A few years ago I wrote about my old friend Nic Thorne’s book on Thucydides and Plato: how they both address the failure of an old social order and the people who show its inadequacies. In Plato’s work, the nihilistic Sophists Callicles and Thrasymachus are worse people than their more genteel predecessors, but they understand the old order’s failings much better than those predecessors do. That claim strongly suggests parallels to our own chaotic age, but the book leaves those parallels unstated.

Now, I’m happy to report, Thorne has a new “limited-edition” Substack, entitled This Has Happened Before, devoted to making those parallels to our age explicit. What do Thucydides and Plato have to teach us about the 21st century? Check out the Substack. Political views expressed there are his and not mine – we have plenty of areas of disagreement – but I recommend checking it out if you’re interested in lessons that history might give us about our crazy era.