A self-professed nerd, the young Shadi Bartsch could be found awake late at night, reading Latin under the covers of her bed by flashlight. Now a professor of Classics at the University of Chicago, Dr. Bartsch is one of the best-known classicists in America and recently published her own translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. Widely regarded for her writing on Seneca, Lucan, and Persius, her next book focuses on Chinese interpretations of classic literature and their influence on political thought in China.
Shadi joined Tyler to discuss reading the classics as someone who is half-Persian, the difference between Homer and Virgil’s underworlds, the reasons so many women are redefining Virgil’s Aeneid, the best way to learn Latin, why you must be in a room with a native speaker to learn Mandarin, the question of Seneca’s hypocrisy, what it means to “wave the wand of Hermes”, why Lucan begins his epic The Civil War with “fake news”, the line from Henry Purcell’s aria that moves her to tears, her biggest takeaway from being the daughter of an accomplished UN economist, the ancient text she’s most hopeful that new technology will help us discover, the appeal of Strauss to some contemporary Chinese intellectuals, the reasons some consider the history of Athens a better allegory for America than that of Rome, the Thucydides Trap, the magical “presentness” of ancient history she’s found in Italy and Jerusalem, her forthcoming book Plato Goes to China, and more.
Follow us on Twitter and IG: @cowenconvos
Email: cowenconvos@mercatus.gmu.edu
Follow Shadi on Twitter
Follow Tyler on Twitter
Newsletter
Stanley McChrystal on the Military, Leadership, and Risk
Claudia Goldin on the Economics of Inequality
Amia Srinivasan on Utopian Feminism
David Cutler and Ed Glaeser on the Health and Wealth of Cities
Zeynep Tufekci on the Sociology of The Moment (Live)
Andrew Sullivan on Braving New Intellectual Journeys
Niall Ferguson on Why We Study History
Alexander the Grate on Life as an NFA
Richard Prum on Birds, Beauty, and Finding Your Own Way
Elijah Millgram on the Philosophical Life
David Deutsch on Multiple Worlds and Our Place in Them
Mark Carney on Central Banking and Shared Values
Pierpaolo Barbieri on Latin American FinTech
Daniel Carpenter on Smart Regulation
Dana Gioia on Becoming an Information Billionaire
Sarah Parcak on Archaeology from Space
John Cochrane on Economic Puzzles and Habits of Mind
Patricia Fara on Newton, Scientific Progress, and the Benefits of Unhistoric Acts
Brian Armstrong on the Crypto Economy
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Navigating Life After 40
Teaching Learning Leading K-12
Regenerative Skills
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
The Mel Robbins Podcast