I have decided to read through the complete works of Plato. Euthyphro is my first dialogue in this Plato Project. I ended up reading it 4 times within 4 different translations. In this episode, I give a brief overview of the dialogue, talk about piety and if/when this word shows up in Homer, the Greek Tragedies, and elsewhere, and cover each of the answers and responses between Euthyphro and Socrates.

Socrates has asked Euthyphro if piety and impiety take on an essential form. Poor Euthyphro thinks he is wise by giving particular example after particular example, but Socrates is after something deeper. Will we get to a form of piety and impiety that can be referenced in all circumstances? The stakes are high. Socrates has just been charged with impiety in corrupting the youth, creating new gods, and forsaking the old gods. If he can’t answer this charge, he’s in trouble. He’s hoping Euthyphro can give him a piety form. Or is Socrates just prodding Euthyphro to see if he knows what he is taking about?

Here are the four versions I read:

* Complete Works - edited by John M. Cooper - translated by G.M.A. Grube

* Penguin Classics The Last Days of Socrates - translated by Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant (intro)

* Loeb Classical Library - translated by Harold North Fowler

* Collected Dialogues - edited by Edith Hamilton & Huntington Cairns - translated by Lane Cooper

Do you find yourself struggling to remember what you read? This has been a continual difficulty for me and is a main reason that I started this reading project. I wanted to read more books, but more importantly, I wanted to experiment with different ways to help me remember what I read.

One of the most powerful ways I’ve found to remember what I read is to apply basic summary frameworks during and after the completion of each book. In this article, I’ll highlight the most powerful frameworks that you can write in the back of the book, in a journal, or in your notes app upon completing a book.

The best part about these ideas is that they take a short time to complete but can greatly enhance your reading memory and comprehension.

The One Sentence

Last week, I had breakfast with my friend DT Slouffman. He’s a contender for the most interesting man alive and one of his roles is teaching the art of storytelling at a college. In that course, he writes the following sentence on the board as a tool for students to apply to fiction:

________ wants ________ but ________ so ________ .

What I love about this simple sentence is that it requires you to identify the protagonist, his or her desire, the challenge, and the path towards growth, resolution, or fulfillment. Going backwards, it identifies the change required to overcome an obstacle by the main character. It’s an encapsulation of the hero’s journey and it forces you to consolidate the book down to one sentence. If you can then remember this one sentence that you crafted, chances are you’ll be able to recall a large portion of the book.

Here’s a One Sentence example I made from The Great Gatsby (yours may be quite different):

Jay Gatsby wants Daisy but she is married so chaos and death ensue.

I purposefully kept this one simple and short. I could elaborate on each fill-in part and you might choose to do so. The lack of a joyful resolution immediately identifies the work as a tragedy. By highlighting death, I immediately think of those situations in the book. I can picture Daisy and Jay as I did while reading the book. For properly recalling a book, sometimes you just need a simple hook that calls up other memories. This One Sentence framework is that hook.

The One Thing

A major focal point of this reading project is to attempt to remember just One Thing from each book that I read. It’s counterintuitive and may even sound wasteful, but I found that if I tried to remember many things from a book, I would forget them all, but if I just remembered One Thing, I could usually recall it, and it would in turn unlock other parts of the book.

This idea is easier to impose upon works of non-fiction, but I’ll provide ideas for fiction as well. Here are a few ways to remember One Thing in different types of books:

* For self-help books, instead of trying to remember One Thing, simply implement One Thing, immediately. If you are reading a book about personal finance, implement one idea from the book in relation to debt, budgets, or investments. If it’s a book about fasting, begin fasting. Running, apply one of the tips on your next run. You will always remember that book if you implement one idea into your daily routine.

* For biographies and works of history, try to remember one story from the book. For example, in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Einstein, there was a story about Einstein being invited to a women’s prayer group in the USA during WWII. They prayed together in a circle and when it came to Einstein, he took out his violin and prayed through his instrument without saying a word. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall. That story helps me recall why Einstein was in the USA at that point, what he was working on, and other aspects of his story.

* For works of fiction, write out the One Thing you can’t get out of your brain. Maybe it’s a theme you see across a variety of books. Perhaps the protagonist confronts a problem you’ve had in the past and your One Thing is how that person dealt with their situation.

In general, you want to highlight the One Thing that stood out to you the most about that book. If you can remember that, it will help you to remember other parts of the book as well.

Identifying Stakes

This is another tool that my friend DT teaches his children and students. The idea here is that most books will present things of value or desire that are put at risk. That creates a stake and that stake must be paid by the end of the book. The exercise here is to create a two column list in the back of the book, in your journal, or in a notes app and write the stake on the left and its resolution on the right. If a stake is introduced and not resolved, you have a sub-par book (or movie, or tv show, etc.).

Here are a few stakes from The Great Gatsby:

* Jay Gatsby builds a mansion across the lake from Daisy in an effort to impress her with his wealth. That can’t just remain neutral, either it will have an impact or not. The stake must be paid in one way or another.

* Jay tells Daisy’s husband Tom that she never loved him. That creates a stake that must be paid in one way or another by Daisy’s response.

* Daisy’s husband’s mistress is killed by Daisy and Gatsby in a car accident. That creates a stake that must be paid through the legal system or through personal revenge.

By highlighting these stakes and payments, you are generating your own framework for the book and are actively seeing each stake through to its conclusion. This will help you to remember key occurrences in the book. This tool can be applied to nearly all fiction and many works of non-fiction, including biographies and histories.

What are some tools you apply to the art of reading that help you remember what you read?

I’m currently making my way through The Immortal Books by 200 different authors. I expect the project to take 15 years. I’m currently in year 3 and Plato is author 18 out of 200. I had initially planned to read 9 of his works (Apology, The Republic, Laches, Symposium, Philebus, Crito, Phaedo, Theatetus, Meno), but when people on Twitter suggested I pick up this version of his complete works, I began to consider reading Plato’s entire corpus.

Why not? Plato has an outsize influence on what comes after him. His ideas are ingrained in our heads. We see some things through his eyes. I’m largely approaching Plato blindly. I read The Republic in 2017 and remember next to nothing. I’ve avoided philosophy out of a deep fear of not understanding it. I’d like to change that. I’d like to dig into Plato, get to know his writings, ponder his ideas, and explore his works.

I recorded this podcast episode as a time stamp of sorts. I want to see if there is something that happens to a person after they read Plato. Will there be a “before Plato Erik” and an “after Plato Erik?” We’ll see. I hope you follow along on this journey. I plan to cover most of Plato’s works on this podcast over the coming weeks and months. And I’ll see if I can finish this large tome by the end of 2025.

A life well-lived. Looking back, what would make you say that about your own life? What would constitute that well-lived life? Would it contain grand gestures seen by many or small, sacred acts seen by few?

The Last Sweet Mile is a long letter written by Allen Levi to his family that covers the last year of his brother Gary’s life. They had a special relationship. A relationship we all long for. They were remarkably close. Gary was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2011 and died an exact year later on July 22, 2012. Allen called that year with his brother the best year of his life.

Allen wrote this book before his latest novel, Theo of Golden. I have Theo on my mind, and so I naturally compared the two books despite Theo being a work of fiction and The Last Sweet Mile a work of non-fiction. I see a lot of Gary in the character of Theo. The sacredness of small things. The signposts of beauty. Sadness. Joy. Laughter.

When I finished reading Theo of Golden last December, I had a one word response–Stunning. I had that same one-word response after finishing The Last Sweet Mile. It’s heart-wrenching, it’s sad, but it’s beautiful, for it portrays a life well-lived.

This episode is for anyone who wants to tackle the Great Books independently—whether you’re years out of college or just looking for a self-guided approach. Not sure where to begin? In this episode, I share ideas on how to prepare, start, and continue on your very own Great Books journey.

I book the author events at Landmark Booksellers in Franklin, TN, and earlier this year, I saw that Dr. Mendelsohn was coming out with a brand new translation of The Odyssey for the University of Chicago Press. I reached out to Dr. Mendelsohn to see if he would be near Franklin any time soon, and to my delight, he was able to do an author event.

It was fascinating. I learned so much about The Odyssey and about his translation choices. It shed new light on the epic. You can watch the event here and here are some of my main takeaways.

The book I cover in this podcast episode is one that Dr. Mendelsohn wrote 8 years earlier in 2017. It’s account of an Odyssey cruise he had taken with his father, Jay Mendelsohn. His father decided to audit his son’s seminar course about The Odyssey and after that course, they took this cruise that stopped at all of the major locations in Homer’s epic.

The book is a fascinating look at Homer’s Odyssey, a relationship between a father and a son, and a dive into major themes through out the epic. I learned a ton. I share some of those things in this podcast episode.

I really enjoyed this book. It was not just an intellectual endeavor, it was a journey of the heart. The book is beautifully written and the format allowed for deep literary analysis, heartwarming father/son dynamics, and wonderful insight into the intangibles that make a marriage last forever.

This book is seared into my memory. I first read it in August of 2002 and just re-read it for the second time in my life. My memory of the work from my first reading was near exact, something that almost never happens to me. It struck such a cord in my 20s that I thought about it often over the subsequent 20+ years. It is one of the most important novels I have ever read.

Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to retain his youth in exchange for his soul. A painted portrait then takes on his “passions and his sins” while his body does not change. We witness him go from age 22 to 38 with no visible change in his physical appearance. This makes it difficult for people to believe the horrible rumors they year. Surely someone so good looking and youthful could not do such things.

Despite being written 130 years ago, this novel feels modern. Youth is still highly prized and now we use social media filters and botox to keep the facade alive. We are still really good at covering the degradation of our lives like Dorain covers and hides his portrait. It’s Adam & Eve all over again. An immediate desire to cover and hide when exposed by the Coldplay Cam.

This novel is a tragedy but does fate guide Dorian’s actions? Is he irreparably influenced by Lord Henry to where there’s no turning back? Or does Dorian have a choice in the matter? What if he did change course? Would the portrait change back to what it was? Or would it remain the same?

This is an endlessly fascinating novel. One with vivid pictures that have stuck with me for 23 years. It’s a novel I think about often. In this podcast episode, I talk about themes, questions, and my One Thing.

Ashurbanipal was king of Assyria from 669 to 631BC. He was a warrior poet, a scholar who carried a pen in his belt while decimating foes with cruel and unusual punishments. In a miraculous twist of history, the fire that destroyed his famous library is the very thing that ensured its survival. The fire solidified his 30,000+ clay tablets.

Those clay tablets, lost to history for 2,400+ years, now mostly reside in the British Museum, where Cuneiform scholars work their way through works of astrology, exorcism, medicine, entrail divination, lamentation, and literature. The most and best preserved copies of The Epic of Gilgamesh come from Ashurbanipal’s library.

This book looks at three main things: Cuneiform, Ashurbanipal, and the contents of Ashurbanipal’s Library. The author, Dr. Selena Wisnom, connects ideas from the surviving works to our own. We see how ideas that seem completely foreign to us are not that far removed from our experience. She shows how the Mesopotamians discovered many things long before others. In turn, these discoveries made our modern world. We’re continually learning more and more from what was discovered in Ashurbanipal’s Library.

In this podcast episode, I talk about the book, Cuneiform, Ashurbanipal, and the contents of his library.

I find it helpful to take a step back from day to day reading to consider overall themes that show up over spans of reading time. That’s what I do in this episode. I look at the first half of reading for 2025 and talk about the 19 books I’ve read so far. I then talk about my favorite books, things I enjoy about Greek Literature, and share the one idea so far this year that has had the biggest impact.

Last week, I discussed Anabasis by Xenophon, which covers the failed attempt of Cyrus the Younger to rule the Persian Empire with the help of 10,000+ Greek Mercenaries. The Education of Cyrus covers a different Cyrus, Cyrus the Great (600 - 530BC). This is the Cyrus in the Bible. The Cyrus of the British Museum’s Cyrus Cylinder. The Cyrus who conquered the Babylonians.

The Education of Cyrus differs from Xenophon’s Hellenika and Anabasis in that it is largely a fictionalized account of Cyrus’ life. It allows Xenophon to share his moral philosophy and teachings through a famous person. It’s exciting and informative but also quite weird in that Cyrus repeatedly prays and sacrifices to Zeus and Hera, something Cyrus would not have done. It’s a mix of fact and fiction.

Some have found it helpful to think of this book as a novel. Others as a moral treatise. It influenced Machiavelli’s The Prince and Thomas Jefferson was said to be fond of it. I felt like I was gaining secret knowledge in parts of it. Other parts moved slowly along before moving into the brilliant strategic move to take down the Babylonian empire.

In this episode, I provide an overview of the book, discuss the fact or fiction debate, highlight wise leadership by Cyrus, and share the one thing I can’t get out of my head.

Show Notes:

* Version of The Education of Cyrus that I read