Epicurus is remembered as the philosopher of pleasure — and almost everything the modern world thinks it knows about his philosophy is wrong. He did not advocate luxury, gluttony, or hedonistic excess. He lived in a garden, ate bread and water, and taught that the highest pleasure was the absence of pain. His actual philosophy was a radical program for eliminating anxiety about death, the gods, and the future.

This episode recovers the real Epicurus from centuries of distortion, examining his atomic theory of the universe, his therapeutic approach to philosophy, and why both Christians and rival philosophers worked so hard to caricature his ideas.

• How Epicurus’s philosophy of pleasure was systematically misrepresented for millennia
• The Garden — Epicurus’s community and its radical inclusion of women and slaves
• Epicurean physics — atoms, void, and the argument that death is nothing to fear
• Why Christianity and rival philosophical schools made Epicurus their favorite villain