I’m meant to be doing a bit of gentle research for a new Simon Test project. Top 10 greatest scientists and scientific breakthroughs - that sort of thing. Something I can subvert for cheap laughs (or should that be expensive?). For example Newton, who of course through his study of optics devised that colour wheel - could be said to have invented colour itself. The comedy mileage, such as it is, being that life prior to Newton was in black in white. Silly really but any story, no matter how tragic or mundane can be told in a comedic way and informed inaccuracy is a great way to telling them.

So anyway, I was looking on good-old-dirty-filthy-bittorrent for history things, ebooks and the like and I accidentally came across audio files called “Machiavelli in Context”. Nothing to do with science at all but it caught my eye none the less. Having just watched House of Cards, the brilliant series of 90s BBC dramas and also remembering psychologists on Big Brother talking about the Machiavelli scale I was keen to learn about this apparent grand manipulator.

So I downloaded them and discovered the series in question is a series of lectures by a chap called William R. Cook and before I knew it I was back at school again. I count myself lucky that I had a really good history teacher at school and like her, Mr. Cook’s style is thorough yet very accessible.

But I was very surprised about Machiavelli himself. Expecting him to be some great leader or corrupt politician I was surprised to discover he could better be described as a scholar; on wikipedia he’s filled under Renaissance philosophy, and that rather being in a position of leadership himself he in fact analysed history himself and through the publication of his seminal book “the Prince” advised others on successful political leadership.

I think it’s such a shame that there didn’t seem to be any great philosiphers these days, at least none that enter my little pop culture domain. In my experience academia at the moment is riddled with pomposity, elitism and says nothing to me about my life.

Of course if I read books all day it would help! But these audio books - and of course the glorious niche world of podcasting - go a long way toward at the little least informing me if not educating me.

I’m half way through the series at the moment and about to plough into an analysis of his “Discourses on Livy”. I always like stuff that discusses the Roman Empire (or in this case the first half - the Republic) so I’m expecting it to be just as good as all the stuff about monarchy.

Inspired by my new personal fad for history - although a general interest in history is always with me - I did another search for similar media files and came across something called 19th Europe and Western Civilisation and caught myself out being genuinely excited. What a geek!

I also downloaded “How to stop smoking - the Easy way” but I don’t expect to enjoy that quite as much as.