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This is a summary of what I think is the best approach to learning a language, based on my experience mastering a foreign language as an adult. 

Here you can download the software that I mentioned, Anki: https://apps.ankiweb.net/

Here is a page of links to word-frequency lists for German; similar lists can be found online for many other languages: 

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists/German

The cover art is from the painting "Before the Audience," which Jean-Leon Gerome completed in 1881. 

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In this episode of Canonball we discuss "The Life Of Saint Louis," which Jean de Joinville completed in 1309. 

The cover art for this episode is a painting titled Louis IX that Émile Signol completed in 1844.

The other painting I mentioned is Saint Louis Mediating Between the King of England and His Barons which Georges Rouget completed in 1820 and can be found here. 

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In this episode of Canonball we discuss the fragments of Heraclitus, who lived in the sixth and fifth centuries BC. 

The cover art for this episode is The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, which JMW Turner completed in 1834 or 1835. 

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In this video, Evan and I discuss "The Libation Bearers," which is the second play in the Aeschylus' trilogy Oresteia.

The cover art for this episode is from Orestes Pursued by the Furies, which William-Adolphe Bouguereau completed in 1862.

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In this episode of Canonball we discuss "The Civilization Of The Renaissance In Italy," which was written by Jacob Burckhardt and published in 1860. 

Get a copy of my edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at my website: 

VollrathPublishing.com

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The data below are in the format indicated in the first line: The first word given is the term that I searched on opensyllabus.org, followed by its frequency in 2008, its frequency in 2024, and the percent change. So, for example, the first term in the list, that of the name of Diderot, declined by 90 percent in 16 years. 

Term  2008 frequency 2024 frequency percent change
Diderot 0.027714 0.0025916 -90.64876957
Thucydides 0.10137 0.011824 -88.33579955
Petrarch 0.060532 0.0074508 -87.69113857
Aristophanes 0.090434 0.0115 -87.2835438
Tacitus 0.039382 0.0053452 -86.42730181
Boccaccio 0.040112 0.0055071 -86.27069206
Erasmus 0.026255 0.0037254 -85.81070272
Francis Bacon 0.033548 0.0051832 -84.54989865
Virgil 0.061991 0.010042 -83.80087432
Victor Hugo 0.009481 0.0016197 -82.91635903
Xenophon 0.035736 0.006317 -82.32314753
Montesquieu 0.040841 0.0076128 -81.35990794
Dostoevsky 0.060532 0.011338 -81.26941122
Voltaire 0.080953 0.015388 -80.99143948
John Dryden 0.012041 0.0023654 -80.3554522
Horace 0.078036 0.015388 -80.280896
Hesiod 0.040112 0.0084227 -79.00204428
Thomas Hobbes 0.080953 0.017331 -78.59128136
Aeschylus 0.058344 0.012634 -78.34567393
Tolstoy 0.080953 0.018303 -77.39058466
Homer 0.18451 0.042923 -76.73676224
Seneca 0.081682 0.019923 -75.60906932
Dante 0.11231 0.028669 -74.47333274
Moliere 0.043758 0.011338 -74.08930938
Euripedes 0.081682 0.021381 -73.82409833
Samuel Johnson 0.032089 0.0084227 -73.75206457
Goethe 0.030631 0.0082607 -73.03156933
Ovid 0.061991 0.017169 -72.30404414
Sophocles 0.14149 0.041303 -70.80853771
Edmund Burke 0.034277 0.010366 -69.75814686
Friedrich Nietzsche 0.18816 0.057339 -69.52646684
John Locke 0.074593 0.022806 -69.42608556
Edmund Spenser 0.010279 0.0031979 -68.88899698
Chaucer 0.11742 0.037092 -68.41083291
David Hume 0.057615 0.018303 -68.23223119
Cicero 0.064179 0.020409 -68.19987846
Cervantes 0.053239 0.017007 -68.05537294
Christopher Marlowe 0.014684 0.0050494 -65.61291201
Herodotus 0.043029 0.014902 -65.36754282
John Milton 0.044488 0.01555 -65.04675418
Charles Dickens 0.032089 0.011662 -63.65732806
Kant 0.30631 0.11176 -63.51408704
Jonathan Swift 0.048134 0.018465 -61.63834296
Plato 0.46019 0.17671 -61.60064321
Shakespeare 0.48863 0.19226 -60.65325502
Marcus Aurelius 0.013127 0.0055071 -58.04753561
Aristotle 0.39966 0.17655 -55.82495121
Schiller 0.098456 0.046163 -53.11306573
Descartes 0.199983 0.096699 -51.64638994
John Donne 0.026431 0.012876 -51.28447656
John Keats 0.037195 0.018465 -50.35623068
Mary Shelley 0.039382 0.019761 -49.82225382
Epictetus 0.024067 0.017817 -25.9691694
Edgar Allan Poe 0.02555 0.028276 10.66927593
Average decline: -69.83809964

The cover art for this episode is Imaginary View of the Grand Galarie in the Louvre in Ruins, which Hubert Robert completed in 1796.

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In this episode of Canonball we discuss "The Revolt Of The Masses" which Jose Ortega y Gasset first published as a series of essays in 1929 before it was published as a book in 1930. 

Get a copy of my edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at my website: 

VollrathPublishing.com

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In this episode of Canonball we discuss the play "Agamemnon," by Aeschylus, which is the first part of Aeschylus' only extant trilogy "Oresteia," which premiered in 458 BC.

I was very pleased to have my good friend Evan join me for this discussion. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. 

The cover art for this episode is from the painting Clytemnestra Hesitating Before Striking Agamemnon, which French painter Pierre-Narcisse Guerin completed in 1817. 

Get a copy of my edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at my website: 

VollrathPublishing.com

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In this episode of Canonball we discuss "The Protestant Ethic And The Spirit Of Capitalism," which was written by Max Weber and published in 1904.

Get a copy of my edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at my website: 

VollrathPublishing.com

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This is a talk I gave at a bookstore in Western Maryland in October 2025 discussing the world in which Mary Shelley was living when she wrote Frankenstein. 

Pick up my edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at my website: https://www.vollrathpublishing.com

At 3:36 I reversed the names of the Islands of St. Helena and Elba; Napoleon was of course first imprisoned on Elba, then St. Helena.

00:00 Intro

00:40 The French Revolution, The Napoleonic Wars, And Mary's Parents

04:51 The Industrial Revolution And Science Fiction

11:49 Mary's Influences And Education

14:50 Mary's Elopement With Percy 

17:15 The Mt. Tambora Eruption

19:28 Bringing It All Together

20:50 Reading German Ghost Stories In A Mansion Overlooking Lake Geneva

22:36 Did Mary Really Write A Short Story At The Villa Diodati?

25:37 Artificial Intelligence And Creating Consciousness – The Relevance Of Frankenstein Today

26:57 Closing