Classical Stuff You Should Know

In this episode, we discuss the purpose of college, beginning specifically with the changes in mission of a specific college.

In this episode we discuss the person of Socrates. The man himself is a little tough to nail down, considering that he didn't write anything down.

We discuss the church's attitude toward lending, interest, and money. We also try to figure out definitions and how to survive the apocalypse.

We introduce you to Dante in this episode and give you a guide to understanding his best known work. Oh, also, it's a little bit about Hell, which is fun.

Adequatio is the notion that the understanding of the knower must be adequate to the thing known.

Graeme teaches us about the fall of man according to Milton. Our eighth-grade boys will be disappointed to hear that it isn't all Eve's fault.

In this episode, A.J. walks us through the ancient method of loci and its modern uses. Ever see Sherlock poke his brain and information comes out? Well, the memory palace is a real thing, but it doesn't exactly work like that.

In this episode, Thomas takes us through the ancient understanding of despair--both its symptoms and its remedies.

In this episode, Graeme takes us through the theology of Milton's paradise lost. Even if you never plan on reading this mountain of a book, it's a good way to delve into the theology of Adam and Eve.

In this episode, A.J. takes us through an alternative to the five paragraph essay that is more useful for everyone, including those of us no longer in school. Need to convince someone of something? You can use this.

In this one, Bees walks us through a classical view of friendship.

Dante recorded what folks had been doing for a long time as they read scripture. In this episode, we run you through Dante's method for studying scripture.

Dorothy Sayers' "Lost Tools of Learning" is the article that helped to form a movement. We talk through it in this episode, and we end up talking a little more trivium while we're at it.

When we say , "The Ideal Type," it's really just a way of expressing in shorthand that we cling to the idea of an ideal: an ideal way to live, an ideal way for man to live in culture. This is a discussion of that ideal.

The Trivium--grammar, logic, and rhetoric--provides the three grand divisions upon which classical education is based. Sounds boring, I know, but it ain't so bad.

In this episode, Bees walks us through Josef Pieper's book, "Leisure the Basis of Culture." A.J. takes issue with those uppity philosophers.

In this episode, we discuss the classical understanding of the seven deadly sins and their import today.

In this episode, we cover the fallacies of ambiguity and the fallacies of form.

The logical fallacies can be bunched into a few headings. There are quite a few of them, and this episode isn't exhaustive, but we hit the biggies. In this episode, we focus primarily on the fallacies of distraction.

Thomas leads us through the criteria for calling a work classical.

This episode is a little different since I included an extra bit of conversation that we had been having with the audio off. It concerns economy and man. After that, we move on to the actual episode. It concerns the three modes of persuasion. If you ever hope to convince someone to do something, and do it with commitment, you're going to have to use these. Ethos concerns the trustworthiness of the...

The House of Atreus is central to both the Iliad and the plays of Aeschylus. The story is a little crazy, so be warned: it's not really appropriate for kids.

Medieval man is much maligned for his cosmology. This episode describes this cosmology, helping the modern reader to understand references to the spheres in Milton and others, while at the same time defending medieval man.

In this episode, Graeme discusses the different parts of a metaphor.

The twenty-second book of the Iliad is a microcosm of the whole. The symbolism in this chapter captures all the major themes of the book.