Matt Levine: uncertainty

Transcript context

…You once told me that law was easier than classics. What did you mean by that? I mean that the activity that you do in your academic job as an undergraduate or a law student is sitting around, analyzing dense texts, but in law, they’re mostly in English. [laughter] It’s very straightforward. If you’re not raised speaking ancient Greek, it is much easier to read even a 19th century legal decision than to read Thucydides. I don’t know. Law is so embedded in our society. You grow up watching Law and Order or whatever. It is very much a part of the fabric of how we live. Whereas reading Greek poetry when I was in college was an extremely niche activity and required a little bit more investment to come up to any familiarity with it. Now, I brought my copy of Horace’s Epistles for this conversation.…

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