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 beneath them. These poems were not written to be read silently, but were deeply connected to music, rhythm, and memory. By recovering this dimension, Professor D'Angour illuminates Horace not just as a literary figure, but as a poet working within a living tradition of song in which meaning is brought about through the interplay of sound, structure, and voice. 
 
Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode:
Horace's Odes

Homer's Iliad and Odyssey

Sappho

Alcaeus

Anacreon

Pindar

Catullus

Virgil

Aristotle

Plato

Epicurus

Augustus

Maecenas

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 in Dante Alighieri's  Divine Comedy. The resulting expanse is an account of literature as something spiritually operative. Dante's poem becomes, in Dreher's telling, a work not only to be interpreted but to be inhabited, as a means by which grace can possess the imagination and heal what argument alone cannot. 
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Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode:
Inferno

Purgatorio

Paradiso

Augustine's Confessions

Julian of Norwich

Benedict XVI

Thomas Aquinas

Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue

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 Jerusalem, from Plato to Paul, this exchange offers lofty reflections alongside practical insights for those seeking wisdom in an age that does not make it a priority. 
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Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode:
Athanasius's On the Incarnation

C.S. Lewis

Plato's Republic

Aristotle's De Anima and Nicomachean Ethics

Socrates

St. Paul

Augustine's Confessions

Disputation of the Holy Sacrament by Raphael

T.S. Eliot's The Four Quartets 

Dante

Aquinas

Shakespeare

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 

Owen Barfield

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 claims can be weighed without the need for more bloodshed. Vengeance and wrath are transmuted into law that enable the city to live with its past, rather than being ruled by it. Klavan reminds us that scapegoating increases when deliberation is foregone, leaving us prone to ritual violence.
Applications for Ralston College's MA in the Humanities are now open. Learn more and apply today at www.ralston.ac/apply
Subscribe for updates at: www.ralston.ac/subscribe
Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode:
Plato's Euthyphro

Homer's Iliad

Aeschylus' Oresteia

The Code of Hammurabi

Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Herodotus

Aristotle's Poetics

The Book of Exodus

Shakespeare's Hamlet

Abraham Lincoln

Ken Burns' The Civil War

Palace of Knossos

The Acropolis and Parthenon of Athens

The Theatre of Dionysus

Barbara Fields

Eddie Izzard

Neil Gaiman's the Sandman

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 talk concludes by asking what is preserved and what is lost when a society exchanges republican freedom for imperial stability, and what the study of ancient leadership can still teach us about prudence, courage, and political responsibility today.
Applications for Ralston College's MA in the Humanities are now open. Learn more and apply today at www.ralston.ac/apply
Authors and Works Mentioned in this Episode:
Winston Churchill

William Shakespeare

Herod the Great

Homer

Virgil's Aeneid

Cicero

Mark Antony

Julius Caesar

Cleopatra