Alex's Guide to a Dinner Toast; Platonic Living

And what's coming on the Cost of Glory

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Some Recent Appearances

I’ve been invited to a number of great podcast shows lately - new friends and old friends. Let me know if you know a show you think needs a good injection of Zeal. Here are some highlights:

1. Busy Dad Training. This is a channel run by my long time friend Max Edwards, a pro philosopher who’s got a great fitness regimen (and philosophy) for, well, guys like us. We talk Ancient Greek fitness principles.

2. ManTalks. I went on Connor Beaton’s show for a second time to talk about Juliu’s Caesar’s amazing personal qualities, and especially how Julius Caesar can make a REAL MAN out of you.

3. Fan of History. My second appearance! Host Bernie Maopolski and I talk the first half of Xenophon’s Anabasis and draw some leadership lessons therefrom

4. Hacking State. My friend Alex Murshak and I had a great convo about Greco-Futurism, a theme which I prophesy you will be hearing more about in the coming times:

Dinner Toast

I recently gave a speech at the opening dinner of NatalCon. This is a conference dedicated to the problem of declining birthrates in developed countries. It’s run by Kevin Dolan and my other friends at the Exit Group.

Here’s the speech:

We do a lot of toasts on our Cost of Glory retreats, so I thought I’d share a couple of principles I built this speech around that I think apply more broadly.

In classical rhetoric, a toast fits into the genre of “epideictic” [a.k.a. “demonstrative”] oratory.

1. Epideictic is about commemorating and celebrating the here and now. Try to give your take on who the audience is, what the location is, what the point of it all is, and why it’s all special and cool.

2. Epideictic elaborates and reinforces common values. Especially through compelling examples that illustrate virtues or blame vices. Herein, I tell e.g. the story of how Lycurgus of Sparta to his own disadvantage, saves his nephew from an abortion (illustrating how a great lawgiver looks after all the children of a nation).

3. Epideictic, in the Greek mind, is a descendent of festal poetry, such as epic and lyric. The main point is to entertain, especially through storytelling. You have more license here than in Judicial or Deliberative oratory. Some of the criticism I got for my speech seemed to come from people who would have preferred I make some concrete policy proposals or cite longitudinal studies or something. But I stand by my basic assessment of what genre was called for in the moment.

4. Establish ethos (character: i.e. that you are competent/trustworthy/well disposed) early on. This goes for every kind of speech. I think I could have done a better job here in the first minute or two, but I did at least make a conscious stab at it.

Speaking of Rhetoric, we still have a couple of slots open for our Cost of Glory retreat in Greece (October 5-12) open.

ALSO - we’re opening up a small number of slots for an online DEBATE CONTEST that we’re running through the Rostra, our nascent online training community for oratory in action. Let me know if you’re interested in hearing more. It should begin in June (and we’re hoping to do this more than once). Stay tuned, I’ll be sharing more with you all.

Platonic Living

A good friend of mine, Teodor Bille (who recently launched his own Substack) is launching a course on Quantum Platonism. You can think of this as “Platonism applied to life” seen through the lens of both physics and traditional meditation practices. Read the description.

I’m very excited about this and I’ve been urging him to do something like it for a while. Teo has studied & practiced yogic meditation intensely for a decade and is building bridges between living meditation practices and the authentic ancient metaphysical tradition (Plato, Plutarch, Plotinus, and more) which, as far as I can tell, is currently mostly extinct in our days.

It starts June 15th with 4 weekly live sessions. The fee is merely a voluntary donation. I’m planning to attend.

(I’m also planning on my wife having a baby more or less the very next day after the course begins, so we’ll see how it all goes).

Stay ancient,

Alex