Breaking History - Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s Socrates

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

We are coming up on the 50th anniversary of punk, the genre that smashed the old rock gods and stripped down the music to its essence.  In this episode of Breaking History, we examine the examined li...fe of the original punk: the loudmouth philosopher who defied the authorities, refused to conform, and paid the ultimate price for speaking the truth. Yes—it can only be Socrates. Grab your leather jacket and your hemlock, we’re going hardcore philosophical. ----- CREDITS Executive Producer: Poppy Damon Associate Producer: Adam Feldman Sound Designer and Composer: Tony Peer Original theme songs by Eli Lake Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, listeners. First of all, I want to thank you for rating and commenting on the last podcast. It really made a huge difference. This episode is a little bit different than our normal ones. We reflect on the 50th anniversary of punk rock. And then we dive into the life and times of the first punk, a man who prowled the streets of the city and questioned everything and everyone, mocking authority and ultimately he died for his beliefs.
Starting point is 00:00:28 Am I talking about Sid Vicious or Johnny Thunder? No, this episode is about the first punk in history. Socrates, keep it locked. 50 years ago this month, on November 6th, four young, angry amateurs took the stage at the Common Room at St. Martin's Art School in London. They were the opening act for Bazooka Joe. This was their debut, even though they had been practicing for a few months in a nearby loft. None of the so-called musicians knew how to really play their instruments.
Starting point is 00:01:24 They bombed. The group was so unknown that the promotional... poster called them support band. But in a few months, the whole world would know who they are, the sex pistols. No recording of the St. Martin's gig exists, but we can extrapolate that this is more or less what the band sounded like. This is from February 1976. Raw, loud, and revolutionary. The sex pistols, along with the Ramones, are wide. widely considered the pioneers of punk. And this month, one could say punk turned 50 years old.
Starting point is 00:02:05 This also marks the 50th anniversary of the Ramones signing with Sire Records. A musical genre defined by its defiance, anger, and youthful rebellion is now middle-aged. Mark and McLaren, you discovered and managed the group. Now, what about the accusation that you're more into chaos than anything else? Well, that's an accusation by people who really don't understand what kids want. is one excitement. They want things that are going to transform what is basically a very boring life for them right now. And music, young rock music, is the only thing they have that they thought that they controlled. And if you look in the charts, they don't really have anything to do with it.
Starting point is 00:02:44 It almost feels cruel. And that's what today's breaking history is all about, because if you think about it, punk is a strange phenomenon. Let's just start with the word itself. Depending on the context, punk can be either the high. highest form of praise, like an innovative CEO being punk rock because he disrupted an industry. Think of Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. In another context, though, punk is a fighting word. I know what you're thinking.
Starting point is 00:03:12 Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, I tell you the truth in all this excitement, I've kind of lost track myself. But Ian, this is a 44 magnet, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head, clean off. You've got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do you punk? The etymology of punk is fascinating.
Starting point is 00:03:36 Some trace it back to the Scottish word spunk, which meant burning ember. William Shakespeare, the bard, used punk in his play's measure for measure and all's well that ends well to mean a prostitute. For most of the 20th century, punk meant a sniveling street criminal. In prison, it means an inmate who is raped. Yet, at the end of December 1975, Punk magazine was launched with feature stories on former Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed and the ruffians from Queens known as the Ramones. Like the appropriation of queer by the gay community, punk was stolen by its targets. The punks were not only cool.
Starting point is 00:04:17 They were out to destroy the rock stars of the 1960s, who were millionaires selling out stadiums. Punk was no longer an epithet. It was a badge of honor. It meant that you were authentic. You had balls. You stuck to your artistic vision no matter the consequence. Here is Sex Pistol lead singer Johnny Rotten explaining in 1976 the mission for his new band. What do you mean?
Starting point is 00:04:42 Do you mean you actually want to destroy him or you want to... Work them out. He won't start my own god. Come play some epithetic. I walk up and down and do nothing and complain. everything, watch top of the pops and send those boring little letters into melody maker week after week. That's what I want to get rid of. This desire to burn down the old in order to build something better, whether it's the culture or in industry, was identified by economist
Starting point is 00:05:11 Joseph Schumpeter in his 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, as Creative Destruction. I doubt Johnny Rotten knew about that concept at the time of that. interview, but that is exactly what the pistols were doing back in 1975 when they opened for Bazooka Joe at St. Martin's School of Art. The essence of punk, I think, is to, you know, stand up and throw the rock, you know, into the tell screen and to, you know, publicly denounce the status quo and say, you know, enough already. We are not going to be kind. We're not going to be polite. We're not going to be well-mannered. We are going to break the rules because the rules are not working for us anymore.
Starting point is 00:05:55 I couldn't create a podcast about punk without inviting Nick Gillespie, the former editor-in-chief of Reason Magazine, to dilate on this issue. Richard Nixon had recently, in recent memory, you had just come out of the Vietnam War where people had been lying to you. The economy was in shambles. The leaders of New York City were lying to everybody about them, that their bonds were worth buying, that the city was okay. There was crime everywhere.
Starting point is 00:06:21 there was no future. That sense that the world was falling apart, the promise of the post-war boom had settled into recession and stagnation, well, it fed a lot of the original punk movement. Now, there's another element of punk that is less noble, kind of death wish, a sense of danger.
Starting point is 00:06:39 The original famous New York clubs that birthed this first generation of American punk bands like the Ramones, CBGBs in Maxis, Kansas City, well, they were really vile places. The Hell's Ames, Angel's biker gang, for example, provided security at CBGBs. Later, punk shows featured mosh pits, where the audience would collide into one another.
Starting point is 00:07:01 And there was also a lot of drugs. Some of the original punks, like Sid Vicious of the pistols, would not make it into the 1980s. Sid stabbed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungeon, and murdered her in 1978 at the Chelsea Hotel. A few months later, he perished from a heroin overdose while awaiting trial. It inspired the timeless tribute from the decidedly non-punk artist Neil Young. Finally, there is the reaction to punk at the time. It caused a moral panic of sorts in the late 1970s. And instead of explaining this in detail, I'm just going to play a classic clip from an episode on punk from that show Quincy, where Quincy, played by Jack Slubman, is a medical examiner for the L.A. County Coroner's Office.
Starting point is 00:08:10 And he actually determines the death of the young man in this episode to be punk rock music. I kid you not. home, and she finds her daughter, burning cigarette holes in her arm, shredding her clothes to bits, taking pills, and locking herself in her room listening to that violence-oriented punk-rock music. You've got to see it with your own eyes to believe it, Quince. I've seen children come off that dance floor with crushed ribs and bloody faces, like soldiers fighting some kind of insane war. What can persuade your dad like that? Maybe the greatest persuader there is. is music.
Starting point is 00:08:53 Punk rock, as I see it, is summed up in a great memoir called Punk Avenue by Phil Marquette. He describes a typical jam night at Maxis, Kansas City, where some of the great bands of that era would just play old rock and roll cover. This night is in 1978. It's a Monday. James Chance, frontman for the contortions, heads up to the stage, and Johnny Thunder's heartbreakers are the backing band. Chance asks the band to play Root 66.
Starting point is 00:09:25 Johnny wasn't having it. And I will let Marcity take it from here. That's all right. Go fuck yourself. No girls on stage, please. Come on. Get off the stage, faggit. Games looked bewildered and just stood there.
Starting point is 00:09:36 Not really knowing what to do. Johnny added. Next, yo. You go home and suck your mother's dick. Everybody in the audience left. No one was thinking this typical punk confrontation would go any further than that. When suddenly this guy, no one knew, real sleazy junkie in tennis shorts with white socks pulled up to his knees, climbed on stage and jumped on James Chance shouting. You never want, move!
Starting point is 00:10:05 This guy punched James right in the face a few times in our own. James Chase fell to the floor and that guy got off the stage to a hail of booze and whistles and was instantly thrown out by Max's bouncers. James Chance slowly got back up. His face completely covered in blood, and he screamed into the microphone. Do you want to fucking hear me sing, Route 66 or what? He was shaking like a leaf, blood pissing all over his white t-shirt. He started the first verse, and the heartbreakers continued to snub him, refusing to play a note.
Starting point is 00:10:39 But they stayed on stage anyway, confused, letting him sing all of Route 66 a cappella to total silence. It was incredible. Ruiz 6. You're wild in Chicago, down the lake, California Road 2,000 away.
Starting point is 00:10:58 Roos 66 is a really long song with, I don't know how many verses, and he was bleeding profusely from his forehead, his nose, his mouth. But he just kept going without moving at all until the very last note when the room exploded. Thank you. It was spectacular.
Starting point is 00:11:18 I'd never witnessed such an ovation for anyone else with Maxes, but he deserved it. What he did was downright extraordinary, a pure rock and roll moment. I would have loved to have been there for that. All the elements of punk are there. Defiance, death wish, creative destruction, and of course the corruption of youth. And in that respect, punk has been with us really since the beginning of civilization. I'm Eli Lake and you're listening to Breaking History.
Starting point is 00:11:54 In this episode, we go deep and look at the origins of punk to examine the well-examined life of the first renegade. Most know him as the father of philosophy. But if you think about it, the first punk was Socrates. After the break, the life of the most hated man in Athens. Certainly in my mood Everyone's dying I drank the hemlock
Starting point is 00:12:26 Live many days This will be my last And I die on a fright Insults with a god Currant a liar I told what I thought Pursue without truth And then he is asking for me
Starting point is 00:12:46 To repent I suddenly that Tell them to get bent Love what to drive into the line devoted to shared inquiry. In a shared inquiry, in undergraduate and graduate seminars, students read the great books that built our civilization. From Plato and Aquinas to Locke, Lincoln, Einstein, and Douglas, in a culture quick
Starting point is 00:13:26 to forget, St. John's develops memory, reason, and renewal, because understanding history is how we change it. St. John's College, a better place, a better world, at sjc.edu. Before we dive into the father of philosophy, I want to get something out of the way. The legacy of Socrates has been debated for nearly 2,500 years. years. I am providing the Eli Lake interpretation, but this is hardly the only or final word on the man. Socrates contained multitudes. On the one hand, Socrates was a relentless interrogator of everything and everyone around him. Socrates was the kind of guy who would show up at a bar and engage in a long dialogue with the bartender about why people had to pay for their drinks
Starting point is 00:14:14 and whether the bartender believed this was a just and fair system of alcohol distribution. You get the picture. I imagine many Athenians found Socrates to be exhausting. Socrates, by all accounts, was a pest. He wandered the streets of Athens, questioned citizens, and sometimes even slaves on some of their most deeply held customs and creeds, and would often conclude that they had no idea what they were talking about. And that itself is very punk, if you think about it. And yet at the same time, Socrates was a loyal law-abiding citizen of Athens. He fought bravely as a hoplight in the Peloponnesian War. And when he was condemned in a trial to death, he accepted his sentence and refused offers from his friends to help him escape. So up front, let's acknowledge that there are
Starting point is 00:15:01 multiple interpretations about the life of Socrates. I call him the first punk because of how his life ended. His trial, his sentencing, and his death are more punk than the first clash record. All the components are there, defiance, death wish, creative destruction. He was convicted for corrupt, the youth for Zeus's sake. Now, the trial of Socrates is known to history because his student Plato wrote it down, and because those works have endured, Socrates is widely seen today as an intellectual hero. Plato was a devoted fan. But not all Greek writers agreed the dramatist, Aristophanes, depicted Socrates in his play The Clouds
Starting point is 00:15:44 as a clever con man who counseled the sons of wealthy families to beat up their father. Here's a snippet of the 1971 production that aired on British television. Oh, Socrates! What do you want, mortal? What are you doing up there? I walk upon the air and elevate my mind. Only up here dangling my vast intellect in the heavens, can I scientifically perceive the secrets of the universe.
Starting point is 00:16:15 By Zeus, what marvelous words! Zeus! Did I hear you say Zeus? Are you mad, sir? There is no Zeus. No, Zeus? Then who makes it rain? Have you ever seen it rain out of an empty sky? No. But when there are clouds, it rains? Yes.
Starting point is 00:16:36 Therefore, sir, it is the clouds that cause rain, not Zeus. Powerfully argued. But what about thunder? Surely the gods cause thunder. Reflect, sir. When you go. yourself on your wife's stew, does not your belly rumble? True. Think of the rumble your tiny stomach makes. Then think of the sound, the boundless clouds can produce when they have indigestion. This view of Socrates as a charlatan, the philosopher who theorized the thunder, was caused by the clouds when they had indigestion.
Starting point is 00:17:13 That was the Socrates who stood accused of corrupting the youth and insulting the gods. They come from Aristophanes, where we see Socrates is running a kind of, would not be too anachronistic to say a think tank. What kind of think tank? Well, it's a think tank that investigates the natural world. And it's a think tank that has as its purpose to show that conventional moral practices can't be justified. This is Peter Berkowitz, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Especially the young people who flock to Socrates think tank should be able to violate custom and convention, like beat up their father. Yes, yes, if the sons think they're misbehaving.
Starting point is 00:18:03 So, no, there's, what we have here is the caricature of the scientific inquirer, the relentless questioner, who is completely dead to the importance of convention, the importance of our inheritance, indeed, civilizational inheritance. That is as punk as it gets, no? A relentless questioner who scoffs at his civilizational inheritance. Even though the clouds was penned around 25 years before the trial of Socrates in 399 BCE, this caricature played a major role in his prosecution. In Plato's apology, Socrates goes out of his way to respond to Aristophanes in what he calls the old charges against him.
Starting point is 00:18:49 Now, we should acknowledge that jurisprudence has come a long way in the last 2,500 years. An Athenian trial lasted a single day. In the case of Socrates, he had a jury of 500 fellow citizens. And that large number was intended to make bribes less effective. There were no lawyers back then, either. And any citizen of the city could bring a case against whoever they wished. There were also no rules of evidence. One could be convicted, for example, through guilt by association.
Starting point is 00:19:20 And here's another strange thing. There's no surviving account of the case against Socrates. We know from Plato that he was charged with corrupting the youth and insulting the gods of the city, but there's no recorded text of the argument of his accusers. So for centuries, scholars have had to piece together those arguments from Socrates during his cross-examination. Here's a snippet from the apology of Socrates, challenging Meletus, one of his primary accusers. Then, by the gods, Meletus, of whom we are speaking, tell me, and the court, in somewhat plainer terms, what you mean? I do not as yet understand whether you affirm that I teach others to acknowledge some gods, and therefore to believe in gods, and am not an entire atheist.
Starting point is 00:20:10 This you do not lay to my charge. But only that they are not the same gods, which the city recognizes. The charge is that they are different gods, or do you mean to say that I am an atheist simply and a teacher of atheism? I mean the latter. You're a complete atheist. That is an extraordinary statement, Miletus. Why do you say this? I assure you, judges, that he does not believe in them. Friend, Meletus, do you think that you are accusing Anaxagoras?
Starting point is 00:20:40 And do you have such a low opinion of the judges to consider them ignorant to such a degree as not to know that these doctrines you mention are found in the books of Anaxagoras? Not me. And so, Meletus, you really think that I do not believe in any God? I swear by Zeus that you believe absolutely in none at all. You are a liar, Meletus, not believed in by yourself, for I cannot help thinking, my fellow Athenians, that Miletus is reckless and impudent, and that he has written this indictment in a spirit of mere wantonness and youthful bravado, for he certainly does not appear to me
Starting point is 00:21:23 to contradict himself in the indictment as much as if he said that Socrates is guilty of not believing in the gods, and yet of believing in them. But this surely is a piece of fun. I should like you, men of Athens, to join me in examine. what I conceived to be his inconsistency. And you, Miletus, answer. And I must remind you that you are not to interrupt me if I speak in my accustomed manner. Two things to notice here.
Starting point is 00:21:54 The first is the defiance. Meletus is not just wrong. He's lying. The other is that Socrates is asserting that he does believe in the gods of the city. And that's pretty strange if you think about it because if you read his dialogues, you find that Socrates is questioning everything. So what was all of this about? Well, it goes back to the Oracle of Delphi, the place where Greeks went to learn about the future.
Starting point is 00:22:21 And then the Oracle was asked who the wisest man in Athens was, and her answer was Socrates. Here is Peter Berkowitz again. She says that he was minding his own business when one day a friend of his, Cairofan asks the oracle at Delphi, who is the wisest person? The goddess there says, Socrates, what's Socrates reaction? He doesn't believe her. Is that pious or impious? He says he's going to be he piously attempted to go out into the city and see what she was
Starting point is 00:22:57 talking about, to refute her actually, not exactly pious. So one can understand why Miletus would get the impression, at the very least, Socrates did not believe the gods of the city were infallible. He seeks to prove the judgment of the Oracle, and he does so in a very Socratic way. He goes into the city and meets with politicians, poets, artisans, and others, only to conclude that they don't really know much of anything. So maybe the gods were correct. So in the end, he concludes, the gods are right. He is wiser than all these fellow citizens, because they think they know things that they don't know,
Starting point is 00:23:38 where Socrates knows about the limits of his knowledge. So he vindicates the gods. Now that right there is a kind of creative destruction. Wisdom for Socrates is not knowing what everyone thinks they know. It's the opposite. It's appreciating all one doesn't really know. Because when you acknowledge that the unconventional wisdom is wrong, it opens up the space to try to do something in a different way.
Starting point is 00:24:06 And that is also very punk. When punk is forming in New York and London, one must remember that the rock gods of their day were marketed as virtuoso musical geniuses. They wrote operas. They played to roaring crowds at massive stadiums. The new punks played their sets at dive bars. They didn't even know how to play their instruments.
Starting point is 00:24:28 Compare a Prague rock band like Yes. To the Ramones. Three chords in the truth, the clash of course, cleared away the interminable drum solos, intricate guitar tunings, to bring back the music to its feral essence. And there's another parallel as well. Socrates is, of course, widely considered one of the finest minds in history.
Starting point is 00:25:11 And yet he presented himself as someone who didn't know anything and just wanted his interlocutors to explain why they believed what they believed. The first punks also played dumb. This is Didi Ramon from the superb documentary, end of a century, explaining how impressive it was that one of his bandmates knew how to cook for himself.
Starting point is 00:25:33 Tommy was a type of guy. He would buy some potatoes and hamburgers and cook himself for dinner. At 21 years old, that's like really, you know, pretty cool thing to do rather than eat some dope and potato chips. Okay, back to Socrates. Now, the punk element of the last days of Socrates is his sentencing and finally his death. Let's start with the sentencing. In ancient Athens, when the accusers suggest a punishment, it's usually the beginning
Starting point is 00:26:07 of a negotiation. So Socrates was initially sentenced to death. He lost a little more than half of the 500 jurors. One might expect that Socrates at this point would show some humility and beg his fellow citizens for mercy. But instead, he suggests that his punishment should be free room and board at the town hall of Athens, the pertinium for the rest of the time. of his life. Then what do I deserve for such a life? Something good, Athenians, if I am really to
Starting point is 00:26:37 propose what I deserve, and something good which it would be suitable to me to receive? Then what is a suitable reward to be given to a poor benefactor who requires leisure to exhort you? There is no reward, Athenians, so suitable for him as a public maintenance in the pritanium. It is a much more suitable reward for him than for any of you who has won a victory at the Olympic Games with his horse or his chariots. Such a man only makes you seem happy, but I make you really happy, and he is not in want, and I am. So if I am to propose the penalty which I really deserve, I propose this, a public maintenance in the pritanium. How punk is that? A man convicted of insulting the gods of Athens, tells the city, my punishment should be to treat me like an Olympic champion.
Starting point is 00:27:36 Johnny Rotten couldn't have said it better. So Socrates is convicted. He is taken to a cave and then has to wait and excruciating 30 days before his execution. This is because the trial happened on the eve of a holy month when Athens honored the god Apollo and no executions were permitted. In those final 30 days, the students and friends of Socrates visit every day. They urge him to escape, but Socrates is having none of it. He is 70 years old at this point and actually is looking forward to his death. He tells his loyal friend Cretto that his soul will live even after his body perishes from the hemlock. In Plato's final dialogue about the trial, the Phaedo, Socrates describes the hemlock poisoning as when his limbs become tired.
Starting point is 00:28:22 But it's much worse than that. The toxin does paralyze the body, but the mind remains alert for the final hours as well. One is slowly asphyxiated, gruesome. In this, I see a parallel with the tragic end of many of Punk's first generation. While they were not ingesting Hamlock, they were strung out on heroin. The song in the background by Johnny Thunder and The Heartbreakers, co-written by D.D. Ramon, Chinese Rocks, has this immortal chorus. I'm living on a Chinese rock.
Starting point is 00:28:53 All my best things are in Hawk. Here is Phil Marquetti from his Punk Avenue memoir. Heroin was the drug of choice in New York in the winter of 75. Looking back, it's hard to believe how naive we all were. We didn't realize the danger we were putting ourselves in, nor how many friends we were soon going to lose because of it. It was the drug of the intellectuals, the artists, the cool, and the hip. Somebody could have at least warned us of the fact that you won't be able to stop.
Starting point is 00:29:29 And that you will die. End of story. Socrates, of course, was not addicted to heroin. But in the end, he embraced his own death with a fearlessness that feels very pung to me. In this section of the phaedo, Socrates scolds his students who are crying right before he ingests the poison. I suppose that I may and must pray to the gods that my journey hence may be prosperous. That is my prayer. Be it so.
Starting point is 00:29:57 With these words, he put the cup to his lips. and drank the poison quite calmly and cheerfully. Till then, most of us had been able to control our grief fairly well, but when we saw him drinking, and then the poison finished, we could do so no longer. My tears came fast in spite of myself, and I covered my face and wept for myself. It was not for him, but at my own misfortune in losing such a friend. Even before that, Crito had been unable to restrain his tears and had gone away. And Apollodorus, who had never once ceased weeping the whole.
Starting point is 00:30:29 whole time burst into a loud cry and made us one and all break down by his sobbing and grief, except only Socrates himself. What are you doing, my friend? he exclaimed. I sent away the woman chiefly in order that they might not offend in this way, for I have heard that a man should die in silence. After the break. What lessons can we learn from Socrates and the punks? We are listening now to the only band that matters, the clash.
Starting point is 00:31:38 And I play this gem from their first record, Career Opportunities, because it really captures the rejection of rules and norms of society that is the essence of punk, and for that matter, the essence of Socrates. Joe Strummer here rejects the opportunity to make tea at the BBC. he wants to live in truth i think you know the way that punk functions as a kind of cultural force because it isn't you know it isn't a single set of aesthetic this is nick gillespie again you can't say okay well you know there's the remones and the sex pistols that maybe iggy pop and the stooges or something like that and that's that's all there is in punk you know the bands that
Starting point is 00:32:23 played at cbgbs all were you know if they hadn't played there you would not necessarily have linked them together because of their aesthetic preferences or their musical abilities or stylings and things like that. The essence of punk, I think, is to, you know, stand up and throw the rock, you know, into the tell screen and to, you know, publicly denounce the status quo and say, you know, enough already. We are not going to be kind. We're not going to be polite. We're not going to be well-mannered. We are going to break the rules because the rules are not working for us. anymore. And when you think about that, and then you think about somebody like Steve Jobs at Apple, Apple as a company was basically created as the mirror opposite or the bizarro world version of IBM,
Starting point is 00:33:14 you know, where instead of like working in a highly structured hierarchical organization where everybody wore the same clothes, you know, it was a uniform, even though it was like for white collar workers, everybody dressed the same and everybody had to act the same. You know, Jobs was like, no, we're going to have something very different. And the whole idea of a personal computer was a punk move because it took the computer and the idea of a mainframe computer, which was distant and remote and was processing scores of data and spitting out decisions for you. It was, you know, it was the opposite. It's like we're going to take the computer and put it in the hands of individuals and we're going to reverse the network and the power will belong to individuals rather than to the
Starting point is 00:33:58 mainframe computer. I agree with Nick on this. From Galileo to Joey Ramon to Steve Jobs, punk is throwing the rock at the tell screen and giving a middle finger to convention. Sometimes that leads to self-destruction. Sometimes it leads to enduring art. It can be both juvenile and profound, but it's rooted in Socratic defiance to seek the truth, to know what we don't. No. At the same time, if everyone is a Socrates, a Steve Jobs or a Joey Ramon, then our society descends into anarchy. In this respect, it's a privilege to be punk. Most of us have to get on with our lives without screaming at our bosses and pointing out every half-truth and compromise that comes with being a grown-up. I wouldn't want to live in a world
Starting point is 00:34:46 without punk, just as I wouldn't want to live in a world without Socrates. Our world is better because of the first clash record, and it's better because an annoying pest roamed the streets of Athens nearly 2,500 years ago, searching for what was true, what was just, and what was beautiful. Let's speak of the Socratic Impulse. This is Peter Berkowitz, again. Too little of the Socratic Impulse leaves us slaves to existing reality. We simply inherit without thinking about it. But of course, our inheritance is always rich and complicated.
Starting point is 00:35:21 and has conflicting impulses in it. So we have to think about it. Too little Socrates leaves us slaves to the given. Too much Socrates leaves us constantly undermining the inherited. We need the right balance. So maybe the best thing to do is to appreciate the punks before they burn out or fade away. Every now and again, they expose a lie, a hippoccur. that we are better off discarding.
Starting point is 00:35:53 Fifty years ago, the sex pistols aimed their anger at the Queen. Telling the world she was not even a human being. When the ironically titled God Save the Queen came out, most of the British media wouldn't utter a critical word about the House of Windsor. Today, Prince Andrew has been stripped of his title after he was disgraced by allegedly betting underage girls provided by billionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Perhaps Johnny Rotten was on to something.
Starting point is 00:36:27 And at the same time, recognize that there is a limit to Socratic defiance. Exposing lies presupposes the existence of truth. Exposing hypocrisy is powerful only when honesty and order and the common good are valued. If everything must be rejected, that is neither wisdom nor progress. It is nihilism. And I suppose this is an irony. The revolutionary instinct of punk prevents stagnation. It only works if it is tempered by a countervailing appreciation for the world that produced us.
Starting point is 00:37:05 Sa, yeah, yeah. Fouca and Fibov, I hope, the project, the next year's motto. Halliops Avent But happens What happens What happens again When news is a
Starting point is 00:37:30 history To them to break history Some cross Sadism Roots of Populism Bill Clinton Bringing
Starting point is 00:37:46 But that neal ever risen the hobby house I've been my name say yeah yeah
Starting point is 00:37:55 what happened once happens again thank you for listening if you like us you should consider subscribing to the free press at thefp.com
Starting point is 00:38:08 I also want to shout out Tony Pier our sound designer he played James Chance of the contortions and recreated that scene in the A block for us.
Starting point is 00:38:21 Thank you so much, Tony. I think it turned out great. The best if podcast excellence, the EIT experience, the best in podcast excellence, the EILA experience.

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