Reading for the Renaissance Man continues with its first substantive episode – an introduction to Thucydides and his famous history. If you prefer audio, you can listen here: https://www.podbean.com/player-v2/?i=qtf4y-1b44cc9-pb&from=pb6admin&share=1&download=1&rtl=0&fonts=Arial&skin=1&font-color=auto&logo_link=episode_page&btn-skin=7 And it should now be available on most major podcast platforms (for example here it is on Apple Podcasts). Or video can be found here: I welcome any and all feedback (and yes, as a couple of you have pointed out, the fan will be off for the next episode!), and if you enjoy, subscribing on your preferred platform not only will let me know how much traction the show’s getting, but also will help other folks to discover it.
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Exciting news! I’ve launched a companion podcast to this blog, Reading for the Renaissance Man. On it, I’ll be reading old books from the Western Canon with some amount of commentary. The idea is to help all of us who have been “meaning to get to” certain classic works for years, but have somehow not found the time. We’ll be starting with Thucydides’s The Peloponnesian War in our soon-to-be-posted first real episode. What’s the connection with the goal of this blog? Well, the Renaissance Man was a broadly read humanist, and part of his ability to persuade was based on being familiar with a wide range of people, times, and…
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Clear Writing is Clear Thinking Though “rhetoric” began as the art of speaking to groups out loud, it has long also included writing as well. Though many of the principles we’ve discussed with speaking apply to writing, there are also some differences worth highlighting. For one, writing tends to handle detailed, complex material better than speaking. For another, writing tends to allow for greater polish (and for that polish to be appreciated). Also, with writing, you can’t “read” your audience live and make adjustments – once you put it out there, that’s what folks will read, for better or worse. Below, we’ll cover some ways to cope with and take…