New Humanists

Ancient Language Institute
  • 5.0 (46)
  • LANGUAGE LEARNING
  • UPDATED BIWEEKLY

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.

  1. NOV 1

    Socrates Had It Coming | Episode XCIX

    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

    1h 6m

  2. OCT 15

    Do "Christian" and "Classical" Go Together? feat. Calvin Goligher | Episode XCVIII

    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

    1h 14m

  3. OCT 1

    Jocks Versus Nerds | Episode XCVII

    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

    1h 13m

  4. SEP 15

    That Other Dorothy Sayers Lecture | Episode XCVI

    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

    1h 35m

  5. SEP 1

    Ahh, the Greeks! | Episode XCV

    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

    59 min

  6. AUG 15

    Is Christianity Kitsch? | Episode XCIV

    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

    58 min

  7. AUG 1

    Sparta: Appalling and Enthralling | Episode XCIII

    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

    58 min

  8. JUL 15

    Sparta Before the Reactionary Turn | Episode XCII

    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

    54 min
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5
out of 5
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About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Ancient Language Institute
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2025
  • Episodes
    99
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Ancient Language Institute
  • Show Website
    New Humanists

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