Hello and welcome to a very special Throwback episode of Our Fake History.

This week I am throwing you back to Season 3 with episode number 61.

What's the problem with Socrates?

This was one of those episodes that I remember coming together very quickly.

Sometimes I have to slave over these shows, but other times they just flow out of me.

I think the reason this one came so easy was because I felt like I was visiting old friends.

You see, as an undergrad, I spent quite a lot of time trying to wrap my head around

the finer points of platonic philosophy.

And yeah, I know that sounds hopelessly pretentious, but as an undergrad, I may have been hopelessly

pretentious.

It's just the truth.

But I honestly feel like I really learned how to write while trying to make sense of dialogues

like the Republic, the Credo, and the Symposium.

So anytime I go back to the Greeks, I get this warm sense of familiarity.

Now this one was fun to research because in all of my time studying ancient Greek philosophy

in university, I never once took a class that took the Socratic question seriously.

As you'll hear in the episode today, the Socratic question is essentially, what should we

believe about Socrates?

Which version of Socrates is the real Socrates?

Now occasionally, a professor would mention the fact that because Socrates didn't write

anything down, we have to rely on the writings of Plato and a handful of others to reconstruct

his philosophy.

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