Podcast
New Humanists
Hosted by Ancient Language Institute · ENGLISH
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.
114episodes
Episodes
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The Charlotte Mason Episode | Episode CXIV
3d ago01:08:11Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailCharlotte Mason argues that all education is ultimately self-education. Unless a student makes the choice to assimilate knowledge into himself, he will not learn anything. If this is so, what role is there for a teacher? Can a student actually be educated into virtue or wisdom?In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan read and discuss the opening chapters of Charlotte Mason's book A Philosophy of Education.Charlotte Mason's A Philosophy of Education: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781922348050Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060935467Ambleside Online: https://www.amblesideonline.org/Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781402782831John Senior's The Thousand Good Books: https://seascs.net/documents/2017/10/John%20Senior%20The%20Thousand%20Good%20Books%20List.pdfTwo ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:Download and subscribe to Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/Subscribe to New Humanists+ for bonus episodes: buzzsprout.com/1791279/subscribeNew 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.comSupport the show
Transcribe →Real Culture, or Culture as Costume? | Episode CXIII
2w ago01:11:19Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailProperly understood, politics is an expression of culture. But the politician would like to use culture for political ends. In doing so, he boils his people's culture down to the merely aestheticized: food, traditional dance, music, dialect or accent. But this is culture as mere costume, not as a vital force that incarnates the total, religious experience of a people's life. Similar to the way a shallow version of culture gets deployed for political ends, so education too gets used for "levelling the playing field," so that everyone has equality of opportunity to succeed. But true equality of opportunity is a fiction; it could exist only in a state of the most radical communism which not only levels all social and economic distinctions, but also attacks the family and goes to war against nature.In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan read the closing chapters of T.S. Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture: Chapter V - "A Note on Culture and Politics," and Chapter VI - "Notes on Education and Culture: and Conclusion."T.S. Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture (in Christianity and Culture): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780156177351Alan Jacobs's The Year of Our Lord 1943: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780190864651John Le Carré's Absolute Friends: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780316159395John Le Carré's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780143124757John Le Carré's A Perfect Spy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780143119760Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg Address: https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.htmlLeon Trotsky's Literature and Revolution: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781931859165Previous NH episode on selections from "Notes on Education and Culture": https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/9884564-t-s-eliot-s-praise-for-privilege-episode-xviTwo ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:Download and subscribe to Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/Subscribe to New Humanists+ for bonus episodes: buzzsprout.com/1791279/subscribeNew 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.comSupport the show
Transcribe →Protestant and Catholic Culture | Episode CXII
May 1501:01:13Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailSince the time of the Reformation, England has had an established Church alongside a rich variety of Protestant Dissenters as well as a group of Roman Catholic hold-outs. The country exemplifies the tense but productive diversity in "sect and cult" which T.S. Eliot describes in his book Notes Toward the Definition of Culture. A proper balance of unity and diversity in religion is one of the three necessary conditions, Eliot says, for a thriving culture. In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan discuss how to distinguish the tangled categories of "religion" and of "culture," the salient differences between a Protestant and a Catholic country, and the homogenization of American religious life due to suburbanization.Alan Jacobs's The Year of Our Lord 1943: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780190864651T.S. Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture (in Christianity and Culture): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780156177351T.S. Eliot's Vergil and the Christian World: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27538181The Ad Fontes podcast episode "Welcome to Hot Dog Church": https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/welcome-to-hot-dog-church/id1557560666?i=1000621387100Two ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:Download and subscribe to Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/Subscribe to New Humanists+ for bonus episodes: buzzsprout.com/1791279/subscribeNew 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.comSupport the show
Transcribe →Nationalism and High Culture | Episode CXI
May 101:08:57Tap to summarizeSend 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 regions. But this raises all sorts of questions: What distinguishes a nation from a region? Isn't a nation just a region with guns? Would it be better or worse for high culture for a thriving region to get political independence? Jonathan and Ryan consider Eliot's argument for regionalism in light of Sparta, the French Revolution, American political history, the English colonization of India, and more.T.S. Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture (in Christianity and Culture): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780156177351Ross Douthat's interview of Ben Sasse: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/opinion/ben-sasse-death-pancreatic-cancer.htmlThe Anti-Federalist Papers: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780451528841New Humanists episode "All Education Is Religious": https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-education-is-religious-episode-lviii/id1570296135?i=1000638713097Two ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:Download and subscribe to Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/Subscribe to New Humanists+ for bonus episodes: buzzsprout.com/1791279/subscribeNew 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.comSupport the show
Transcribe →Plato the Educator | Episode CX
Apr 1501:01:19Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailTwo ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:Download and subscribe to Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/Subscribe to New Humanists+ for bonus episodes: buzzsprout.com/1791279/subscribePlato's Academy was not just a philosophic debating society. It was, in the words of the historian H.I Marrou, "a seminary that provided councillors and law-givers for republics and reigning sovereigns." The Academy was small, elite, and functioned like a fraternity whose members could take concerted political action. But creating a secret society of philosopher-politicians was probably not Plato's original goal. He was born into a reactionary clique of the Athenian aristocracy which had attempted to destroy democracy and refound the city on Spartan political forms. But the defeat of his cousin Critias and the rest of the Thirty Tyrants destroyed this political movement and gave a permanent ascendancy to democracy in Athens. With no place left in Athens for his politics, the execution of Socrates, and the subsequent failure of Plato's own efforts to turn tyrants in other cities into philosophers, he settled for the philosophic education of the young as a form of "politics in exile."In doing so, Plato became one of the "masters of the classical tradition" alongside Isocrates, in the sense that both figures laid out the forms, content, and priorities education in the West would take in antiquity thenceforth. Plato's educational vision is on the one hand quite conservative, preserving the musical and gymnastic education for the young which the "old Athenian education" had centered upon, but also revolutionary in ultimately envisioning a complete transformation of society in order to be fully instantiated.In this episode of New Humanists, Jonathan and Ryan discuss H.I. Marrou's chapter on Plato in the study "A History of Education in Antiquity."H.I. Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149Plato's Republic: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780465094080Plato's Laws: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226671109NH episode on Martin Luther's "To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany": https://www.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/13419426New 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.comSupport the show
Transcribe →Socrates and the Sophists, feat. David Talcott | Episode CIX
Apr 100:58:49Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailTwo ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:Download and subscribe to Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/Subscribe to New Humanists+ for bonus episodes: buzzsprout.com/1791279/subscribeIn his comedy Clouds, Aristophanes turns Socrates into the arch-sophist of Athens: financially voracious, obsessed with verbal trickery, and preoccupied with irrelevant investigations. In most of the dialogues written by his student Plato, however, Socrates is not an arch-sophist, but the archenemy of the sophists: unmotivated by money, able to disarm their semantic wordplay, and concerned above all with living a virtuous life. That is what makes the Euthydemus dialogue so fascinating. In this Platonic dialogue, Socrates meets his friend Crito, and in an enthusiastic fluster, he tells Crito that the two of them simply must go become the students of the two sophists who are visiting Athens. In order to convince his skeptical friend, Socrates recounts his conversation with them, and the sometimes bizarre demonstration of their supposed wisdom. Dr. David Talcott, Fellow of Philosophy and Graduate Dean at New Saint Andrews College, joins Jonathan and Ryan to discuss the dialogue, and what it shows us about the role of education and philosophy in political life, and to draw some parallels with other Socratic dialogues.Plato's Euthydemus: https://scaife.perseus.org/library/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0059.tlg021/H.I. Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149New 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.comSupport the show
Transcribe →The Case Against Meritocracy | Episode CVIII
Mar 1501:03:33Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailTwo ways to support the show and unlock bonus episodes:Download and subscribe to Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/Subscribe to New Humanists+ for bonus episodes: buzzsprout.com/1791279/subscribeWhat's the matter with meritocracy? Shouldn't college acceptances and jobs and awards be distributed on the basis of merit? The alternative, some sort of quota system, seems unjust and intolerable. In his book, Notes Toward the Definition of Culture, T.S. Eliot makes a case against meritocracy. This is the subject of Chapter Two: "The Class and the Elite." While admitting that every "honest man is vexed" to see people who have obtained positions "for which neither their character nor their intellect qualified them," Eliot argues that the doctrine of meritocracy is a radical position. Far from being a conservative or even moderate outlook, true meritocracy requires a total transformation of society, in which family and cultural life must be re-engineered by committees of elites. Eliot distinguishes between the old concept of aristocracy and the new concept of elites, categories we tend to confuse. He argues for the necessity of an upper class to maintain manners and standards and taste, which he says is required for the perpetuation of great art and high culture.T.S. Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture (in Christianity and Culture): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780156177351New Humanists episode on Chapter 1 of Notes Toward the Definition of Culture: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/18764670-defining-culture-episode-cviiPaul Fussell's Class: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780671792251David Hicks's Norms & Nobility: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781538195352New 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.comSupport the show
Transcribe →Defining "Culture" | Episode CVII
Mar 101:09:49Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailDownload Ekho: ancientlanguage.com/ekho/Subscribe to New Humanists+ for bonus episodes: buzzsprout.com/1791279/subscribePop culture. Cancel culture. Judeo-Christian culture. Everyone likes to talk about "culture," but what actually is it? One of the greatest writers of the 20th century, the poet and essayist T.S. Eliot, wrote a short book, Notes Toward the Definition of Culture, attempting to answer exactly that question. Written in the latter days of World War Two, as the Allied nations began to realize that Germany's surrender was imminent and that it was up to them to rebuild European culture, Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture was part of a broader anxiety among European and American elites about what the postwar world would look like. In Chapter One, Eliot proposes three necessary ingredients for the existence of high culture: the durability of social classes, regionalism, and the balance of unity and diversity in religion. He also gestures towards two possible definitions of culture: first, simply that which makes life living, and secondly, the incarnation of the religion of a people. Jonathan and Ryan discuss Chapter One, as well as related matters, such as California cuisine.Alan Jacobs's The Year of Our Lord 1943: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780190864651T.S. Eliot's Notes Toward the Definition of Culture (in Christianity and Culture): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780156177351Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781935191568C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652920Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199538744H.I. Marrou's A History of Education in Antiquity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780299088149Ayaan Hirsi Ali's "Why I Am Now a Christian": https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/Charles Taylor's A Secular Age: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674986916New 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.comSupport the show
Transcribe →Technology Versus the Classics, feat. Timothy Griffith | Episode CVI
Feb 1500:53:29Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailWhen the Loeb Classical Library was launched, the greatest language teacher of the age, W.H.D. Rouse, wrote an essay meant to promote the Loebs by extolling the magnificence of Greek literature and Latin literature. And boy did he. "Your mind cannot live without them. All the great intellectual impulses begin in Greece; the modern world only grows crops from the Greek seed." While Rouse admitted that his space was short, and so he had to "be dogmatic," this essay, "Machines or Mind?" is a worthy read, not least because of its response to the utilitarians who'd prefer we abandon the humanities and instead bend all of our time, effort, and resources to making more machines. One of Rouse's 21st century heirs, Senior Fellow of Classical Languages at New Saint Andrews College and founder of Picta Dicta, Timothy Griffith, joins the podcast to discuss the essay, Rouse's place in the tradition of humanist education, and whether the Aeneid can properly be called an epic.W.H.D. Rouse's Machines or Mind?: https://antigonejournal.com/2024/11/machines-or-mind-loebs-rouse/Picta Dicta: https://pictadicta.com/W.H.D. Rouse's Latin on the Direct Method: https://scholalatina.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Rouse-Appleton-Latin-on-the-direct-method.pdfC.S. Lewis's Preface to Paradise Lost: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780195003451New 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.comSupport the show
Transcribe →Straussian Aristocracy, feat. Pavlos Papadopoulos | Episode CV
Feb 101:15:19Tap to summarizeSend us Fan MailLiberal education is for the man of leisure: Either a gentleman engaged in politics, or a philosopher engaged in contemplation. What role, then, can liberal learning have in a mass democracy? In the lecture "Liberal Education and Responsibility," the political theorist Leo Strauss defends his statement that "Liberal education is the ladder by which we try to ascend from mass democracy to democracy as originally meant. Liberal education is the necessary endavor to found an aristocracy within democratic mass society." Along the way, he also discusses religious education, the distinction between the gentleman and the philosopher, and the insufficiency of the great books movement. Wyoming Catholic College professor Pavlos Papadopoulos rejoins the podcast for another dive into Strauss.Leo Strauss's Liberal Education and Responsibility: https://archive.org/details/LeoStraussOnLiberalEducation/Strauss-LiberalEducationResponsibility/NH episode on Leo Strauss's What Is Liberal Education?: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/18277048-big-bad-leo-strauss-feat-pavlos-papadopoulos-episode-ciAllan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781451683202Jonathan Swift's The Battle of the Books: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781507890530Mark A. Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780802882042Greg Lukianoff's and Jonathan Haidt's The Coddling of the American Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780735224919Pete Hegseth's and David Goodwin's Battle for the American Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780063215054Robert R. Reilly's The Closing of the Muslim Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781610170024Allan Bloom's translation of The Republic of Plato: https://amzn.to/49ZMPIsAlexis De Tocqueville's Democracy in America (trans. Harvey Mansfield): https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226805368Cicero's Pro Archia Poeta: https://amzn.to/4buKd7WC.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652944Josef Pieper's Leisure The Basis of Culture: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781586172565New 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.comSupport the show
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