The two pillars of this reading project are to read more books and to remember what I read. To that end, I’ve experimented with a variety of practices to attempt to assist with memory. I’m always on the hunt for new ideas.

That’s how I came across Rhetorica Ad Herennium by [Cicero]. Cicero is in brackets because it’s not certain that he is the author. So, author unknown, but content exceptional. This is the oldest surviving work we have about ways to remember what you hear and learn.

This was written around 90BC and the techniques are still used today. The main idea is to place an intermediary background between your memory and the thing you are trying to remember. I always just go right to the thing. If I want to memorize a poem, I brute force my way into my memory bank by reading it over and over again. I never thought to place that poem against a background to enhance the likelihood of remembrance.

In this episode, I cover a very short 10-page section of this larger work that deals with memory. I share how Cicero or not-Cicero suggests creating a background or room in which to place images that relate to words or subject matter. The more striking and odd the image, the more likely it will be remembered.

This practice is not natural to me and it actually seems counterintuitive. But, if it’s worked for 2,000+ years, there’s something to it. I’m going to give it a try.

Book Version - Loeb Classical Library book 403 - Rhetorica Ad Herennium

I started reading through the complete dialogues of Plato this year. I came to a point where I realized that Plato was referencing philosophers who came before him and I didn’t know anything about them or their ideas. I took a break from Plato to consider these philosophers who gave the seeds to Plato’s philosophy.

These philosophers are called the Presocratics and the Sophists. They are Pre-Socrates in that their ideas precede Socrates, not necessarily that they preceded him historically. The Presocratic philosophers discussed in this podcast episode lived between 600 - 400BC. Socrates lived between 469 - 399BC.

I read The First Philosophers with a translation and introduction by Robin Waterfield. In the introduction, Waterfield says “Presocratic thought was holistic : it was an attempt to give a systematic account of the whole known universe and all its major features.” They cover ideas such as the soul, happiness, and the makeup of things. You can see not only their intellectual method but also their ideas in the dialogues of Plato.

In this episode, I cover four of my favorite Presocratic philosophers (Heraclitus, Parmenides, Pythagoras, and Empedocles) and some of their ideas. I also share the one thing that stuck out to me the most about these fathers of philosophy.

An introduction to this reading project for anyone new to Books of Titans. I started this in 2017 as an attempt to read more books and experiment with ways to help me remember what I read. It’s morphed into a lifelong reading project that I now expect to last until I die as I slowly make my way through The Immortal Books. Give this episode a listen to learn more and then give my wife Stephanie’s music a listen as well!