403 episodes listed below
Epicurean philosophy, argued slowly and carefully.
Lucretius Today treats ancient philosophy as an argument still worth sorting out. Its episodes move through Lucretius, Cicero, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus with close attention to how claims about nature, knowledge, pleasure, pain, and virtue shape ordinary life.
PRESS PLAY
Lucretius Today is a dense, careful study of Epicurean philosophy conducted through ancient texts and the disputes surrounding them. Its center of gravity is Lucretius, but the run also spends sustained time with Cicero’s Academic Questions and Tusculan Disputations. The show is slow by design. It gives an argument room to breathe before judging it. Episodes often begin by locating the audience within a book, section, or previous discussion, then move into the philosophical problem at hand. Subjects include Plato’s ideal forms, Aristotle’s rejection of those forms, Theophrastus and Strato, Cicero’s account of virtue, and Epicurus’s different treatment of truth, sensation, pleasure, and pain. The show repeatedly contrasts Epicurean thinking with Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, and Democritean alternatives. These contrasts are not handled as trivia. They are treated as choices with consequences. If truth belongs only to ideal forms, atomic structures, universal essences, or sensory experience, then the shape of human judgment changes. If virtue is the sole ground of happiness, or pleasure and pain must be understood differently, then ethics changes too. The show’s recurring strength is that it keeps connecting technical ancient arguments to questions of responsibility, confidence, and daily decision-making. A discussion of infinite divisibility can become a way of asking whether abstract logic should override sense experience. A discussion of intelligent design can become a question about whether people must take charge of their own lives. A dispute over pain can become a test of what Epicurus actually meant by happiness under suffering. The tone is measured and argumentative rather than casual. It tolerates repetition because the material is difficult and because the same central claims return from several directions. Joshua appears in multiple excerpts, usually helping test, restate, or extend the main line of thought. Don is mentioned in connection with an appearance discussing Plutarch. The show best serves listeners who want philosophical patience, not quick survey-course summary. It is especially suited to people interested in Epicurus as a coherent alternative to better-known ancient schools. It asks for attention, but it pays that attention back with unusually explicit reasoning.
Made for: For listeners who want ancient philosophy treated as a serious guide to judgment, ethics, and reality. It suits patient readers, Epicurus students, and anyone willing to follow long arguments without needing quick conclusions.
What sets it apart: The show’s advantage is its sustained Epicurean point of view: rival schools are not merely summarized, but tested against sensation, pleasure, pain, nature, and happiness. It makes difficult textual disputes feel consequential without flattening them into slogans.
Lucretius Today is a podcast dedicated to learning Epicurean philosophy through study of the poet Lucretius, who lived in the age of Julius Caesar and wrote "On The Nature of Things," the only complete presentation of Epicurus' ideas left to us from the ancient world. We'll walk you line by line through the six books of Lucretius' poem, and we'll discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. In this podcast we won't be talking about modern political issues. How you apply Epicurus in your own life is entirely up to you. Over at the Epicureanfriends.com web forum, we apply this approach by following a set of ground rules we call "Not Neo-Epicurean, But Epicurean." Epicurean philosop…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Close textual study turns Epicurean disputes about reality, knowledge and emotion into practical questions about how to live.
Lucretius Today treats ancient philosophy as an argument still in progress. The speakers work closely through Epicurean texts and Cicero's Academic Questions, pausing over questions about the gods, sensation, knowledge, emotion and the structure of reality.
Achilles never catches the tortoise, and suddenly your everyday decisions need a cosmology.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Cicero's judgments frame a discussion of ideal forms, truth, virtue and happiness.
Aristotle's challenge to Plato's ideal forms gives the hosts a way into Cicero's Academic Questions and its arguments about truth. Cicero's judgment of Aristotle's successors soon comes into focus, especially his sharp criticism of Theophrastus for denying that happiness depends…
Episode 328 uses Cicero to test Epicurus against forms and atom-level truth, with water making emergence concrete.
Episode 328 frames a clean philosophical dispute through Cicero's Academic Questions: whether reality belongs at the atomic level, in ideal forms, or in the lived world of experienced things.
An Epicurean challenge to intelligent design becomes a practical argument for personal responsibility.
Lucretius Today frames section 7 of Cicero's Academic Questions as more than a dispute over whether the universe is intelligently ordered or explained through Epicurean nature.
Zeno's tortoise becomes a clear, patient test of how Epicureans think through nature and argument.
Lucretius Today makes Zeno's Achilles-and-tortoise problem feel less like a museum piece than a live challenge to common sense. The episode follows the shrinking gap in the race, showing how a tidy logical argument can make ordinary motion seem impossible, then connects that…
A measured look at Stoic emotional discipline, Epicurean ethics, and pleasure's place among the passions.
Lucretius Today follows a line from grief and Epicurean ethics into a busy dispute about strong emotion, with Cicero's criticism opening the way to Stoic categories.
A careful look at whether Epicurean gods are physical beings, mental constructs, or something harder to classify.
Episode 256 returns to a core problem in Epicurean theology: whether Epicurus treated the gods as physically real beings or as something closer to mental constructs formed by the mind.
Peter Boghossian applies street epistemology to guests debating free speech, immigration, and belief.
Big questions, patiently tested.
Lucretius Today episode 304 reads Cicero's Tusculan Disputations Book 4 through the lens of Epicurus and strong emotion.
Did Epicurus secretly not believe in gods at all, as Posidonius alleged, or was his theology sincere?
The hosts of Lucretius Today discuss Cicero's criticism of Epicurean views on pleasure and virtue, reorienting listeners to their ongoing analysis of Tusculan Disputations.
This episode explores Epicurus's doctrine that pleasure, not virtue, is the natural guide of life, emphasizing its broader meaning beyond mere stimulation.
Lucretius Today Episode 353 follows Lucullus’s argument in book two of Cicero’s Academic Questions that skeptics throw knowledge into confusion.
Lucretius Today episode 329 stays in Cicero’s Academic Questions and uses section 9 to trace how Plato’s academy split over ideal forms, virtue, and the criterion of truth.
Lucretius Today episode 328 uses Cicero’s Academic Questions, section 8, to contrast Platonic ideal forms with Epicurean sense-based knowledge.
Episode 327 of Lucretius Today finishes Section 7 of Cicero's Academic Questions, Book 1, from an Epicurean point of view, after last week’s discussion of division of nature, infinite divisibility, and geometry.
Lucretius Today episode 326 stays inside Cicero's Academic Questions and focuses on Varro's account of nature, including air, fire, water, earth, a fifth class for stars and winds, and matter that can be divided 'ad infinitum.' The hosts contrast that Platonic and Aristotelian framework with Epicurus' atomism, which treats sense experience and the mind's processing of the senses as the basis for knowing anything true.
This episode discusses Cicero's Academic Questions and the Epicurean division of philosophy into physics, ethics, and epistemology.
The hosts of Lucretius Today discuss Cicero's criticism of Epicurean views on pleasure and virtue, reorienting listeners to their ongoing analysis of Tusculan Disputations.
This episode of Lucretius Today continues analyzing Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, focusing on his criticism of Epicurus' view that pain is not an evil and contrasting it with Stoic and Epicurean approaches to dealing with pain.
This episode examines Cicero's critique of Epicurus's view on pain as evil, clarifying Epicurus's actual position that a happy person remains happy even under torture.