Your hosts had very different takes on the topic of this episode: the Doctrine of the Mean (中庸). An idea first put forward by the writer Zisi (孔伋), at its most basic it means that people shouldn’t deviate from the middle road in life (中不偏), which is unchanging (庸不易). In other words, don’t live life to extremes.

For the first time in this series on the Three Character Classic (三字经), we’ve come across two different versions of a verse. In the alternative text the author’s nickname (孔伋) is replaced with the phrase “from his pen” (子思笔). (If that doesn't make sense, don’t worry, we talk about it in the show.)

The三字经 was written by the Song Dynasty (宋朝) scholar Wang Yinglin (王应麟). This 1,134 character text was one of the first textbooks used by students, and provided lessons on education, morality and ethics, science, literature, and history.