On today’s show, Calvin and Alex sit down with Dr. Robin Reames - Associate Professor of English at the University of Chicago - to discuss her new book The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself: The Power of Rhetoric in Polarized Times. 

In this book, Robin synthesizes rhetorical theories and concepts from Greek antiquity to the 20th century to deliver some of the most practical lessons that rhetorical knowledge can offer. In our conversation, we discuss what it means to be a rhetorical thinker, some of the key characters from ancient Greek rhetorical history who hold important lessons for our current era, and illustrate some examples of how thinking like a rhetorician can help us reason more critically in our day-to-day lives. We conclude with a meditation on how rhetorical knowledge can help us better understand disagreements - from those in our interpersonal relationships to the larger divides that seem to define and constrict our current political reality.

Robin Reames’s The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself is available now from Basic Books

Listen to our episode on Stasis Theory here

An accessible transcript of this episode can be found here