TMS Classical Mythology:
The Greeks

mp3 + book

In Classical Mythology: The Greeks, widely published Professor Peter Meineck examines in thrilling detail the far-reaching influence of Greek myths on Western thought and literature. The nature of myth and its importance to ancient Greece in terms of storytelling, music, poetry, religion, cults, rituals, theatre, and literature are viewed through works ranging from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey to the writings of Sophocles and Aeschylus. Through the study of these time-honored myths, the Greek heroes and gods—including Heracles, Zeus, Achilles, Athena, Aphrodite, and others—leap from the page in all their glorious splendor. The following lectures are not only an entertaining guide to Greek mythology, but a fascinating look into the culture and time that produced these eternal tales.

Professor Peter Meineck (New York University)
Peter Meineck is a clinical assistant professor of classics and artist in residence at the New York University Center for Ancient Studies and the producing artistic director and founder of the Aquila Theatre Company. Peter currently teaches in the Classics Department at New York University.

Indian Maths

Mathematics from the Indian subcontinent has provided foundations for much of our modern thinking on the subject. They were thought to be the first to use zero as a number. Our modern numerals have their roots there too. And mathematicians in the area that is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were grappling with concepts such as infinity centuries before Europe got to grips with it. There’s even a suggestion that Indian mathematicians discovered Pythagoras’ theorem before Pythagoras.

Some of these advances have their basis in early religious texts which describe the geometry necessary for building falcon-shaped altars of precise dimensions. Astronomical calculations used to decide the dates of religious festivals also encouraged these mathematical developments.

So how were these advances passed on to the rest of the world? And why was the contribution of mathematicians from this area ignored by Europe for centuries?

When Richard Feynman, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics, died in February 1988 after a courageous battle with cancer, the New York Times called him "the most brilliant, iconoclastic, and influential of the postwar generation of theoretical physicists." Here, in these "further adventures," a companion volume to "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!," is another healthy dose of Feynman's irreverent zest for life and an even deeper, wiser level of reminiscence. He tells us of his father, who taught him to think, and of his first wife, Arlene, who taught him to love, even as she lay dying.

Pastoral Literature 

 

 

An entreaty from Christopher Marlowe's Passionate Shepherd to His Love - thought by many to be the crowning example of Elizabethan pastoral poetry. The traditions of pastoral poetry, literature and drama can be traced back to the third century BC and have principally offered a conventionalised picture of rural life, the naturalness and innocence of which is seen to contrast favourably with the corruption and artificialities of city and court life.