Aristotle: Ancient Greece’s greatest philosopher?

Summary

Podcast Summary: You're Dead to Me – Aristotle: Ancient Greece’s Greatest Philosopher?

Release Date: January 31, 2025

Introduction

In this enlightening episode of BBC Radio 4's comedic yet scholarly podcast, You're Dead to Me, host Greg Jenner delves into the life and legacy of Aristotle, often hailed as Ancient Greece’s greatest philosopher. Joined by Professor Edith Hall, a renowned Classics expert from Durham University, and comedian Dan Schreiber, the episode balances rigorous historical analysis with humor, making the complexities of Aristotle's life accessible and entertaining.

Early Life and Education

Greg Jenner begins by painting a picture of Aristotle's modest beginnings. Born in Stagira ([03:36]), a small town on a cliffside in northeastern Greece, Aristotle was the son of Nicomachus, a general practitioner whose name intriguingly means "victory in battle" ([04:06]). Despite his seemingly ordinary family background, Aristotle's intellectual prowess became evident early on.

At the age of 17, following the untimely death of his parents, Aristotle was sent to Athens to study at Plato’s Academy ([10:03]). Professor Edith Hall humorously compares Aristotle to a "teenage sensation," highlighting his distinction from his peers with nicknames like "The Walking Library" and "Just the Brain" ([10:48], [11:35]).

Time at Plato’s Academy

Aristotle’s two-decade tenure at the Academy was marked by his insatiable curiosity and diverse interests. Unlike Plato, who focused primarily on philosophy, Aristotle ventured into natural sciences, conducting empirical studies on plants, animals, and even weather prediction ([12:27]-[13:21]). This divergence sometimes put him at odds with the more theoretical pursuits of his contemporaries, earning him a reputation as a "sneaky" intellectual.

One notable anecdote shared by Dan Schreiber involves Aristotle’s humorous take on unconventional weather forecasting methods, such as observing the behavior of hedgehogs in Byzantium to predict weather changes ([15:01]). This blend of scientific inquiry and wit underscores Aristotle's multifaceted character.

Personal Life

Aristotle's personal life intertwined significantly with his professional endeavors. He married Pythias while in Assos, a culturally rich region in western Turkey, and they had a daughter together ([18:36]-[19:17]). Tragically, it's believed that Aristotle lost his wife and possibly his daughter in childbirth, a loss that profoundly affected him.

His close relationship with his friend Theophrastus, a younger scholar from Lesbos, influenced his scientific pursuits. Together, they embarked on pioneering work in zoology and botany, documenting numerous species and laying the groundwork for environmental thought ([21:19]-[22:27]).

Works and Contributions

Aristotle's contributions spanned an impressive array of disciplines. With a prolific output of around 160 treatises, his surviving works cover physics, metaphysics, ethics, politics, poetics, and jurisprudence ([36:37]-[36:50]). His most famous work, the Nicomachean Ethics, explores virtue ethics, advocating for moderation and the "golden mean"—the idea that virtue lies between extremes ([37:25]-[39:16]).

A notable quote from Aristotle encapsulating his ethical philosophy:

"You're more likely to be happy if you try to be nice... you've just got to get them in the right amount." ([37:35])

Despite his achievements, Aristotle held controversial views, particularly regarding slavery and the intellectual capabilities of women. He justified slavery as a natural institution and posited that women lacked the rational capacity for full citizenship ([41:36]-[42:49]).

Legacy and Influence

Aristotle's legacy endured through the centuries, profoundly influencing Medieval and Renaissance thought, especially within the Latin Church through figures like Thomas Aquinas. His revival in the 20th century among ethicists underscores his timeless relevance, particularly his secular approach to morality ([46:19]-[47:07]).

Professor Edith Hall reflects on Aristotle's enduring impact:

"What a brain. What an extraordinary footprint to have left on our planet..." ([53:25])

Notable Quotes and Moments

• Aristotle’s Humorous Side:
  Greg Jenner:

  "There's usually an empirical explanation for why he came up with this theory at least though." ([07:52])

• Virtue Ethics Simplified:
  Greg Jenner:

  "If everybody could do what I say about trying to be a good person and about running your cities, the world would be a better place." ([35:22])

• On Human Agency:
  Greg Jenner:

  "You are at your dashboard. You've got to sort it out. Humans have got to sort it out." ([39:07])

Interactive Segments

The episode features engaging segments like "So What Do You Know?" where listeners are prompted to assess their knowledge of Aristotle, and a "Nuance Window" where Greg Jenner explores lesser-known facts, such as the historical origins of puns linking Aristotle to Cockney slang ([50:05]-[50:18]).

Additionally, the "Quickfire Quiz" offers a fun recap of the episode’s key points, challenging Dan Schreiber's retention of the information shared ([50:50]-[53:15]).

Conclusion

You're Dead to Me masterfully intertwines humor with scholarly insight, offering listeners a comprehensive and entertaining exploration of Aristotle's life and philosophy. Professor Edith Hall's expertise and Dan Schreiber's comedic flair ensure that even the most intricate philosophical concepts are both understandable and enjoyable. Whether you're a history enthusiast or a casual listener, this episode provides a compelling look into the man whose ideas continue to shape our understanding of ethics, science, and the human condition.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Greg Jenner at [37:25]:
  "You're more likely to be happy if you try to be nice... you've just got to get them in the right amount."

• Edith Hall at [39:04]:
  "It was the simple idea that you will be happy if you do what makes you happy and do good."

• Greg Jenner at [39:12]:
  "You won't get punished afterwards, you'll just be miserable now if you're nasty."

• Edith Hall at [53:20]:
  "I'm relatively team Aristotle over here."

Closing Remarks

The episode wraps up with heartfelt thanks to Professor Edith Hall and Dan Schreiber, encouraging listeners to explore more episodes and engage with the podcast. Greg Jenner emphasizes the lasting significance of Aristotle's work, leaving the audience with a deeper appreciation for the ancient philosopher's multifaceted legacy.

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For more engaging discussions on historical figures and their lasting impacts, tune into future episodes of You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds.

Transcript

[Greg Jenner]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk. BBC Sounds Music Radio podcasts.

[Dan Schreiber]

You're about to listen to youo're Dead To Me episodes will be released on Fridays, wherever you get your podcasts. But if you are in the UK, you can listen to the latest episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else, first on BBC Sounds. Hello and welcome to youo're Dead to me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today, today we are dusting off our philosophy textbooks and going back nearly 2,400 years to ancient Greece to learn all about one of history's greatest beardy chin strokers, Aristotle. And to help us tell our virtue ethics from our empiricism, we have one top notch teacher and one very eager pupil in History Corner. She's professor of Classics at Durham University and a fellow of the British Academy. You might have heard her on Radio 4's Nathy Haynes, stand up for the classics or Radio 4's Great Lives. Maybe you've read one of her many books, including Aristotle's How Ancient Wisdom can Change your Life and her most recent book, Facing down the Furies. And you'll know her from our episode on Mr. Triangle himself, Pythagoras. It's Professor Edith Hall. Welcome back, Edith.

[Greg Jenner]

Hi. I'm absolutely thrilled to be here. Though I would dispute that Aristotle's actually dead to me because I dream about him almost every night.

[Dan Schreiber]

Okay, we'll get into that later. And in Comedy Corner, he's a writer, comedian, presenter, producer and podcaster. He's a polymath. Maybe you've listened to his incredible podcasts, no Such thing as a Fish. And his new show, We Can Be Weirdos, or his new kids book, Impossible Things. And you'll definitely remember him from our episode of youf're Dead. All the way back in series one on Young Napoleon, it's Dan Schreiber. Welcome back, Dan.

[Edith Hall]

Hey, thanks for having me. I have to say Aristotle, from what you were saying just before we started recording. Absolutely. The time person I'd want to sit down and ask weird questions to. He sounds really interesting.

[Dan Schreiber]

So last time out, Dan, we had you back in 18th century France and Corsica and we were following the travails of a young man called Napoleone.

[Edith Hall]

Yes.

[Dan Schreiber]

How do you feel about ancient Greece? Is this a comfort area for you?

[Edith Hall]

No, I'm equally as ignorant in ancient Greece as I am at that time. But I'm fascinated by this period because it feels like this is the moment that science erupted. I know that Aristotle's often called the first scientist. So what I love is the mixture of both interesting and true facts that have come through to today, and then outrageous claims that were so verifiable at the time that seem to have just been taken as fact. And actually, that's my sweet spot. I think that's where I would have preferred to have lived.

[Dan Schreiber]

So what do you know? All right, that brings us to the first segment of the podcast. This is the. So what do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And Aristotle is one of the most famous Western philosophers of all time. He's one of the most famous names in all of history. Maybe you're picturing a bearded guy in a robe. Maybe he's lecturing a bottle blonde Alexander the Great. Because you've seen the movie Alexander where all the Macedonians were Irish for some strange. Perhaps you've encountered Aristotelian ethics through the wonderful sitcom the Good Place. You may have seen Aristotelian quotes all over Facebook and Instagram. He's very quotable. But who was this philosopher who changed intellectual life in the west forever? How did he get to be so brainy and so important? And what do you do when a king orders you to tutor his frat boy son? Let's find out. Right, Professor Edith, let's start at the beginning. Where and when was Aristotle born? What was his family situation like?

[Greg Jenner]

Aristotle actually had a really, very boringly sort of normal personal life. So he's a GP son. He's son of the GP in a little town called Stagira, which means the dripping place, because it's high up on a cliff where the waters drip down into the sea. I've been there. This is not Macedonia. This was a free, independent city state in northeastern Greece. And dad's called Nicomachus.

[Dan Schreiber]

Nicomachus, yeah. And so what does that mean?

[Greg Jenner]

It actually means victory in battle.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah. Cause Nike is the goddess of victory.

[Greg Jenner]

That's the one.

[Dan Schreiber]

And Marcus means war. Fight, fight, die. So it's a GP who's actually pretty hardcore.

[Greg Jenner]

Greek names are something else. I mean, they really are. I mean, Aristotle means the best goal, which is a bad name for him. You know, the best goal in life. Your best telos. Best telos.

[Dan Schreiber]

Best purpose.

[Edith Hall]

He's definitely real, right, Aristotle?

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah.

[Edith Hall]

Because there's so many of these characters from this period where the stuff was written about them. All these years after, and you find out, oh, pythagoras Was that a real guy? Aristotle's like, we know he's real.

[Greg Jenner]

He is very, very real. Yeah, he's extremely real. Even though just lately some of his works have been banned in China and some of the Chinese Internet started saying he wasn't real. But, you know, take it from me, not the Chinese Internet. So his mother was called Festus and he seems to have been very fond of her. So he has a comfortable, idyllic childhood in this very small, beautiful town. So he has this nice childhood, but very sadly his parents died when he was about 13. Both of them, we don't quite know why. And then between 13 and 17 there are various different stories, but I think the true story is that his older sister had married a very nice and very rich guy who lived actually in what's now northwest Turkey, because that was all Greek, near Troy. You know, in the ancient world, lots of people lost their parents, young people died younger for all kinds of reasons. And he actually really landed on his feet.

[Dan Schreiber]

So at 13, his sister takes him in, he goes to sort of live with his uncle and his.

[Greg Jenner]

Well, it's his brother in law.

[Dan Schreiber]

His brother in law, sorry, his older brother in law. Right. And they're in Turkey, so they're in northwest Turkey. So the Greek world as we know it isn't just Athens and Sparta.

[Greg Jenner]

It certainly is not. The Greek world is basically all around the Black Sea, all down the west coast of Turkey, half of Lebanon and the Levantine coast, North Africa, Egypt, all the way over to Libya and Tunis and then all the way around to Spain. The Greeks never liked going far inland until Alexander. They liked to live within 25 miles of the sea, wherever they were, and go everywhere by ship.

[Edith Hall]

Does he cross over with any other great notable character from history? If you were looking global, kind of like Cervantes and Shakespeare were living in the same period, Right.

[Greg Jenner]

He's on a cusp between what we call classical Athenian democratic Athens. So that's the Parthenon, it's Pericles, it's the Peloponnesian and the Persian Wars. And then because he teaches Alexander the New, what we call the Hellenistic world, which is after the Macedonian takeover of the Persian Empire. So the Greeks are then running everything all the way to the Hindu kush.

[Dan Schreiber]

So at 13 he lives through tragedy. His parents die, he goes to live with his sister. You know, he sort of, he's a young man. What do you think he does with his time? You know, 13, 14.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah, I don't fully know what a Turkish life when you're 13 is like. Okay, so what was he doing? Was there any sports at the time?

[Dan Schreiber]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Edith Hall]

I'm sort of going off Monty Python sketches here.

[Greg Jenner]

But yeah, you went to the gymnasium. You went to the gymnasium and you threw. You did all the things that you do in track and field at the.

[Edith Hall]

Olympics, I was gonna say. Cause if his name's a great goal.

[Greg Jenner]

Then you run around, you throw spears, javelin, discuses. You also, he seems to know an awful lot about horses. Oh, I think he knew a lot about horses. So I suspect that he was quite a good chariot driver.

[Edith Hall]

You say he knew a lot about horses. This is one few things I know about him is that didn't he believe that certain wind, if they hit your horse, could fertilise your horse? So you sort of had to keep them out of.

[Dan Schreiber]

We'll get to that later. Actually, there's some interesting stuff. We'll come to the biology.

[Edith Hall]

This is why I love him so much.

[Greg Jenner]

There's usually an empirical explanation for why he came up with this theory at least though.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah, okay, right, so put a pin in that one. Come back to that.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dan Schreiber]

So yeah, you've gone for sports and I think that's sort of spot on. The other thing that's interesting about him is supposedly he tries his hand at war and fails. So his dad's had the good, the good warfare name.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah, that particular piece of evidence is a really, really dodgy source as we're always having with these ancient guys. There was huge biographical tradition and people who didn't like his particular school of philosophy. So like the Stoics or you know, a rival school of philosophy would create malicious rumors. There is a rumor that he tried national military service and didn't really like it. And so he was decided that he was the nerdy intellectual one that had to be packed off to university to study stuff. But actually he's got huge respect for athletics and health and training in all of his work. So I suspect that it was just. He was very good at athletics, but even better at intellectual things.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah.

[Dan Schreiber]

What's interesting about Aristotle, he doesn't have a kind of rebellious bad boy phase. He's not wearing a leather jacket with his tunic. It's not really a good look anyway. But you know, he's not doing that. Instead he's. He's absolutely excelling everywhere. And so his brother in law and his sister spot the talent and go. This kid needs proper training.

[Greg Jenner]

Right, Absolutely. Otherwise he would undoubtedly have become the general practitioner in Stegora. Because these things Were hereditary. And in fact, his father came from generations and generations of doctors to the extent that he's supposed to be descended from Maka'on, who is a mythical doctor in the Iliad, who was, you know, the son of Asclepius, the actual God of.

[Dan Schreiber]

Oh, really?

[Greg Jenner]

Yes. So if you were a practicing doctor, you would hang out on your window, you know, great grandson of Asclepius. I mean, obviously if you're a blacksmith, you'd put great grandson of Hephaestus. You know, direct descent. This was part of the marketing spiel.

[Dan Schreiber]

Wow.

[Greg Jenner]

Either his sister or his brother in law just got so fed up with this boy going on and on about, you know, saying, do I know I'm really here? Do we exist at supper? Right?

[Dan Schreiber]

You say, fed up. I think they're going, this kid's got, he's got. He should go places.

[Greg Jenner]

So they say, okay, we got money. What's the best university in the world? Oh, we know. It's Plato's academy in Athens.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah, right.

[Greg Jenner]

Send him off at 17.

[Edith Hall]

Did he possibly invent the. But why.

[Dan Schreiber]

That's Socrates. That's Socrates.

[Edith Hall]

That's Socrates.

[Dan Schreiber]

But why is Socrates. So Aristotle rocks up to Plato's academy in Athens at 17. Or rather, he's a good boy. So he queues up politely and waits to be let in. But he arrives, he's there. He's gonna learn from this superstar philosopher. And Plato had been taught by Socrates. So you're learning from the guy who learned from Socrates.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah. That's wild.

[Dan Schreiber]

It's pretty good.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah. Who came after? I know we might get into it later, but was there a fourth after Aristotle?

[Greg Jenner]

Theophrastus?

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah. Oh, he's not impressed.

[Edith Hall]

Not as big a name as the other three.

[Dan Schreiber]

So Plato has a couple of nicknames for Aristotle, his new student. Do you want to guess what they are?

[Edith Hall]

Son of a doctor, great mythical God, as a great, great, great grandparent. Were they buddies? Did he bring him in to make him.

[Dan Schreiber]

I think that's nickname worthy.

[Greg Jenner]

Well, they became buddies. I think Aristotle was his star pupil. There's some very interesting bits, though. In Plato's Republic, he actually throws down his challenge. He says, right, I'm going to ban all poets and artists and theater people from my republic, but anybody out there who thinks that they ought to be in there, why don't you write a prose treatise? And because Aristotle later wrote the Poetics, which is a prose treatise defending the art, you actually can quite often almost hear him talking to the brightest boy, you know? You know, the little boy who's stretching his arm up really, really high. I know the answer. I know the answer.

[Dan Schreiber]

Sir, sir, sir. I know, I know.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah, exactly. So you do quite often get that sense that Plato's talking directly to him.

[Edith Hall]

Would he been young? As in with everyone else? Been in their 20s and 30s?

[Greg Jenner]

Yes, he would have been young to go there at 17.

[Edith Hall]

Right. Okay.

[Dan Schreiber]

Oh, so he's young, Sheldon, almost. He's like a sort of teenage sensation. So the, the nicknames we've got, I think, are the Walking Library.

[Edith Hall]

Okay, very good.

[Dan Schreiber]

Which is quite nice. And Just the Brain.

[Greg Jenner]

Just the Brain. Where's the brain today? It's awfully quiet. He stayed on and became a teacher, you know. Cause he stayed there for 20 whole years until Plato died. I think he was perfectly happy there with the old boy. Got the old boy there. But he gradually became more and more.

[Dan Schreiber]

Important and he studies a variety of things at the academy. Right, so it's not just philosophy, it's astronomy, natural science.

[Greg Jenner]

Well, he studies lots of things that Plato really wouldn't have approved of. I mean, I think that's the really important thing. Plato's academy did not study natural science at all.

[Dan Schreiber]

Oh, really?

[Greg Jenner]

No, no, no. I think Aristotle was out there sort of picking up mushrooms and stones and sort of measuring plants and trees and doing all kinds of things which Plato.

[Dan Schreiber]

Wouldn'T particularly have approved of because Plato's just hardcore theory.

[Greg Jenner]

Well, it's the three great branches of philosophy, as they were then, which are ethics, how should I live? Epistemology, how do I know things? And ontology. What is existence? Right, so it's hardcore philosophy. He liked maths. Yeah. All theoretical. But the things like natural science, Socrates had played around with in his youth but had given up. And there is no sign that Plato was interested in it at all.

[Edith Hall]

How interesting.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah, so I think Aristotle's this sort of sneaky. He's basically country boy, you know, he's from northern Greece. He's like, I don't know, coming down from the Highlands of Scotland to London and he really needs to go out and sniff some heather and shoot some grouse or something.

[Edith Hall]

Was it Aristotle who thought that maybe the plant life had souls? He did.

[Greg Jenner]

No, he didn't think it had souls. He didn't think it had souls. That's much more Pythagorean, actually. But he did think it was life. And actually a lot of his really, really important thinking about what is it to be human? What is an anthropos, A human is that I share this with plant life, but they don't share consciousness and language, or I share this with animal life. But they don't share the ability to deliberate. So he starts from all of life, a living thing, a zoon, like I word zoo. And then he gradually refines and refines and refines. What's different about the human animal?

[Dan Schreiber]

So he's the ultimate post grad because he comes at 17 and he is there 20 years and he's studying stuff he's meant to be studying and he's studying bonus courses. So he writes about lyric poetry. He writes about drama, which is obviously theatre with masks and tragedy. Right. You know, sort of Medea and things like that. He writes about epic, which I guess is the Iliad, the Odyssey. He writes about comedy, but we don't have it, which is devastating to me because you and I both love comedy. We don't have his book on comedy.

[Greg Jenner]

We've lost book two of the Poetics.

[Edith Hall]

How did we lose it? Where did it go?

[Greg Jenner]

I just basically think we lost most of the stuff we lost because Byzantine monks didn't like it.

[Edith Hall]

Didn't get the.

[Greg Jenner]

We've lost almost all of Sappho because various Christian bishops said, we don't want any of that lesbian pornography, that kind of thing. I suspect there was an awful lot that wasn't really appropriate to the Greek Orthodox Church in Aristotle on comedy.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner]

So I don't know what was in it. I have read everything that Aristotle wrote in his surviving works about humor. And so I'm sad to say that he says that we've all got to be humorous. We've got to be a good person is going to be humorous. But he says that there are two extremes. You can be a sullen person who never laughs at anything. Don't do that. You can be a buffoon who makes really crude jokes and is always making jokes and messing around and larking around and won't have a serious conversation. He says there is a mean, which is just to be appropriately witty. And that isn't very promising.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yes, Dan. Appropriate wit.

[Edith Hall]

Appropriate wit. What did he label himself as? Was he.

[Greg Jenner]

I think he thought he was an appropriate wit. And he does sometimes tell some slightly dry anecdotes. So the one I like best is when he's talking about weird ways of predicting the weather. Weather forecasting. So he talks about a guy who lived in Byzantium who kept pet hedgehogs and used to tell in Byzantium, which is now Istanbul. And he could tell what was gonna happen to the weather depending on what direction his hedgehogs Were walking in and Aristotle does find that funny.

[Dan Schreiber]

Bring that back.

[Edith Hall]

Bring it back.

[Dan Schreiber]

The hedgehog clock. Perfect. In 348, a big thing happens to him. The Death of Plato, 348bce. His tutor, his sort of his grandmother, great intellectual figurehead dies, and again the idyllic life comes crashing down around him. And you might assume that he gets the gig teaching at the academy, takes over running the school.

[Edith Hall]

I wouldn't assume that, no.

[Dan Schreiber]

Okay. What?

[Edith Hall]

Well, no, because clearly he's gone into the natural sciences. Plato is going, this guy's lost the plot. He'd be the equivalent of a fringe scientist these days. You'd be like, what's happened to this guy? He was. So that the brain's gone faulty. Get him out. He's in the middle of the library.

[Dan Schreiber]

He'd be in your book, couldn't he?

[Edith Hall]

Oh, absolutely, yeah. No, I. I assume because of the power of Plato as well, that other people around him would be going, why is he talking? Why is he looking at mushrooms? What's going on?

[Dan Schreiber]

Well, you've clearly deduced what happened because he doesn't get the job, that he's expecting the rivals sort of step in and muscle him out. And it's a guy called Speusippus.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah. Which means enthusiast for horses. He was, to my mind, a rather boring mathematician and nobody's ever heard of him. But he was also related to Plato.

[Dan Schreiber]

Oh, nepotism.

[Greg Jenner]

Partly nepotism, but I suspect it was much more envy that all the other people at the academy just couldn't stand the fact that this guy so outclassed them that instead of saying, great, we make him in charge and we're in his slipstream and we can all benefit. It's bye bye Aristotle.

[Dan Schreiber]

So he doesn't get the gig and he instead he gets an invitation to go to a new place. He does, and this place is called Assos. And off he goes to Assos, which.

[Greg Jenner]

Is where it's absolutely stunning. It's on the western coast of Turkey, but further down and it's all. The nearest island is Lesbos, so you can see it's about sort of halfway down.

[Dan Schreiber]

And he's invited by a guy called Hermias, who is a former slave who's now ended up as king.

[Greg Jenner]

That's what they say. There's been some sort of coup. He may have committed murder. He may have murdered the tyrant. He's become king and. Or tyrant, which means somebody who's come into monarchical power, but not through hereditary. And he invites Aristotle over, apparently to help him write a constitution.

[Dan Schreiber]

Which sounds very progressive and modern, doesn't it? So he heads off to Assos. I spent Most of my 30s on Assos too, but I was mostly trying to buy skinny jeans.

[Edith Hall]

That would be an Aristotle.

[Dan Schreiber]

That's an appropriate wit.

[Edith Hall]

Everyone bet there was an appropriate joke back then.

[Dan Schreiber]

So Assos, he goes there and he finds love.

[Greg Jenner]

He does. It's either Hermas daughter or his adopted daughter or possibly his niece. But anyway, it's a posh woman in his court called Pythias. Called Pythias, yeah.

[Edith Hall]

What's that mean?

[Greg Jenner]

Well, it means like the sort of big snake at Delphi. The python. Yeah, the python, yeah. Yeah, but that's okay. Sort of Snaky lady, which is Snaky lady.

[Edith Hall]

What should we call our daughter? Snake Lady.

[Dan Schreiber]

Snake lady, yeah.

[Greg Jenner]

Anyway, he marries her and it seems to have been very happy.

[Dan Schreiber]

And they have a daughter together, also called Pythias, because Aristotle, apparently, you know, he's run out of names. He's like, well, you know, I've met one.

[Greg Jenner]

Well, it's possible, but it's also possible that she actually died in childbirth, in which case it would have been very natural to call the little girl.

[Dan Schreiber]

Oh, that's sad.

[Greg Jenner]

Oh, right.

[Edith Hall]

So we don't know.

[Greg Jenner]

We don't really know.

[Dan Schreiber]

Oh, okay, interesting.

[Edith Hall]

We know and don't know.

[Greg Jenner]

It's only last a couple of years.

[Dan Schreiber]

Okay, so he's raising the baby on his own, apparently. Ah, it's suddenly taken a turn, isn't it? Suddenly.

[Greg Jenner]

He does refer, though, to people who send babies out to wet nurses quite often.

[Dan Schreiber]

So, okay, so he's got some help.

[Edith Hall]

But he's got a constitution. All right.

[Dan Schreiber]

He has, he has. But they move to the isle of Lesbos.

[Greg Jenner]

They do.

[Dan Schreiber]

Which is not far from asshole. And we've got this single dad with his little girl. What do you think they get up to on Lesbos? What do you think Aristotle's gonna do?

[Edith Hall]

I'm not gonna take the bait, buddy. Nice try. Well, I don't know. Give me a bit more about Lesbos. What is the island like? Is it. It's populated at this point?

[Greg Jenner]

It is very much so. There are three big cities. The biggest is Mytilini.

[Dan Schreiber]

And it's a very cultured. It's a place of great culture.

[Greg Jenner]

It's deeply cultured. Very ancient. It's had the poet Sappho. It's had another very famous poet called Alsaeus. It's already in the Iliad as the land of fair women. Also got the most extraordinary natural World. I mean, it's got. Botanists today will say it's got outstanding amount of really interesting plants that don't exist anywhere else. And it's got this massive lagoon, which is a lake which is mainly fresh water, but it actually blurs into salt water and meets the sea. And it had such an amazing amount of interesting creatures living in it that Aristotle said, I know what I want to be now. I'm going to be a marine zoologist.

[Edith Hall]

Did he invent that?

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah.

[Dan Schreiber]

Wow.

[Edith Hall]

I'm gonna be a thing I've just invented.

[Dan Schreiber]

At 37. He's like, I'm just gonna invent that octopus.

[Greg Jenner]

And you know the original Addams Family movie, not the TV series. They have a pet octopus.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner]

Because it's a cephalopod. Do you know what they call it?

[Dan Schreiber]

Aristotle.

[Edith Hall]

Who would have. Imagine if you were able to tell him the influence he's had on the world, that.

[Greg Jenner]

That included Adam Salvage pet octopus.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah. The question of what did he do with his daughter. I do. I want to know if sometimes scientists do look at their young adults.

[Dan Schreiber]

Oh, really?

[Edith Hall]

An experiment. And that's why I was asking about the island. Was it to separate the daughter from the mainland so as to just bring her up believing in weird stuff?

[Greg Jenner]

But I don't think so. The fact is, he got a very good friend, either already had or more likely made. But there was this young guy who was 17 years younger than him, so about 20, called Theo Fraster, who means speaks like a God. And he is a lesbian. He lives on Lesbos. Stop it.

[Edith Hall]

I'm just mirroring what you're saying.

[Greg Jenner]

He's obsessed with plants. And I think they quite literally decided over whatever the ancient Uzo was to invent zoology and botany together. And I think he's probably living off Theophrastus hospitality. But what I really admire is, for all he knew he was gonna be stuck on that island as a poor relation, as it were, forever. Right. And he says, okay, if I'm gonna be stuck on this island, what's got this island got? I will devote my life to inventing zoology. Do you see what I mean?

[Dan Schreiber]

He's not desperately trying to get his job back. In accent no.

[Greg Jenner]

If life gives you lemon, you know.

[Dan Schreiber]

Study that lemon and write a book about it.

[Edith Hall]

Invent Lemon studies. Yeah, but it does sound. It doesn't matter what his life circumstance would have been. The curious mind would have just explored any surroundings.

[Greg Jenner]

I think that's exactly right.

[Dan Schreiber]

And so when he's there, he describes 500 species of animal he's looking at plants as well.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah, but it was easier back then. There was so much. Nothing had been described when you invented.

[Greg Jenner]

But he also invents environmental thinking. One of the things he sees or doesn't see in the lagoon, he says there used to be a thing called a red scallop. The fishermen have told me. He talked to all the people who really knew. The fishermen have told me. But overfishing has killed it. It is extinct.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah. Oh, wow.

[Greg Jenner]

He actually says that that's the first reference in world literature to human industrial farming or anything actually killing off a species.

[Dan Schreiber]

An extinction is an idea. Isn't really rediscovered until the 18th century.

[Greg Jenner]

So he's now actually quite big in green circles.

[Edith Hall]

Guys, controversial theory. I think he might have been a time traveler. This feels like someone who's like, almost a glitch.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah, yeah.

[Edith Hall]

Like too much information just poured out of the wall.

[Dan Schreiber]

You think he's got a wristwatch? You think it is.

[Edith Hall]

I think if we are living in a simulation, he got the extra weapons.

[Dan Schreiber]

I knew you'd make it weird. I didn't think it would be this.

[Edith Hall]

Far in, but I needed to hear the evidence first. And clearly.

[Greg Jenner]

It's like cyborg, Aristotle.

[Edith Hall]

Something's going on. But already, you know, this is. This is not your average human. People listening are gonna be like, yes, Dan, it's Aristotle.

[Dan Schreiber]

That's why we're talking about.

[Edith Hall]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Dan Schreiber]

No, but you're right. He's extraordinary in every way, and he's not flawless, and we'll talk about some of his flaws later, but I think he's one of the most interesting people. So on Lesbos, he is raising his little daughter. It's almost like two men and a little baby. It's like these two brilliant scientists and a little girl. It's like a really charming Rom com.

[Greg Jenner]

Two men, a baby, and 100 octopuses.

[Dan Schreiber]

Now it feels like a novel. Now it feels more like literary fiction. So he describes 500 species at least. He writes, I think, 10 books on animals, as well as many other things. Theophrastus is writing about plants and they're sort of chatting and comparing notes. So Sappho had been a couple of centuries before she'd written lyric poetry. Aristotle then invented zoology. So Lesbos, they're both writing about the birds and the bees, but in totally different ways. It's really nice, isn't it? It's like. It's an amazing sort of place. But sticking with Aristotle's sort of scientific work, I mean, he gets things wrong. Mini quiz for you, Dan.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah.

[Dan Schreiber]

Here are five myths that were believed in the ancient world. Aristotle believed four of them. Which of them did he disprove? Number one, women have fewer teeth than men. Number two, eels do not reproduce. They spontaneously generate. Three, elephants cannot bend their knees. Four, the Earth is the center of the universe. And five, a heavier object falls faster than a lighter one. Which of those did Aristotle disprove?

[Edith Hall]

I. I think the teeth one is real. I think he actually pushed that, which I. That's one of the few things I know about Aristotle to think what. But do you know what? Maybe, maybe women had fewer teeth back then. You know, maybe that's an evolutionary quirk that's happened since his time. Elephants can't bend their knees. I bet. Did he ever see an elephant? That would be my first question. Elephants on lesbos? Not sure.

[Dan Schreiber]

Another good novel. Elephants on Lesbos.

[Edith Hall]

Yep.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah. Okay, yeah. Remember, he's getting information from other people as well later.

[Edith Hall]

But everyone else is an idiot compared to this guy. Well, he's just gonna take that. I'm gonna say the elephants one is the one that he disproved.

[Dan Schreiber]

You're right.

[Edith Hall]

Oh, really?

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah, yeah, well done. I mean, process deduction, I guess. Cause he's interested in animals. But yeah, he disproves that one. He believes the other four.

[Greg Jenner]

I very much doubt if Aristotle had ever seen an elephant. I suspect he got a letter from one of Alexander's lieutenants who had indeed seen elephant bend the knee in India.

[Dan Schreiber]

So he believes that women have fewer teeth than men.

[Greg Jenner]

But the point about that one is that it's result of doing some empirical studies and drawing false inference from them. So I know because I've given birth to two children and breastfed two children, and I have lost two teeth. So if you look into the mouth of a woman you know had four children, which most women will have done in ancient Greece, they will have all lost 1, 2, 3, child. Because you do. And he'll have counted few in. If he did a test case of 30 women and they all had four fewer teeth than men. That is actually a perfectly valid inference from an empirical survey.

[Edith Hall]

But I imagine at the time that would have been such like a dinner party conversation. Have you heard Aristotle's latest, Women have fewer teeth. Quick, let's count. And then gradually you'd realize, oh, no.

[Greg Jenner]

See, well, you didn't have women at dinner parties.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, the symposium.

[Greg Jenner]

But he would have looked in any woman who was prepared to open and show him.

[Dan Schreiber]

You there. Come and show me your tea.

[Edith Hall]

Including his daughter. Presumably, yeah, presumably.

[Dan Schreiber]

Who wasn't a woman yet.

[Greg Jenner]

It may even be the same with eels, because I don't know an awful lot about eels and reproduction, but I suspect he got a tank and watched them for many hours because we know, for example, he sat looking at a chicken's egg for 20 days or something to see what happens.

[Dan Schreiber]

Cause he did anatomy, didn't he? He did dissection.

[Greg Jenner]

He also did dissection. Yeah, he will have. And never actually seen them copulate or something and therefore inferred. So I'm not. I think laughing at him is wrong because he was drawing sometimes false inferences from studious empirical observation.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah, I don't think it should be. LAUGHTER Anyway, I think this is a genius who was doing a lot of stuff and yeah, you're occasionally gonna have to abandon the latest thing and not.

[Greg Jenner]

Everybody'S prepared to watch a tank full of eels for several days.

[Edith Hall]

There you go.

[Greg Jenner]

Dedication.

[Edith Hall]

That's the dedication. Didn't you ever think flies as well.

[Dan Schreiber]

Wasn'T that he looks at flies. He was interested in. He really was interested in crustaceans, wasn't he? Like crabs, cuttlefish, lobsters, Fish. So your podcast is called no Such Thing as a Fish. Yes, he would have. He would have had such an argument with you.

[D]

He really would.

[Dan Schreiber]

But he would have loved to hear why he thought that. Because he spent ages trying to work out what is a fish, what isn't a fish. Is lobster a fish?

[Greg Jenner]

Because other philosophers, are they mammals? Yes, exactly. Warm blooded.

[Dan Schreiber]

And he argued against other philosophers using dichotomy, didn't he? He said that they're too simple in going. Things with wings. Things without wings. He's like, no, it's way more complex. You've got to look at every spread.

[Greg Jenner]

He invented the spreadsheet, mate. Yeah, you can tell that from his work on volcanoes. He takes the test case, he builds up a relational database which is no mean feat on ancient papyrus.

[Dan Schreiber]

He's on Lesbos, he's doing all this, he's having a great time, he's written stuff and then suddenly he gets a job offer.

[Greg Jenner]

Oh, dear.

[Dan Schreiber]

From a man called Philip of Macedon, who's in the king business. And Philip says, I've got a kid over here, bit of a brat, could you teach him? And the kid's name is.

[Edith Hall]

Well, I've heard his name being mentioned a few times this episode. Alexander the Great.

[Dan Schreiber]

Not yet. Great.

[Edith Hall]

Not yet. Great. Alexander the.

[Dan Schreiber]

The brat.

[Edith Hall]

The brat.

[Dan Schreiber]

So he's the heir to the throne. He's the son of Philip's fourth wife, Olympias. Complicated court politics, murder, poison, intrigue.

[Greg Jenner]

Absolutely.

[Dan Schreiber]

You never know you're gonna survive through adulthood. And Aristotle gets the gig and he decides to go. Why?

[Greg Jenner]

Well, he gets the gig and decides to go. That's how it's always put in his biographies. We don't know any more about it. I would say when you get a letter from Philip, the greatest murderer the Greek world has ever known of Macedon, you don't sit around saying, I don't think I feel like that. Because you might be dead the next day.

[Dan Schreiber]

You think he's a threat.

[Greg Jenner]

Also, it did mean money, money, money, money, money. And I think Aristotle already always had his eye on the long game, which was to found a university to completely outclass the academy. Me.

[Dan Schreiber]

So, Dan, what would your curriculum be if you were gonna have to educate a sort of tyrant's child?

[Edith Hall]

Wow. Well, if I. If I was Aristotle's.

[Greg Jenner]

Well, you've got three sons, right?

[Edith Hall]

I have three sons, yeah. I feel like it's a bit. I've got modern knowledge. I'm trying to put myself back into 4th century. Okay, class on Excel spreadsheets. We've got to learn how to do that. Certainly. If it's been invented just recently, that's kind of like the latest trendy thing. Joke writing classes.

[Dan Schreiber]

Good.

[Edith Hall]

Aristotle, I believe that. Do you think he has the mind of a tyrant?

[Greg Jenner]

13, 14.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah. But if you're. I always get the impression that the children of a dictator are a bit scary at that age because they feel they can push everyone around.

[Dan Schreiber]

It's very Joffrey, Game of Thrones, sort of risk, isn't it? It's sort of like slightly psychopathic teenager. Yeah.

[Edith Hall]

So the question is, this is not normal teaching circumstances. You put your foot wrong, you might get killed. Right. By the dad. So. So you've got to play into. It's sort of like a lesson on my family and other villains teaching them. But you also want to put love and interest into them.

[Dan Schreiber]

Aristotle doesn't want to raise. He doesn't want to raise someone dangerous.

[Edith Hall]

No. He wants to put. Well, you got the most curious man alive who's been tasked with a fertile brain who could change the world. I mean, that's a perfect combo, really.

[Greg Jenner]

Must have been incredibly difficult.

[Edith Hall]

It must have been so hard to toe that line and maybe get in the subtle lessons of goodness while also making the dad feel like he's not got a child who might not be a great warrior themselves. So. Yeah. But largely Excel spreadsheets, I think, is.

[Dan Schreiber]

What I prepare for the workplace.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah.

[Dan Schreiber]

Cause he does. Aleksandr is told, you don't have to be a philosopher, but please do listen to the philosopher. Which feels like a compromise, like, okay, all right, you're not gonna be a philosopher, I get it. But can you at least listen to them?

[Greg Jenner]

Well, he will have definitely taught him ethics, politics and rhetoric. This is a sort of curriculum how to behave.

[Dan Schreiber]

So rhetoric is speechmaking, how to govern your country.

[Greg Jenner]

And how to speak in public. Yes, this has been the basis of it, but we simply don't know. And everything that Aristotle wrote after Alexander went East. Philip died and Alexander went East. And Aristotle went straight back to Athens and founded the Lyceum. Everything he wrote after, he never really talks. He does talk about things like really evil, very rich people. Or what happens in tyrants, households, you know, that kind of thing. But he doesn't put names to it usually.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yes. We don't get a sense that he had a good time in Macedonia.

[Edith Hall]

Do we know much about what Alexander the Great mentioned about him in his.

[Greg Jenner]

No, because Alexander the Great we know even less about than Aristotle. All the sources are so late and myths were being made. Because he died out there. He never came back. He crossed the Hellespont, never came back. He liked being on campaign with all his mail mates and drinking himself stupid. I mean, he did. Yeah, he did. And I think that's one thing Oliver Stone got over quite well in that movie. He liked that life. He never wanted to come back and.

[Edith Hall]

Be a responsible ruler on the curriculum question. I do feel like I would have a superpower to be a teacher back then. Because I do very often in the various other things that I do say something that sounds factual, sounds confident, but is absolutely not true, it turns out. And people believe me because of the.

[Greg Jenner]

Rest of the natural authority.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah, I do. And in this day and age, unfortunately, people can Google it and tell me I'm wrong.

[Dan Schreiber]

It's aged 48 that we get Aristotle returning to Athens. And he's lived life by this point. He has written a new constitution. He's fallen in love, he's become a new dad, he's been widowed. He's invented zoology, he's invented marine biology. He's tutored a trust fund brat and survived the most dangerous blaze in the world. And he's gone back home to Athens, you'd think, to take up his job at the Academy. But he doesn't. Right. He ends up opening a rival school, which I don't know if that's petty.

[Greg Jenner]

No, it's not petty.

[Dan Schreiber]

No.

[Greg Jenner]

He just Wanted to run his own show. I completely get it. He didn't want to go back to all those old rivalries.

[Dan Schreiber]

But that school is called the Lyceum.

[Greg Jenner]

And because Theophrastus was natural science and he did it with Theophrastus.

[Dan Schreiber]

So he brings Theophrastus.

[Greg Jenner]

Utterly loyal to Theophrastus. Yes, they do it together.

[Edith Hall]

Is he received back into Athens as a kind of returning hero?

[Greg Jenner]

Well, not as a returning hero, I don't think, but as a perfectly welcome resident, an alien. He never got citizenship.

[Dan Schreiber]

Never really.

[Greg Jenner]

But I think he got loads of money. This is, I have to say this, I think he was very sensible that he will have been paid extremely well being with Philip of Macedon's court. So he took that money and ran and stayed alive and ran and then.

[Dan Schreiber]

Put some money into the school.

[Greg Jenner]

Yes.

[Dan Schreiber]

So the Lyceum is arguably the first teaching university. The Academy is a philosophical philosophy class. But this, this has got a library, this has got. This feels like it's something different.

[Greg Jenner]

It is something different. One of the things that he did was lecture to the public. In the afternoons they had public lectures. I mean, he saw it as a public facing institution and he wrote lots of books which we very sadly haven't got, which put his complicated ideas in very simple form to circulate amongst the general public. He was highly committed to that and he genuinely believed. He said, if everybody could do what I say about trying to be a good person and about running your cities, the world would be a better place. He'd actually believed it. But he only stayed alive for about 13 years. But in that 13 years, my goodness, what he did.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah. And his followers were called the Peripatetics.

[Greg Jenner]

Yes.

[Dan Schreiber]

Which means people who walk.

[Greg Jenner]

Yes. There's two theories about that. There were two theories in antiquity. One is that there was a covered thing like a cloister at that, which is called the peripatos, so that they could walk around even in the rain, which is what monks do. It's very useful. You know, you go to Bologna, it's like that. Or it's because he liked hiking. And the Greek for going for walking even today is per pat. It's the same word, I go walking. But it could be both.

[Dan Schreiber]

Okay.

[Greg Jenner]

He could like walking in his cloister and going out hiking.

[Edith Hall]

Right. Where's his daughter at this point?

[Greg Jenner]

She's with him. And he's got a new girlfriend.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yes.

[Greg Jenner]

Who he never seems to marry. She's called her Pilis and she seems to be a slave or commoner in some way that he couldn't marry. Maybe she. I don't know. You know, we don't know why he didn't marry her, but he treated her as his wife. She was from Stagra. He was very, very attached to her. And he had his son Nicomachus, named after. In the Greek way, his father. Yeah.

[Dan Schreiber]

So the father of the GP was.

[Greg Jenner]

Nicomachus, after whom the Nicomachean Ethics, its name.

[Edith Hall]

You're holding up a book.

[Greg Jenner]

I'm holding up the Nica McKinnon ethics.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner]

Which I, you know, just happen to have in my pocket.

[Dan Schreiber]

So this is one of it. So he writes 160 books. Treatises.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah. And a lot of them, I think, in that time, or finished them in that time.

[Edith Hall]

How big. How big are these books? Like, are we talking, like, word count per book?

[Greg Jenner]

Oh, God. They vary between 5,000, 100, 20,000.

[Edith Hall]

Okay. Yeah.

[Dan Schreiber]

I mean, we've got a lot of his. We've only got 31 of his 160 books, so we don't. We only have a small percentage, but we know kind of what he's writing, and it's extraordinary. And he's writing books on physics, on metaphysics, on Nicomachean ethics, the politics on the soul. He writes about the soul. He writes about animals, he writes about storytelling, he writes about jurisprudence and law and justice and equity. Like, he's just every subject, like logic, he's doing everything. And the thing that I suppose he's most famous for in moral philosophy is what we call virtue ethics. How would you sum that? I mean, it's a big subject. How would you sum that up quickly on a comedy podcast?

[Greg Jenner]

Okay. You're more likely to be happy if you try to be nice. A, and B, you don't have to suppress your emotions and instincts. You've just got to get them in the right amount. That's it.

[Dan Schreiber]

Job done.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah. That's beautiful.

[Greg Jenner]

So I love this because I'm a creature of huge excess. And so I was always told in my Christian household and the binary system, which is also Platonism, that, you know, having a sexual urge is bad, having anger is bad, wanting revenge is bad. You know, it's all good, bad, good, bad. What Aristotle says is, no, there's a right amount of revenge, there's a right amount of sex, there's a right amount of wine. Right, so.

[Dan Schreiber]

Which he calls the golden mean. Right?

[Greg Jenner]

Well, he calls it the mean. The Romans then called it the golden.

[Dan Schreiber]

Okay.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah. Tom Messon.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah. Which basically.

[Greg Jenner]

It's so sensible.

[Dan Schreiber]

It's sensible centrist politics. It's what we want. And there are words that are used in philosophy. Eudaimonia, yeah.

[Greg Jenner]

That means flourishing. Flourishing. It's more a verb than a noun. It's not happiness, but living your life in a way that will conduce to happiness.

[Dan Schreiber]

And you means good and daimonia means spirit or. Yeah, so I like the word felicity.

[Greg Jenner]

Which was the Latin. The Romans translated it felicity.

[Dan Schreiber]

And then the other one we are, which means moral excellence, I suppose. Yeah. So those are the sort of two Greek ideas.

[Greg Jenner]

And your telos, your goal. Yeah, Your end, your dunamis is your potential.

[Dan Schreiber]

And he's called Aristotle, he's called the ultimate goal.

[Greg Jenner]

He is, he's called the ultimate best goal.

[Dan Schreiber]

So be good, be happy and you will be good. And if you be good, you'll be happy.

[Greg Jenner]

Basically.

[Dan Schreiber]

It's very good, isn't it?

[Edith Hall]

It's very simple. Yeah. I think it's true as well. Not to. He doesn't need my backing, but.

[Greg Jenner]

And there's no life after death. It's all about now that's very important.

[Edith Hall]

Ah, so be here now. He's very Zen, isn't he?

[Dan Schreiber]

He's very Zen.

[Greg Jenner]

It's now, it's now.

[Edith Hall]

This is it.

[Greg Jenner]

You won't get punished afterwards, you'll just be miserable now if you're nasty.

[Dan Schreiber]

Does he believe in the gods or does he?

[Greg Jenner]

Sort of, but they're kind of these weird things that live far away on the planet. No interest. The unmoved mover. He has no interest or to. She has no interest whatsoever in human life. You are at your dashboard. You've got to sort it out. Humans have got to sort it out. You know, you can't look to the beyond for any moral answers.

[Edith Hall]

Was that a wild concept? To not have the gods? Fairly right. And to say that there's no life after death. So again, a fringe sort of like idea.

[Dan Schreiber]

He's a maverick, isn't he?

[Edith Hall]

He really is.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner]

But you've got to take charge. This is it. You've got potential, you've got your life.

[Dan Schreiber]

So he's all about self knowledge, he's about moderation. He's trying to create a better world by creating better individuals.

[Greg Jenner]

Starting from the individual. Exactly. Plato. Starting from dictating this look of the state from top.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yes. Plato's writing about the polis, the city, the empire.

[Greg Jenner]

And he actually, you see, he even hates adultery, which is amazing for an ancient Greek guy. And the reason is not because of, you know, whatever. It's because the ultimate building block of society. He Says is the country couple.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner]

And he is prepared to envisage gay couples. Right. There is a couple that the partnership comes before even the children. And he says, if that is corrupted by disloyalty or lies, then you've corrupted the foundation.

[Edith Hall]

So you know that classic question of if you could have a dinner party guest? Sorry? If you could have a dinner party with any guests from history. So Aristotle seems like he's the perfect guest to be there. Out of curiosity, if he was at my dinner party and he saw women at the table at my other. Well, what would he be saying there is that.

[Greg Jenner]

I think he was a bit of a flirt, actually.

[Dan Schreiber]

Interesting.

[Greg Jenner]

He constantly cites the example of what to do if you really, really fancy your neighbour's wife.

[Dan Schreiber]

Hang on a minute. You've said adultery was a bad thing. No, he does.

[Greg Jenner]

He says what to do. And then he gives you the example of Helen of Troy and he says, be like the old men in the Iliad who said when they saw her, God, she's beautiful, but sent her back because she's caused the war.

[Dan Schreiber]

Wow. Okay.

[Greg Jenner]

He says, do with your lady you're infatuated with, or man you're infatuated with. Do Helen. You say, yes, you're gorgeous. I'll bug her off.

[Edith Hall]

That's a shame. Cause Helen's also at my dinner party.

[Dan Schreiber]

So.

[Edith Hall]

Sorry, Helen, gotta go.

[Dan Schreiber]

I think we do. I mean, we've spent a lot of the episode saying, what an extraordinary man. I know I back away from that. But he has flaws. He's not a saint. There are things that he believed that we would find repellent.

[Greg Jenner]

Absolutely.

[Dan Schreiber]

One of them was that he did not believe women were as intellectually capable as mental. Right.

[Greg Jenner]

No.

[Dan Schreiber]

So he thinks women are not as smart.

[Greg Jenner]

We do not have a deliberative capacity. We can't think things through. We're all emotion. Therefore, we cannot have full citizenship.

[Dan Schreiber]

So it's the idea of logos, is it? Or logic.

[Greg Jenner]

Yes.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner]

We don't have. Well, it's called Tobu lutycon, which. It's precisely deliberative.

[Dan Schreiber]

Okay.

[Greg Jenner]

That you cannot think through decisions rationally.

[Dan Schreiber]

He's also. He's ancient Greek. So he is a slave owner because they all are.

[Greg Jenner]

Well, he also came out. He came out with the big justification of slavery that I'm afraid was wheeled out ever from the 15th century to the American Civil War. He was responsible for that.

[Dan Schreiber]

I think the slavery thing is the thing.

[Greg Jenner]

It's a very big.

[Dan Schreiber]

We really struggle with.

[Greg Jenner]

It's a very big one.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah. Because he's often been called a biological misogynist because of his science, but I don't think that's entirely fair. But he does think that it's. It's a man's job to think.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah, but he does even. I mean, I'm not minute trying to defend him on this, but he does even say there is a really big problem because corporation. Quite a lot of slaves do appear to be actually as good and big and clever as we are. His empirical good sense, he does actually admit that. And he also, in his will, had all his own slaves freed so they wouldn't be sold on.

[Edith Hall]

Okay, and is that unusual? That's unusual. Okay.

[Greg Jenner]

A lot of slaves were perfectly happy if they got a good master. I think the worst thing was if you've got a good master so you're basically okay, you're not being flogged to death every day, whatever. You know, if you're then sold on, you have no idea who you're going to. So he made sure that didn't happen.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah. There still is a bit of a plot twist on Aristotle, but, you know, that is gonna happen.

[Dan Schreiber]

We know what Aristotle looks like, which is quite rare.

[Edith Hall]

We know what he looks like.

[Dan Schreiber]

We have a copy of a sculpture done by him by someone who knew him. So the guy was called Lysippus, who did a bronze of him. We don't have the bronze. We've got a later Roman copy in marble.

[Edith Hall]

Do you want to describe him for Very lovely beard.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yes.

[Edith Hall]

Very curly. His hair is. Hmm. I don't know if anyone's seen modern day Ron Weasley his age. It's got this floppish look about it. He's got quite a pronounced upper forehead. I would say big brain for that. Big old brain. Walking library.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah.

[Edith Hall]

His nose quite dented. I'm not gonna say substance abuse, but it looks like the old white powder might have gone in there.

[Dan Schreiber]

Surely that's an athletic inj from his teenage years.

[Edith Hall]

Yes, exactly.

[Dan Schreiber]

He was a jock.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah. Very white eyeballs, no pupils.

[Dan Schreiber]

They would have been painted in ancient statues.

[Edith Hall]

So this would have been a painted statue.

[Greg Jenner]

Can I say he looks exactly like my husband?

[Dan Schreiber]

Oh, congratulations.

[Greg Jenner]

Wow. It took me a very long time. I was 32 until I found one who looked exactly like Aristotle. Yeah.

[Edith Hall]

Can I.

[Dan Schreiber]

And you locked him down. It's quite rare for us to have a portrait of a Greek philosopher.

[Edith Hall]

That's amazing. So this is a statue.

[Dan Schreiber]

This is a statue done by someone who knew him.

[Greg Jenner]

Well, he must have known him because he was at the court in Macedonis.

[Dan Schreiber]

We do have to kill Aristotle off. He sort of dies slightly in ignominy. He's sort of chased out of Athens.

[Greg Jenner]

Yes.

[Dan Schreiber]

Why?

[Greg Jenner]

Okay, so that's to do with Macedonian high politics. This is after Alexander dies and there's lots of jockeying for power and influence and the Athenians don't want to be taken over by the Macedonians because he's got Macedonian connections. They accuse him of doing the same sort of things they did Socrates, which is subverting the youth, bringing in, you know, it's what you did to philosophers he didn't like.

[Dan Schreiber]

Okay.

[Greg Jenner]

But instead of he. He said, I'm not going to give you the satisfaction of doing a suicide thing like. Like Socrates. I'm going to take the option of exile. And he goes off to the island of Euboea, which was not under Athenian jurisdiction, but where his. His mother came from. And he had had a house, takes his girlfriend, Herpilis, and apparently his children.

[Edith Hall]

So he's got more kids at this point?

[Greg Jenner]

Well, you know, he's got the two. Yeah, he's got Nicomachus and the older girl, Picteaster.

[Dan Schreiber]

Okay.

[Greg Jenner]

And Thea thus seems to write, he's this very detailed will and dies apparently stomach cancer about a year later.

[Dan Schreiber]

And Theophasis stays behind in that.

[Greg Jenner]

Yes.

[Dan Schreiber]

And keeps his books. And that's how he have them. Right, that's how.

[Greg Jenner]

Well, it's a very long story behind that. But yes, he's got Theophrastus to leave everything too. And that must have been a very great comfort. I mean, Theophrastus was, you know, Nicomachus is still very young. He's got a very adult son who's been his best friend for a very, very long time. Wonderful relationship.

[Dan Schreiber]

So he died soon after sort of exile from Athens. And his reputation immediately after is not that burnished with glory. It takes a little while for people to re. Sort of discover his brilliance, I think. Is that fair?

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah, because other more new and shiny philosophical schools took over, especially Stoicism and Epicureanism, which the Peripertos, that the academics at the Lyceum carried on and became one of the most dominant schools of antiquity. But not immediately after.

[Dan Schreiber]

No, it took a sort of century and a half or so, didn't it, for people to sort of go, oh, this guy was pretty brilliant actually. And then of course, he was a huge deal in the Middle Ages.

[Greg Jenner]

Yes, he was a huge deal in, well, sort of Aquinas and the Latin Church. That's another whole story. But he's had in the 20th century been rediscovered by ethics people because of this secular morality system, seems to be the most close to what we need now of anything from antiquity of how.

[Dan Schreiber]

To live a good life.

[Greg Jenner]

Yes.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah. So there you go, Dan. Aristotle. Pretty good life.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah. He's all right. Yeah. No, what an incredible life. It feels silly again saying that, because obviously it must be incredible life, but I was surprised for how few details I knew about what he had actually achieved in his time. How old was he when he died?

[Greg Jenner]

63.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah, 63.

[Dan Schreiber]

But when we did the Pythagoras episode, you were able to sort of knock down quite a few myths, but there was still an awful lot of stuff that we really struggled to get to grips with here. We've just got so much.

[Greg Jenner]

Well, Pythagoras himself left so little. We have actually almost everything I've said, 80% of it is out of his own works. Right. So this is solid testimony.

[Dan Schreiber]

And we've only got 31 books out of 100. Maybe one day others will show up somewhere, who knows?

[Greg Jenner]

And I've also been to all of those places where he lived and I've been to Les Was. I've been to Assos. I've been to Stagora.

[Edith Hall]

With your husband cosplaying alongside you as you're there? Yeah.

[Greg Jenner]

Actually, no, it was my 16 year old daughter who made the movie that you can find on YouTube at 16.

[Edith Hall]

If there was an. I've never read any Aristotle. If I went now to a bookshop and had to get one of his writing, what is the one I would get?

[Greg Jenner]

History of Animals.

[Dan Schreiber]

I would too. I read it this weekend, it's brilliant.

[Greg Jenner]

It's such a read, isn't it? Yeah, it's a very good one to start like kids off on as well, you know, It's a lot of narrative and description. It's not too full of logistical syllogisms.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah. The nuance window. All right, time now for the nuance window. This is where Dan and I peripatetically promenade around the Lyceum for two minutes while Professor Edith tells us something that we need to know about Aristotle. My stopwatch is ready. You have two minutes. Edith, take it away.

[Greg Jenner]

The one thing that most people have heard about Aristotle was that Monty Python wrote a philosopher's song in which they quoted him. Plato, they say could stick it away Half a crate of whisky every day. Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle Hobbes was fond of his dram Rene Descartes with a drunken fart I drink, therefore I Am. That may be the only thing you know about Aristotle, that he was indeed a bugger for the bottle. What I want to tell you though, is that Monty Python, being completely plagiaristic, the history of Aristotle bottle songs goes all the way back to 1652. I have done this research and there is a tavern song by one John Hilton that was sung in 1652. So actually at a really dodgy moment, because, you know, got Oliver Cromwell's running the place and spoiling fun. But he says, come away, come away to the tavern. I say, leave your prittle prattle, fill us a bottle. You're not so wise as Aristotle. What you probably don't know either is that cockney slang for for an arse. A back end is an aris. And the reason for this is extremely complicated. Because originally, bottle and glass is the passing for arse that goes to just bottle is your arse. But because bottle rhymes with Aristotle, Aristotle ends up as arse and it just ends up as Aris.

[Dan Schreiber]

Intellectual history. And then we end up with a bomb joke. That's what should be in his poetics about comedy. Right, yeah. So there we go.

[Greg Jenner]

1652, they were doing that pun on bottle.

[Edith Hall]

Yeah. There's no new jokes. Apparently.

[Greg Jenner]

There is no other modern language in which Aristotle rhymes with anything to do with alcohol except English.

[Dan Schreiber]

It's something to be proud of in the Greek pronunciation. Is it Aristotle?

[Greg Jenner]

Is it Aristotelas? Aristotelis now.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner]

But tellis does not rhyme with buccal.

[Dan Schreiber]

So what do you know now? Time now for the so what do you know now? This is our quickfire quiz for Dan to see how much he has learned. We are fired so much.

[Edith Hall]

Forgot about this element of the show.

[Dan Schreiber]

Last time out, dan, you got 9.5 on Napoleon out of 10, which is really good. I mean, really good score.

[Edith Hall]

Yep. I'm gonna predict three this time.

[Dan Schreiber]

Let's aim higher than that. Question one. What was the name of the independent Greek state where Aristotle was born?

[Edith Hall]

Pass. I have no idea.

[Dan Schreiber]

Do you remember the nickname for it?

[Edith Hall]

Was it the snake woman?

[Dan Schreiber]

No. Was it the stagrast of horses? Stagra. The dripping place.

[Edith Hall]

The dripping place.

[Dan Schreiber]

The dripping place. So that was his hometown. Question 2. Which God did a later writer claim Aristotle was descended from? The God of which type of discipline?

[Edith Hall]

No, that's gone as well.

[Dan Schreiber]

Asclepius, God of medicine. Okay, question three. Plato had two nicknames for his clever Aristotle student. Can you name one of them?

[Edith Hall]

The brain and the walking library.

[Dan Schreiber]

Oh, very good. Well done. Which scientific Field did Aristotle basically invent at the lagoon of Lesbos?

[Edith Hall]

Marine biology.

[Dan Schreiber]

It was. Yeah. Question five. What name was shared by Aristotle's wife and daughter?

[Edith Hall]

Pisiopus? Pythias.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah, Pythias. Very good. Yeah, Pythias is correct. Yes. The snake lady. Question 6. Why didn't Aristotle take over running the Athenian Academy when Plato died?

[Edith Hall]

Because he was a fringe scientist that no one wanted to hear about his weird mushroom theories.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yeah. And that was.

[Edith Hall]

He was a natural scientist and there.

[Dan Schreiber]

Was a Nepo baby ready to take over.

[Edith Hall]

A Nepo baby?

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah.

[Edith Hall]

It's a shame that the Nepo baby was not called nepotism. I feel like that would have been a Greek.

[Dan Schreiber]

True.

[Edith Hall]

I don't know.

[Dan Schreiber]

Speusippus, wasn't it? Question 7. Which famous prince did Aristotle tutor?

[Edith Hall]

Alexander not yet. The Great.

[Dan Schreiber]

Very good.

[Edith Hall]

The brat.

[Dan Schreiber]

The brat. Alexander the brat. Question 8. Aristotle's book, the Nicomachean Ethics was dedicated to his son. Simply put, what philosophy does it prefer?

[Edith Hall]

It was the simple idea that you will be happy if you do what makes you happy and do good.

[Dan Schreiber]

Yep. Perfect.

[Edith Hall]

Was that it?

[Dan Schreiber]

Aristotle was 48 years old when he returned to Athens to found which pioneering school with an outreach program and public lectures.

[Edith Hall]

It was called the Lyceum.

[Dan Schreiber]

It was very good. Question 10. Can you name one of the provisions in Aristotle's will that all of his.

[Edith Hall]

Slaves would be free?

[Dan Schreiber]

That's right. Yeah, absolutely. And he also left all his stuff to Theophrastus and his furnishings to her pillars. Eight out of ten. Dan Schreiber. Wow. You started slightly wobbly and then you got stronger.

[Edith Hall]

It was really. It was really worrying at the beginning, wasn't it? And then, yeah, confidence took over.

[Dan Schreiber]

Staggerod was hard to remember. That was a tricky question. Well, I mean, we've had a really interesting chat. Are you kind of like on board with the Aristotle? Because I think we're both team Aristotle over here.

[Edith Hall]

I'm relatively team. I mean, outside of the stuff that is very questionable. I think in terms of. I'm looking at him purely as someone who was thinking differently. Uniquely. What a brain. What an extraordinary footprint to have left on our planet, to have created marine biology, to have been the name of an octopus in the original Addams Family movie. What I would love to do now is just work out how much of modern day life is thanks to his brain. This one brain, this one blip of consciousness that has. Yeah, and I think he's got a great champion in you. You wrote a book called the Aristotle Way.

[Greg Jenner]

Aristotle's way.

[Edith Hall]

Okay. I'm reading that because ancient wisdom being relevant, I think is something we often forget.

[Dan Schreiber]

Lovely stuff. Well, thank you so much, Dan. Thank you, Edith. And listener. For more applied philosophy, check out Edith's previous episode on Pythagoras, which was an absolute hoot. We also did an episode on medieval science. And if you want more Dan in your ears, you can scroll all the way down in the app back to 2019 to the young Napoleon episode with Dr. Laura O'Brien. It's a really fun one. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review. Share the show with subscribe to youo're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds, so you never miss an episode, but I'd just like to say a huge thank you again to our guests. In History Corner from University of Durham, we had the fantastic Professor Edith Hall. Thank you, Edith.

[Greg Jenner]

Thank you.

[Dan Schreiber]

And in Comedy Corner we had the brilliant Dan Schreiber. Thank you, Dan. Thanks, Greg to you, lovely listener. Join me next time as we return to the classroom for another lesson from the past. But for now, I'm off to go and rewrite Aristotle's lost volume on comedy. I think it's mostly to do with bums. I mean, how card for it be. Bye. This episode of youf're Dead To Me was researched by Madeline Bracey. It was written by Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, Emma Nagus and me. The audio producer was Steve Hanke and our production coordinator was Ben Hollands. It was produced by Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, me and senior producer Emma Nagoose and our executive editor was James Cook. You're Dead To Me is a BBC Studios audio production for BBC Radio 4.

[Greg Jenner]

Best Medicine Dissecting Funny and fascinating medicine. I think pain management is the best medicine.

[Edith Hall]

Bibliotherapy therapy by books Sleep well Spot.

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[Dan Schreiber]

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[Edith Hall]

Because it can completely change someone's life.

[Greg Jenner]

Defibrillation. Oh, defibrillators. Okay. Amazing machines. That much is clear. Sorry, clear. That's the new series of Best medicine from Radio 4 with me, Kiri Pritchard McLean. Available now on BBC Sounds.

[D]

Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation.

[E]

It felt a really safe and welcoming space. After the yoga classes, I felt amazing.

[D]

But soon that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker. A journey that leads to allegations of gruesome grooming trafficking and exploitation across international borders.

[E]

I don't have my passport. I don't have my phone. I don't have my bank cards. I have nothing.

[Greg Jenner]

The passport being taken, the being in a house and not feeling like they can leave.

[D]

World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry, where the hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations.

[Greg Jenner]

You just get sucked in so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realize. And it's like this, the secret that's there.

[E]

I wanted to believe that, you know, that whatever they were doing, even if it seemed. Seemed gross to me, was for some spiritual reason that I couldn't yet understand.

[D]

Revealing the hidden secrets of a global yoga network.

[E]

I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this and to put my reputation and everything else on the line. I want truth and justice and for other people to not be hurt, for things to be different in the future.

[Greg Jenner]

To bring it into the light and almost alchemize some of that evil stuff that went on and take back the power.

[D]

World of secrets. Season 6 the Bad Guru Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.