More aphorisms and commentary from Balthasar Gracián, the 17th century Spanish Jesuit philosopher, offering counsel on surviving and thriving in the life of the court and society in general.

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Episode 78 - The Art of Worldly Wisdom - Part 2

Our fourth installment of 9-passage sections of the ancient Chinese sage's Classic of the Way and Its Excellence.

Episode 77 - Laotze - Dao De Jing - Passages 28-36

Thomas Henry Huxley, British biologist, educator, and famous as "Darwin's Bulldog," for championing the revolutionary naturalist's theory of evolution, offers his definition and explanation of a liberal education.

Episode 76 - What is Education?

A handful of maxims whose practice can bring quietude and tranquillity to life.

Episode 75 - Cultivating Peace

William Cullen Bryant's most famous poem, which translates from the Greek as "A View of Death," written when he was 17 years old.

Episode 74 - Thanatopsis - Bryant

Greek philosopher Pythagoras, while sojourning in India, encounters an herb, an oyster, and a mob of Hindus bent on burning two men at the stakes for the perceived heresies of questioning religious traditional wisdom.

Episode 73 - An Adventure in India - Voltaire

The story sung by Demodocus, singer of the court of Alcinous, King of the Phaeacians, hosts of Odysseus after his raft washes ashore on the island of Scherie. How Aphrodite, goddess of love, cheated on her husband, Hephaestus, the gods' smithy, with Ares, god of war.

Episode 72 - Aphrodite & Ares - Homer

Six sonnets on the theme of time by the Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon. Music: John Dowland "Flow My Tears," performed by guitarist Jon Sayles. http://www.jsayles.com/familypages/earlymusic.htm

Episode 71 - Time Sonnets II - Shakespeare

A short story from the French master of the form, Guy de Maupassant. A skilled carnival knife-thrower laments his misfortune to the sympathetic narrator of the tale.

Episode 70 - The Artist - Maupassant

An excerpt from the chapter, "Economy," in Walden by Henry David Thoreau, where the philosopher expounds his thoughts on simple accoutrements.

Episode 69 - On Clothing by Henry David Thoreau

The great American storyteller, author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, offers this brief, moralistic animal tale featuring the cleverness of the cat, the skepticism of the ass, and the curiosity of a host of other animals of the forest.

Episode 68 - A Fable by Mark Twain

This gentle ancient Greek philosopher lived a life of celibacy and temperance and taught that reason was to be used to enable people to judge with certainty what is to be chosen, and what to be avoided, to preserve themselves free from pain, and to secure health of body, and tranquillity of mind. 

Episode 67 - The Philosophy of Epicurus

From Whitman's entry on May 12. The narrative of a two-day battle, replete with details of the relentless fighting and gruesome carnage, the beauty of the cloudy sky revealing a silvery moon, and ending with a tribute to the thousands of unknown and unburied soldiers who perished in the United States Civil War.

Episode 66 - Specimen Days by Walt Whitman - an excerpt

A collection of quotations on mortality from various sources, famous and less known, classic and contemporary.

Episode 65 - A Sobering Meditation

A second set of five sonnets on Love by William Shakespeare, in celebration of Mother's Day. Music: A madrigal, Amor mi sprona (bassoon & choir) by Alfonso Ferrabosco, Sr. Performed by Robert Rønnes.

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