Young Heretics

In an age when anxieties about state persecution are running high, Spencer Klavan looks to the ironclad perseverance of Saint Thomas More. More lived in a far more dangerous time than our own, and his confidence in the reality of the hereafter kept him firm in the face of tyranny. This episode of Young Heretics is the first of two on how one man gave it all rather than buckle under pressure. -- Ce...

How can a good and just God allow suffering? The Book of Job is where the Old Testament looks this question squarely in the face. In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan discusses this masterwork of wisdom literature, drawing out lessons for patience in suffering that go beyond happy talk and nihilism. -- Everyone wants a beard that looks like Spencer Klavan's. Visit https://minimoustach...

With Thrasymachus the sophist thoroughly spanked and sent home crying, the real philosophers in the room get to work. That's the premise of Republic Book II, in which Socrates embarks with Glaucon and Adeimantus on a monumental project of imaginary civilization-building. In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan explores the question, can they craft a city of pure justice, or just a totali...

Romeo and Juliet are two truly iconic characters—Shakespeare's tragedy has made them so powerfully real that it's almost as if they're still alive. But who are they, really, and why did this one play stick so firmly in the mind of the West? In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan talks through the high drama, the classical sources, and the world-famous speeches of this classic play. -- L...

How do we put blood guilt to rest? It isn't pretty. In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan walks through the conclusion of Aeschylus' Oresteia and traces the ideas it conveys throughout Western history. In the end, the question is not "what are we owed," but, "how can we live?" -- Public Goods is the one stop shop for sustainable, high quality everyday essentials made from clean ingredi...

Who is Orestes? What kind of man will he be? That is the question on which the middle play of the Oresteia turns. In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan walks through the tragedy and the questions it raises for men and women facing the unfairness of life today. -- Everyone wants a beard that looks like Spencer Klavan's. Visit https://minimoustachery.com/heretics and use the code HERETIC...

Are the sins of the father really the sins of the son? That's the question driving Aeschylus' Oresteia, the only surviving complete trilogy of Greek tragedies. In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan begins a three-part journey through Aeschylus' prizewinning masterwork, seeking wisdom for today's debates over the history of racism. -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Anc...

Can we still do America anymore? Is the Constitution just hopelessly outdated? In a world governed by elites who think the whole America thing doesn't work, Spencer Klavan uses Aristotle's "Politics" to examine what living in political community means, and how we can (still) make it work in this country. -- Everyone wants a beard that looks like Spencer Klavan's. Visit https://minimoustachery.com/...

The First Crusade is one of the most maligned events in all of Western history. But what was it really about? In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan discusses the history of the Crusade and its impact on The Song of Roland. -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Ancient Language Institute and receive 15% off with the code HERETICS: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics....

"The Song of Roland" is a glorious legend about the doomed hero, Roland, and his tragic defeat at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass. In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan talks through the history behind this great epic and what it can tell us today. -- Everyone wants a beard that looks like Spencer Klavan's. Visit https://minimoustachery.com/heretics and use the code HERETICS to get 25% of...

As Gawain gallops toward his potentially deadly encounter with the Green Knight, he faces an unexpected challenge: seduction. In the second Young Heretics episode on "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Spencer Klavan discusses the tradition of courtly love poetry and what to make of its more scandalous elements. -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Ancient Language Institute and rece...

Is the chivalric code one of civilization's great achievements, or is it all just a lie? That's the question Spencer Klavan takes up in the first of two episodes on "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," a jewel of Middle English literature and of chivalric poetry. In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer reads Simon Armitage's masterful translation and argues that the high ideals of honor can still...

The royal history of England is a story of triumphs and mishaps—but is there a plan behind it all? For that matter, is any of us free to affect the course of history? In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan walks through Shakespeare's tale of war and loss, asking what the medieval kings can teach us about our present crisis. -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Ancient Lan...

Are all cultures, all countries, all governments as good as each other? How do we know what's right and wrong? In this episode of Young Heretics—the first of many episodes on the foundation-stone of Western political philosophy, the Republic—Spencer Klavan walks through the context, the history, and the profound impact of Republic Book 1. Get your copy of "The Republic of Plato" here: https://www....

Young Heretics is the classical education you've been denied. But what is a classical education, anyway? In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan walks through the history of the three- and four-fold way (the "trivium" and the "quadrivium") to explain how we can shape our souls to love the good in a degraded age. Get your copy of Allan Bloom's translation of Plato's "Republic" here: https...

What happened to the lovers of the French Revolution after it dissolved into terror? Some never changed their minds. But others—like the great Romantic poet William Wordsworth—reconsidered. Reading through Wordsworth's great poem "The Prelude" in this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan discusses how we can all turn around after a wrong turn. Read along with Spencer with your own copy of "Th...

For the first time on Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan tackles a philosopher with whom he thoroughly and entirely disagrees: David Hume. Reading through the "Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding," Spencer examines the roots of modern skepticism and its influence on later thinkers like Freud. Read along with Spencer with your copy of Hume's "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" here: https://...

What if all this Western culture stuff is just a mistake? That's the provocative question Spencer Klavan explores in this episode, with the help of that infamous German polemicist Friedrich Nietzsche. Spencer begins with Nietzsche's first book, "The Birth of Tragedy," taking a hard look at the weakness Nietzsche saw in Socrates, and so in the Western tradition of philosophy. -- Public Goods is the...

We are surrounded these days by people who tell us our natural assumptions are all wrong: patriotism is evil, gender is a construct, everyone should eat bugs. Using the writing of Edmund Burke, Spencer Klavan argues that you have a right to be suspicious of billionaires who want to reduce your life to mere mathematics. -- The Classic Learning test is an alternative to the ultra-biased College Boar...

Are we living through another French Revolution? With the help of the great statesman Edmund Burke, Spencer Klavan examines what made the difference in the 18th century—and what makes the difference now—between justified reform and destructive anarchy. -- The Classic Learning test is an alternative to the ultra-biased College Board tests that puts students in front of the kinds of thinkers we love...

Death is real. It's not going away, and no amount of risk management can stave it off. So what do we do about it? In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan talks with journalist and editor Sohrab Ahmari about the Stoic Seneca's approach to death, as discussed in Ahmari's new book, "The Unbroken Thread." -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Ancient Language Institute and rece...

In this second episode on C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, Spencer Klavan explores the lead-up to the book's climactic moment, and the philosophy of courage that lies behind it. Courage is "every virtue at the testing point"—the thing which, in Lewis's day as well as ours, we cannot do without. -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Ancient Language Institute and receive 15% off wi...

Probably no work by the great C.S. Lewis is more famous than his "Screwtape Letters," an imagined series of notes from one hellish tempter to another. In this first part of a two-part "Young Heretics" series, Spencer Klavan talks about Screwtape's view of sex and love, as well as the poetry and philosophy that informed Lewis's work. -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Ancient Langu...

In Twelfth Night, a comedy first performed at the turn of the 17th century, Shakespeare demonstrates a subtler and more sophisticated understanding of how sex and gender work than all our modern ideologues put together. As Spencer Klavan explains this episode of "Young Heretics," the play acknowledges the delicate counterplay between male and female, before ultimately affirming that each is a unit...

Fyodor Dostoevsky lived a life like one of his novels: harsh, dramatic, profound. His exile and hard labor in Siberia showed him the innate worth of the human soul and laid the groundwork for one of his best-known masterpieces, "Crime and Punishment." In this episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan talks through the hard conditions of 19th-century St. Petersburg and Dostoevsky's harrowing psyc...