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Top 10 New Humanists Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best New Humanists episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to New Humanists for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite New Humanists episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
Why Modern Literature Stinks | Episode LXXXIV
New Humanists
03/15/25 • 57 min
In the final chapter of Climbing Parnassus, Tracy Lee Simmons distinguishes between the "skills" and the "content" arguments for classical study, and says that the skills argument is in fact the stronger. Content, Simmons says, can be learned by reading translations - or even from scanning Wikipedia (or asking A.I.!). What is irreplaceable about true classical study is the formation of the mind and the skills acquired from long years of intense training in reading and writing in Greek and Latin. The death of this educational program caused European literary culture to rot, just as critics and poets like W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, and C.S. Lewis had warned: they were the last generation to receive this education, and so it should be no surprise that they were the last generation of Anglophone writers even to approach greatness.
Tracy Lee Simmons' Climbing Parnassus: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781933859507
New Humanists episode on Albert Jay Nock: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/10528217-should-everyone-be-educated-episode-22
J.R.R. Tolkien's Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics: https://jenniferjsnow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/11790039-jrr-tolkien-beowulf-the-monsters-and-the-critics.pdf
Plato's The Last Days of Socrates: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140449280
Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780393320978
ALI's Latin for Kids program: https://ancientlanguage.com/latin-for-kids/
New 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.com
08/15/24 • 100 min
For the first time, a collection of Irving Babbitt's and Paul Elmer More's correspondence has been published. Eric Adler, the editor of the collection (titled "Humanistic Letters") joins the show to discuss the collection, New Humanism, and the question that caused more controversy between Babbitt and More than anything else: Do humanists need to believe in God?
Eric Adler's Humanistic Letters: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780826222909
Eric Adler's The Battle of the Classics: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780197680810
Irving Babbitt's Literature and the American College: https://amzn.to/3YIP0Ml
New Humanists episode Can Humanism Replace Christianity? https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/12494774-can-humanism-replace-christianity-episode-xliv
Justin Garrison and Ryan Holston's The Historical Mind: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781438478432
Ryan Holston's Irving Babbitt and Christianity: A Response to T.S. Eliot: https://www.academia.edu/43227260/Irving_Babbitt_and_Christianity_A_Response_to_T_S_Eliot
C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652944
Norman Foerster's Humanism and America: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.88302/page/n5/mode/2up
Luke Sheahan's The Intellectual Kinship of Irving Babbitt and C.S.Lewis: https://www.pdcnet.org/humanitas/content/humanitas_2016_0029_0001_0005_0042
C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780060652920
Paul Elmer More's The Greek Tradition: https://amzn.to/4dxbXGQ
New 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.com
Petrarch's Little Dark Age | Episode LXX
New Humanists
06/15/24 • 59 min
Imagine that you are the leading figure in a movement to renew the study and appreciation of classical literature, but you have come to the end of your life and not only has the educational and political situation not improved - it has gotten worse. Such was the vista spread out before Petrarch in his twilight. Jonathan and Ryan read and discuss some of Petrarch's correspondence, recording the meditations of the great humanist as he wrestled with civilizational decline, the possibility of rebirth, and the awareness of how little time he had left.
Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition: https://amzn.to/3Q4lRnO
Cicero's Pro Archia Poeta: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674991743
Tim Griffith's The Case for Classical Languages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UquUv7wzAgQ
Ryan Hammill's Saints Versus Statesmen: https://americanreformer.org/2024/04/saints-versus-statesmen/
New 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.com
The Homer-Industrial Complex | Episode LXXV
New Humanists
09/01/24 • 58 min
The Iliad was more popular than the Odyssey beginning in ancient times, and continued to be all the way up to World War One. Then, something changed. Now the Odyssey leaves the Iliad in the dust in terms of which poem gets assigned more frequently in school, in book sales, and simply in the stated preference of readers. What happened? Ryan and Jonathan read Edward Luttwak's essay, Homer Inc., about the thriving industry of Homer translations, the ancient redactors of Homer, the historicity of the Trojan War, and one of the perennial questions any humanist must answer - and to which Luttwak gives his own idiosyncratic response: Why does Homer matter?
Edward Luttwak's Homer Inc.: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n04/edward-luttwak/homer-inc
NH episode on Melanchthon and Homer: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/13181921-return-of-the-old-gods-in-germany-episode-lii
NH episode on Weil and Homer: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/10429309-the-iliad-or-the-poem-of-force-episode-xxi
NH episode on Nietzsche and Homer: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/13949908-nietzsche-homer-and-cruelty-episode-lvi
Stephen Mitchell's Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781439163382
Robert Fagles's Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140275360
Emily Wilson's Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781324001805
Richmond Lattimore's Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780226470498
Peter Green's Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780520281431
Robert Fitzgerald's Iliad: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780374529055
New 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.com
A Great Books Monastery | Episode LXXIX
New Humanists
12/01/24 • 47 min
When civilization is crashing down all around you, what do you do? Retreat to the hills, build a monastery, and preserve what you can. That is exactly what Cassiodorus did in the 6th century when he founded the Vivarium, an Italian monastery dedicated to copying, emending, and preserving the classics of Greek and Roman literature. In this episode, Jonathan and Ryan take a look at the proposed curriculum and list of great books and authors that Cassiodorus recommended for his students.
Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition: https://amzn.to/3Q4lRnO
Rule of Saint Benedict: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780375700170
Athanasius' Life of Anthony: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780809122950
Virgil's Georgics: https://amzn.to/417pzFK
New 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.com
What the Modern World Lost | Episode LXXX
New Humanists
01/01/25 • 70 min
Representative government, freedom of religion, the right to privacy - these are just some of the liberties of the modern world which we cherish. But at what cost? After the French Revolution and the subsequent rise and fall of Napoleon, the French classical liberal Benjamin Constant undertook an examination of ancient liberty as compared to modern liberty, in a bid to defend the modern liberal project against its detractors. But Constant is honest about the downsides of the modern liberal regime, and explains what rights and powers from the ancient world modern men can no longer exercise.
Benjamin Constant's The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns: https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/constant-the-liberty-of-ancients-compared-with-that-of-moderns-1819
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780141191751
Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780684827902
Herodotus' Histories: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9781400031146
Stendhal's The Red and the Black: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780140447644
Julius Caesar's The Gallic War: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674990807
New 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.com
02/01/25 • 62 min
The Renaissance humanist Biondo Flavio dedicated his massive book Roma Triumphans, a historical investigation of what made Rome great, to his fellow humanist Pope Pius II. He contended that central to the story of Roman greatness was Roman religion, and that the Roman Catholic Church was the heir of the Roman Empire, correcting its faults even as it carried its legacy into the modern world. As James Hankins discusses in Virtue Politics, the main policy position that Biondo advocated for, in order for Europe to recapture the spirit of ancient Rome, was a renewal of the Crusades, so that the dominion of the Catholic Church could encompass the territory of the Roman Empire.
James Hankins' Virtue Politics: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674278738
New Humanists episode on Irving Babbitt, feat. Eric Adler: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/episodes/15574729-humanism-with-or-without-god-feat-eric-adler-episode-lxxiv
Biondo Flavio's Roma Triumphans: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780674055049
Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780300240023
New 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.com
04/15/25 • 52 min
In his lifetime, John Chrysostom witnessed the true beginning of Christendom: the Emperor Theodosius confirmed the public standing of Christianity over that of paganism and delivered a final knockout blow to Arian heresy in favor of Nicene orthodoxy. But a religion on the upswing can attract opportunistic and ill-informed converts. Jonathan and Ryan look at Chrysostom's advice on the bringing-up of children, and the ways in which the Greek Father uses pagan tropes - Greco-Roman hero cults, wrestling, statuary - to cajole new converts into dropping their pagan habits.
Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition: https://amzn.to/3Q4lRnO
Jaspreet Singh Boparai's The Man Who Translated the Bible Into Latin: https://antigonejournal.com/2021/10/saint-jerome/
New 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.com
How to Learn Like Thomas Aquinas | Episode LXXII
New Humanists
07/15/24 • 51 min
Thomas Aquinas is also known as the "Angelic Doctor," but he was quite capable of coming down from the heavens and getting practical. In two selections from his work included in Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition, we find some of Thomas' advice and outlook for students and teachers, including a discussion of whether teaching is an inherently contemplative or active pursuit.
Richard M. Gamble's The Great Tradition: https://amzn.to/3Q4lRnO
New Humanists episode Education that Makes Aquinas Look Modern, feat. John Peterson: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/12698279-education-that-makes-aquinas-look-modern-feat-john-peterson-episode-xlvi
Pope Leo XIII's Aeterni Patris: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris.html
Augustine's De Magistro (The Teacher): https://amzn.to/4cUbVZ4
A.G. Sertillanges's The Intellectual Life: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780813206462
Homer Camp: https://ancientlanguage.com/homer-camp/
Bible Camp: https://ancientlanguage.com/bible-camp/
New 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.com
07/01/24 • 60 min
The things of God belong to a heavenly kingdom. But politics is taken up with what is earthly. Surely, therefore, Christians should keep politics at a distance as much as possible. Right? Even while defending the life of contemplation and retreat from the earthly, Francesco Petrarch and Giovanni Bocaccio laud Christian involvement in public life. Petrarch goes so far as to dream of a Julius Caesar reborn in medieval Europe and baptized a Christian, who goes on to conquer Egypt from the Muslims and present her as a gift - this time not to Cleopatra - but to Christ.
James Hankins's Virtue Politics: https://amzn.to/3UiQpp3
Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780199535699
C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780062565396
Calvert Watkins's How to Kill a Dragon: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780195144130
New Humanists episode on Leonardo Bruni: https://newhumanists.buzzsprout.com/1791279/14460440-mediocrity-versus-glory-in-the-renaissance-episode-lxii
Sallust's Catilinarian Conspiracy: https://amzn.to/4chKY1C
Henry David Thoreau's Walden: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780460876353
Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild: https://bookshop.org/a/25626/9780385486804
New 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.com
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FAQ
How many episodes does New Humanists have?
New Humanists currently has 87 episodes available.
What topics does New Humanists cover?
The podcast is about Humanities, Classics, Society & Culture, Language Learning, Podcasts, Education, Philosophy and Latin.
What is the most popular episode on New Humanists?
The episode title 'Transhumanism in the Year of Our Lord 2021, Pt. 1 | Episode II' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on New Humanists?
The average episode length on New Humanists is 62 minutes.
How often are episodes of New Humanists released?
Episodes of New Humanists are typically released every 15 days, 20 hours.
When was the first episode of New Humanists?
The first episode of New Humanists was released on Jun 1, 2021.
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