Are the sins of the father really the sins of the son? That's the question driving Aeschylus' Oresteia, the only surviving complete trilogy of Greek tragedies. In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan begins a three-part journey through Aeschylus' prizewinning masterwork, seeking wisdom for today's debates over the history of racism. -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Ancient Language Institute and receive 15% off with the code HERETICS: https://ancientlanguage.com/youn...
Aug 24, 2021•59 min
Can we still do America anymore? Is the Constitution just hopelessly outdated? In a world governed by elites who think the whole America thing doesn't work, Spencer Klavan uses Aristotle's "Politics" to examine what living in political community means, and how we can (still) make it work in this country. -- Everyone wants a beard that looks like Spencer Klavan's. Visit https://minimoustachery.com/heretics and use the code HERETICS to get 25% off men's grooming and shave kits. -- If you believe t...
Aug 17, 2021•49 min
The First Crusade is one of the most maligned events in all of Western history. But what was it really about? In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan discusses the history of the Crusade and its impact on The Song of Roland. -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Ancient Language Institute and receive 15% off with the code HERETICS: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics. -- Public Goods is the one stop shop for sustainable, high quality everyday essentials made from cl...
Aug 10, 2021•49 min
"The Song of Roland" is a glorious legend about the doomed hero, Roland, and his tragic defeat at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass. In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan talks through the history behind this great epic and what it can tell us today. -- Everyone wants a beard that looks like Spencer Klavan's. Visit https://minimoustachery.com/heretics and use the code HERETICS to get 25% off men's grooming and shave kits. -- If you believe that your data is your business, secure yourself ...
Aug 03, 2021•1 hr 4 min
As Gawain gallops toward his potentially deadly encounter with the Green Knight, he faces an unexpected challenge: seduction. In the second Young Heretics episode on "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Spencer Klavan discusses the tradition of courtly love poetry and what to make of its more scandalous elements. -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Ancient Language Institute and receive 15% off with the code HERETICS: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics. -- If you believe tha...
Jul 27, 2021•53 min
Is the chivalric code one of civilization's great achievements, or is it all just a lie? That's the question Spencer Klavan takes up in the first of two episodes on "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," a jewel of Middle English literature and of chivalric poetry. In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer reads Simon Armitage's masterful translation and argues that the high ideals of honor can still guide us today. -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Ancient Language Institute and ...
Jul 20, 2021•1 hr 1 min
The royal history of England is a story of triumphs and mishaps—but is there a plan behind it all? For that matter, is any of us free to affect the course of history? In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan walks through Shakespeare's tale of war and loss, asking what the medieval kings can teach us about our present crisis. -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Ancient Language Institute and receive 15% off with the code HERETICS: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretic...
Jul 13, 2021•50 min
Are all cultures, all countries, all governments as good as each other? How do we know what's right and wrong? In this episode of Young Heretics—the first of many episodes on the foundation-stone of Western political philosophy, the Republic—Spencer Klavan walks through the context, the history, and the profound impact of Republic Book 1. Get your copy of "The Republic of Plato" here: https://www.amazon.com/Republic-Plato-Allan-Bloom/dp/0465094082. -- Public Goods is the one stop shop for sustai...
Jul 06, 2021•52 min
Young Heretics is the classical education you've been denied. But what is a classical education, anyway? In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan walks through the history of the three- and four-fold way (the "trivium" and the "quadrivium") to explain how we can shape our souls to love the good in a degraded age. Get your copy of Allan Bloom's translation of Plato’s “Republic” here: https://www.amazon.com/Republic-Plato-Allan-Bloom/dp/0465094082?tag=youngheretics-20 Get your copy of Dav...
Jun 30, 2021•54 min
What happened to the lovers of the French Revolution after it dissolved into terror? Some never changed their minds. But others—like the great Romantic poet William Wordsworth—reconsidered. Reading through Wordsworth's great poem "The Prelude" in this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan discusses how we can all turn around after a wrong turn. Read along with Spencer with your own copy of "The Prelude" here: https://www.amazon.com/Prelude-1799-Norton-Critical-Editions/dp/039309071X?tag=youn...
Jun 22, 2021•52 min
For the first time on Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan tackles a philosopher with whom he thoroughly and entirely disagrees: David Hume. Reading through the "Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding," Spencer examines the roots of modern skepticism and its influence on later thinkers like Freud. Read along with Spencer with your copy of Hume's "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" here: https://www.amazon.com/Enquiry-concerning-Understanding-Oxford-Philosophical/dp/0198752482 . -- If you belie...
Jun 15, 2021•1 hr 2 min
What if all this Western culture stuff is just a mistake? That's the provocative question Spencer Klavan explores in this episode, with the help of that infamous German polemicist Friedrich Nietzsche. Spencer begins with Nietzsche's first book, "The Birth of Tragedy," taking a hard look at the weakness Nietzsche saw in Socrates, and so in the Western tradition of philosophy. -- Public Goods is the one stop shop for sustainable, high quality everyday essentials made from clean ingredients. Receiv...
Jun 08, 2021•1 hr 2 min
We are surrounded these days by people who tell us our natural assumptions are all wrong: patriotism is evil, gender is a construct, everyone should eat bugs. Using the writing of Edmund Burke, Spencer Klavan argues that you have a right to be suspicious of billionaires who want to reduce your life to mere mathematics. -- The Classic Learning test is an alternative to the ultra-biased College Board tests that puts students in front of the kinds of thinkers we love at Young Heretics. Get 20% off ...
Jun 01, 2021•50 min
Are we living through another French Revolution? With the help of the great statesman Edmund Burke, Spencer Klavan examines what made the difference in the 18th century—and what makes the difference now—between justified reform and destructive anarchy. -- The Classic Learning test is an alternative to the ultra-biased College Board tests that puts students in front of the kinds of thinkers we love at Young Heretics. Get 20% off your registration fee by using the code HERETICS at https://cltexam....
May 26, 2021•54 min
Death is real. It's not going away, and no amount of risk management can stave it off. So what do we do about it? In this episode of Young Heretics, Spencer Klavan talks with journalist and editor Sohrab Ahmari about the Stoic Seneca's approach to death, as discussed in Ahmari's new book, "The Unbroken Thread." -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Ancient Language Institute and receive 15% off with the code HERETICS: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics -- The Classic Learnin...
May 18, 2021•1 hr 8 min
In this second episode on C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, Spencer Klavan explores the lead-up to the book's climactic moment, and the philosophy of courage that lies behind it. Courage is "every virtue at the testing point"—the thing which, in Lewis's day as well as ours, we cannot do without. -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Ancient Language Institute and receive 15% off with the code HERETICS: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics -- The Classic Learning test is an a...
May 12, 2021•56 min
Probably no work by the great C.S. Lewis is more famous than his "Screwtape Letters," an imagined series of notes from one hellish tempter to another. In this first part of a two-part "Young Heretics" series, Spencer Klavan talks about Screwtape’s view of sex and love, as well as the poetry and philosophy that informed Lewis’s work. -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Ancient Language Institute and receive 15% off with the code HERETICS: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics....
May 04, 2021•53 min
In Twelfth Night, a comedy first performed at the turn of the 17th century, Shakespeare demonstrates a subtler and more sophisticated understanding of how sex and gender work than all our modern ideologues put together. As Spencer Klavan explains this episode of "Young Heretics," the play acknowledges the delicate counterplay between male and female, before ultimately affirming that each is a unity of body and soul. -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Ancient Language Institute a...
Apr 28, 2021•50 min
Fyodor Dostoevsky lived a life like one of his novels: harsh, dramatic, profound. His exile and hard labor in Siberia showed him the innate worth of the human soul and laid the groundwork for one of his best-known masterpieces, "Crime and Punishment." In this episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan talks through the hard conditions of 19th-century St. Petersburg and Dostoevsky's harrowing psychological portrait of the murderer Raskolnikov. -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the ...
Apr 20, 2021•55 min
Was Milton on the devil's side? The great revolutionary confronted the limits of rebellion in his masterwork, "Paradise Lost." In this episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan takes a first look at the epic to expose the logic of Milton's Satan and how it turns everything inside out. -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Ancient Language Institute and receive 15% off with the code HERETICS: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics. -- America is under siege. As the new presiden...
Apr 13, 2021•1 hr 4 min
Miracles aren't magic, they're real life. But what really did happen on the cross? In this episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan describes how scripture and sculpture both can express the profound truths of life, death, and resurrection that Christians commemorate this time of year. -- Big Tech is cracking down on conservative voices, but you can protect your online privacy with ExpressVPN. Get 3 extra months free with a 12-month plan: https://expressvpn.com/heretics -- America is under si...
Apr 06, 2021•56 min
You can't cancel the West. You can try, but its truths are eternal and the great conversation across generations marches on. That's the vision of Raphael in his masterwork, the School of Athens. In this episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan walks through the history and meaning of his favorite painting. -- Big Tech is cracking down on conservative voices, but you can protect your online privacy with ExpressVPN. Get 3 extra months free with a 12-month plan: http://expressvpn.com/heretics --...
Mar 30, 2021•1 hr 2 min
Led by communists like Antonio Gramsci, progressives began their long march through the institutions in the 1960s. They indoctrinated students with dangerous socialist ideas beginning at the earliest levels of education. The effect has been a hatred of America that persists even in today's youth. In this "Young Heretics" special, Spencer Klavan sits down with the new president of Young America's Foundation, Governor Scott Walker, to break down YAF's new action plan, a plan that Walker says will ...
Mar 29, 2021•15 min
When Paul stood in the Athenian court on the Hill of Mars (the Areopagus) to plead his case for Christianity before the Epicureans and Stoics, no one knew what would happen. Would he be laughed out of town? Or put in chains? What nobody expected was what eventually came to pass. In this episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan discusses how the obscure faith of this Jewish scholar took over the world. -- Everyone wants a beard that looks like Spencer Klavan's. Visit minimoustachery.com/hereti...
Mar 23, 2021•47 min
Plato dreamed that philosophers would rule the state; Marcus Aurelius made that a reality. In this episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan examines Aurelius's Stoic belief system as articulated in his famous "Meditations," which have made him an enduring model of manly self-control for all the ages. -- "Young Heretics" is now on Locals! You can become a Young Heretics VIP by visiting https://youngheretics.com/locals and subscribing for only $4.99 per month. -- Learn a language and have fun d...
Mar 16, 2021•47 min
Atoms bouncing off one another in an infinite void, a world without interference from God, and a life of seeking pleasure above all else...sound familiar? That's the ancient philosophy of Epicureanism, and it dominates our lives today though we don't know it. In this episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan discusses, and criticizes, the teachings of Epicurus. -- "Young Heretics" is now on Locals! You can become a Young Heretics VIP by visiting https://youngheretics.com/locals and subscribing...
Mar 09, 2021•46 min
Philosophy isn't an abstract academic subject: it's a way of life. After lots of requests, Spencer Klavan sits down in this episode of "Young Heretics" to talk through the Hellenistic philosophical schools of ancient Athens, starting with Stoicism—its roots in Greece, its encounter with Christianity, and what it has to say for us today. -- "Young Heretics" is now on Locals! You can become a Young Heretics VIP by visiting https://youngheretics.com/locals and subscribing for only $4.99 per month. ...
Mar 02, 2021•55 min
In this special episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan answers questions from listeners who have supported the show and want to dig deeper into some of the great ideas of the West. Plus, "Young Heretics" is now on Locals! You can become a Young Heretics VIP by visiting https://youngheretics.com/locals and subscribing for only $4.99 per month. -- Learn a language and have fun doing it. Meet the Ancient Language Institute and receive 15% off with the code HERETICS: https://ancientlanguage.com...
Feb 24, 2021•58 min
Why is Game of Thrones better than WAP? Or is it? This kind of question is always flying around on Twitter, especially among conservatives. But it has an ancient pedigree: from Plato's "Republic" and Aristotle's "Poetics," on through Philip Sidney and Camille Paglia, the critics and philosophers of the West have puzzled over what it means to enjoy depictions of weird or even ugly things. In this episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan digs into that history to help resolve our modern controv...
Feb 16, 2021•54 min
Where do we go from here? Home. In this episode of "Young Heretics," the series on America's and the world's present crisis draws to a close with a survey of localism, from G.K. Chesterton in Dublin to Wendell Berry in America. Spencer Klavan argues that building outward from our immediate surroundings is the key to healing our damaged country. -- Big Tech is cracking down on conservative voices, but you can protect your online privacy with ExpressVPN. Get 3 extra months free with a 12-month pla...
Feb 09, 2021•58 min
