The Great Awokening

As I lie abed, recuperating from painful surgery, I use my time differently than I normally do.  I read voluminously and rapidly.  It is my preferred mode of information ingestion.  

I am aware of podcasts and video interviews and know that there is a rich ecosystem of resources which I probably would enjoy, but none of them can match the rate achievable when simply reading.  Great for long distance driving and commuting, but really, no competition.

Immobile recovery is providing an opportunity to investigate some of what is out there.  Pain medication reduces the capacity for focused work and pain is distracting when reading.  

All as a preamble for my watching the following conversation with historian Tom Holland.  Tom Holland and the Great Awokening.

Double click to enlarge.

An hour long conversation, mostly carried by Holland but certainly shaped by the hosts.  It is not that I agreed with everything had to say, in fact there are a handful of issues where I think he has the wrong end of the stick.  However, his erudition, his clear thinking, the quality of his argument for some of his insights, and the articulateness of conversation are superior.  What a pleasure.  An hour well worth listening.

And what an accomplished polymath.  A very successful author of literary fiction.  A very successful historian with a string of books.  A translator of Herodotus.  A producer of multiple documentaries.  There are some people who are straight-forwardly talented across multiple domains.

I have a handful of his books, Rubicon and Persian Fire in particular.  They have been sitting around for a long while.  Now I know that they need to be read.  

I especially liked this conclusion of his:

He began working on a doctoral dissertation on Lord Byron from Oxford University, but soon quit after deciding that he was "fed up with universities and fed up with being poor" and instead began working.

A free man demonstrating reasoned free thinking and arriving at original and insightful conclusions.