New Humanists

Nationalism and High Culture | Episode CXI

01 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Send us Fan MailT.S. Eliot argues that cultural vitality depends in part upon a balance of unity and diversity in a nation with respect to its various...

Plato the Educator | Episode CX

15 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Send us Fan MailTwo ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:Download and subscribe to Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/Subscribe to New Human...

Socrates and the Sophists, feat. David Talcott | Episode CIX

01 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Send us Fan MailTwo ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:Download and subscribe to Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/Subscribe to New Human...

The Case Against Meritocracy | Episode CVIII

15 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Send a textTwo ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:Download and subscribe to Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/Subscribe to New Humanists+...

Defining "Culture" | Episode CVII

01 Mar 2026

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Send a textDownload Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/Subscribe to New Humanists+ for bonus episodes: buzzsprout.com/1791279/subscribePop culture. Cancel...

Technology Versus the Classics, feat. Timothy Griffith | Episode CVI

15 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Send a textWhen the Loeb Classical Library was launched, the greatest language teacher of the age, W.H.D. Rouse, wrote an essay meant to promote the L...

Straussian Aristocracy, feat. Pavlos Papadopoulos | Episode CV

01 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textLiberal education is for the man of leisure: Either a gentleman engaged in politics, or a philosopher engaged in contemplation. What rol...

Out of the Steppe, feat. Colin Gorrie | Episode CIV

15 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textWhat do you think of laryngeals? How should we refer to the Anatolian languages? Where do you stand on Gimbutas and Renfrew? In this epi...

Enter the Indo-Europeans, feat. Colin Gorrie | Episode CIII

01 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textSupposedly, about half of the world population speaks languages that all come from one root language: Proto-Indo-European. How do we kno...

The Sophists Are the Founders of Classical Education | Episode CII

15 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textThe classical education revival movement began in the 1980s as a DIY, grassroots attempt to recover the medieval liberal arts, most nota...

Big Bad Leo Strauss, feat. Pavlos Papadopoulos | Episode CI

01 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textWhat is liberal education? It's the prompt that has launched one thousand essays, and in a 1959 lecture at the University of Chicag...

Time Present, Time Past, Time Future | Episode C

17 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textIn celebration of the 100th episode of New Humanists, we do an extended episode that is a retrospective, discussing the history of the A...

Socrates Had It Coming | Episode XCIX

01 Nov 2025

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Send us a textSocrates taught his students contempt for the gods, how to defraud creditors, and useless trivialities about flea-jumping. Or at least, ...

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

15 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textIn the 4th century AD, two Christian friends - Basil and Gregory - travelled from Cappadocia to Athens to go study Greek literature with...

Jocks Versus Nerds | Episode XCVII

01 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textWe tend to think of the Athenians as philosophers, architects, and mathematicians. But their highest devotion was rather to sports and t...

That Other Dorothy Sayers Lecture | Episode XCVI

15 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textEveryone knows "The Lost Tools of Learning." But did you know Dorothy Sayers delivered another, longer, and even more interest...

Ahh, the Greeks! | Episode XCV

01 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a text"Παιδεία found its realization in παιδεραστία." This is how Henri-Irénée Marrou characterizes the relation...

Is Christianity Kitsch? | Episode XCIV

15 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textWhat if we find Norse myth or Greco-Roman myth more aesthetically pleasing than Christianity? Should we believe in the pagan gods instea...

Sparta: Appalling and Enthralling | Episode XCIII

01 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textTHIS IS SPARTA. Xenophon said that, even in his day, the rest of the Greeks thought Sparta's laws wholly strange: "all men pra...

Sparta Before the Reactionary Turn | Episode XCII

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textWe think of Sparta as a grim place, more of a military barracks with some civilians attached than an actual city. Its inhumane marriage ...

How to Raise an Achilles | Episode XCI

01 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textPlato called Homer "the educator of all Greece." But what is a Homeric education? What were the Greeks learning from their sup...

Gamble, Marrou, and the Uses of History | Episode XC

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textWhy study history? To understand ourselves? To pass on the tradition of our ancestors to our progeny? To build something new? Jonathan a...

Philosophy Versus the Liberal Arts | Episode LXXXIX

01 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textThe wise man, like Abraham, does not spurn Hagar. For she is merely preparatory to Sarah. This is the analogy that the great Jewish Plat...

Christian Gnosticism? | Episode LXXXVIII

15 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textClement of Alexandria was one of the many luminaries of the Catechectical School of Alexandria, one of the early church's most dist...

Replacing Machiavelli with Francesco Patrizi, feat. James Hankins | Episode LXXXVII

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textNiccolo Machiavelli is often held up as the paradigmatic political philosopher of the Italian Renaissance. But as James Hankins argued i...

Using Paganism to Christianize the Pagans | Episode LXXXVI

15 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textIn his lifetime, John Chrysostom witnessed the true beginning of Christendom: the Emperor Theodosius confirmed the public standing of Ch...

The Hieronymus Option | Episode LXXXV

01 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textCan Christians read and appreciate pagan literature? The vexed relationship between the Church and a world that hates it has generated m...

Why Modern Literature Stinks | Episode LXXXIV

15 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textIn the final chapter of Climbing Parnassus, Tracy Lee Simmons distinguishes between the "skills" and the "content" a...

The Declines and Falls of Classical Education | Episode LXXXIII

01 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textClassical education has declined and fallen before - as the Roman Empire succumbed to internal weakness and external threats, so did its...

Will Classical Schools Climb Parnassus? | Episode LXXXII

15 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textA truly classical education is centered on the study of the Classics: the ancient languages and literatures of Greece and Rome. The adje...

"The Church Is Like the Ancient Roman State" | Episode LXXXI

01 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textThe Renaissance humanist Biondo Flavio dedicated his massive book Roma Triumphans, a historical investigation of what made Rome great, t...

What the Modern World Lost | Episode LXXX

01 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textRepresentative government, freedom of religion, the right to privacy - these are just some of the liberties of the modern world which we...

A Great Books Monastery | Episode LXXIX

01 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textWhen civilization is crashing down all around you, what do you do? Retreat to the hills, build a monastery, and preserve what you can. T...

The Barren Contemplative Life | Episode LXXVIII

15 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textThis week, Jonathan and Ryan discuss two early medieval selections from Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition, one taken from Gre...

How to Train a Pastor | Episode LXXVII

01 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textHe who teaches the truth finds himself locked in battle against all those who teach falsehood. With what tools will you equip him? That ...

Florence the Heir of Rome | Episode LXXVI

15 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textWhat if the true heir of the Roman Empire was not Rome, but Florence? Over the course of his life and career as a scholar and politician...

The Homer-Industrial Complex | Episode LXXV

01 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textThe Iliad was more popular than the Odyssey beginning in ancient times, and continued to be all the way up to World War One. Then, somet...

Humanism, With or Without God, feat. Eric Adler | Episode LXXIV

15 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textFor the first time, a collection of Irving Babbitt's and Paul Elmer More's correspondence has been published. Eric Adler, the ...

Medieval Monastic Humanism | Episode LXXIII

01 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textLove for Cicero, attention to rhetorical form, use of pagan wisdom for political thought - these are all hallmarks of the Renaissance hu...

How to Learn Like Thomas Aquinas | Episode LXXII

15 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textThomas Aquinas is also known as the "Angelic Doctor," but he was quite capable of coming down from the heavens and getting pra...

Pagans and Christians, Glory and Piety | Episode LXXI

01 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textThe things of God belong to a heavenly kingdom. But politics is taken up with what is earthly. Surely, therefore, Christians should keep...

Petrarch's Little Dark Age | Episode LXX

15 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textImagine that you are the leading figure in a movement to renew the study and appreciation of classical literature, but you have come to ...

Liberal Arts for Liberal Hearts | Episode LXIX

01 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textAre the liberal arts for everyone? We tend to think that the liberal arts can be helpful and edifying for anyone. But even amidst the hu...

What is Tyranny? | Episode LXVIII

15 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textWe think we know what a "republic" is, but what did the Romans mean with their phrase "res publica"? What about the ...

The Renaissance Politics of Virtue | Episode LXVII

01 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textA pandemic. A changing climate. A hopelessly divided country. Christianity threatened by Islam. Universities completely out of touch wit...

Christine de Pizan | Episode LXVI

15 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textThe poet of Joan of Arc, and a notable example of a female writer in the premodern period, Christine de Pizan took a turn at the popular...

Your Children Are Weak | Episode LXV

01 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textIn his essay "On Educating Children," a follow-up to his denunciation of pedantry, Michel de Montaigne warns that "natura...

The Art of Language Teaching, feat. Tim Griffith | Episode LXIV

15 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textWhen Tim Griffith was coaching soccer and reading ancient Roman rhetorical theory, he realized he had stumbled across a pedagogical gold...

Republican Education, feat. Clifford Humphrey | Episode LXIII

01 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textWe threw off the monarchy... now what? Having established a republic on American soil, the Founding Fathers were faced with the question...

Mediocrity Versus Glory in the Renaissance | Episode LXII

15 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textLeonardo Bruni was the titan of Renaissance historians and a prolific humanist. In a long letter to an aristocratic Italian woman, Batti...

Does Education Improve the Soul? | Episode LXI

02 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textMichel de Montaigne was a native Latin speaker in modern Europe and yet a great innovator in French letters; among other things, he invi...

Pope Humanist | Episode LX

15 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textAeneas Silvius was an accomplished Renaissance humanist, author of erotic literature, and influential aide to emperors and popes (and an...

Prince Erasmus | Episode LIX

01 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textJonathan and Ryan turn to a set of selections from the Prince of Humanists himself, Desiderius Erasmus. In Liber Antibarbarorum, Erasmus...

All Education Is Religious | Episode LVIII

15 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a text"As only the Catholic and communist know, all education must be ultimately religious education." So argues T.S. Eliot in his e...

Compassion Versus Classical Antiquity | Episode LVII

01 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textIn The Greek State, Friedrich Nietzsche argues that the Greek polis existed in order to hold the many in slavery so that the Olympian fe...

Nietzsche, Homer, and Cruelty | Episode LVI

15 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textWhy was it that the Greeks, the most humane of all peoples, also possessed such a tigerish lust for blood? Why did the Greeks so delight...

The Mirror for Princes | Episode LV

15 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textThomas Elyot wrote "The Boke named the Governour," the first book about education written in the English language, an outstand...

Martin Luther for Public Schools (or, Don't Be an Ostrich) | Episode LIV

01 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a text"Simple necessity has forced men, even among the heathen, to maintain pedagogues and schoomasters if their nation was to be brought...

Only the Weak Desire a Quiet Life | Episode LIII

15 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textUlrich Zwingli was one of the towering figures of the Reformation, a committed humanist, and a warrior who ultimately fell in battle. He...

Return of the Old Gods in Germany | Episode LII

01 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textIn the opening lecture of his course on Homer, the Professor of Greek at the University of Wittenberg, Phillip Melanchthon, first invoke...

The Warm and Capacious Calvin | Episode LI

15 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textA stern prophet of the new and harsh doctrine of predestination. A bloodthirsty tyrant burning people at the stake. A narrowminded dour ...

How to Educate the Queen | Episode L

01 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textHow do you prepare a royal princess for the throne? In this episode, we look at the writings of two giants of Reformation humanism: Joha...

Bread and Circuses for Rome | No Republic Was Ever Greater

15 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textKing Tarquinius secures his hold on power by expanding the Senate, but encounters a roadblock to strengthening the military in the perso...

Enter the Tarquins | No Republic Was Ever Greater

01 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textStrange omens, plague, occult religious rites. King Tullus Hostilius' reign collapses in something like supernatural madness. The g...

Democracy Dies with Lysander, feat. Alex Petkas | Episode XLVII

15 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textLysander is a troubling figure. As a child, he was a charity case who excelled his more affluent peers; he never cared for wealth, and y...

Education that Makes Aquinas Look Modern, feat. John Peterson | Episode XLVI

01 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textIn his wise and humane Didascalicon, the teacher, canon regular, and mystical theologian Hugh of St. Victor lays out his advice and inst...

The Danger of Plato | Episode XLV

15 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textDoes Plato, and philosophy more generally, belong in schools? In a lecture, professor and Davenant Institute VP Colin Redemer suggests t...

Can Humanism Replace Christianity? | Episode XLIV

01 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textIrving Babbitt was the architect of New Humanism. He was also T.S. Eliot's mentor at Harvard. But in 1928, the newly Anglican Eliot...

Wars of Ancient Religion | No Republic Was Ever Greater

15 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textThe duel between the Horatii brothers and the Curiatii brothers seemed to settle the Roman-Alban dispute and give Rome authority over Al...

The Roman Will to Power | No Republic Was Ever Greater

01 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textAfter the long peace of Numa's reign, Rome gets a new king, even more ferocious than Romulus: Tullus Hostilius. As soon as he comes...

Lincoln with the Bard, feat. Ted J. Richards | Episode XLI

15 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textAbraham Lincoln spent less than 1 year of his life going to school. Nevertheless, he became a lawyer, a surveyor, and one of the greates...

Numa Numa Yeah | No Republic Was Ever Greater, Ep. 4

01 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textWhen Romulus dies, the city of Rome is riven by ethnic conflict between Romans and Sabines, and class conflict between senators and pleb...

Milton Against the Trivium | Episode XXXIX

15 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textJohn Milton's clarion call to educators to "repair the ruins of our first parents" has inspired countless teachers and pa...

Messing Up Your Kid's Education | Episode XXXVIII

01 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textGiambattista Vico was a Renaissance Man after the Renaissance, but he was largely forgotten for centuries. As a professor of rhetoric, h...

Reflections on the Sexual Revolution in France | Episode XXXVII

15 Dec 2022

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Send us a textAfter reading Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, a member of the French National Assembly wrote to Burke, asking for ...

The Startup City | No Republic Was Ever Greater, Ep. 3

01 Dec 2022

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Send us a textWhat if you gathered a bunch of friends, went out to the desert of Arizona, and built the greatest city that the world had ever seen? Th...

How to Stage a Coup | No Republic Was Ever Greater, Ep. 2

15 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textThis is the second episode of our series about Livy's "Ab Urbe Condita," called "No Republic Was Ever Greater."...

No Republic Was Ever Greater, Ep. 1

01 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textThis is the first episode of a new series on New Humanists, called "No Republic Was Ever Greater." We are walking through the ...

Was Virgil Divinely Inspired? | Episode XXXIII

15 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textThe late antique and medieval Church saw Virgil as a pagan herald of Christ, due to the seemign messianic prophecies in Eclogue IV. In a...

The First English Conversation, feat. Dr. Colin Gorrie | Episode XXXII

01 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textÆlfric's Colloquy is a dialogue between a teacher and his students, written both in Old English and Latin, designed to teach Latin...

Maybe the Liberal Arts Are Useful? | Episode XXXI

15 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textAre classical educators dooming their students to poverty? Even back in the early 1800s, that accusation was gaining steam. Edward Cople...

Newman on Knowledge for Its Own Sake, feat. Dr. Robert Jackson | Episode XXX

01 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textIs knowledge its own end? Or is it a means to something else? In Discourse Five of his The Idea of a University, John Henry Newman juxta...

The Classical Definition of Classical Education | Episode XXIX

15 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textMilton and Shakespeare? Or Homer and Virgil? Why should our students study Greeks and Romans when we have English-language poets, philos...

Doing the (Intellectual) Work | Episode XXVIII

01 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textThe intellectual life can’t just be reading all day. Eventually, you have to sit down and do the work. According to A.G. Sertillanges,...

The Intellectual Life, Continued | Episode XXVII

15 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textJonathan and Ryan continue their discussion of A.G. Sertillanges’s marvelous The Intellectual Life. In chapters 4 -6, Sertillanges tou...

Me, an Intellectual | Episode XXVI

01 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textThe French Thomist A.G. Sertillanges, O.P., is most famous for The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. The book is a mov...

Academic Leadership | Episode XXV

15 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textWho is at the helm of the ship of state? Is the United States doomed to go the way of the Titanic? In the essay “Academic Leadership,”...

Justin Martyr’s First Apology, feat. Calvin Goligher | Episode XXIV

01 Jun 2022

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Send us a textWas Socrates a Christian? Did Plato meet Jeremiah? Are pagan myths based on garbled versions of the Hebrew prophets? Welcome to Justin M...

Beowulf, feat. Colin Gorrie | Episode XXIII

16 May 2022

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Send us a textWhere is Geatland? Beowulf has been taken as a founding poem for England, yet England never appears in the poem. Linguist Colin Gorrie j...

Should Everyone Be Educated? | Episode 22

02 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textMaking humanistic education democratic and freely available was its downfall, at least in the eyes of Albert Jay Nock, as he discusses i...

The Iliad, or the Poem of Force | Episode XXI

15 Apr 2022

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Send us a text“The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force,” wrote Simone Weil. And yet, she said that Homer’s poem is “...

The Trivium According to Dorothy Sayers | Episode XX

01 Apr 2022

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Send us a textThe Lost Tools of Learning, a 1947 lecture delivered at Oxford by Dorothy Sayers, was largely ignored at the time and in England until d...

Don’t Read Too Much | Episode XIX

15 Mar 2022

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Send us a textIn one of his many letters to his nephew Lucilius, the famous Stoic philosopher, playwright, and statesman, Seneca, advises his nephew t...

Oakeshott Teaches Us How (and What) to Think, feat. Dale Stenberg | Episode XVIII

01 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textShould teachers teach their pupils what to think? Or how to think? The great English philosopher Michael Oakeshott says it’s not so si...

The Original New Humanist, featuring Dr. Eric Adler and Katherine Bradshaw | Episode XVII

15 Feb 2022

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Send us a textLong before the New Humanists podcast was born, Irving Babbitt helped found the movement now known as New Humanism. University of Maryla...

T.S. Eliot’s Praise for Privilege | Episode XVI

01 Feb 2022

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Send us a textIt is tempting to dismiss T.S. Eliot’s musings on class, society, and education as the complaints of a cranky reactionary. But the gre...

Athanasius’ On the Incarnation, feat. Calvin Goligher | Episode XV

15 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textAthanasius the Great, Athanasius contra mundum, the Hammer of the Arians. The great defender of orthodox Christology is no mere rigorist...

C.S. Lewis on Old Books | Episode XIV

01 Jan 2022

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Send us a textAt the same time that he was delivering the Mere Christianity radio addresses to a war-torn England, C.S. Lewis penned a now-famous pref...

Learning to Read the Bible, feat. Dr. Dru Johnson and Tyler Foster | Episode XIII

15 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textRather than trying to pull the mask off the Hebrew Bible to reveal something (a monster?) hidden underneath, what if you attended to the...

René Girard, Myth, and the Bible, feat. Dr. Patrick Downey

01 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Send us a textIn I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, René Girard argues that the Bible definitively refutes the lies of pagan mythology. The pagan myths...