To help keep myself focused, basically by staying tethered to the computer when I’m working, I’ve been listening to podcasts. \u00a0First of all, it’s more comfortable than getting up and going outside. \u00a0With the humidity running well over 100%, I feel as though I’m being waterboarded much of the time. \u00a0Sure, I grew up outside of DC, but I’m acclimated to Denver now. \u00a0Really, you want the Gitmo guys to break? \u00a0Send ’em here and just have ’em walk around for a few minutes. \u00a0They’ll be singing like Maria Callas.<\/p>\n

Which podcasts? \u00a0There’s a wealth of stuff. \u00a0Radio Lab. \u00a0This American Life. \u00a0The Stanford Business School Entrepreneurship Corner. \u00a0The Hoover Institution has a bunch of stuff. \u00a0The nice thing is that when miss some of the lecture because I’m concentrating too much on work, I can back the thing up and hear it again. \u00a0Try that with an actual professor.<\/p>\n

A friend of mine turned me on to the Open Yale Courses, though, and for the last week, I’ve been sitting in the classroom of Donald Kagan’s survey course on ancient Greek civiliation<\/a>. \u00a0Kagan’s a real researcher, has written a great history of the Peloponnesian War.<\/p>\n

He’s can also be hugely entertaining. \u00a0He understands that teaching stadiums-full of undergraduates a survey course is almost as much showmanship as scholarship. \u00a0His description of hoplite warfare<\/a> is worth the price of admission (although not necessarily the price of tuition, which I guess is why it’s online). \u00a0Fortunately, this doesn’t translate into misguded attempts to be “cool.” \u00a0Kagan’s disdain for the state of core liberal arts education is, I think, quite real. \u00a0I have no idea what his politics are, but he wears his small-c academic conservatism well.<\/p>\n

On second thought, I do know, at least a little, what his politics are. \u00a0He can’t be a raging leftist because he’s a fan of Victor Davis Hanson’s scholarship. \u00a0He credits Hanson, as a farmer, with the key insight into how the Greeks developed oligarchic and then democratic institutions, that being the invention of the family farm. \u00a0The connection to the land gave the farmers \u00a0a literal stake in the society, and a desire to participate in the polis<\/em>‘s decision-making. \u00a0The steady virtues required to be a farmer also benefitted one who wanted to be a citizen, rather than a subject. \u00a0It’s a story that’s also part of America, something we still consider to be true today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Productive work itself is virtuous. \u00a0But it’s nice to be able to combine it with learning something about how the world.
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