Plato

8 minute lives · Jul 28, 2026 · 8m

Hi there, and welcome to 8 Minute Lives. In 399 BC, in Athens, a roughly seventy-year-old man drank a cup of poison hemlock, surrounded by his friends. His crime, according to the jury of his fellow citizens, was corrupting the young and disrespecting the gods. His name was Socrates, and among the young men influenced by him was a young aristocrat from a famous family. That young man was so shaken by what Athens did to his teacher that he spent the rest of his life trying to answer a single question: how do you build a world where the best man in the city isn't killed by it? His name was…