David Butterfield

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739 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 20 May

David Butterfield’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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TRIGGERnometry · How Civilisations Die - Ancient Greece Expert David Butterfield · 20 May 2026 podcast

We're in a much worse place than late-day Athens.

I do think hubris needs to be a recurrent word.

I've never known a more selfish, myopic, frankly, philistine and uneducated class of politicians than we have now.

If a random citizen has one of these positions of power,

and things go wrong in the year that they have power, you could be executed.

Dr. David Butterfield, we have been waiting to have this conversation for literally months.

Welcome to Trigonometry.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's a thrill to be here, chaps.

Yeah, well, it's great to have you on.

We met actually in Greece where you were part of a Ralston College tour there for the students and we were invited along.

And you talk, you're a classicist, that's your background.

In fact, why don't you tell us your background?

Because that will be helpful to people to understand the conversation we're going to have.

Of course.

I'm a classicist, a classical scholar, which means I study the ancient Greeks and the Romans.

And in particular, I'm interested in how these ancient peoples shaped not just the Western world, but the world as a whole as we live in it.

Now, I grew up in Northern England.

I was fortunate to go to a state school that taught Latin to everyone, and I also picked up ancient Greek, and those two ancient languages led me into a love of the ancient world.

Then it was off to university, studying the classics, and I realized that the career I wanted in journalism was ultimately going to be a waste of time, and it would be far more interesting to get my head down and explore the classics.

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