ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED???
Young Heretics
Spencer Klavan
4.9 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 27 June 2025
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If, like me, you're still sore about what they did to the Gladiator franchise, let this episode be part of your healing journey. It's certainly part of Aeneas': with the fleet grounded back in Sicily, the crew realizes it's been one year since the death of his father Anchises. This is the occasion for a good old fashioned fight night, with funeral games in honor of the great patriarch. It's a connection between Rome's gladiatorial entertainments and the heroic passtimes of yore, a way for Aeneas to seek closure after his year of grief, and a pause between the emotional tryst with Dido and the biggest challenge yet: the descent into the underworld.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | My name is Spenserus, Andronicus Claevacus, son of Andronicus, no relationus, |
| 0:08.0 | servant of the true emperor Marcus Aurelius, champion of the book bros, leader of the analog armies, |
| 0:16.0 | and I will have my vengeance in this life or the next. |
| 0:30.6 | Are you not entertained? |
| 0:39.8 | One way I know I'm getting old is that even my awesomest pop culture references are becoming a little bit ironic and quaint. |
| 0:44.6 | It was so depressing teaching Roman history this spring semester because I was doing this whole rant about, I guess, Blake Lively |
| 0:48.6 | and how she's sort of like lesbian from the Catellas poems, |
| 0:52.3 | and the whole drama in the poems is sort of like the thing |
| 0:55.8 | between Blake lively and Justin Baldoni after it ends with us. And I thought it was so hip and |
| 1:00.1 | cool. I was like, wow, I'm the best teacher ever. And I got to the end of it. And my students all |
| 1:04.4 | looked at me like, who are you talking about? I thought this was current affairs. But of course, |
| 1:11.4 | their celebrities are all in TikTok. I have no idea who any of them are, what musicians they're listening to. |
| 1:16.4 | I've completely lost the plot on that. It's the lucky thing that I've always said young heretics |
| 1:21.2 | is about youth in spirit and not in reality, because I never predicted that aging would |
| 1:26.8 | happen to me. |
| 1:28.3 | Anyway, that was the famous speech from Gladiator One, which if you haven't seen it, |
| 1:33.9 | it is a classic. |
| 1:35.2 | If my younger listeners are not up on this, then you need to educate yourself in the great |
| 1:40.7 | works of our American tradition. |
| 1:43.3 | This is a true throwback to the sword and sandal |
| 1:47.1 | epic genre. It was just fantastic. Russell Crow, Joaquin Phoenix is the evil emperor, |
| 1:55.0 | and he has to fight his way back. His wife and child are killed at the beginning, and he has to |
... |
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