Aug 30, 2024
Ifmmp! After months spent explaining how communicating works in different languages, I've gotten a question about now not communicating works, in any language. Turns out the answer will take us through ancient mysticism, the invention of computers, and the technology behind Bitcoin...all in 30 minutes! At the end of it...
Aug 27, 2024
If I were making a movie of the Iliad (a good one, not the Brad Pitt version of Troy), there's no question the trailer would have to include today's central scene: Hector and Andromache on the wall. This is the money shot that reveals the poem in its full greatness, honest and sober about the realities of war but...
Aug 24, 2024
"A word is a kind of painting of which the subject is a thought," wrote Nicolas Beauzée. Even an Enlightenement Frenchman is right twice a day. But where does that leave the written word--as a picture of a picture of a thought? Yes, I argue in this episode, and there's profundity in that which goes far beyond...
Aug 22, 2024
The cotton gin, the railroad, the printing press, the internet...there are plenty of candidates for the world's biggest tech revolution, but the biggest one might be one we've never even thought about before. And it has to do with how we process language, so naturally...I'm obsessed. PLUS: in a very...
Aug 20, 2024
And we're off to the races! The Iliad begins in earnest this week with the outbreak of the feud between Achilles and Agammemnon (#TeamAchilles). The drama that unfolds contains almost the entirety of all that was to come in Greek culture, from the terror of hubris to the magnificent achievement of city-states in...