Hi there, I'm Jason Gots, and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think podcast.

If the word Epicurean brings to mind a porcine man in a toga reclining on a velvet couch and dropping fat,

juicy grapes into his open mouth one by one, you are not alone. But this caricature, probably the descendant of some ancient propaganda by rival philosophers,

tells us very little, in fact, about Epicureanism, the worldview of the 4th century

BCE, Greek philosopher Epicurus, and his later disciple Lucretius, whose ideas prefigured and shaped much of the modern world.

My guest today is philosopher Catherine Wilson, author of the book How to Be an Epicurean,

The Ancient Art of Living Well.

At a confusing cultural moment where many people are looking for a guiding framework,

she's here with a strident defense of Epicureanism as a way of life. In its pragmatic approach

to embracing pleasure and minimizing pain, she sees a saner way of living in the world and maybe

enjoying a few juicy grapes while you're at it. Welcome to think again, Kathleen. Thank you, Jason.

It's great to be here. You know, I was thinking you do such a good job in the book of clearly laying out what

Epicureanism is and how it might apply to many of the problems and questions that many of us face

in the world today. But still, it's kind of hard to get a handle on. And I was thinking,

I was thinking to myself, well, actually, that's the case really with any ancient philosophy,

Aristotelianism.

You know, I can't imagine one that you could sum up in a neat soundbite.

Well, I think we could start with the concept of materialism, because a lot of people find

that a very scary word.

I think they're interpreting it in two ways, possibly. One is consumerism. Materialism

seems to be the philosophy that the more stuff you have, the happier you'll be. And the other thing

they find scary is dialectical materialism of Marx and Lenin.

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