Society, Technology and Philology with Dr Jason Pedicone: Thoughts on the Study of the Classical Humanities at the Dawn of the Digital Revolution
Release Date: 07/14/2025
Memory, Tradition, and the Unity of the Classical Mind: Dr Armand D’Angour on the Lyrical Poetry of Horace
The Ralston College Podcast
Dr Armand D’Angour turns our attention to the lyrical poetry of Horace, as it is placed within the Greek musical and poetic inheritance. With close readings of key odes, he shows us how Horace uses Greek lyric meters to achieve something both rhythmic and aural. Constructed around the themes of love, time, and political life, these poems can be seen as carefully constructed personnae, rather than autobiographical confession. This lyric poetry is shown to be a disciplined artform that carries inherited Greek forms into something distinctly Roman, without disturbing the musical intelligence...
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How Dante Can Save Your Life with Rod Dreher
The Ralston College Podcast
Great works of literature are often regarded with admiration and even intimidation for their role as the lofty subject of scholarly analysis, but these books were not written for the halls of the university alone. These works were composed to be used: insofar as they are able to challenge, guide, and transform the lives of those who come into their possession. The redemptive power of philosophy and literature is something we focus on often at the college, but few people today model this power as well as Rod Dreher. In this lecture, we find a potent example of the enduring vitality that exists...
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The Practice of Loving Wisdom | A Conversation with Spencer Klavan and Connor Livingston
The Ralston College Podcast
The great books have never been more accessible, yet we live in a moment increasingly drawn away from them. Their value and transformative power are immediate, but many lack the patience and desire to become truly acquainted with the great minds of antiquity. In this installment of the Career and Life Conversation series, Dr Spencer Klavan joins Ralston College Fellow Connor Livingston for a discussion on the utility of the classics, the confluence of religion and philosophy, and the role of embodiment in human reason, along with what this reveals about artificial intelligence. From Athens to...
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Blood Guilt and Ballot Boxes: The Oresteia in America | A Lecture by Spencer Klavan
The Ralston College Podcast
In his first lecture at Ralston College, Spencer Klavan offers a reading of Aeschylus’ Oresteia that seeks to make sense of the American political landscape. The Furies exemplify the impersonal arithmetic of blood and counter-blood, while the younger gods introduce personal claims, partiality, and the integrity of the individual. When these powers collide with a single human being, we enter into a tragic cycle that demands a payment which only deepens the debt. Resolution is brought about by Athena and the city that bears her name. Deliberative justice creates a forum in which opposing...
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Founding an Empire: Lessons from Augustus with Dr Barry Strauss
The Ralston College Podcast
In this lecture, historian Dr Barry Strauss examines Augustus as the architect of Rome’s imperial settlement, tracing how a young heir of extraordinary ambition transformed a republic struggling with civil war into an enduring political order. Tracing events from the turmoil following Julius Caesar’s assassination to the victory at Actium, the creation of the Pax Romana, and Augustus’s claim to rule as Rome’s “first citizen,” Strauss highlights how Augustus secured power by building trust, managing rivals, and reshaping public life through law, ritual, architecture, and art. The...
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Universities and the Future of Civilization: In Conversation with Iain McGilchrist
The Ralston College Podcast
Ralston College Dr President Stephen Blackwood speaks with newly appointed Chancellor Dr Iain McGilchrist about the fate of the universities and their role in the future of civilization. Reflecting on education, tradition, and the conditions necessary for genuine understanding, Dr McGilchrist shares his hope that we can restore places of truth, beauty, and wisdom despite the pressures of reductionism, instrumentality, and mechanistic thought. The conversation also traces prevailing academic narratives such as reduction and computation, which risk a flattening of human life into utility,...
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Taking Up Your Inheritance: A Philosophical Conversation Between Student and Teacher
The Ralston College Podcast
In this conversation, Jay Morris speaks with Dr James Bryson about the modern crisis of meaning and the difficulty of remaining spiritually oriented in a world shaped by reductionist accounts of mind, body, and nature. They reflect on the psychological and cultural repercussions of a scientific picture that brackets teleology and final causes, leaving many modern people disembodied, disenchanted, and uncertain about purpose. While acknowledging the genuine success of modern science, Dr Bryson argues that its limits must be faced honestly, especially where questions of meaning, value, and the...
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Drs Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying in Conversation with Ralston College’s Students
The Ralston College Podcast
In this wide-ranging conversation with students at Ralston College, evolutionary biologists Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying reflect on how to live well in the modern world, biologically, philosophically, and spiritually. Moving from Aristotle’s De Anima to the ethics of diet and the future of civilization, they explore the body not as an obstacle to overcome but as the very substrate through which consciousness takes form. From lineage and the long arc of life on Earth to nutrition, parenthood, grief, and the challenges of modern medicine, the discussion reveals an integrated vision of...
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The Sophia Lectures With Bret Weinstein - Lecture 4: The Relationship Between Culture and Genes
The Ralston College Podcast
In the fourth and final lecture of the 2025 Sophia Lecture series, Dr Bret Weinstein explores how humanity’s evolutionary inheritance, both genetic and cultural, has enabled us to navigate an extraordinary range of ecological and social niches. They show that while genes provide the foundational architecture of the mind, culture allows for rapid adaptation and the creation of new possibilities, from the construction of monumental cathedrals to the development of shared narratives that transmit knowledge across generations. Weinstein examines consciousness as a tool for novelty, emphasizing...
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The Sophia Lectures With Heather Heying - Lecture 3: The Usual Suspects
The Ralston College Podcast
In this third lecture, Dr Heather Heying turns to the conditions sufficient for the emergence of sentient consciousness, exploring how life evolves the capacity to perceive, learn, and create. Drawing on the examples of primates, corvids, dolphins, elephants, wolves, and others, she reveals how traits such as long lifespans, extended childhoods, sociality, and play recur in the rare instances where sentience has independently evolved. These convergences, she argues, point to universals in the nature of intelligence itself, from cooperative learning to creative problem-solving. Along the way,...
info_outlineRalston College presents a lecture by Dr Jason Pedicone, distinguished scholar and classicist and the co-founder and President of the Paideia Institute.
In this rich and compelling address, Dr Pedicone introduces the subject of philology - the study of language in its historical context - before embarking on a historical tour of philological interventions – times when people have decided to pay particularly close attention to language for societal, historical or technological reasons. Our tour takes us from the ancient Greek and Roman worlds of Plato and Pisistratus through Charlemagne, Valla, Erasmus, Nietzsche and up to the present day and the inexorable rise of AI.
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Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode:
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C.S Lewis
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Plato
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Suetonius
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Pisistratus
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Homer - The Iliad; The Odyssey
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Aristophanes of Byzantium
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Aristarchus of Samothrace
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Callimachus of Cyrene
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Quintus Ennius
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Livius Andronicus
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St. Boniface
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Jerome
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Charlemagne
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Alcuin of York
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Boniface
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Lorenzo Valla
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Desiderius Erasmus - Novum Instrumentum Omne
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Nietzsche - The Birth of Tragedy
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Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff - Philology of the Future
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Friedrich August Wolf - Prolegomena ad Homerum
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Derrida
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Plato - The Phaedrus
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Roland Barthes - The Death of the Author
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Wilhelm von Humboldt
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Heidegger - Being and Time
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Camus
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Shakespeare
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Marsilio Ficino
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Nick Bostrum - Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World
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Ray Kurzweil