Recently I was asked to review The Keys to Democracy: Sortition as a New model for Citizen Power for Polis journal. The book was written by the classical scholar Maurice Pope in the 1980s but has only recently been published by Maurice's son Hugh. I was especially interested in reviewing the book as it seemed that Maurice Pope had become interested in random selection in politics in exactly the same way I did: by learning about the classical Athenian democratic system while studying classics - even (as it happened) at the same boarding school in south-west England!

Maurice Pope died in 2019, but Hugh Pope (a distinguished writer and journalist in his own right) has taken up the mantle of reintroducing Athenian-style sortition to contemporary democracies. I spoke to Hugh about the boarding school to radical democracy pipeline, sortition vs. referenda, and whether participatory democracy takes up 'too many evenings.'

My review of Maurice Pope's book: https://www.academia.edu/127407924/Review_of_Pope_The_Keys_to_Democracy

My review of Sintomer and Lopez-Rabatel's volume on the history of sortition: https://www.academia.edu/86952726/Review_of_Lopez_Rabatel_and_Sintomer_Sortition_and_Democracy_History_Tools_Theories

Hugh's Substack 'For a New Democracy': https://hughpope.substack.com/

Peter Rhodes on Athenian democracy in the 4th century: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3297282

Jim Fishkin's 'deliberative polls': https://deliberation.stanford.edu/what-deliberative-pollingr

Walter Scheidel is Dickason Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University, and has long been at the forefront of applying social science methods to many of the big questions of ancient and modern history. We talked about the plagues of Egypt; economic inequality over the very long term; monogamy, polygamy, and the West; the fall of Rome and what difference it made; and whether we should be in favour of catastrophic civilizational collapse.

*Death on the Nile*: https://brill.com/display/title/7348

*The Great Leveler*: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/0691165025

*Escape from Rome*: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/0691172188

'A Peculiar Institution? Greco-Roman Monogamy in Global Context': https://www.academia.edu/3166619/A_peculiar_institution_Greco_Roman_monogamy_in_global_context

Piketty, *Capital in the 21st Century*: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/0674979850

Deayton, ' COVID-19 and Global Income Inequality ': https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34308354/

Morris, *Why the West Rules - For Now*: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/0312611692

Henrich, *The Weirdest People in the World*: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/0374173222

Holland, *Dominion*: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/1408706954

Arthur Pomeroy is Emeritus Professor of Classics at Victoria University of Wellington and a leading expert on Tacitus, Roman social history, and the ancient world on the modern screen. In this interview we explore the wild and wonderful world of modern movies about ancient Greece and Rome, enjoying encounters with musclemen, Joan Collins, albino warrior clones, and sword-fighting skeletons along the way.

Then It Was Destroyed by the Volcano: https://www.amazon.com/Then-Was-Destr...

The YouTube version of this interview features photos and clips from the films we discuss:

Ian Morris is the Jean and Rebecca Willard Professor of Classics and a Fellow of the Archaeology Center at Stanford University. We talked about the rise of the Greek city-state; East-West divergences, ancient and modern; and how to understand global history. Along the way we touch on aliens, the super-tall Chinese Muslim eunuch Admiral Zheng He, why burials are so interesting, the concept of Western Civilization, and how to get from Iron Maiden to Iron Age Greece.

Burial and Ancient Society: https://books.google.co.nz/books/abou...

Why the West Rules - For Now: https://www.amazon.com/Why-West-Rules... Geography is Destiny: https://www.bookdepository.com/Geogra...

Diamond - Guns, Germs and Steel: https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Ste... Scheidel, Escape from Rome: https://press.princeton.edu/books/har...

Caleb Ontiveros is the creator of the Stoa app, a platform for modern Stoic practice. We talked about modern Stoicism, Western Buddhism, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, mystical Christianity, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and neo-Epicureanism's apparent failure to launch.

Caleb also led a brief Stoicism-inspired 'View from above' meditation from 27:00

Stoa app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...

The Classical Futurist: https://classicalfuturist.substack.com

Epictetus, Enchiridion: http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epi...

Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus: http://classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/meno...

Diogenes of Oinoanda's Epicurean Inscription: ohttps://www.english.enoanda.cat/welco...

Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: https://www.amazon.com/Swerve-How-Wor...

CBT: https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/pa...

ACT: https://www.psychologytoday.com/nz/th...

The poems of Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912) are marked by themes of desire and disillusionment and are distinguished by a profound and erudite engagement with the classical past. Dr. Elena Borelli (King's College London) joined me to discuss Pascoli and his context, and also to read some excerpts of a new English version of Pascoli's Convivial Poems. https://www.amazon.com.au/Convivial-P...

Paul Cartledge is a professor emeritus at Cambridge. We talked about how weird Sparta really was; whether the Greeks really invented democracy; and what democracy means (and might mean) in modern times.

Paul's book Democracy: A Life - https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Life-Paul-Cartledge/dp/0190866276

Prof. Patrick Lee Miller teaches philosophy at Duquesne University. We talked about how texts are (and aren't) like drugs; what the best foundation for free speech is; and what Plato might have to offer modern liberalism. Some of Patrick's writings on Plato, the sophists, free speech, and liberalism:

https://quillette.com/2018/02/12/has-liberalism-failed/

https://quillette.com/2018/02/20/liberalism-can-succeed/

http://odessareview.com/freedom-of-speech/

https://culturico.com/2020/08/15/speech-truth-power/

A conversation with my Victoria colleague Xavier Marquez. We talk about Plato's Statesman and some of the issues it raises concerning the place of expertise in a flourishing society.

Interview with Prof. Ober on Athenian democracy; democracy and liberalism; and the prospects for liberal democracy.

Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens: https://press.princeton.edu/books/pap...

Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: https://www.amazon.com/Political-Diss...

Democracy and Knowledge: https://politicalscience.stanford.edu...

Demopolis: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/...

Stanford Civics Initiative: https://civics.stanford.edu

Heterodox Academy: https://heterodoxacademy.org/hxcommun...