How did the first democracy die?
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Welcome the search engine. M, P, A. vote. No question.

Too big. No question, too small. No question to old. We going to do something different this week. How often do you think about the roman empire?

No, maybe three, four times .

a month, three times a week. And say, last fall, this mean, circulated where people, mostly women, on tiktok as their husbands or boyfriends. How often they thought about the roman empire? Why do you think about the roman .

empire is very interesting time.

Think so you you never .

think about, what do you think .

about the mire? IT was a moment where, once again, we learned there are two kinds of people this time, those who think about wrong all the time and those who do not. But there was a third type of guy never mentioned this meme.

And a guy was me. I don't think about the roman, but I do think about ancient greece a fair amount of the time. Specifically, I think about ancient greece as a coping mechanism.

When I yet deeply upset about our democracy, I think about theirs. Athons was a very first democracy in human history, one that faced some of the same problems we face, some problems of their own, and then died in spectacular fashion. I know this might not be the escape ism some people are looking for this week, but walk with me for a ec.

Any book can be a self hell book. And for the past few years, mine has been what's wrong with democracy? From Anthony, an practice to american worship, which is a factual academic clerk at the problems of ethie democracy in the face century.

B. C. I spoke to its rider this week. Okay, first things first, can you just introduce yourself?

Sure of my name's laun sales, but everyone calls me j and I teach Green history and greek and latin at boston university and have done so for over thirty years. I also worked for the american college of greece and a consulting royal and athens, and my interests have been democracy and imperialism and the historians who write about democracy and imperialism for pretty much my whole career.

One of the ancient historians who j thinks about most often is a greek rider named through siddique j first in canada, work decades ago as a student.

When I got to graduate school, I still thought I was going to be a roman historian, but I was really through idioms that dragged me into athenian history. I found him so interesting that I abandoned my roman studies and focused on the greeks and what wasn't .

IT about two cities? Like, what about the way that he wrote was so dark?

I mean, two cities, as he has an extremely dark view of human nature. He's very much like my father in many ways. If you think things are as bad as I can possibly get, you're definitely wrong.

They are going to get worse. But I think sometimes people think through cities is sort of taking joy in that that he says it's good that human beings exercise power and this really sort of awful way. But I think that's wrong. He's someone who recognizes the tragedy of the fact that human beings tend to make similar mistakes over and over again.

Two cities was an elite in greek society, a general who was, except from atoms. After losing a big battle, he ended up spending time in enemy land that only places is welcome for much of his life. Exile is hard on people, but IT be useful for writers.

And utilities took the opportunity to try to understand a senior society from his new position outside of IT. A lot of what, through city of these wrote you could be forgiven for thing, was about us today complaining about athens, his hometown, around four hundred B. C. He observed that, quote, most people, in fact, will not take the trouble in finding out the truth, but are much more inclined to accept the first story they hear. Hi course.

One of the most famous things through cities said, is, as long as human nature remains the same, similar things will happen again. And that's why he believed his work would be useful for those who wanted know about the future, not because history is cyclically, not because history repeats itself, but because human beings repeat themselves and make the same kind of mistakes generation after generation.

So cities is going to be our primary source for this story. And he really was there. He watched the first democracy rise and fall.

Chapter one athens when the story begins, around six hundred fifty bc, greece is a series of city states. Athens was a typical one. The city itself very small.

Maybe ten or twenty thousand people live there. On the top of the big hill, there are a few temples, some spots for public gatherings. Most people live dumble out.

Eventually we'll build a city wall outside the city, miles and miles of rural farmland, where the majority lived. And then if you keep traveling further throughout the meditation, ian, there's something like a thousand other city states. They looked more less like athinking ad.

These city states are independently ruled and consulate war with each other. And like our american states, there are a series of experiments, each representing a different way society could function. Spartan lived in a country with more women's rights, but also lived under military rule.

Curtis knew their state with the wealthy commercial hub, but that IT was run by other article leads. Athens, when our story begins, is not yet known as the home of plato, security and soto as the crater of western philosophy and government. Attis is known instead as kind of a backwater.

IOS was a second tear state, maybe even a third tear state in the seventh and six centuries. B. C.

And what does that mean? Like what does the third year state at that time?

Well, I mean that a, they weren't as powerful as some other states. Their military strength was not up to some other states. But what I really mean is that they didn't have the early history that other states said, like sara and fives, and argues, those are names that ring through the mythology and what the greek, sort of their very ancient past.

Where's athons? For example, if you take homer, the elliot athens plays almost no role at all in the elliot. Most classicists can even name the ethnic hero of the iod because he's a nobody in the store.

He appears four times and twice, has been called a coward. But they do know that oddi, as comes from ethics and ajax comes from salomons. So you have all these other heroes that come from other places that seem far less important than athens.

But to an athenian reading homer, he fails to find themselves there. So what does this mean for the athenian psyche? And I I think it's it's actually A A major factor. And how the ethie started themselves.

you mean that they had like what i'm refilled delpha like they had when filled delphi and have, which is like this feeling of lake, sort of being sand, which between places that thought of them myself is greater. Like this started angry.

overlook feeling. Yeah, yeah, I do. I do think that that's probably making IT too strong.

Yeah, I think that this feeling rarely rises to a kind of conscious level. But it's active. IT does rise to a conscious level.

For example, paricles, in one of the speeches that facilitated records, says we don't need any homer to seeing our praises as a really odd d thing to say. We don't need any home or we know we're not there and we don't need him. We're going to write our own epic.

this nation. They wanted to write its own epic. I had a plan. Chapter two, the ethie experiment.

Adams planned to make a named for itself involved, constantly picking fights with its neighbours. The athenians were obsessed with imperialism. That's how they believed the'd get into the history books as a conquering power.

That's their goal. But in the fifth century B, C, they happen to make what will turn to be a very consequently choice for human history. They offer widespread voting.

There were some other greek city states that allowed voting, but I was restricted to small groups. Evoluted arrest croats, property owners. In athens. The politicians start allowing more and more regular people to vote.

And this is one of the things that makes a senior democracy different IT starched to look different from other greek city states, because the is lowered the property qualification to the point eventually you don't have to own property to be a citizen .

and vote in the assembly was an extraordinary arly radical idea. Of course, there are big groups excluded, women, foreign and slave people. But by the standards of the time, letting the masses vote was unheard of.

And what's most interesting is that athenian voting looks completely different from the voting video today in america. Like to them the idea of an election day where we all show up and pick the politician who will represent us and then get a little sticker afterwards. The athenians would have found this comical in athens.

What would happen instead was much more exciting. The authorities had a stone machine called a clara italian, which that sort of hard to picture but you just imagine instead, if the random ball jump er from a bingo hall, the clare italian helped randomly assign random citizens to the senior version of congress. There they returned for a year.

You didn't vote for your congresswomen. You became one at random and then got to put fourth laws, which any other citizen can vote on. If this sounds crazy, IT hasn't upside.

The lottery system sorted prevents the thing. We have a system where we get to vote for our politicians, but those politicians are usually egads, and wealthy people use their money to influence that vote. Another Green rider, aristotle, for, saw this problem over two thousand years ago.

Aristotles said, you can't define democracy by voting in elections, because if you have voting in elections are going to have a role of the rich. Total said this necessarily follow lows from elections that you end up with were all of the rich.

They said .

that early. Yes, I get around.

This is something jay clearly relishes about the essenians, how the dark view of human nature than, in some ways, they could predict problems with democracy that we encounter as surprises. I had my own moment where I felt a shock of recognition, hearing about a different part of a senior democracy. IT had to do with how they end the justice system.

So I should say, I first found James book in twenty twenty one, which, when I was reading that during a very unique moment in american life, people were angry about society. And that anger was rAiling on social media at the time, if they like, every week there are these improved to public events, some trial by internet. These speedy affairs were, moo was prayed out, almost always found guilty.

And then usually osteria zed, sometimes permanently, sometimes just temporarily. I witnessed a lot of these events as a spectator. I even reported on a few.

And then one day I found myself inside of one as the smile. The main thing I was struck by was how uniquely modern IT felt. Even when I try to write about IT, I felt too modern to describe there are no words or all the words were wrong.

Reading jail book, I realized this was not as modern as I believe. What I thought was an unprecedented system of justice was, in fact, a very precedented system of justice. Capture three, the people decide. So IT just help me picture like i'm accused of a crime and increase. What if my try like like in aft?

Well, it's gonna heard by jury, a large jury of athens OK. You're onna have to defend yourself. There's no lawyer to defend you. You can hire someone to write a speech for you, but you're still gonna to deliver that speech yourself.

Am I delivering that speech? And like, I miss me, i'm not in a hagan's courter. no.

Where am I the outdoors? The indian courts were typically outdoors. Jorge, sitting on benches around you, no michonnin applies ation no nothing. The whole time is gonna en in one day prosecution will make its the prosecutor will also not be a public a prosecutor.

It'll be an individual senior citizen who has a the ability to bring this case against you and you're going to defend yourself and the whole thing will be over in a day. The jurors will vote whether you're guilty or not, and if they find you guilty, I A pi. You.

how many people are?

Five hundred and thousand.

sometimes more than that. So I am playing my case in front of five hundred, two a thousand, and I screaming.

I hope so. If you to be hard, you've got any chance. And you need to think about entertaining the jury too, right? You gonna hold people's attention is just like public speak anywhere else.

You may have all evidence in the world if you can hold their attention, or if I just don't like you, mean, let's just say they do or don't like you. They've been looking for a chance to get rid of you, right? And there is no mechanism for making sure that only evidence is used there.

One of the practices, the ethnic england, that I phone very fascinating, was that they had a formal system of astros. M, he just described for me how I worked .

sure once a year the authorities would get together and vote on the question, are we going to ostracize anybody this year? Australia would mean sending somebody away. For ten years.

The property wasn't seized. Nothing was done to them. They would just sent away.

So there's no right to property that prevents the indian people from doing this. The indian people can do what they want. IT is in fact, a direct democracy.

Of course, I always told my students i'm definitely voting yes. You know, every year are we going on australis m, then? I don't know for who are, but I don't want to see the chance.

And that's pretty great. So, and then a few days later, they would come back and they would have the actual vote. And the day the vote, you would write the name of the person you wanted to australians on a broken piece of party that potter is called on astra con.

So that's what gives austrasia its name. And so you wrote the name of the person you wanted, astra size, you know, professor salmons. Then you turn that in.

And if six thousand people voted, then who ever got the most votes had to go? No matter what matter what? There's no appeal.

There's nothing you you can say, they just don't like me, have a bias against people for marino me and then thrown me out. There's no appeal to this. You have to go.

And why they at what point did they realize our society will function Better if once a year we can take the human desire to cast some of out and formalize that?

right? So this looks pretty clearly to have been something they invented right after the person wars. And in the context where athons had gotten rid of its, but the person had tried to bring a tyre back and impose a tyrant on athons, a previous tyre, and the first people who are austerities ed were people who could be associated in some way with the tyres.

So IT looks like the athenian start to prevent a potential tyre. We will use this saying, australia, right? We can't trust having this guy around. Even I saw we're going to a get rid of them, but they turns into something else.

I think we both know where this is going. But before IT does IT is only viral acknowledge that the mob was not always wrong. Ethiop's authorised to remove some very dangerous tyrants, people who may have broken no laws, but who did threaten society, the mob also.

I mean, this was just funny. They exercised every studies, the just in part because they were so erred by his nickname. What if you hair does sound a little bit like for signal? Over time, as you'd expect, a leaves began just cash each other out of society.

For author's reasons, some fair, some not opinion. Democracy was not concerned, as we sometimes are, with due process. IT was concerned strictly with amplifying the voice of the people. And today we question some of the authorities people's choices, like when they tried, convicted and executed security. Socrates, perhaps the greatest philosophy in the history of the west, found guilty of being inefficiently pious, of corrupting the youth with his strange .

ideas in socket case, were told that more people voted that he should be executed, and found him guilty. So there were people who voted for security, innocence, who still voted that he should be executed.

And why.

why, in the court case, he had annoyed a whole of people, including some very powerful people.

This is part of what so confusing about how to think about the first democracy. The athenians gave us security. They also killed him in every democracy since has had to rustle with this moment, this moment where the people got exactly what they want. And how much for the american founders thinking about etherium democracy? When they designed our democracy.

they thought about this, but they didn't see IT as a positive example. Almost everything they said about IT was we wanted avoid that. The founders just didn't want the american system to be that open to the will of the people. The will of the people had to be controlled to some degree. IT had to be blunted, you know, the force of the world of the people.

James is medicine, one of our founders wrote that had every athenian's in the authorities, every ethie assembly would still been a mob. And in athens, unlike in america, the leaders really learn to fear the people. Generals who lost wars, wars that people had voted for for, sometimes executed, often exiled.

Sometimes the people would size a general than a few years later, realize they wanted him back and have to hit undue IT was a rockers, I was suggest, in sane way to on the city state. And over time, the leaders who are learned to thrive in a society like this would be the ones who would help destroy IT. After the break, a new word becomes popular. Paths demagogy.

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Hey, Chris doesn't going.

Can you hear me? I can. Can you hear me?

Yeah, I so sorry for being late. I understand that you have an incredibly busy .

schedule to me.

Recently, I was over fifteen minutes late for an early morning conversation with my very understanding friend of press. Years ago, we worked in the same office he was on the business side at the time. You were not see sweet executive. Now you're, I think my only friend is A C sweet executive.

I doubt that it'll take IT these days.

Chris is successful founder. He started a company that helps A I models get smarter as a business executive. Chris S A I is a helpful tool that he uses in his day.

I do. I use IT for everything. I'm basically a cyber. This point.

how do you use IT?

If I am going into a meeting with a prospect, a company that we want to work with, I will have a chat, hot, basically pulled together all the information age, you know, to be successful in that meeting is just incredible at crunching through a time of research and condenser IT and helping me walk into a meeting really prepared. So research is one big use case business development ideas.

So if i'm feeling like we're stalling out on growth in any given th, I, I might turn to japan and ask what are some other companies we might approach to fit this profile. And it's great a delivering just a big longest of ideas. yeah. So it's good at like sort of helping me brainstorm. It's really a sounding board on those sorts of things.

Use IT as like a pluck y in turn.

yes, a Lucy in turn for all of my anxious ravitz.

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Welcome back to the show. Capture form greek tragedy. When our story began, athens had been a third year city state, a backwater.

But by the middle of the fifth century B, C, that had changed. They, they defeated the persons while fighting side the spartans. They dominated islands like maxus, ha avia through the a.

gn. All these cities are pay tribute back to authors. Things are good. The threat to a senior democracy when he arrives, IT won't come from the baths neighbors. It'll come from its people. One of the early ideas in a thin and democracy have been that all these random people who are being pulled off their farms and into public service, they should get paid. A good idea, which span into something else.

One of the things is that the pay for public service in the fifth century became eventually pay for all kinds of things, including in the force century. They paid themselves to vote.

They are paying themselves to vote like a lot.

but no, not a lot. What you would get paid as a labor or for one day.

something like that. It's only, I have to say, on the first blush, they have paying people to vote does not seem so. Maybe more people voted, maybe more working people voted. But what IT happened in athens that the democratized offering to pay people to do things was a very good way to buy public support.

eventually get to the point where they paid themselves to go to the theater. They that they undervote theater tickets for a and why .

are they making this a terrible decisions?

Well, I mean, how do you, if you are assembling the a politician gets up and says, I think you guys should be paid to vote. Who's going to vote against that? right? I mean, once that idea is out there, once the idea of paying people to do X O Y is out there, they just impossible IT seems to me in a, in a democratic environment, to get people to go.

No, no, i'll give up that money. I don't want to be paid. I don't want to get that extra benefit.

So what the crowd voting for, what the crowd wanted, government spending in fifth century B. C. Athens started a little coco bananas.

For instance, the tax revenue has been used to fund military. Some demagogue suggests why I would just use that money to find entertainment instead. More festivals, more theater, more religious holidays. The crowd, in its infinite wisdom, agree, which required politicians to find even more innovative ways to accumulate silver.

They borrowed money from the goddess Serena.

How do you borrow money from a gotz?

Yeah, it's funny thing. I was very willing alone. They saw of their money in their treasuries, and that was owned by their guys as available for human use. IT wasn't that the money owned by .

the guides couldn't be used. So state would like, you know, mind, tell her from the minds. IT would have reserve actually some of those going to be given us tribute to the god's, but they are not likes throwing IT down a well where they can get IT, it's available and then you can borrow from the god's right?

So the thing is, kept those books separate, the money that was taking out the minds, that was money that didn't have to be borrowed, but the money that they borrows from the guard, some of which they had taken from other greek states, some of the imperial money gets dedicated to the guard.

So the opinions were melting down their statues of the god's for gold. They're also spending the money they have set aside for the god's to fund endless wars.

That money had to be paid back and had to be paid back in interest. And a thea was very generous during the palpi, ian, where he lowered our interest rate from something like seven percent to one hundred percent. What's a nice over? But the seniors basically spent all the money they had in their day accumulated to their empire, and that debt was a dead to the god.

But they never paid IT back a state. A democratic say, can just spend itself into a living. And in fact, I would go so far to say IT will spend itself and do a billion.

So you think in some way, the mistake they made is just like they overspent.

They overspent. And that overspending went to more military action .

because why the empire .

is generating some of this money that's being used to pay people, yeah I and to build the buildings and to pay people to serve on juries. The thing is quite well understood that sAiling out and attacking other greeks and imposing tribute payments on them was paying them. There was a direct relationship between those two things they understood.

So the democratic system of paying for for public service and and building these buildings is generating empire is not that. The thing is an imperial before adam was always aggressive, even before democracy has had an usually aggressive profile, is part of their national character for some more on. But boy, democracy really empted up.

There must have been a thing. Who knew that if the state paid everybody to vote ID, everybody deserve on the thousands. A cheries paid people to go to athenian, an kocher, that eventually the need for silver would force them into a war they would lose.

The studied is actually describes how the few of initially knew, also knew to shut up. He writes, quote, with this enthusiasm of the majority, the few that liked IT not feared to appear unpatriotic by holding up their hands against that. And so kept quiet, at least the of an story, the desire to be democratic LED to people voting for running more money. Actually, you want to be paid to do more things which associated more imperials m, which they didn't have a problem with. There's know what how .

wards in of athens? no. And they were by the end of the fifth century.

They are ethnic who are saying things like this. Imperial m thing is a little out of a control. It's a tiny, tiny voice in a course of but more empire is Better.

Capture five the end. The inevitable finally happens in three thirty eight b the authorities have voted too many times to pay themselves, not enough times to fund the military that they keeps setting off to fight. Some generals now are even relying on their own private resources to keep things together.

Athens into block a battle. Finally, they can't bounce back from Philip of mass. Don, father of Alexander the grade.

He is the one to conquer the anthonio at the battle of CarOlina. Tinian are no longer as sovereign. The first democratic experiment in human history is over about two hundred years after IT begun.

When we picture the end of our democracy lately, people are about fast. M, how is going to be the handmaid tail or germany in thousand nine hundred and thirty three? But the end of a teen. And democracy was not really like that. In fact, there were plenty of italians who were pretty OK with life under the new rain of phillip.

Phillip didn't destroy ads. The thinking an city state continued, and the thinking ans actually kept having jury trials. And they kept elected officials. They just more sovereign.

Athens wasn't running its own show, right? They ve got to worry about the master doones. They are not making in their own policy more.

They're not just whether is calling the shots that eventually the romans are going to call the shots on that. So that's what changes. But internally, they still had elections, and they still had officers, right? They still play democracy.

We could call IT, that's probably unfair to call playing. But they had lost that thing that had defined the greek city state before, which is being the absolute sovereign authority over yourself. You make your own laws, you make your own foreign policy, you decide where you going to.

right? And like the moment where the most important decisions are not, the city says decision to make, I feel like you don't call that a democrat, more like you're a place to get to vote on something, but you're not and democracy .

and see IT counted to me, like you are described in the world we live in now, a place where you get to vote on some stuff yeah, I mean, I ve had this really dark thought over the last three years.

Maybe i'm too many of them, but you know, our study says man is suit to live in a life in the palace, and that the sort of heavy responsibility lies of citizenship is the best way for a human being, in the ideal way, for a human being to spend his public life. And maybe I still believe that that is true. I'm an ideal world, but IT just seems to me that human beings, in the end, find that too burdensome and that they retreat.

Jay is a strange thing about setting the athenians as a historian, is how much they thought about how they be perceived by future historians, in a weird way, how much they were thinking about him. AmErica will one day end. Everything does we know. There will be some future society they've back on us, try to understand the choices we made that I can Better understand itself somewhere many centuries ahead.

There's another jay, some devoted scholar, reaching back to this moment, asking why jay is that he started to faul deeper into athens when he became more disappointed in the present, first of licking escape from the modern politicians he couldn't stand listening to in america. But more and more he found himselve recognizing us in the, i'm really seeing the truth in what three cities is. IT said that human nature itself is a constant look.

In the late eighties and early nineties, I realized that I had to stop basic watching the news, yeah. And I had to retreat to some degree into the cities and these other authors. But the problem is that you keep seeing the same things in those authors that you see around you.

So might copy a few cities ties has in the margins. November nineteen ninety two, in the march of this, reminded me of something. It's not, I don't follow the news at all anymore, but I realized I just couldn't become someone who was in that game of what's the next winning move in this political sport.

Jay retreated into utilities, and later I retreated into jays work. Not because I was disappointed in democracy, I was disappointed in the internet. The same way athenian democracy naturally created demagogues every time, drove most other people away.

I feel like our social media actually worked in a very similar way. And so for a while I turned away from the internet. Honestly, I can even turned away from society.

But here's a good sentence. We greeks believe that a man who takes no part in public affairs is not merely lazy, but good for nothing. That's two cities.

Despite his very dark view of human nature, his faith that people were ultimately ruled by fear, self interest in the desire to be seen favourite ably by their peers, he still believe we had to show up. We had to show to a democracy that would always be vulnerable to democrats who would start up crowds for their own short term gain. We had a shop and take our place in a crowd that would often make the wrong choice.

We had to have to fight, knowing that real leaders would be rare, and when they did arrive, we might just punish them for their honesty. We had to show up despite knowing that human nature itself is an incurable condition. They were likely to make the same mistakes as our ancestors.

Centuries before the story of greek democracy is, appropriately, a tragedy, a story whose end was inevitable because of the character of the people in at, in the settle in which they found themselves. I understand that not everybody finds a tragedy reassuring, but I do IT helps me to think that the way we are is not new. We're always like this, or at least we're always struggling to not be like this.

We go through moments for humans, improbably organize ourselves, or something Better, more reasonable, and then the madness takes over, and then we begin again. Is there any party that just thinks, like, the authorities had a rough draft? Number one, the romans had a rough revetment. Two, amErica might be rough revered. Three, like, no, you don't think there be a right, remember?

Oh, I find this hilarious that people assume that democracy is somehow the ultimate government. This has have been as running stick of mine for years that you go to any political science department in the west and you won't find somebody who goes, know, the next thing is gna be this really Better thing. It's not democracy at all, right? Somehow they are all studying ways to make democracy Better, in ways to make democracy more democratic.

So you caught in this kind of circle where you evaluate democracy against the principles of democracy. I don't think that works. So you got to evaluate IT by some out external of standards, how much, just as does IT produce, how much goodness does IT produce, how much wealth does IT produce? You know, how many families does IT produce? The kinds of ways you, how democratic? That thing just won't work, right in terms of an evaluation process for me.

So I I really hope that we're not just going to keep reinvent ing democracy over and over that a human history hasn't ended you know, with with this thing that we're just going to keep tweet like IT isn't IT possible that mankind will actually produce a system of government in the future that superior to democracy is at least possible, I think. And so if it's possible, we should be thinking about IT. But I still think we focus too much on that political thing. We take our eyes off the other things .

that are actually more important that feels like government is if the cities felt that human nature was both a constant and had a dark view of IT, yes, then I guess that is, I think what we're not going to change human nature. And so we just need to keep changing the the rules around people to try to guide them toward something Better.

right? That's true. But i'll also just d is he did have a dark of human nature, so do I, but that no historian believes that mankind is completely irradiation because you would never write about the past if you didn't think a Better future was actually possible through cities had to believe a Better future is actually possible.

That's what he says. In fact, early in his history, he doesn't put IT quite in that tie in. Well, he says that he wants his work to be a possession for all time.

He says, for those who want to know about the future, this work will be valuable, because as long as human nature is what IT is, similar things will happen again. And if you know the kinds of things that are likely to happen, you can, in fact, plan for them, and you can try to avoid them. It's not that you're likely to avoid them, but it's possible you may.

And I think, no, I believe this. Yes, this is to me, the inherent optimism that goes along with history, even if you have a dark view of human agent. So I don't believe that it's impossible for Better things to happen in the future. And it's one of the reasons I study the.

Doctor learn j. Salmons, executive director of the institute for Helene culture and the liberal arts at the american college of greece. His most recent book is called paricles and the conquest of history of political biography. What's wrong with democracy is hard to fine, but you can find IT. It's worth looking after a short break, we have an announcement to make.

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