Comic follows ancient schools of thought for R4 series

Comic Andy Zaltzman has spent three weeks living by the teachings of various ancient schools of philosophy for a new Radio 4 series.

The satirist, who studied classics at University College, Oxford, is to be a stoic, and epicurean and a cynic in the programme, My Life As…

Every week he will be given a set of tasks to teach him a philosophical lesson in the school of thought he is studying for that episode.

In the first, scheduled to air on November 17, he will tackle stoicism, and discovers that it’s ‘nothing about keeping a stiff upper lip and suppressing my emotions’.

Premiership rugby club Saracens hold weekly classes in stoicism and special forces recruits are taught its insights: the value of virtue for its own sake and how to make the best of what is in our power, and take the rest as it happens. 

The show also features mentalist and illusionist Derren Brown, a follower of stoicism.

In episode two, Zaltzman will be following the epicurean philosophy that arose in around 300BC in Athens.

 Epicurus set up a school of philosophy called The Garden, where his followers lived and supposedly shared all their possessions. For Epicureans, the goal of life is happiness or pleasure, rather than virtue, but they tended to live simply and eat simply.

And for the third episode Zaltzman ‘thinks it should be easy’ living as a cynic given his job, but ‘soon finds out how wrong he is’.

The school gets its name from Diogenes, who lived in a barrel in Athens and who was nick-named ‘kynikos’, or 'dog-like', because he lived in the street and fed on scraps

The cynics’ philosophy is based on puncturing the false belief that the most important thing in life is to win success and status, often with philosophical pranks.

Comic Mark Thomas is one of those helping Zaltzman understand that way of thinking.

Published: 27 Oct 2017