was launched, the greatest language teacher of the age, W.H.D. Rouse, wrote an essay meant to promote the Loebs by extolling the magnificence of Greek literature and Latin literature. And boy did he. "Your mind c...
Straussian Aristocracy, feat. Pavlos Papadopoulos | Episode CV
Liberal education is for the man of leisure: Either a gentleman engaged in politics, or a philosopher engaged in contemplation. What role, then, can liberal learning have in a mass democracy? In the lecture "Liberal Education and Responsibility...
Ep. 104 BONUS: Concerning Homer and the Greeks, feat. Colin Gorrie
Colin, Jonathan, and Ryan continue their discussion of Laura Spinney's Proto, focusing on the Greeks and their Minoan and Mycenean forebears, including archaeological and philological evidence for the historicity of the Iliad....
Out of the Steppe, feat. Colin Gorrie | Episode CIV
What do you think of laryngeals? How should we refer to the Anatolian languages? Where do you stand on Gimbutas and Renfrew? In this episode of New Humanists, Dr. Colin Gorrie helps guide us through the Indo-European family tree. We follow the ...
Enter the Indo-Europeans, feat. Colin Gorrie | Episode CIII
Supposedly, about half of the world population speaks languages that all come from one root language: Proto-Indo-European. How do we know, and where did "PIE" come from? Ukraine, Anatolia, or somewhere else? Did the Indo-Europeans spread out in...
The Sophists Are the Founders of Classical Education | Episode CII
The classical education revival movement began in the 1980s as a DIY, grassroots attempt to recover the medieval liberal arts, most notably the Trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. However, the classical ed movement also frequently drapes i...
Big Bad Leo Strauss, feat. Pavlos Papadopoulos | Episode CI
What is liberal education? It's the prompt that has launched one thousand essays, and in a 1959 lecture at the University of Chicago, the (in)famous Leo Strauss gave his answer. Despite fleeing Nazi Germany and coming to the United States, Stra...
Time Present, Time Past, Time Future | Episode C
In celebration of the 100th episode of New Humanists, we do an extended episode that is a retrospective, discussing the history of the Ancient Language Institute and the New Humanists podcast, has some updates on what we're up to at the moment,...
Socrates Had It Coming | Episode XCIX
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. If you want to understand something of the Atheni...
Do "Christian" and "Classical" Go Together? feat. Calvin Goligher | Episode XCVIII
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. While there, these two young and wealthy Cappadocians befrie...
Jocks Versus Nerds | Episode XCVII
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 system of education, in which young Greek men were trained ...
That Other Dorothy Sayers Lecture | Episode XCVI
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 recalls beginning Latin lessons with her father at the tend...
Ahh, the Greeks! | Episode XCV
"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, few things were so distinctively Greek as their love for boys...
Is Christianity Kitsch? | Episode XCIV
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 theology beautiful? Do Christians find their religion beauti...
Sparta: Appalling and Enthralling | Episode XCIII
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." Foremost among these strange laws, of course, were the o...