A review of “Athens: The Dawn of Democracy”

“Sparta, Athens, Rome, and Carthage were all republics; two of them, Athens and Carthage, of the commercial kind. Yet were they as often engaged in wars, offensive and defensive, as the neighboring monarchies of the same times. Sparta was little better than a wellregulated camp; and Rome was never sated of carnage and conquest.”

– Alexander Hamilton, in the Federalist Papers (Federalist No. 6)

I have been learning the Ancient Greek language since 2013. The Athenian dialect of the language is the standard dialect taught in introductory classes about “Ancient Greek,” and the dialect that I’ve studied most. Thus, my education about Ancient Greece has been largely focused on Ancient Athens. But although I didn’t learn a lot of new content in this documentary, I enjoyed hearing what Bettany Hughes had to say about this familiar content. I am also a fan of her film about the Spartans, who are from a very different part of Ancient Greece. She portrays Athens more sympathetically than she does the Spartans, and this is as it should be. Nonetheless, this is a “warts and all” portrayal of Ancient Athens, which does not sugar-coat certain parts of the city’s legacy.

Athenian statesman Pericles

A review of PBS's “Influenza 1918” (American Experience)

“I had a little bird
Whose name was Enza,
I opened the door
and ‘in-flew-Enza.’ ”

– A popular ditty sung by children, at the time that the deadly epidemic was still going on

Two-thirds of a million Americans died from a deadly influenza strain called “Spanish flu” …

In the United States, more than two-thirds of a million Americans died in an influenza epidemic in 1918 – a particularly deadly strain of it that Americans call the “Spanish flu.” This is more American deaths than from all of the wars of the twentieth century combined. As a percentage of our population, we didn't lose as many people in World War One as many of the other nations did. For some other nations, World War One was actually more devastating than the flu epidemic. But the Spanish flu (not to be confused with common flu) was a worldwide epidemic, and killed comparable percentages of the population in many other nations. Nonetheless, this documentary focuses on the United States, as you might expect from a series calling itself “American Experience.” They show the full horrors of the Spanish flu epidemic, and bring them to life for a generation that have seldom heard of them.

A review of “The Plague” (History Channel)

The greatest outbreak of disease in recorded human history (the Black Death) …

It is still the greatest outbreak of disease in recorded human history. Some estimate that the plague killed 30 percent of the European population, but many others place it around 50 percent. To many Europeans of this time, the apocalyptic Plague seemed like “the end of the world,” and there may have been reason for them to see it this way. No war has ever killed as many people as the “Great Plague” did, and the death toll was easily numbered in the millions. Small wonder, then, that this massive outbreak of the fourteenth century is sometimes known simply as “the Plague,” as it is called in this documentary's title.

A review of Dan Snow’s “How the Celts Saved Britain” (BBC)

Every year on the 17th of March, Christians around the world celebrate “St. Patrick’s Day,” particularly if they are of Irish descent. The name of the holiday clearly indicates whom it is named after, but who is this “St. Patrick,” anyway? And why was he so important to the church, particularly in Ireland? A television program from the BBC tries to answer this.

Saint Patrick

Setting maximum healthcare prices doesn't really help consumers (price controls never do)

You're applying for a dream job at a particular organization. You “just know” that this occupation is right for you – or, at least, that it will lead you to a great career. But then you are told that the position doesn't actually pay you. You have to work for free if you work there, and you won't get compensated with anything else, either. Are you likely to stick around by working for this organization? If you're particularly altruistic, you might stick around just for the rewarding feeling of “helping people.” But most people would quickly abandon the job, and move to something that actually pays – particularly when they've got kids or other obligations to take care of.

Some thoughts about foreign language education

“What do you call someone who speaks three languages? (Trilingual.) What do you call someone who speaks two languages? (Bilingual.) What do you call someone who speaks one language? (American.)”

– An old joke, with an alternative punch line saying “British”

If we were to rank the world’s languages by the total number of speakers (native and non-native), the English language would be the most spoken language in the world. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage to native speakers of English. On the one hand, it makes it easier for us to find people that speak our language when we travel abroad, and this confers many advantages upon us when we travel. On the other hand, it means that we are seldom forced to learn a foreign language, the way that our counterparts elsewhere often seem to do (hence the joke above). Knowing a foreign language confers many benefits, and not just of the economic variety. Our brains benefit from this kind of education, and it allows us to see the world differently than monolinguals do. The benefits of knowing a foreign language are often advertised by professors of languages, at least when their languages are foreign to the places where they live and teach. But which languages should we teach in our school system? In my view, we should endeavor to teach something like all of them, whether they are ancient or modern or anything in between.

A review of David Grubin's “The Buddha: The Story of Siddhartha” (PBS)

For practicing Buddhists, Siddhartha Gautama was just the first Buddha …

At the time I write this, I have watched eight other films by David Grubin – and I am a fan of all of them. These include Marie Antoinette, Napoleon, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, LBJ, and RFK (a lot of initials there). Every film on this particular list is a biography, and David Grubin is very good at making them. But as you may have noticed, all of these other biographies are about Western individuals; and few of his films cover more Eastern topics. As far as I know, this was his first foray into Asian history; but seems to have been a good one despite this lack of prior experience with the region. It is a good introduction to understanding Buddhism, because it examines the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the man whom Buddhists revere as the first “Buddha.” In the Buddhist religion, any good person can become a “Buddha”; so he is only held to be the first of them. Nonetheless, there’s a reason that most people think of Siddhartha Gautama when they hear a phrase like “the Buddha.” He was the founder of the religion, and one of the world's great religious leaders.