No Shortcuts to Now

About No Shortcuts to Now

No Shortcuts to Now is a philosophy and mythology podcast exploring resistance, meaning, and myth in an age of authoritarianism. Hosted by K.L. Homme, each episode blends Greek myth, Stoic philosophy, and creative nonfiction to examine how we endure — and defy — the rising tide of disinformation, strongmen, and cultural collapse. From ancient wisdom to modern politics, No Shortcuts to Now invites thoughtful listeners into a trail of reflection, resilience, and moral imagination. noshortcutstonow.substack.com (https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

K.L. Homme

Category

history · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

6 Jul 2025

Latest episode

13 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

44 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   13 Oct 2026

   🎧 The King of No Kings (6.5)

   🎧 Waypoint 6.5 — The King of No Kings: The Contingent Crown This audio essay continues the journey of No Shortcuts to Now through myth, history, philosophy, and the stories that shape the civilizations we inherit. In this episode: a democracy under siege, a mercenary's invasion, a general's ambition, a constitution carved in stone, a mother teaching her son to sing—and a philosopher who discovers that freedom requires no crown. For more than a century, the Greek city of Cyrene had governed herself. Then, in 322 BCE, as Alexander the Great's generals divided his empire, Cyrene's democracy fell. The conqueror Ptolemy imposed an oligarchy. Political power passed into the hands of ten thousand property-owning men. The freedom of a city had become subject to the fortunes of kings. But Aristippus the Younger had inherited a different understanding of freedom. His grandfather had taught that neither kings nor crowds could enslave a man who governed himself. His mother, Arete, had taught him to adapt to fortune without surrendering his independence. Drawing on the history of ancient Cyrene and the philosophy of the Cyrenaic school, this essay explores the difference between political liberty and personal freedom—and what remains ours when the world we know falls apart. Tomorrow belongs to fortune. The present alone is ours to enjoy. The present wears a contingent crown. Don’t lose the trail. Get new posts as they drop. 👉 Subscribe to No Shortcuts to Now on Substack:https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com/subscribe (https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com/subscribe) ☕ Support the project: Buy Me a Coffeehttps://buymeacoffee.com/NoShortcutsToNow (https://buymeacoffee.com/NoShortcutsToNow) New? 📘 Begin here:https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com/p/begin-here-no-shortcuts-to-now (https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com/p/begin-here-no-shortcuts-to-now) Support the project—and share this with someone who might appreciate it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit noshortcutstonow.substack.com (https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   8 Sept 2026

   🎧 The Heir of Pain (6.4)

   🎧 Waypoint 6.4 — The Heir of Pain: Birth Pangs of a Democracy This audio essay continues the journey of No Shortcuts to Now through myth, history, philosophy, and the stories that shape the civilizations we inherit. In this episode: a king flaunting his wealth before the Mediterranean world, a miraculous chariot victory, a poet paid to praise the gods, a people forced to pay the bill, foreign mercenaries, revolution—and a prince who inherits a people’s pain. For more than two centuries, the Battiad dynasty ruled the Greek city of Cyrene. Its last king, Arcesilaus IV, surrounded his reign with spectacle. He celebrated victory as evidence of divine favor, opened the city’s coffers for sacrifices and monuments, and commissioned the great poet Pindar to sing of his triumph. But the people were paying for the spectacle. When resentment became resistance, the king answered with foreign mercenaries. The people answered with revolution. Drawing on the surviving traditions of ancient Cyrene, this essay follows the violent end of the Battiad dynasty and the birth of a democracy that would endure for more than a century. Along the way, victory becomes propaganda, wealth becomes grievance, and two very different heirs reveal what one generation can leave to the next. Arete inherited her father’s philosophy. Battus inherited only Cyrene’s rage. A republic may be born. Keeping it is another matter. Don’t lose the trail. Get new posts as they drop. 👉 Subscribe to No Shortcuts to Now on Substack:https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com/subscribe (https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com/subscribe) ☕ Support the project: Buy Me a Coffeebuymeacoffee.com/NoShortcutsToNow New? 📘 Begin here:https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com/p/begin-here-no-shortcuts-to-now (https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com/p/begin-here-no-shortcuts-to-now) Support the project—and share this with someone who might appreciate it. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit noshortcutstonow.substack.com (https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   11 Aug 2026

   🎧 The Heiress of Pleasure (6.3)

   “When, then, does the soul attain to truth?”—Plato, Phaedo Cyrene became the Athens of Africa. One of the great minds the ancient city produced was the geometer Theodorus, who lived in the age of Socrates. Before him, the Pythagoreans believed the universe was governed by mathematical harmony and could be measured using only whole numbers and fractions. But then Theodorus fitted one right triangle to another and continued until he revealed an elegant spiral. The spiral could be drawn in the sand or carved in stone. It could be seen, touched, traced. Yet many of its lengths could not be expressed exactly as whole numbers or fractions, but only as irrational numbers. This astonished Plato. The world of the senses could only be known approximately. Yet mathematical truth could be demonstrated exactly. Did this mean that reality itself—that ultimate Truth—could only be approached through the intellect? The Spiral of Theodorus lent support to Plato’s Theory of Forms, which posited an otherworldly realm of eternal Ideas—perfect Forms that the physical world only approximates. We can define a circle, a square, or a triangle exactly, but any of these found in the physical world will be imperfect—a kind of shadow of the ideal Form. Centuries later, this Platonic dualism—this separation of matter and idea, physical body and ideal form—helped provide a philosophical framework for Christian theology, with its sharp distinction between body and soul, its promise of eternal life, and its suspicion of sensual reality as corrupt and fallen. After Theodorus, Cyrene ripened another apple, one which fell somewhat farther from the tree: Socrates’ most scandalous student, Aristippus. This skeptical hedonist pulled hard in the opposite direction. He argued that we can know only what our own senses reveal. The rest is silence. Sitting before the crackling warmth of a fire, I can know only what my senses disclose to me, never what yours disclose to you. Geometry may shape cities and civilizations, but we are forever bound to the mortal body, with no special access to an eternal god’s-eye view. Two millennia later, Arthur Schopenhauer arrived at a similar conclusion about the limits of knowledge, writing that a man “does not know a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth.” From this hard empiricism, Aristippus founded the ancient world’s most radical school of pure hedonism: Cyrenaicism. Aristippus taught that bodily pleasure was the supreme and only good of life, and he encouraged his students to seek active, intense, and immediate sensual gratification. Yet he did not teach licentiousness. After all, not all pleasures are worth the chase. Many pursuits bring more pain than pleasure. So his philosophy required discernment, restraint, and self-knowledge. Aristippus kept company with his desires. He mastered them—not they him. He lived by his motto: “I possess, but am not possessed.” When he had wine, he drank heartily. When he had none, he kept his cheer. When he found a lover, he embraced her. When she left him, he let her go. She had other customers. The Roman poet Horace admired his ability to adapt, writing that “every hue of life became him.” Yet some called him a charlatan and a sophist. They complained that he charged steep fees to teach clever tricks, not wisdom. Others called him a tyrant’s dog, claiming that, to fund his extravagant tastes, he threw himself shamelessly at the feet of King Dionysius I. At a banquet, the tyrant spat in his face. When asked why he was not offended, Aristippus replied with a question: “If fishermen endure being drenched at sea to catch little fish, why shouldn’t I endure a little spittle to catch a whale?” The darkest slander that circulated about him claimed that he had compared his infant son to useless phlegm, and cast him out to die. Yet he raised two sons, it seems, as well as a daughter named Arete—whose name means virtue—and chose her as his intellectual heiress. In an age that seldom taught philosophy to its daughters, this remarkable woman vindicated her father’s unconventional judgment. From childhood, her father taught her to pursue pleasure with discipline and to disdain excess. She grew to embody a balanced and reflective ideal of rational hedonism. A Renaissance tradition portrays her as the intellectual heart of the Cyrenaic school, where she taught for decades. She carried her father’s philosophy into the next generation, and may have written as many as forty books—all lost to time. 📘 Begin here (https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com/p/begin-here-no-shortcuts-to-now?r=5jzsl3) | ⬅️ Previous Waypoint (6.2) (https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com/p/62-to-refuse-a-god) | ➡️ Coming Soon 🔒 🏛️ Read the Oedipus Cycle here: 5.1: Nine Moons Certain (https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com/p/waypoint-51nine-moons-certain) ☕️ If you’d like to support the work, you can buy me a coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/noshortcutstonow). Follow the journey → Share this with a friend. 🗂️ Indexes: Chapter 1 (https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com/p/chapter-1-index-standing-in-the-ancient) • Chapter 2 (https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com/p/chapter-2-index-the-souls-ascent) • Chapter 3 (https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com/p/chapter-3-index-the-blasted-heath) • Chapter 4 (https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com/p/chapter-4-the-riddle-of-the-deep) • Chapter 5 (https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com/p/chapter-5-the-delphi-cycle) Sources & Further Reading Plato, Theaetetus (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0172%3Atext%3DTheaet.%3Apage%3D147), 147d–148b (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0172%3Atext%3DTheaet.%3Apage%3D147). Xenophon, Memorabilia (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0208%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D1%3Asection%3D1), Book II, chapter 1 (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0208%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D1%3Asection%3D1). Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0258%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D8), Book II, sections 65–104 (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0258%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D8). Kurt Lampe, The Birth of Hedonism: The Cyrenaic Philosophers and Pleasure as a Way of Life (https://academic.oup.com/princeton-scholarship-online/book/37314) (2015). Voula Tsouna, The Epistemology of the Cyrenaic School (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/epistemology-of-the-cyrenaic-school/A4D9EDF40F1854155CECE68187706BBB) (1998). Katharine R. O’Reilly, “Arete of Cyrene and the Role of Women in Philosophical Lineage,” in (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/ancient-women-philosophers/arete-of-cyrene-and-the-role-of-women-in-philosophical-lineage/A7C551F8381B665368B4A7C3A17F8A8F)Ancient Women Philosophers (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/ancient-women-philosophers/arete-of-cyrene-and-the-role-of-women-in-philosophical-lineage/A7C551F8381B665368B4A7C3A17F8A8F) (2023). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit noshortcutstonow.substack.com (https://noshortcutstonow.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

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Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

5 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

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