A high priest from a hereditary clan of seers at the temple of Zeus in Olympia marched to India with Alexander the Great and came home convinced that nothing can be known for certain, and that this is the secret to happiness. This episode tells the story of Pyrrho of Elis, roughly 360 to 270 BCE, from his roots in the Democritean atomist tradition and his student Timon of Phlius, who preserved his teachings, to his encounters with the Magi and the naked wise men of India.

The hosts weigh the competing theories of where his skepticism came from: Diogenes Laertius’s claim of Indian inspiration, possibly from Jains or Ajnanas, versus Richard Bett’s point that conversations ran through three translators and Johannes Bronkhorst’s argument that all the ingredients were already Greek. They then lay out the method itself, epoche or suspension of judgment, isostheneia or equal strength of opposing arguments, and the resulting ataraxia, before addressing the paradox of dogmatically claiming nothing can be known and how Aenesidemus and Sextus Empiricus rebranded Pyrrhonism as ongoing inquiry.

• The Klytidai clan and what it meant to be a gatekeeper of divine truth at Olympia
• Why a game of telephone through three translators complicates the Eastern origin theory
• Parallels between ataraxia and nirvana and the possibility of a shared ancient root
• The tug-of-war image: letting go of the rope when both sides pull with equal force
• Pyrrhonism versus academic skepticism and the shift from noun to verb