In this podcast episode, I cover the life and ideas of Democritus of Abdera. He is one of my favorite early Greek philosophers, mainly because of his wisdom/ethical sayings. He barely made the Presocratic cut, being just 1 - 10 years before Socrates. However, his ideas, way ahead of their time, were picked up by Aristotle and Epicurus and have influenced humankind to our time. A true Renaissance Man before it was popular 😉, Democritus is worthy of study. His First Principle(s) of Atoms and the Void are revolutionary and are great responses to the ideas of earlier philosophers.

Books Referenced:

* Early Greek Philosophy - Translation by Jonathan Barnes - Penguin Classics

* The First Philosophers - Translation by Robin Waterfield - Oxford World’s Classics

* Lives of the Eminent Philosophers - Diogenes Laertius - Loeb Classical Library

In this podcast episode, I cover the life and ideas of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae. His first principle, the thing that organized everything else, was the nous or the mind. He thought that in the beginning, there was an original mixture of unchanging seeds that a mind set in motion and began to organize. Anaxagoras was born in Asia Minor and moved to Athens, becoming one of the first philosophers to establish Athens as a hub of philosophy. In fact, Anaxagoras is a philosophical grandfather to Socrates through his student Archelaus. Socrates learned from Archelaus who learned from Anaxagoras.

Books Referenced:

* Early Greek Philosophy - Translation by Jonathan Barnes - Penguin Classics

* The First Philosophers - Translation by Robin Waterfield - Oxford World’s Classics

* Lives of the Eminent Philosophers - Diogenes Laertius - Loeb Classical Library

In this podcast episode, I cover the life and ideas of Empedocles of Acragas. He lived from 495 - 435 BC before dramatically diving into the volcano at Mt. Etna to prove he was immortal. As we find out in this episode, the accounts of the life and death of Empedocles are varied and contradictory and contain an element of myth, which is appropriate given his use of epic poetry to present his ideas. With Empedocles, we have the largest stash of fragments of any of the early Greek Philosophers.

Books Referenced:

* Early Greek Philosophy - Translation by Jonathan Barnes - Penguin Classics

* The First Philosophers - Translation by Robin Waterfield - Oxford World’s Classics

* Lives of the Eminent Philosophers - Diogenes Laertius - Loeb Classical Library

Aristotle called Thales the Father of Natural Philosophy. At a very high level, he’s credited with shifting from mythos to logos, from a mythological explanation of the world to one based upon natural observation. Thales believed that water was the underlying principle of everything, that an immortal soul existed, and that earthquakes were caused by waves underneath a flat earth instead of by the gods.

Thales of Miletus is one of the earliest Greek philosophers (625 - 545 BC) and in this podcast episode, I look at his life, his ideas, and his impact both now and then.

Books Referenced:

* Early Greek Philosophy - Translation by Jonathan Barnes - Penguin Classics

* The First Philosophers - Translation by Robin Waterfield - Oxford World’s Classics

Last week, I talked about the life and philosophy of Heraclitus of Ephesus. A number of his surviving fragments deal with the concept of Logos, what Eva Brann calls “the order that is the cosmos.” This week, I’m taking a deeper look into what Heraclitus meant by Logos and how that might help us better understand John’s use of it in the New Testament Gospel, where he writes, “In the beginning was the Logos…”

In The Logos of Heraclitus, Eva Brann considers the fragments of Heraclitus in order to arrange a cohesive philosophy containing Logos, fire, and flux. I share what I learned from this short book and how it expanded my understanding of the Logos.

Show Notes:

* March 13, 2026 Episode about Heraclitus

* Purchase The Logos of Heraclitus by Eva Brann

For the next month or so, I’m going to highlight different early Greek Philosophers on the podcast and in my Substack articles. Last year, I started reading Plato’s dialogues and realized that I didn’t know the philosophers or their ideas that he was referencing. I stopped reading the dialogues in order to get to know these Greek Philosophers.

In this episode, I cover Heraclitus, a philosopher famous for his ideas on flux, fire, and the logos. While we don’t have his complete work On Nature, we do have fragments that provide an understanding of his main ideas. This will be a two-part episode with this first one focusing on the life and ideas of Heraclitus and the second one focusing on Heraclitus’ idea of the logos.

Here are the books I referenced for this podcast episode:

* Early Greek Philosophy - Translation by Jonathan Barnes - Penguin Classics

* Heraclitus Fragments - Translation by Brooks Haxton - Penguin Classics

* The First Philosophers - Translation by Robin Waterfield - Oxford World’s Classics

* Heraclitean Fire - Erwin Chargaff - Book 20 in 2017

* Lives of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogene Laertius - Vol 2 of Loeb.

* Major Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Oxford University Press

I start each year reading straight through a different version of the Bible during January & February. This year, I selected the Intertextual Tanakh for the Five Books of Moses and the Early Prophets and used the Bibliotheca version for The Latter Prophets, The Writings, and The New Testament. In this episode, I share what stuck out this year over the 80 hours of reading through the Bible.

Here’s episode 7 covering my 2026 read-through of the Bible. I talk about the ideas that have stuck out to me while reading the New Testament books of the Gospels, Acts, Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians.

Show Notes:

Dr. Jason Staples’ Suggested Bible Reading Order (start at the 1hr 16 minute mark):