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New Humanists

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★★★★★
4.9
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This podcast has
105 episodes
Language
English
Explicit
No
Date created
2021/06/01
Latest episode
2026/02/01
Average duration
72 min.
Release period
16 days

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Join the hosts of New Humanists and founders of the Ancient Language Institute, Jonathan Roberts and Ryan Hammill, on their quest to discover what a renewed humanism looks like for the modern world. The Ancient Language Institute is an online language school and think tank, dedicated to changing the way ancient languages are taught.

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Straussian Aristocracy, feat. Pavlos Papadopoulos | Episode CV
2026/02/01
Send us a text 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," the political theorist Leo Strauss defends his statement that "Liberal education is the ladder by which we try to ascend from mass democracy to democracy as originally meant. Liberal education is the necessary endavor to found an aristocracy within democratic mass society." Along the way, he also discusses religious education, the distinction between the gentleman and the philosopher, and the insufficiency of the great books movement. Wyoming Catholic College professor Pavlos Papadopoulos rejoins the podcast for another dive into Strauss. Leo Strauss's Liberal Education and Responsibility: https://archive.org/details/LeoStraussOnLiberalEducation/Strauss-LiberalEducationResponsibility/ NH episode on Leo Strauss's What Is Liberal Education?: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/18277048-big-bad-leo-strauss-feat-pavlos-papadopoulos-episode-ci Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781451683202 Jonathan Swift's The Battle of the Books: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781507890530 Mark A. Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780802882042 Greg Lukianoff's and Jonathan Haidt's The Coddling of the American Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780735224919 Pete Hegseth's and David Goodwin's Battle for the American Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780063215054 Robert R. Reilly's The Closing of the Muslim Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781610170024 Allan Bloom's translation of The Republic of Plato: https://amzn.to/49ZMPIs Alexis De Tocqueville's Democracy in America (trans. Harvey Mansfield): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226805368 Cicero's Pro Archia Poeta: https://amzn.to/4buKd7W C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652944 Josef Pieper's Leisure The Basis of Culture: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781586172565 New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/ Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores. Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com Support the show
Out of the Steppe, feat. Colin Gorrie | Episode CIV
2026/01/15
Send us a text 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 various branches as they spread out across Europe and Asia: Anatolian, Tocharian, Celtic, Germanic, Italic, and more. This episode covers the second half of Laura Spinney's introduction to the field of Indo-European studies, Proto. Laura Spinney's Proto: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781639732586 Colin Gorrie's YouTube interview with Laura Spinney: https://youtu.be/_nVIV-qaHHY M.L. West's Indo-European Poetry and Myth: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199558919 Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226458120 Colin Gorrie's "Dead Language Society" Substack: https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/ Calvert Watkins' How to Kill a Dragon: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780195085952 Ekho, the ancient language audiobook app, is coming soon. Check here for more details: https://ancientlanguage.com/ekho New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/ Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores. Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
Enter the Indo-Europeans, feat. Colin Gorrie | Episode CIII
2026/01/01
Send us a text 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 a massive, peaceful migration of farmers? Or as small bands of shepherds, stealing livestock and killing anyone standing in the way? How do we even know what a prehistoric language sounded like if we don't have any record of their language? In this episode, Colin Gorrie joins us to discuss the opening chapters of Laura Spinney's Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, a fascinating and enjoyable survey of the current state of research into Proto-Indo-European, and a useful introduction to the fields of historical linguistics, archaeology, and paleogenetics, and how they relate to the question of Indo-European origins. Laura Spinney's Proto: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781639732586 Colin Gorrie's YouTube interview with Laura Spinney: https://youtu.be/_nVIV-qaHHY Fustel de Coulanges's The Ancient City: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780648690542 Erwin Rohde's Psyche: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780415225632 New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/ Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores. Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
The Sophists Are the Founders of Classical Education | Episode CII
2025/12/15
Send us a text 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 itself in the garb of Plato: leading students out of the cave, employing Socratic techniques in the classroom, and ensuring its students do not lead unexamined lives. But what if classical education, both in its love for the Trivium (and Quadrivium) as well as its institutional character, borrows more from the great enemy and rival of Socrates - sophistry? In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan read H.I. Marrou's chapter from A History of Education in Antiquity on the sophists and the birth of classical education proper. Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149 Plato's Symposium: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780521682985 New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/ Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores. Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
Big Bad Leo Strauss, feat. Pavlos Papadopoulos | Episode CI
2025/12/01
Send us a text 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, Strauss wasn't afraid of criticizing the positivism, historicism, and relativism of the American academy. And as is evident in reading his lecture "What is Liberal Education?" neither was he afraid of calling into question the value and feasibility of modern democracy. Wyoming Catholic College professor Pavlos Papadopoulos joins Jonathan and Ryan to discuss Strauss, his relation to the Great Books movement, and his views on the relation between liberal education and mass democratic society. Leo Strauss's What Is Liberal Education? https://archive.org/details/LeoStraussOnLiberalEducation/Strauss-WhatIsLiberalEducation/ Josef Pieper's Leisure, The Basis of Culture: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781586172565 New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/ Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores. Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
Time Present, Time Past, Time Future | Episode C
2025/11/17
Send us a text 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, and a peek behind the curtain so listeners can find out what is upcoming at ALI and on the podcast. We also welcome both Colin Gorrie and Luke Ranieri to the show to discuss Ekho: The Ancient Language Streaming App. Alan Jacobs’s The Year of Our Lord 1943:  https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780190864651 Jacques Maritain's Education at the Crossroads: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781685953423 W.H. Auden's Vocation and Society: https://www1.swarthmore.edu/library/auden/documents/vs.pdf C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652944 Simone Weil's The Need for Roots: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780415271028 T.S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture: https://amzn.to/4p5ubVo Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781402782831 Introduction to Latin Poetry: https://ancientlanguage.com/intermediate-latin-ii/ Introduction to Ancient Greek Poetry: https://ancientlanguage.com/ancient-greek-intro-poetry/ Introduction to Old English Poetry: https://ancientlanguage.com/intermediate-old-english-ii/ Colin Gorrie's Ōsweald Bera: An Introduction to Old English: https://ancientlanguage.com/vergil-press/osweald-bera/ Learn Old English at ALI: https://ancientlanguage.com/register-for-old-english/ Learn Old Norse (through Old English) with ALI: https://ancientlanguage.com/old-norse-through-old-english/ Laura Spinney's Proto: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781639732586 Colin Gorrie's interview of Laura Spinney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nVIV-qaHHY Luke Ranieri's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LukeRanieri The Ranieri-Roberts Approach to Ancient Greek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vwb1wVzPec Apuleius' The Golden Ass: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780253200365 Xenophon's An Ephesian Tale: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781514295557 Benjamin Kantor's The Pronunciation of New Testament Greek: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780802878311 Lucian's Assembly of the Gods: https://amzn.to/4peTcxB New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/ Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores. Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
Socrates Had It Coming | Episode XCIX
2025/11/01
Send us a text 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 Athenian hostility to the great philosopher which eventually reached its climax in sentencing Socrates to death, it helps to see how he was lampooned in front of Athenian audiences by his contemporary, the comedian playwright Aristophanes. But Clouds is more than just (dirty) jokes. It is a profane and self-critical attack on educational innovation, and a call to return to the old ways, the ways which produced heroic men like Aeschylus, who with his fellows turned the Persians back at Marathon and saved Greece. The new form of education, in Aristophanes' view, threatens to reduce Athens to a pathetic bunch of weak and impious nerds. But even in his mockery of the new, Aristophanes seems well aware of the inner weakness of the old ways and the reason for their defeat. So it shouldn't be too surprising that his conclusion simply seems to be: Burn it all down. Aristophanes' Clouds trans. by Alan H. Sommerstein: https://amzn.to/4hEaykY Aristophanes' Clouds trans. by Peter Meineck: https://amzn.to/4o7lr0R Aristophanes' Clouds trans. by William James Hickie: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0241%3Acard%3D1 Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149 Hesiod's Works and Days: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674997202 Herodotus' Histories: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781400031146 Plato's Republic: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780465094080 Leo Strauss's "The Problem of Socrates" (in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226777153 New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/ Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores. Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
Do "Christian" and "Classical" Go Together? feat. Calvin Goligher | Episode XCVIII
2025/10/15
Send us a text 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 befriended a fellow student named Julian, the nephew of the Emperor Constantine. There in Athens, the three young Christians mastered Greek philosophy and rhetoric at Libanius' feet. Later on, Basil went on to become the bishop of Caesarea, one of the architects of orthodoxy's victory over the Arian heresy, and was later named a "Doctor of the Church." His friend Gregory of Nazianzus rose to become one of the foremost preachers and theologians in church history. And their friend Julian became Emperor - and having repudiated the Christian faith, attempted to turn the newly Christian Roman Empire pagan again. Clearly, as the example of Julian the Apostate shows, pagan mythology and literature pose a danger to Christian faith. But can pagan learning serve Christian faith as well? Jonathan and Ryan are joined, once again, by the Rev. Calvin Goligher to discuss St. Basil of Caesarea's "Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature," in which he answers heartily in the affirmative, and explains how to use Greek poetry, philosophy, and history for the edification of young Christian students.  St. Basil's Address to Young Men on the Right Use of Greek Literature: https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/basil_litterature01.htm Frederick Morgan Padelford's Introduction to St. Basil and the Address to Young Men: https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/basil_litterature00.htm Richard M. Gamble’s The Great Tradition: https://amzn.to/3Q4lRnO NH episode on Justin Martyr: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/10722142-justin-martyr-s-first-apology-feat-calvin-goligher-episode-xxiv NH episode on Athanasius: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/9827740-athanasius-on-the-incarnation-feat-calvin-goligher-episode-xv Robert Louis Wilken's The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780300105988 New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/ Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores. Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
Jocks Versus Nerds | Episode XCVII
2025/10/01
Send us a text 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 to compete in the Olympics as well as to sing and dance in the chorus. They were jocks. Think of the tragic playwright Aeschylus, who despite his literary accomplishments was remembered in his epitaph merely as a warrior at the Battle of Marathon. A man's man. So when Socrates and the sophists came around, the defenders of old-style musical and athletic education scoffed at the sickly, ugly, and weak men that philosophical and rhetorical training produced: in other words, a bunch of nerds. In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan discuss what the comic Athenian poet Aristophanes called ἡ ἀρχαία παιδεία, i.e. that old-time education of Athens. Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149 NH episode on Homeric education: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/17406673-how-to-raise-an-achilles-episode-xci Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780684827902 Aristophanes' Clouds: https://amzn.to/46GYaeK Cato's De agri cultura: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Cato/De_Agricultura/A*.html Pete Hegseth's and David Goodwin's Battle for the American Mind: https://amzn.to/4gHQEox Jacob Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781617206047 New Humanists episode on Alcuin and Charlemagne: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/15992673-the-barren-contemplative-life-episode-lxxviii Herodotus' Histories: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781400031146 New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/ Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores. Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
That Other Dorothy Sayers Lecture | Episode XCVI
2025/09/15
Send us a text 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 tender age of 6, but laments that after 20 years of study, she was left barely able to read a line of Latin - and not for lack of trying or talent. Sayers contrasts this with her success in learning French, and concludes that what she needed in Latin was a conversation partner and easier, intermediate texts, or in other words: spoken Latin and lots of comprehensible input. Sayers also relates a conversation with C.S. Lewis about what medieval Latin texts he'd give to an intermediate-level Latin student to read. Dorothy Sayers's The Greatest Single Defect of My Own Latin Education: https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/greatest-single-defect-my-own-latin-education/ NH episode on Dorothy Sayers's The Lost Tools of Learning: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/10347912-the-trivium-according-to-dorothy-sayers-episode-xx Hans Orberg's Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata: https://amzn.to/3hoLz7V Mary Beard's What Does the Latin Actually Say? https://www.the-tls.com/regular-features/mary-beard-a-dons-life/what-does-the-latin-actually-say Hans Orberg's Latine Disco: https://amzn.to/3JWgKIl J.R.R. Tolkien's Letter 43: http://web.archive.org/web/20160308065444/http:/glim.ru/personal/jrr_tolkien_42-45.html C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780062565396 New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/ Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores. Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
Ahh, the Greeks! | Episode XCV
2025/09/01
Send us a text "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. Thus a close relationship between an older man and an adolescent was, for centuries, the definitive form of education in Greece. Xenophon and Plutarch famously protested that in Sparta, sexual touch between men and boys was forbidden, but modern historians are not so sure. In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan read and discuss "Pederasty in Classical Education," the third chapter of Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity. Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149 Xenophon's Constitution of the Spartans: https://cmuntz.hosted.uark.edu/texts/xenophon/constitution-of-the-spartans.html Plutarch's Instituta Laconica: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Instituta_Laconica*.html Paul Cartledge's Spartan Reflections: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780520231245 Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780679724698 Mary Eberstadt's Primal Screams: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781599475851 Plato's Symposium: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780521295239 New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/ Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores. Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com Support the show
Is Christianity Kitsch? | Episode XCIV
2025/08/15
Send us a text 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 beautiful just because they believe it is true? In a 1944 lecture before Oxford's Socratic Club, C.S. Lewis asks and answers these questions - and more. Jonathan and Ryan follow along as Lewis asks, and answers, the question the Socratic Club put before him: "Is theology poetry?" C.S. Lewis's Is Theology Poetry? https://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/lit/Theology=Poetry_CSL.pdf C.S. Lewis's The Weight of Glory: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060653200 James Frey's A Million Little Pieces: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780307276902 Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780143038252 Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780765382030 C.S. Lewis's Surprised by Joy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780062565433 C.S. Lewis's Miracles: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060653019 Charles Taylor's A Secular Age: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674986916 New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/ Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores. Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
Sparta: Appalling and Enthralling | Episode XCIII
2025/08/01
Send us a text 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 ones concerned with the rearing and education of children. And these laws, he said, were in their own turn developed not by imitating others, but came from the mind of a single great lawgiver: Lycurgus. It should come as no surprise, then, that the strict military training regime instituted by something of a philosopher-king held out its charms to the young men of Athens who surrounded Socrates. This had, in the case of Critias and the Thirty Tyrants, disastrous results. Jonathan and Ryan take a look at Xenophon, Plutarch, and other texts concerned with the appalling and enthralling institutions of ancient Lacadaemon. Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149 Previous New Humanists episode on Sparta: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/17503634-sparta-before-the-reactionary-turn-episode-xcii Xenophon's Constitution of the Spartans: https://cmuntz.hosted.uark.edu/texts/xenophon/constitution-of-the-spartans.html Plutarch's Instituta Laconica: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Instituta_Laconica*.html Paul Cartledge's Spartan Reflections: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780520231245 Pericles' Funeral Oration (from Thucydides): https://hrlibrary.umn.edu/education/thucydides.html New Humanists episode on Nietzsche's The Greek State: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/14044549-compassion-versus-classical-antiquity-episode-lvii Plato's Republic: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780465094080 New Humanists episode on Nietzsche's Homer's Contest: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/13949908-nietzsche-homer-and-cruelty-episode-lvi Fragments of Critias:  https://demonax.info/doku.php?id=text:critias_of_athens_fragments Paul Rahe's The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780300227093 Paul Rahe's Was There a Spartan Mirage?: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2016/10/06/was-there-a-spartan-mirage/ New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/ Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores. Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
Sparta Before the Reactionary Turn | Episode XCII
2025/07/15
Send us a text 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 educational system, obsession with military training, and paranoid suspicion of non-Spartans all led French historian Henri-Irénée Marrou to label Classical Sparta as an ancient fascist state. But there was a time, as Marrou argues in his history of ancient education, when Sparta was the cultural center of ancient Greek life. Artists and musicians flocked to pre-Classical, archaic Sparta to find a population more appreciative of fine poetry and music than anywhere else in Greece. Jonathan and Ryan turn to the Spartan lyric poets Tyrtaeus and Alcman to investigate what Spartan education and society was like in the archaic period, before the city closed in on itself. Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149 Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199537341 New Humanists episode on Homer's Contest: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/13949908-nietzsche-homer-and-cruelty-episode-lvi M.L. West's Greek Lyric Poetry: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199540396 Richmond Lattimore's Greek Lyrics: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226469447 New Humanists episode on Benjamin Constant: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/16302266-what-the-modern-world-lost-episode-lxxx The Anti-Federalist Papers: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780451528841 Thomas Babington Macaulay's Horatius: https://englishverse.com/poems/horatius Plato's Republic: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780465094080 New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/ Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores. Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com
How to Raise an Achilles | Episode XCI
2025/07/01
Send us a text 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" contains within it a second meaning as well. What kind of education were Homer's heroes getting? In other words, how did Achilles become Achilles? In this episode, we take a close look at Chapter One of A History of Education in Antiquity, in which Henri-Irénée Marrou describes the character of Homeric education, in both its senses, focusing in both cases on "words and deeds," the two fields of excellence every hero must master. Additionally, Jonathan tries to convince Ryan that Iliad Book 9, central to Marrou's explanation of Homeric education, is a story about the triumph of rhetoric. Henri-Irénée Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149 Robin Lane Fox's Homer and His Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781541600447 Robert Drews's Militarism and the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780367886004 Caroline Alexander's translation of the Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780062046291 Thomas à Kempis' The Imitation of Christ: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780141191768 New Humanists is brought to you by the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/ Come read Homer with us. Starting in September, we launch Homer Seminar, a book-by-book sequence of courses reading and discussing Homer's epics, all in Ancient Greek: ancientlanguage.com/homer-seminar Links may have referral codes, which earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. We encourage you, when possible, to use Bookshop.org for your book purchases, an online bookstore which supports local bookstores. Music: Save Us Now by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

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4.9 out of 5
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discesapere 2025/11/20
My favorite podcast!
I’ve loved this podcast ever since someone shared that one spicy classical education article with me (iykyk). Now I’m slowly working through the whole...
★★★★★
doubtfultekton 2025/08/06
The Best Education Podcast
Love the ALI guys, this is seriously the most underrated podcast out there on classical education, the liberal arts, and the humanities. Nothing else ...
★★★★★
ClassicalChristianEducator 2025/04/04
Gem of a Podcast
I stumbled upon the New Humanists while researching workshops for the 2025 ACCS Conference. Ryan’s ACCS bio included a reference to the podcast. I dec...
★★★★★
heytherereadingfriends 2025/02/10
My favorite podcast
I love listening to the New Humanists! I studied Classics as an undergrad and did my ancient Greek at Harvard with Gregory Nagy when ‘dead’ languages ...
★★★★★
benshapfan 2024/09/03
Excellent show
These guys are the best. I studied Ancient Greek and Latin at a famous American university with a world-renknown classics department. In all my time t...
★★★★★
petra's reviews 2024/07/01
The Best Podcast Ever
I love “hanging out” with Jonathan and Ryan (every time I listen it makes me sad I don’t have friends like them in real life). I’ve learned so much th...
★★★★★
jen522arts 2022/09/15
Review
Excellent conversations to listen to. As an educator, provides excellent perspective that has helped to form the way I view my students and my own rol...
★★★★★
thomasmore44 2021/10/12
Inspiration and Perspective
These guys are having a great conversation and inviting us into it. I particularly enjoyed the Voegelin episode as it reminded me to go back and read ...
★★★★★
Interested Humanist 2021/10/05
Bevis and Buthead
These are the original guys on the couch but instead of mind numbing mtv they are tuned into the true muse of philosophy in search of a recovery of ph...
★★★★★
chispellsx 2021/08/06
Outstanding
Having listened to the first three podcasts, I am very interested to continue with Jonathan and Ryan on their quest to elucidate the meaning and purpo...
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