ancientgreece

Our personal memories only extend back so far in life, and before that, there is a void. Why don’t we remember our early childhood and what does it say about human memory, childhood development and cultural ideas about infants? Robert and Joe explore in this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind… (originally published 04/04/2023)

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In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses the Hecatoncheires or hundred-handed warriors of Greek mythology… 

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It’s that time of year again. Join Robert and Joe as Stuff to Blow Your Mind descends into the Halloween season. In this episode, explore the historic and psychological origins of necromancy: the ancient practice by which shamans, wizards and sorcerers sought communication with the dead. 

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Can you see the light of the stars from the bottom of a well? Did an astrologer once fall into a well because he was staring up at the stars? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss a couple of well-and-cosmos-related tales from antiquity. (originally published 5/05/2022)

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The 1983 holiday film “A Christmas Story” warned us of the dangers associated with BB guns, bar soap and frozen flag poles – but it also introduced us to the Old Man’s prized leg lamp. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe dive into the deep, ancient and occult history of lamps and other objects shaped in the likeness of a human leg or foot. 

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In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert chats with Martin Wallen about his 2021 book “Squid,” which covers the history of humanity’s scientific, folkloric and literary interest in cephalopods – from Aristotle’s understanding of the creatures to their treatment in weird fiction of the 20th and 21st centuries.

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In a period of only about 100 years, Athens went from relative obscurity, to becoming an influential empire, to collapsing into ruin.

My guest today will guide us through the dramatic arc of this city-state and the larger-than-life characters that contributed to it. His name is David Stuttard, and he's a classicist and the author of Phoenix: A Father, a Son, and the Rise of Athens, and Nemesis: Alcibiades and the Fall of Athens.

We begin our conversation with the rise of Athens and why its aristocratic families decided to institute a radically democratic form of government. David then walks us through how the Persian invasion catapulted Athens to power in Greece. Along the way, David explains how a father and son named Miltiades and Cimon led Athens to power. We then shift our attention to the fall of Athens and how it was precipitated by the Peloppensian War with their one-time ally, Sparta. David introduces us to the made-for-Hollywood character that would play a pivotal role in Athens' fall — the handsome and charismatic aristocrat and serial traitor, Alcibiades. We end our conversation with the lessons we moderns can take from the rise and fall of Athens.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• AoM Podcast #461: The Spartan Regime
• AoM Podcast #710: The Spartans at Thermopylae
• Miltiades
• Battle of Marathon
• Cimon
• Alcibiades

Connect With David Studdard

• David's Website

Once more, it's time for a weekly dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...

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We all know snake-haired Medusa, the gorgon of Greek myth whose very gaze turns mortals and titans alike to stone. But where does this iconic monster come from and why has she lingered so very long in our art, minds and culture? In this Stuff to Blow Your Mind two-parter, Robert and Joe venture to the Gorgade isles in search of answers. (4/30/2020)

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Despite the fact that public speaking remains an important and relevant skill in our modern age -- you never know when you'll need to give a toast at a wedding, pitch an idea at work, or champion a proposal at a city council meeting -- most of us get very little instruction these days in how to do it effectively.

Fortunately, my guest says, we can look to the great orators of the past to get the public speaking education we never received. His name is John Hale, and he's professor of archeology as well the lecturer of The Great Courses course Art of Public Speaking: Lessons from the Greatest Speeches in History. Today on the show, John shares what we can learn about the physicality of public speaking from Demontheses of Athens, the importance of empathetic body language from Patrick Henry, the effective use of humor from Will Rogers, the power of three from the apostle Paul, and the potency of brevity and well-executed organization from Abraham Lincoln.

Get the show notes at aom.is/publicspeak.

From fictional tales of vampire thrust to to real-life medical research, the notion of synthetic blood brings with it a lot of possibilities. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe consider the strange history of purported blood substitutes and possible ramifications if scientists ever solve this riddle in the blood.

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Get to know everyone's favorite ancient bronze age robot.

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#355: Leadership and Public Service With Gov. Eric Greitens by The Art of Manliness

Ancient Greece and Rome have a heavy influence on the idea of manhood we promote on the Art of Manliness. In fact, this classical conception of manliness was how much of the West defined manhood up until the middle of the 20th century. If you were to ask a man living in 1920 what “manliness” meant, he’d probably give you roughly the same answer as a Greek or Roman man living 2,000 years ago.
My guest on the podcast today is a classical scholar who has spent time thinking and writing about Greek and Roman notions of manliness. His name is Ted Lendon. I had Ted on the podcast awhile back ago to discuss his book Soldiers and Ghosts (episode #231 if you want to check it out).
On today's show, Ted goes into detail about how the Greeks and the Romans defined manliness. We begin with the Greeks and how the Homeric epics, particularly The Iliad, served as their bible on how to be a man and how Achilles and Odysseus were held up as models of manhood. Ted then explains how the Athenian philosophers tried to tame Bronze Age manliness by making self-control an important element of being a man.
We then shift gears to the Romans and discuss how they borrowed elements of Greek manliness to shape their own culture of manhood, as well as how Roman ideas of manliness differed from those of the Greeks.
We end our conversation talking about why the virtue of self-control pops up in definitions of manliness not just in the West, but also Eastern cultures like Japan and China.

I’m a classics guy, so the ancient Greeks and Romans inform a lot of my ideas about what manliness means, particularly in regards to the way they equated manliness with living a life of virtue. One of the best books that I’ve come across on how the Greeks saw manliness as intertwined with virtue is by professor of philosophy Angela Hobbs. In Plato and the Hero: Courage, Manliness, and the Impersonal Good, Hobbs goes into detail clarifying Greek concepts related to manliness, including the wild, Homeric virtues of andreia, or courage, thumos, or spiritedness, and time, or honor. Today on the show, professor Hobbs and I discuss these ancient notions of masculinity in detail as well why the philosopher Plato felt uneasy about them. We then talk about how much of Plato’s philosophy was about tempering these virtues so that they can be harnessed for the greater good of society and how that’s influenced our notions of masculinity today.