Books of Titans Podcast

In my recent article, I walked through the Path of Candide by Voltaire. This hilarious satire was written as a response to a particular idea about optimism put forward by Leibniz early in the 1700s. That idea met the 1755 Lisbon earthquake that shook Voltaire’s acceptance of the idea that this was the best of all possible worlds.

Voltaire’s response was to explore optimism through the use of satire. The result is a work considered to be one of the key texts of the enlightenment. In this episode, I consider the path to Candide, talk a bit about the story, and share the one thing that stuck out to me most about this short Great Book.

I set aside one post per month to highlight my reading life. This month I’m tying a podcast episode to my regular post. Books of Titans is a reading project aimed at seeking the ancient paths by reading The Great Books by 200 Authors chronologically over the next 40 years. Thank you for following my journey.

September 2026 Reading

Plato’s Republic

I spent the month of September reading Plato’s Republic. I started with the John M. Cooper Complete Works there on the left (translation by G.M.A. Grube with a revision by C.D.C. Reeve) and am currently working my way through Allan Bloom’s translation and essay on the right. My goal was to read it three times during September, but it’s a lot longer and harder than I anticipated.

I’m really glad that I read a number of Plato’s dialogues before reading The Republic. It gave me a good introduction before reading this much larger and more comprehensive dialogue. And in turn, it has helped me better understand his other dialogues that I have read. This is his greatest hits and I touches on a number of topics from his other dialogues but in a manner that is more concise and focused.

October 2026 Reading Plan

Plato • Voltaire • Lao Tzu

The next book for the Short Great Books Reading Group I lead is Voltaire’s Candide. I’ve never read it and don’t know what to expect, but I have a few days to read it before we meet on Monday.

After that, I’m back to Plato. I still need to read the interpretive essay in Allan Bloom’s Republic translation. I may then take a quick Plato break to read Lao Tzu, an author who lived nearly 200 years before Plato (and who I mistakenly skipped on my chronological read-through of the 200 authors on my Great Books list). I’ll mainly focus on Plato during October & November this year. In December, I’m going to be reading books about trees!

I may return to some other dialogues before beginning my 3rd reading of The Republic. Here are the dialogues I still have pending for Plato:

* Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Meno, Greater Hippias, Lesser Hippias, Menexenus, Clitophon, Timaeus, Critias, Minos, Laws, Epinomis, Letters, Definitions, On Justice, On Virtue, Demodocus, Sisyphus, Halcyon, Eryxias, Axiochus, Epigrams

Recently Acquired

September Book Purchases

My wife Stephanie (Check out her music here) and I travelled to Scotland during September and I visited some of my favorite bookstores. Here are the books I purchased for my library. Let me highlight a few of them:

Aeschylus Loeb II - I consider his Oresteia trilogy to be one of the most important works ever written. When I saw this edition at a pre-owned price, I jumped on it.

George MacDonald - A Short Life by Elizabeth Saintsbury - George MacDonald is my wife’s favorite author and we named one of our our daughters the same name as one of George’s daughters. There are some nice photos in that book.

Malcolm by George MacDonald - There is an incredible inscription in this copy of Malcolm that I purchased in Aberdeen. Check it out:

Bookish Adventures

When I hit the ground in Edinburgh, I make my way around my bookshop loop. Here’s a note I wrote about that beloved loop:

Here are some other bookshop and book-related photos from September:

A quick episode where I look at a question posed in Book 1 of Plato’s Republic - can those moving towards injustice accomplish their goal while being unjust to one another?

Ever go to someone’s house and wonder at how their library came about? What were the first books they purchased? How did that lead to other books? What are their favorites? Which ones would they grab in the event of a fire?

In this episode, I pull 7 books from my shelves and talk about what they meant to me, how I got them, and what I found inside (I use fun items for bookmarks). It’s a representative sample from my larger library.

I’m in the midst of my Plato Project, which is my attempt to read the complete works of Plato. I’m near the mid-way point, and while the reading is quite difficult, it’s been extremely rewarding. I’m dedicating the month of September to Plato’s Republic. One thing that has been interesting so far is to see references to topics from Plato’s other dialogues. It’s making me very glad that I did not start with The Republic but read some of his other dialogues first.

For instance, I keep seeing references to the definition of self-control, something the Charmides dialogue focuses on. Courage is also referenced quite a bit, something the Laches dialogue covers. These references in The Republic have been helpful in answering some of the questions I still had after reading those other dialogues.

In this episode of the podcast, I talk about a few of the connections between Plato’s Republic and Ion dialogues. In Ion, Plato has Socrates question a rhapsode named Ion about his expertise in performing the poetry of Homer. The Republic (written 5 years after Ion) helps answer some questions I had after reading Ion.

This is episode 300 of the podcast, and I can’t think of a more perfect topic to mark the milestone. One of my main goals with this reading project is to make connections across the books that I read, and here, I get to connect different dialogues by Plato and share how they inform one another.

If you’re interested in learning more about Ion, here’s a wonderful discussion I took part in with the brilliant minds over at Ascend - The Great Books Podcast:

Laches is another one of Plato’s Dialogues of Search. In this one, Plato is seeking a definition for the Greek word andreia (ἀνδρεία), which is typically translated as courage, fortitude, or manliness (manly virtue). Two seasoned Athenian generals (Nicias and Laches) discuss with Socrates in an attempt to arrive at a definition that covers all instances of this term.

In this episode, a provide a quick introduction to the dialogue, walk through the main ideas, and close with Socrates’ conclusion.

Translations Mentioned:

* Plato Meno and Other Dialogues / Robin Waterfield / Oxford World’s Classics

* Plato Complete Works / Rosamond Kent Sprague / Hackett

Charmides* is a dialogue of search and the search is for a definition of the Greek word sophrosyne. It’s a word that encompasses the spirit behind the famous sayings at Delphi of “Know Yourself” and “Nothing in Excess.” Translators have rendered it self-control, moderation, prudence, temperance, and discretion.

In this episode, I walk through the attempts by Socrates, Charmides, and Critias to define sophrosyne. It’s a fascinating journey that may not leave us with an exact definition, but that does get us thinking about knowledge and action.

*Quick, embarrassing note: I mistakenly refer to Charmides as Charmenides throughout the podcast episode. I didn’t realize the error until I had finished recording. Mea culpa. I got Parmenides and Charmides mixed up. Any time I say Charmenides, just think Charmides in your head.

Translations Mentioned:

* Plato Meno and Other Dialogues / Robin Waterfield / Oxford World’s Classics

* Plato Complete Works / Rosamond Kent Sprague / Hackett

* Plato Collected Dialogues / Benjamin Jowett / Princeton University Press

I’m closing out my biweekly summer podcast schedule with an episode about my top 5 favorite Loeb Classical Library books. Do you need these if you don’t read Greek or Latin? Why collect these when there are plenty of alternatives? I address these questions and show you my top 5 (with 2 bonus books at the end) in this video podcast recorded in the Books of Titans Library.

The famous inscription a the Temple of Apollo at Delphi encourages the visitor to “Know Thyself.” Plato’s dialogue Alcibiades is an exploration of that inscription. What does it mean to know oneself? And how does Socrates lead the powerful Alcibiades in this dialogue?

In this episode, I cover Alcibiades and Second Alcibiades by Plato, two relatively short dialogues with wonderful thoughts about virtue, the soul, and the good.

What is love and what does it have to do with the immortal soul? These are some of the questions addressed in the wide-ranging Phaedrus dialogue by Plato. Similar to other Plato dialogues, this one contains a myth. Perhaps you have heard of the Tripartite Soul. This is one of the dialogues that introduces that idea and it is found within the Myth of the Winged Soul.

In this episode, I talk about how Plato used this myth to talk about ideas like love, desire, immortality, education, and the soul. I then tie that together with a major theme of this reading project, direction. I close out with a, how should I say this, interesting 😬 definition of love from Plato.

Show Notes: