Plato

Discussions on the dialogues of Plato, who wrote nearly 2,400 years ago, hosted by amateur philosopher James Myers: four seasons of group discussions and a fifth with invited guests; 75 of 77 episodes are here, 132 hours.

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With Alexandra F. Morris

Alexandra F. Morris's Disability in Ptolemaic Egypt and the Hellenistic World (Routledge, 2024) uncovers overlooked evidence of dwarfism, blindness and other disabilities between 332 and 30 BCE.

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast · Philosophy texts read and chatted through; only the Greek texts are indexed

With Mark Lint, Philosophy Bro

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast · The Great Books read in seasons; the Homer, tragedy and Plato seasons are indexed

With Matthew Bianco

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With William H. F. Altman

William H. F. Altman's Ascent to the Beautiful (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020) completes a five-volume reading order of Plato's dialogues, defending Alcibiades Major against Schleiermacher's rejection of it.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Book II builds on Book I's link of virtue and happiness, asking how children are educated toward virtue and instilled with a sense of it, centring on judging the pleasure and pain that motivate behaviour.

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

With Adam Rose

Plato's Phaedrus has Socrates and his friend Phaedrus discuss Platonic love in the countryside, where Socrates critiques a speech by the orator Lysias claiming that love is harmful, then delivers a myth about the spiritual benefits of loving.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Book III opens with natural cataclysms and the emergence of early human communities, and turns to concord between the extremes of pain and pleasure and reason, education, proportion and a common sense of virtue among citizens.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Alec Bianco

Alec Bianco and the Athenian Stranger join Dcn. Harrison Garlick to introduce Plato's Phaedo, on the soul, with a deep dive into its opening allusion to the myth of Theseus.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Book IV has the Athenian, Clinias and Megillus discuss virtuous leadership for the new colony's establishment, where the Athenian holds God, defined in Book X as Reason and the universe's origin, to be the measure of all.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Plato's Pod begins its series on the Laws with Book X's cosmology, where the unnamed Athenian argues the immaterial soul is older than physical matter and therefore the primary cause of all motion.

Part of Gresham College Lectures · Public lectures from London's Gresham College; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Melissa Lane

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

The final meeting on the Laws covers Book XII's Nocturnal Council, guarding the virtue of Magnesia's citizens and leaders, and revisits Book X's claim that Reason sits at the very centre of the universe.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Wrongly convicted and facing execution in two days, Socrates tells Crito in Plato's dialogue that it is not right to take the laws into his own hands after benefiting from Athenian society for seventy years.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Brett Larson

Deacon Harrison Garlick, Dr. Frank Grabowski, Dr. Brett Larson, and Thomas Lackey draw on Plato's First Alcibiades and the Meno to discuss education and the teacher as a lover of the soul.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Book VI has the Athenian, Clinias and Megillus design a mixed democratic and monarchical government for Magnesia, with every citizen choosing the Guardians of the Laws through rigorous vetting while Crete oversees the new colony's founding.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Timaeus, from 48(a), introduces Necessity as a container for the limits of Becoming and the four elements of earth, fire, water and air, raising whether physical objects or intelligence came first in the universe.

Part of Professor Kozlowski Lectures

Professor Kozlowski opens History of Social Thought with Plato's Republic, examining the opening argument and preliminary answers to the question what is justice.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

In Book IX the Athenian, Clinias and Megillus address administering justice for evil acts in Crete's new colony, proposing reasoned preambles to laws and a doctor's treatment by education, with a death penalty warranted in certain cases.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast · The Great Books read in seasons; the Homer, tragedy and Plato seasons are indexed

With Justin Brophy

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Book I of the Laws argues for a constitution cultivating virtue in a new colony's citizens, unlike Crete's war-focussed constitution and the laws of Sparta, building on Book X's presentation of the universe's soul and Reason.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Alec Bianco

Ascend discusses First Alcibiades with Alec Bianco of the Circe Institute and the Athenian Stranger, calling it the best place to start with Plato.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Book VII of the Laws has the Athenian, Clinias and Megillus discuss raising Magnesia's children, from the harmony of laws with customs to how appreciating number and shape can reveal collective potential in the universe.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Justin Brophy

Deacon Harrison Garlick and Fr. Justin Brophy finish Plato's Apology, discussing Socrates' defense at his trial, his thoughts on death and virtue, and the influence of Saint Justin Martyr.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

The Timaeus, to 30(d), opens with Socrates unable to picture the idealized city of the Republic in motion before Plato turns to Atlantis and Timaeus's division of the universe into Being and Becoming.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Plato's Protagoras opens on whether virtue can be taught, with the sophist Protagoras selling his knowledge of it against Socrates's position that virtue cannot be taught, a battle of words that continues in a second part.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

The second half of Book I has the Athenian, Clinias and Megillus conclude that mastering pain and pleasure through self control and courage equips Magnesia's citizens both to govern and be governed.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

The second half of Book X sets out reason as the primary cause of the universe, and debates the death penalty for a citizen who, after every attempt at explanation and reconciliation, refuses to acknowledge reason as a god.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Plato's Critias tells of Atlantis, a wealthy society descended from the god Poseidon that lost its harmony to material wealth and brought upon itself the punishment of Zeus, disappearing in a great earthquake 9,000 years earlier.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Socrates holds virtue unteachable while Protagoras claims qualifications as its teacher, and the session asks whether virtue is a single entity or a range of connected attributes, and whether all knowledge is recollection as Socrates stated in the Meno.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Book XII of the Laws has the Athenian, Clinias and Megillus propose scrutineers who review but do not legislate, to oversee Magnesia's Guardians of the Laws and guard the colony against foreign influence.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Book XI shifts tone from Book X to the Athenian's thirty-three laws on trade and property in Magnesia, including a harsh penalty letting any passer-by over thirty beat a seller who quotes two prices in a day.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

The Timaeus passages from 53(a) to 72(d) cover sensory perception, triangles and the five Platonic solids that Plato revealed 2,400 years ago, with a question raised about a triangle at the sphere's very centre.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Speeches by Aristophanes, Agathon and Socrates relating Diotima's wisdom raise whether love is the mortal search for the universe's immortality, expressed between humans and by philosophers as lovers of wisdom.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Concluding the Protagoras, the sophist argues virtue is not a matter of knowledge while Socrates concludes it is, contradicting his own earlier view that virtue is unteachable in what Socrates calls a topsy-turvy result.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Concluding the Philebus, Socrates ranks measurement first among skills and distinguishes the philosopher's arithmetic from everyday mathematics, touching on the values of zero and one-half in the soul's recollection of unity.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

In Plato's Ion, Socrates tells the poet Homer's proponent Ion that since Homer represented an idea, Ion represents Homer's representation, comparing the divine power moving souls to a magnetic stone drawing iron rings.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Timaeus, from 30(d) to 47(e), explains a universe centred on the soul, distinguishing the timeless realm of Being from the physical realm of Becoming while participants compared today's atomic model to his spherical universe.

Part of Professor Kozlowski Lectures

Professor Kozlowski completes Plato's Republic, covering equality for women, communal child-rearing, the Allegory of the Cave, and how governments fall apart, and the Myth of Er.

Part of Professor Kozlowski Lectures

Professor Kozlowski follows Socrates through Plato's Republic as government grows from its earliest organization into a state of luxury, with a tangent on the Laws of Lycurgus that influenced Plato and Aristotle.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Plato's Greater Hippias contrasts the boastful sophist Hippias's claimed intelligence with the Cratylus's definition of wisdom as knowledge of motion, showing Hippias's illogical attempt to measure fine and foul in physical objects.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Pavlos Papadopoulos

Deacon Harrison Garlick and Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos discuss Plato's Crito, set in Socrates' prison cell, exploring his refusal to escape and his debt of gratitude to Athens.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Joey Spencer

Deacon Harrison Garlick, Dr. Frank Grabowski, Thomas Lackey, and Dr. Joey Spencer open Plato's Euthyphro, a dialogue on piety, discussing piety as a political problem.

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Plato's Sophist has a character called the Eleatic Stranger, not Socrates, use a method of division to work out what a sophist really is, after describing sophists as teachers of philosophy and rhetoric in Ancient Greece.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Three speeches on love among Plato's hungover Athenians at the symposium are examined for a common thread, asking whether love is a god that rules over humans or one that humans are free to fashion.

Part of Professor Kozlowski Lectures

Professor Kozlowski opens his encomium of Plato's Symposium with Greek cultural assumptions behind love, through the speeches of Phaedrus, Pausanias, Erixymachus and Aristophanes.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

In Book V the unnamed Athenian alone addresses Clinias and Megillus on the soul as master over the body, moderating pains and pleasures, and ends with the proposal that 5,040 is the ideal population of a community.

Part of Professor Kozlowski Lectures

Professor Kozlowski completes his encomium of Plato's Symposium, discussing how the love affair of Socrates and Alcibiades may have endangered Athenian civilization.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

With Michael Fitzpatrick

James Myers and Michael Fitzpatrick relate the Republic, the Laws, the Statesman and the Meno to leadership, education, wealth and social cohesion in a technologically powered world of 8 billion people, seeking a path to the common good.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Daniel Wagner

Deacon Harrison Garlick and Dr. Daniel Wagner discuss Plato's Meno, contrasting Meno's stagnant, power-seeking sophistry with the slave boy's rapid learning in the famous geometry demonstration.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Socrates and Protarchus search in the Philebus for the causes of the soul's pleasure, distinguishing memory experienced with the body from recollection experienced by the soul alone, and asking where reason finds the common element.

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With William H. F. Altman

William H. F. Altman's Plato the Teacher (Lexington, 2012) puts the Allegory of the Cave at the center of Plato's teaching order, alongside the examples of Socrates and Cicero.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Erik Rostad

Deacon Harrison Garlick, Erik Rostad, and Dr. Grabowski discuss Plato's Ion, subtitled On the Iliad, where a victorious rhapsode claims to speak more beautifully about Homer than any other person.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Joey Spencer

Deacon Harrison Garlick and Dr. Joey Spencer finish Plato's Euthyphro, exploring piety, morality, and the divine through the famous Euthyphro Dilemma.

Part of The Ancient Philosophy Podcast · A philosophy professor on ancient thought worldwide; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

A roundtable of a lawyer, two PhDs, and an independent scholar launches Ascend's study of Plato, asking who Plato was, why Christians should read Plato, and how Plato should be read.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

With Michael Fitzpatrick

Michael Fitzpatrick and the group conclude discussing Plato's Seventh Letter, where Plato never published his opinions so a soul's own thoughts must be born afresh, leaving the Meno's question of whether virtue can be taught unanswered.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Plato's Lesser Hippias has the title character unable to separate cause and effect in the motions of time, challenging Hippias and the reader to measure the difference between truth and lie, 2,400 years later.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Plato's Letters VI and VIII are read as a trilogy with Letter VII, where a good king is the servant of the laws and justice, and Letter VI calls on the Academy to befriend a king who respects reason.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

With Earl Fontainelle

Earl Fontainelle of the Secret History of Western Esotericism podcast joins Clif Mark to discuss whether Plato wrote esoterically, the secret meanings he may have been hiding, the divided line and the mysterious Plato math in the Republic.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Christopher Frey

Deacon Harrison Garlick and Dr. Christopher Frey conclude Plato's Phaedo, capturing Socrates' final hours and his arguments for the soul's immortality.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast · The Great Books read in seasons; the Homer, tragedy and Plato seasons are indexed

With Christopher Frey

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast · Philosophy texts read and chatted through; only the Greek texts are indexed

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With William H. F. Altman

William H. F. Altman's Ascent to the Good (Lexington, 2018) reads Plato's dialogues between Symposium and Republic as preparation for the Idea of the Good, unlike Aristotle's eudaemonism.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

With Michael Fitzpatrick

James Myers and Michael Fitzpatrick relate Alfred North Whitehead's perspectives to Plato's dialogues, including the Sophist, the Timaeus and the Philebus, and follow his path from ancient principles to the discoveries of Albert Einstein and Nils Bohr.

Part of Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean

With Kaitlyn Boulding

Conversations: Kaitlyn Boulding joins the show for more context on Plato's Timaeus, his story of Atlantis, and how Plato connects with and mimics Hesiod.

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

With Walter Bobbie, Bill Youmans

Broadway performers Walter Bobbie and Bill Youmans perform Plato's Crito, where Socrates awaits execution and decides against escaping the city, since that would be ungrateful to the city whose benefits he has enjoyed.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Gregory McBrayer

Deacon Harrison Garlick and Dr. Gregory McBrayer finish Plato's Gorgias, sections 481 to 527, with Socrates confronting Callicles, whom Greg calls the nastiest character in all of Plato.

Part of Professor Kozlowski Lectures

Professor Kozlowski discusses the opening of Plato's Symposium and its first two speeches, by Phaedrus and Pausanias, examining the context Plato gives each character.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

Host Lantern Jack and scholar Gina White move book by book through Plato's Republic, from the question of what justice is to the Myth of Er, in seventy-nine minutes.

Part of The Ancient Philosophy Podcast

Plato's famous lecture on the Good , with much of the discussion a reflection on Konrad Gaiser's 1980 article in Phronesis, 'Plato's Enigmatic Lecture on the Good.'

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

Plato's best known Seventh Letter recounts his experience teaching the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse and the philosophically minded Dion, with Plato succeeding with Dion and failing with Dionysius, a warning against rulers who do not practise philosophy.

Part of The Ancient Philosophy Podcast · A philosophy professor on ancient thought worldwide; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Cecilia Li

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

Seventy-five minutes on book one of the Republic, following Cephalus, Polemarchus and Thrasymachus as each tries to define justice, while Thrasymachus challenges Socrates and praises injustice.

Part of Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean

Conversations: Ben of Classical Studies Memes for Hellenistic Teens joins Liv to discuss how the Classical world lends itself to memes, plus Classics and much more.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified · Conversations that take in Greece and the wider ancient world

Part of Ad Navseam

Socrates' elenchus, the method of question and answer he uses to refute his interlocturos, gets tested against the tactics of the Sophists with help from scholar Gregory Vlastos.

Part of Ad Navseam

Socrates describes an inner daimon that only seeks to drive him away from something, a voice the guys compare to the apostle Paul's conscience in Romans, within Plato's Apology.

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Plato's Parmenides asks whether forms exist for every adjective, whether a form of a property itself has that property, how Forms connect to particulars, and how mortals can relate to Forms at all.

Part of Classical Stuff You Should Know · Three teachers on the classical world; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified · Conversations that take in Greece and the wider ancient world

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Alec Bianco

Alec Bianco and the Athenian Stranger join Dcn. Harrison Garlick to finish Plato's First Alcibiades, picking up the conversation at 124(b) on knowing thyself.

Part of Ad Navseam

The episode lays groundwork for Socrates' defence speech, asking how the reign of the 30 tyrants and his connections to great men like Pericles influenced it, and what the elenchus did for ethical teaching.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

University of Chicago philosopher Gabriel Richardson Lear explains book six's Theory of Forms and Plato's vision of the Good as the ultimate source of human knowledge.

Part of The Ancient Philosophy Podcast

Stylometry lets scholars date the composition of Plato's dialogues and the episode explains the basic stylometric methods and their application in that case.

Part of Classical Stuff You Should Know

Plato's Crito closes out the saga of Socrates's trial and death, with Socrates defending his choice to stay and drink the hemlock and not run away.

Part of New Books in Ancient History · Scholars on their new books, interviewed by a peer; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Jill Gordon

Part of Professor Kozlowski Lectures

Professor Kozlowski takes on the speech-myth of Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium and how it appeals to modern audiences, along with the speeches of Eryximachus and Agathon.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Clif Mark joins Graham Culbertson of the Everyday Anarchism podcast to discuss Athenian democracy, Plato, anarchism and how modern meritocratic education fails, in this crossover episode.

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With Malcolm Schofield

Malcolm Schofield's How Plato Writes (Cambridge UP, 2023) traces the allegory, myth and paradox that Plato deploys, drawing mainly on the Republic and the lesser-known Laws.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

With Ben Morison

Princeton philosopher Ben Morison unpacks the allegory of the cave from book seven of the Republic, which the episode introduces as one of the most famous passages in all of western philosophy.

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With Matthew Duncombe

Matthew Duncombe's Ancient Relativity (Oxford UP, 2020) reads Plato, Aristotle, the Skeptics and the Stoics as sharing one basic position he calls constitutive relativity.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Brett Larson

Deacon Harrison Garlick, Dr. Larson, and Dr. Grabowski discuss Plato's Lovers, a short and often overlooked dialogue that seeks a definition of philosophy.

Part of The Ancient Philosophy Podcast

With Justin Vlasits

Justin Vlasits joins to discuss Aristotle's criticisms of Plato's theory of Forms, opening with a brief summary of that theory for newcomers.

Part of Classical Stuff You Should Know

Aristotle and Plato took very different approaches to epistemology, and the episode discusses the implications of each.

Part of Classical Stuff You Should Know

In Book X of Plato's Republic, the discussion covers his attack on imitative poetry, his argument for the soul's immortality, and the strange myth of a man named Er.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

Works through book eight of Plato's Republic, where tyranny is presented as the inevitable next step in political evolution after democracy.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

Psychoanalyst and philosopher Jonathan Lear tests Plato's tripartite model of the soul from book four of the Republic against modern psychology.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

Opens an eleven-part series arguing the Republic was shaped by Plato's own experience of civil war and the collapse of Athenian democracy.

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Plato's Protagoras continues as Socrates argues that Protagoras does not really know what virtue is, since he treats courage and the other virtues as distinct, a claim Socrates refutes in several suspect ways.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

With Daniel Shields

Deacon Harrison Garlick and Dr. Daniel Shields discuss Plato's First Alcibiades and its use at Wyoming Catholic College, exploring self-knowledge and the importance of mentorship.

Part of Classical Stuff You Should Know

This penultimate chapter of Plato's Republic turns to tyranny, the government form the dialogue takes up here, given the nickname Tyrone by the hosts for the occasion.

Part of Classical Stuff You Should Know

Book V of Plato's Republic, an aside on something he glossed over earlier, holding women and children in common, and the hosts calling him the first true feminist before taking it back.

Part of Professor Kozlowski Lectures

Professor Kozlowski examines the final speech of Plato's Symposium, delivered by Alcibiades, discussing the many ways it might be read within Plato's understanding of love.

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With James Romm

James Romm's Plato and the Tyrant (W.W. Norton, 2025) follows Plato to tyrant-ruled Syracuse, first in 388 BCE while he was writing The Republic, and twice more over the years.

Part of Classical Stuff You Should Know

In Plato's dialogue Meno, Socrates and Meno try to work out whether virtue can be taught, and the discussion leaves the answer that it cannot be.

Part of Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

With Carol Atack

Carol Atack, fellow and Director of Studies in Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, discusses her biography Plato: A Civic Life, the second volume in Paul Cartledge's Great Lives of the Ancient World series.

Part of The Ancient Philosophy Podcast

Should Plato's characters be read as his own mouthpieces? Debra Nails' essay 'Mouthpiece Schmouthpiece,' from Who Speaks for Plato?, is where the episode focuses.

Part of Classical Stuff You Should Know · Three teachers on the classical world; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of The Ancient Philosophy Podcast

A recorded lecture lays out Plato's theory that the soul has parts, covering the principle of opposites, the definitions of justice and moderation, and the soul-state analogy.

Part of Classical Stuff You Should Know

While Socrates waits in line for his own trial, he meets Euthyphro, who plans to denounce his own father, and the two debate the definition of piety until Euthyphro excuses himself.

Part of Classical Stuff You Should Know

In Book VIII of Plato's Republic, Socrates traces how an Aristocracy degrades into weaker forms of government, with democracy ranked well below the top by his account.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Socrates, whom Clif Mark calls a philosopher of desire, tells Glaucon that the form of the good is essential to a good life, illustrated with the sun, line and cave in book 7 of Plato's Republic.

Part of The Ancients · History Hit's interview show; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With James Romm

Part of Young Heretics

The journey through Plato's Republic reaches the book on excellence, where Spencer Klavan discusses the cardinal virtues and how to cultivate them.

Part of Gresham College Lectures

With Edith Hall

Edith Hall focuses on Plato's masterpiece, the Republic, and on the dialogues set during the last days of Socrates, tracing the Socratic method of question-and-answer in the work of the philosopher who founded the Academy.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

Robin Waterfield, author of the first full English biography of Plato, traces his relationship to Socrates and Aristotle and the founding of the Academy.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified · Conversations that take in Greece and the wider ancient world

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

Rachel Barney, professor of classics and ancient philosophy at the University of Toronto, on book 2 of Plato's Republic: whether the fear of God is necessary for morality, and how to educate people to value and practice justice.

Part of In Our Time

Plato alone tells of the island of Atlantis, lost long before his time, across the Timaeus and the Critias, using the tale to test what an ideal republic might be and whether Athens could ever become one.

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast · Philosophy texts read and chatted through; only the Greek texts are indexed

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

Covers Glaucon's speech defending injustice and Adeimantus' case against pro-justice arguments before Socrates answers with the city-soul analogy in book two of the Republic.

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With Tae-Yeoun Keum

Tae-Yeoun Keum's Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought (Harvard UP, 2020) traces Plato's Myth of Metals and Myth of Er through Bacon, Leibniz and Cassirer.

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Plato's characters plan the laws for a new state called Magnesia, starting in Book 4, covering marriage rules, a nocturnal council, and the argument that everyone has to believe in gods.

Part of Ancient Greece: City and Society

With Rhiannon Evans

Rhiannon Evans explores Plato’s Symposium, a conversation among leading thinkers of late fifth century Athens on love and sexuality, where Greek men could pursue both hetero- and homosexual relationships.

Part of Ascend - The Great Books Podcast

Deacon Garlick and Dr. Grabowski discuss Plato's Hipparchus, a short, strange, somewhat forgotten dialogue whose question, what is the love of gain, becomes an examination of the democratic soul.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Socrates, suspected by Athenians of plotting to overthrow democracy, argues that thinking politics turns people into a paranoid mob, raising how the political mindset differs from the philosophical mindset and whether he is an enemy of the state.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

Princeton's Melissa Lane, author of The Birth of Politics, examines stasis, Greek for political polarization, its causes, and the solutions ancient thinkers offered to prevent it.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex, on Plato, Socrates and the legacy of Greek philosophy, and questions her book tackles: why Socrates was killed and why philosophy emerged in Greece.

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With Robin Waterfield

Robin Waterfield's Plato of Athens (Oxford UP, 2023) follows Plato from wartime Athens through the Academy he founded, to his failed attempt to write a constitution for Syracuse.

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Jonathan Lear's Open Minded essays connect Plato's Republic and Symposium to psychoanalysis, comparing Socrates' questioning to psychotherapy and asking whether Plato's analogy between mind and state in the Republic truly holds.

Part of In Our Time · The BBC seminar format; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

With Piero Boitani

Piero Boitani, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at the University of Rome, discusses his book Timaeus in Paradise, which names Dante's Paradiso and Raphael's School of Athens among the later sites of the Timaeus's reception and influence.

Part of Combat and Classics Podcast

Socrates and Alcibiades reappear at a party where several characters take turns praising Eros, often called in English the god of love, and the conversation moves from sexual desire to politics, law and philosophy.

Part of Ithaca Bound

With Tae-Yeoun Keum

Dr Tae-Yeoun Keum of the University of California, Santa Barbara, discusses the myths that show up in Plato's writings, among the variety of topics Plato wrote on.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Socrates analyzes the four kinds of regime in the Greek world and the personality each one makes, spirited and proud under Sparta, cheap under oligarchy, chilled out under democracy until a tyrant takes over, in book 8 of Plato's Republic.

Part of Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean

Deconstructing Atlantis begins with the story of Atlantis as it actually exists in Plato's Timaeus and Critias, the original source behind centuries of fascination.

Part of Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean

By popular demand, Liv reads Plato's Critias dialogue, rounding off the Atlantis series of episodes; further reading points to Benjamin Jowett's translation of Timaeus and Critias.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

Every ancient written trace of Atlantis comes from a single author, Plato, in his late dialogues Timaeus and Critias, sequels to the Republic.

Part of Combat and Classics Podcast · Seminars for military members on the great books; the Greek texts are indexed

Part of In Our Time

Writing around 380BC, Plato applied the question of whether it is always better to be just than unjust to both the individual and the city-state, imagining an ideal city that might be ruled by philosophers.

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Plato's Laws argues that a just state's laws should aim at making people virtuous, with each law preceded by a rational prelude persuading people to obey it.

Part of The Ancient Philosophy Podcast · A philosophy professor on ancient thought worldwide; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of Combat and Classics Podcast

Lise, Jeff and Brian open a conversation on Book I of Plato's Republic, first asking how to approach the Great Books when starting from scratch with no background or without a group.

Part of Podcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP)

Plato's Republic, widely regarded as his masterwork, complex and sly, is introduced here with a general look at the intricate structure of the text itself.

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With Marcus Gibson

Marcus Gibson discusses Books VIII and IX of Plato's Republic, asking whether America today counts as democratic or oligarchic and whether democracies drift toward tyranny.

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Plato's Cratylus continues on language, asking whether naming resembles a craft such as carpentry or sewing that can go wrong, and whether a name's letters can capture what it names, with Socrates offering examples.

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Plato's Parmenides, from around 350 BCE, asks whether properties are real in the world or only in the mind, and uses Parmenides talking to a young Socrates to raise objections that seem aimed at Plato's own theory.

Part of Podcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP) · The forgotten story of Western thought; only the ancient Greek episodes are indexed

With Peter Adamson

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Socrates defines justice in the city and the soul, explaining the structure of the human soul after building imaginary cities and armies with Glaucon and Adeimantus, in book 4 of Plato's Republic.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

Sheffield philosopher Angie Hobbs examines book three's question of who keeps Plato's ruling class of guardians from becoming an unaccountable regime themselves.

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Plato's Cratylus, a mid-period dialogue from around 388 BCE, has Socrates argue that words represent what they name, so etymology can teach philosophical truths, before he seemingly reverses his own position.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Socrates thinks poetry is like candy that can rot the soul, that humans have a poetic sweet tooth for certain stories, and that following a natural taste for art undermines reason, in Plato's Republic.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Glaucon and Socrates design an immersive education for the guardians and tell them a noble lie about being built underground by a god, in this reading of book 3 of Plato's Republic.

Part of HistoryExtra podcast · Conversations with historians, six a week; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Robin Waterfield

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Socrates explains his proposal for philosopher kings, smart, capable and virtuous rulers, and argues that democracies never produce them, in this reading of books 5 and 6 of Plato's Republic.

Part of In Our Time

Written in the 4th century BC, Plato's Symposium sets a dialogue at a dinner party where Socrates and the playwright Aristophanes are among the guests speaking of Eros, giving rise to the modern notion of Platonic love.

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With Marcus Gibson

Marcus Gibson discusses Plato's Symposium, asking why Socrates does not get drunk, whether love is finding your other half, and what links comedy and tragedy, love and immortality.

Part of Combat and Classics Podcast · Seminars for military members on the great books; the Greek texts are indexed

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Plato's Phaedo, a middle dialogue from 390 BCE, depicts the death of Socrates, asking whether philosophers should fear death, and builds arguments for the soul's immortality that expand the Meno's recollection theory into Plato's first full account of Forms.

Part of The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Plato's Timaeus, a late dialogue from around 360 BCE, has the character Timaeus give a likely story about the universe, physics, and biology, describing a Craftsman who built everything on the model of the Forms.

Part of The Ancient Philosophy Podcast · A philosophy professor on ancient thought worldwide; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of Podcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP)

Plato looked up with his intellect toward the world of eternal truths located above the earthly realm; the accounts he gives of the journey there are examined here.

Part of Podcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP)

With Maya Alapin

Maya Alapin discusses the mathematical structures within Plato's Republic, showing how harmonic theory, music, ratios and proportions intertwine with textual meaning in his masterwork.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast · Political philosophy explained book by book; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean

Deconstructing Atlantis asks why Plato's Timaeus and Critias resist being termed myths, and what history might lie behind Plato's Atlantis if it is not one.

Part of Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean

Socrates and Alcibiades, the Lovers You Never Knew You Needed: Plato's Symposium continues to hype up love between men as literally godlike, and Aristophanean soulmates.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

Angie Hobbs returns to unpack Plato's theory of mimesis from the second half of book three, that art and objects shape the health of the soul.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast · Political philosophy explained book by book; only the Greek episodes are indexed

Part of Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean

Plato's Atlantis, never intended to convey history, may still carry a Bronze Age natural disaster as inspiration, and the episode traces how Atlantis became a dangerous conspiracy.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

King's College London's MM McCabe, author of Plato's Individuals, discusses the philosophical dialogue as a literary form and as a practice between people, and what makes Plato's dialogues worth reading.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Socrates insults his jury, dares them to sentence him to death and mocks them when they do, in part 2 of Clif Mark's 4-part series on Plato's Apology.

Part of Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean

Plato Says Being Gay Is Absolutely Divine: Plato's Symposium hypes up love between men as literally godlike, and provides the wild idea of Aristophanean soulmates.

Part of Gresham College Lectures

With Melissa Lane

Melissa Lane revisits Plato's Republic and its Cave, with its passive citizens and demagogic political leaders, to ask whether it holds lessons for tackling climate change today.

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With Demetra Kasimis

Plato's Republic imagines building an ideal city from scratch almost 2,400 years ago, a hypothetical posed to understand justice, human behavior and what a more just society would take.

Part of Podcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP)

With Christopher Gill

Christopher Gill, Emeritus Professor of Ancient Thought at the University of Exeter, explores Atlantis, one of Plato's most puzzling creations.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Adeimantus and Socrates plan an education for the guardians, replacing the lies young Athenians learn from Homer and Hesiod with new lies that set a good example, covering parts of books 2 and 3 of Plato's Republic.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Clif Mark asks why a reasonable, well-intentioned Athenian might have voted to kill the 70-year-old Socrates, why politics might get interested in you, and what separates morality tales from philosophy tales.

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

With M.M. McCabe, Raphael Woolf

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Socrates finally answers Glaucon and Adeimantus's book 2 challenge, arguing the tyrant's life is desperate, paranoid and miserable, and the philosopher king 729 times happier, in book 9 of Plato's Republic.

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With Marcus Gibson

Marcus Gibson introduces Plato in preparation for a series on the dialogues, asking why Plato wrote dialogues at all and whether Plato counts as a friend to democracy.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

James Myers introduces season 3 and Plato's Cratylus by reviewing the Theory of Forms from the first two seasons, asking whether today's machine language technology can be distinguished from human words.

Part of Podcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP)

Plato's Timæus, the grandfather of western esotericism's single most influential dialogue, is introduced here as the work that set the scene for pretty much all subsequent esoteric thought.

Part of Podcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP)

Plato was long considered an esoteric author who hid true doctrines within his dialogues; the reasons for his reputation as esoteric author par excellence and modern debates on the esoteric question are examined.

Part of HistoryExtra podcast · Conversations with historians, six a week; only the Greek episodes are indexed

With Paul Cartledge

Part of Podcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP)

The Phædo depicts Socrates' final hours in philosophical discussion with his circle of friends, arguing that the soul is immortal and the philosopher should rejoice to die, for mysterious reasons.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Socrates faces the sophist Thrasymachus, who yells at him for playing dirty and argues that morality is a lie before Socrates wins the argument, covering the second half of book 1 of Plato's Republic.

Part of Ancient Greece Declassified

Classicist Zina Giannopoulou revisits Plato's Symposium, the dialogue that coined platonic love, to set the record straight about a misunderstood concept and Plato's radical theory of love.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Plato's Republic stages an all-night conversation between Socrates, Cephalus, Polemarchus and friends covering ethics, politics, education, epistemology and psychology, starting from the question what is justice, in book 1.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Clif Mark asks whether philosophy's reputation as an outrage to religion and a danger to morality explains why the Athenians killed Socrates, or whether calling philosophy dangerous just makes it sound sexier.

Part of The Ancient Philosophy Podcast

Plato's allegory of the cave, from the seventh book of the Republic, taken up by Doug Campbell, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Alma College.

Part of Podcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP) · The forgotten story of Western thought; only the ancient Greek episodes are indexed

Part of Podcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP)

Initiation, central to western esotericism, has origins in the mystery-cults of the Græco-Roman world; the route from ancient ritual practices to a transcendent kind of knowledge or wisdom runs via Plato.

Part of Podcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP) · The forgotten story of Western thought; only the ancient Greek episodes are indexed

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

The last bit of book 10 of Plato's Republic: what to know to choose a good reincarnation, and Socrates's story of a man who travelled to the afterlife and came back, showing how he thinks poetry should be written.

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Socrates proposes nationalizing the family into one giant clan, women taking jobs and a eugenics program disguised as a religious festival, testing how family loyalty, political unity and meritocracy fit together in book 5 of Plato's Republic.

Part of New Books in Ancient History

With Steven Smith

Plato's Apology is a first-person account of the 399 BC trial of Socrates, who believed in free-thought and whom the Athenian government decided was dangerous, written as a dialogue.

Part of Podcast episodes – The Secret History of Western Esotericism Podcast (SHWEP)

The greatest philosopher of the western world was a trickster; Plato, the father of western esotericism, is introduced here alongside his importance to the esoteric traditions.

Part of Plato's Pod: Dialogues on the works of Plato

James Myers examines eight of Plato's works on how word meanings shape constitutions and justice, from Socrates's execution over two words to a Supreme Court dispute now hanging on three words evolved since 1789.

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

With Fiona Leigh

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

With Frisbee Sheffield

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

With M.M. McCabe

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of The Ancient Philosophy Podcast

Plato's view that the whole world had a soul, and why he thought so, from Doug Campbell, an Assistant Professor of philosophy at Alma College.

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of Good in Theory: A Political Philosophy Podcast

Paul Sagar, a lecturer in political theory at King's College London who played Thrasymachus in book 1, tells Clif Mark why he doesn't actually enjoy reading Plato very much.

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps

Socratic virtue, ignorance and irony in the Platonic dialogues are examined here, including Socrates' claim that no one does wrong willingly.

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps · Peter Adamson on the whole history of philosophy; only the ancient Greek run is indexed

Part of The Ancient Philosophy Podcast

Was 'Plato' Plato's real name? Doug Campbell, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Alma College, takes the question on.

Part of The Ancient Philosophy Podcast

Plato's views of exercise in the Timaeus, taken up by Doug Campbell, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Alma College.

Part of Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! | Greek Mythology & the Ancient Mediterranean

Plato's Symposium supplies the origin of the concept of soulmates, translated here by Christopher Gill, a story the episode calls weird but ultimately lovely.