The International Influence of the Classics | Anya Leonard

On this episode of Anchored, Jeremy is joined by Anya Leonard, founder and director of Classical Wisdom, a site dedicated to bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds. Anya discusses her experience as a well-traveled individual and unpacks her experience in her current home, Buenos Aires, as a culture steeped in culture. She discusses international interest in the classics but highlights differences in the American renewal movement. The two also talk about the founding and purpose of Classical Wisdom and how to cultivate a love of learning in children.

Transcript

Jeremy Tate (00:06.583)
Welcome back to the Anchored Podcast. We are here today with Anya Leonard from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Anya is the founder and the director of Classical Wisdom, a publishing business dedicated to bringing ancient wisdom to modern minds. Anya majored in philosophy and the history of science and math with a minor in comparative literature at St. John's College right here in Annapolis and received her master's in sociology at the University of Edinburgh. Born in Norway.

Anya has lived in 12 countries, has visited 85 countries, and is currently residing again in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She recently published a children's book about the ancient Greek poetess called Sappho, the Lost Poetess. Anya Leonard, thanks so much for being with us this morning.

Anya Leonard (00:54.51)
Well, thank you so much for having me.

Jeremy Tate (00:57.443)
So you have an amazing story. I mean, starting off in Finland, you lived in all of these different countries. Starting off in Norway, excuse me. What was school like growing up in Norway as a young child?

Anya Leonard (01:11.862)
Well, I was born in Norway, but I actually moved to England when I was still a baby, so about six months. And I lived in England until I was about four, and then I moved to America. So that's why I have a very American accent. I lived in the U.S. until about 14, and then I went back to Norway. And then I went back to England as well, and around this time too, my father moved to Kazakhstan. So I used to spend my summers in Kazakhstan, and then after that...

He lived in Russia, so I lived in Russia for a while as well. And sort of just, you know, it gets very complicated. There was a lot of other places thrown in there. But I sort of just bounced around and I got the opportunity to try lots of different educational systems. I went to boarding school in the UK, I went to a private school in Norway, I went to a public school in America. So I got a taste of everything, really.

Jeremy Tate (02:11.659)
So, Anya, having spent time, you know, Kazakhstan, Norway, all these different countries, do you speak many different languages?

Anya Leonard (02:20.31)
You know, I love studying languages, but I love studying them more than mastering them. And I think one of the reasons is, you know, I don't actually have the best hearing. Um, and I studied linguistics. I couldn't get the IPA test really well. So that's why I love actually studying ancient languages because I don't have to necessarily say them out loud. Um, but yeah, I've spent a lot of time, you know, studying Russian and, um, but right now I speak in Spanish.

And so, you know, if you don't use it, you lose it. So right now my life is mostly in the bilingual world of English and Spanish, and of course, ancient Greek and Latin.

Jeremy Tate (03:01.247)
So you've lived in 12 countries, you have visited 85. Why did y'all choose Buenos Aires right now as home base?

Anya Leonard (03:09.642)
Well, first off, I should say that number is outdated. We are avid country collectors, and with the visiting of San Marino a few months ago, I got to 90. So I'm actually at the 90 country mark. Buenos Aires, you know, so before Buenos Aires, we were living in Taiwan, and I loved Taiwanese culture, the people, the food. I mean, absolutely the natural landscapes. I mean,

Jeremy Tate (03:21.931)
Nice. That's amazing.

Anya Leonard (03:39.434)
absolutely mind-blowing. But they work so hard. Everybody, like the kids go to school from, you know, seven or eight a.m. until nine p.m. I mean, it's, you know, you go to a coffee shop and everyone's sort of falling asleep at the coffee shops. And at the time, we both decided, oh, you know, we'd love to go to a little bit more of a relaxed culture, you know, where you can have a glass of wine and a long conversation. So we, you know, chose Buenos Aires

Jeremy Tate (03:49.705)
Wow.

Anya Leonard (04:08.95)
We absolutely love this country. We've been here for 12 years. We lived in Mexico and Colombia for a little while and then came back. But it's sort of like kind of going back in time. You know, you go to a cafe and everybody's reading big books of philosophy. It's got one of the highest bookstores per capita, the highest theater per capita. It's really a culture, steeped in culture, you know? People...

Jeremy Tate (04:36.728)
Wow.

Anya Leonard (04:37.89)
You walk around the streets and there are these old, beautiful French buildings. I mean, we live in an almost 100-year-old building that has got a grand courtyard and thick marble walls that you never need the heating or the air conditioning. It's old school.

Jeremy Tate (04:42.997)
in.

Jeremy Tate (04:54.451)
Yeah, yeah. Now, Anya, when did you kind of start to think through? I mean, you'd had this exposure to school in the US and UK boarding school and school in Norway. Were you pretty reflective pretty early on about kind of the different kinds of education and thinking through the merits of, you know, different, different educational kind of philosophies?

Anya Leonard (05:14.686)
I mean, it really is a wonderful insight to be able to live abroad young and travel when you're young because you learn to see things from the outside in and that things that you might completely take for granted or never question are questionable. And when you realize just how different things can be depending on where you are in life, even within the US.

Jeremy Tate (05:33.315)
Hmm.

Anya Leonard (05:42.938)
I lived in different neighborhoods and my mom got remarried and we went to a completely different neighborhood that had a very different demographic, culture, everything. So it was really interesting. To be frank, sometimes the quality of education, intellectually I was definitely challenged a lot more in boarding school than I was in the public school. I mean, it just...

was the case and so yeah.

Jeremy Tate (06:16.863)
You know, there's something about like the English boarding school, and maybe it's Harry Potter or a dozen other movies where like, it just kind of has this place in, you know, American imagination. Well, what was that like for you being in an English boarding school?

Anya Leonard (06:33.474)
You know, I loved it, and it was really hard. When I first entered, I just had never been challenged to that extreme before. And it took me off my guard. If you go through schooling and you never really struggle and you never have any problems and you get good grades and you just don't question it, you're like, okay, this is great. And then all of a sudden, you reach a point where you're like, oh, wow, I didn't just automatically get that A. It kind of...

freaks you out to be honest. And the first month, I actually kind of suffered a bit of insomnia. I was like, oh my goodness, this is sort of stressful. But I think it's good to encounter those stresses and challenges when you're young because you learn to overcome them and then later on in your life you go, okay, well that was really hard, but I managed to overcome it. And so, I remember it was my history class of all things that I had the worst grade in at first. And part of it was not my fault

Jeremy Tate (07:16.623)
Hmm.

Anya Leonard (07:31.402)
I had my chemistry class was on the opposite side of campus. And so I'd always get there late. And so the teacher would always put me in the worst seat, which was like a big U and one person in the middle for whoever came late. And I had to clean up a lab on the opposite side of class, campus, and I'd always sit in the middle seat and he would grill me. And I, you know, it was very stressful, but over the course of, you know, a semester or two, I went from like a D, I think straight to an A, but I studied.

Jeremy Tate (07:40.194)
Ugh.

Anya Leonard (08:00.962)
so hard. I mean, I really had to push myself and, you know, I didn't like it at the time, but I was very grateful for it afterwards.

Jeremy Tate (08:09.703)
And then kind of your discovery of classical education. One of the things I love about the classical ed movement is very few people would say they grew up with this kind of education. For most of us, it's been a process of discovering what we didn't have growing up. I guess for you it's a bit more complex. I mean, in some ways I would think an English boarding school now or 20 years ago would very much have retained at least elements of a serious classical education.

process of discovering this tradition been like and how did that begin?

Anya Leonard (08:44.042)
Well, I think for all people who have had this experience, they know that really, genuinely, it starts at home. And I wrote even like in the beginning of our essential Greeks, you know, before I read the classics, the classics were read to me. And I was very fortunate to have a mother who loved mythology and literature. And so, you know, I remember as a kid, she would be reading out loud, the Iliad and the Odyssey to me and my brothers. And so, you know, we got it really early. I even have.

Jeremy Tate (08:58.927)
Hmm.

Anya Leonard (09:14.354)
I think this is my grandmother's companion Homer and from like the early 1900s. So, you know, a lot of this does, you know, belong deeply in the family. And I was very fortunate also to have an older brother who loved philosophy as well. And I remember even when I was like a teenager in Kazakhstan, my father studied astronomy. And so we would go to the observatories and look up the stars

Jeremy Tate (09:24.987)
So cool.

Anya Leonard (09:43.734)
you know, have these philosophical conversations that kind of happened more organically, just in the family, in the home, in nature, rather than, you know, the very strict classical education as we perceive it. I mean, later on, yes, in school, we would study a lot of these things, but I think it was already like the love and interest was ingrained from the beginning.

Jeremy Tate (10:09.911)
Love that. And let's talk classical wisdom. Some folks listening, big fans, subscribers, they're already a part of what you're doing, but maybe some folks have never heard the first thing about classical wisdom. So what is this? Tell us a little bit about your work.

Anya Leonard (10:25.018)
So Classicalism was actually founded about 10 years ago. It was originally started as a joint project with a man named Bill Bonner, who runs a large financial publishing company called Agora. And Bill happens to love the classics, be a friend of the classics, and he owns Le Belette, the French publishing house, which...

is one of the last publishing houses to publish new critical translations. And I mean, they have to have a whole team of people who know different types of ancient Greek to kind of go through these. And sadly, there's not as much funding or interest as there used to be historically in new translations. I mean, people have a hard enough time selling Cicero. Can you imagine these things that are just being translated just don't have the same fame.

to going for them. So my initial project was to find a way to make the classics self-sustainable because cultures, politics, funding can come and go and if we can find a way to make it work on its own, like that's beautiful to have enough people interested to help keep this project alive. So that was the roots of classical wisdom and

Jeremy Tate (11:14.199)
Mm.

Anya Leonard (11:42.614)
You know, it's been wonderful. We're kind of branched out from the Agora umbrella, but it's still dedicated to kind of promoting, preserving the classics. And our goal is to sort of show the relevance of it in the here and now and the day-to-day life and bringing classics to everybody. So we have over 60,000 readers in over 180 countries. It's a really worldwide endeavor. Our subscribers come from everywhere. We do.

Jeremy Tate (12:07.093)
Oh.

Anya Leonard (12:12.542)
live events every month and there will be people being like, yeah, it's 2 a.m. here in the Philippines or you know and it's just awesome. We have a really, really beautiful community and we do these live events that will be about the philosophy of anxiety or the battle of Thermopylae. You know, we kind of cover the whole range of the Greco-Roman world from around 12,000 BC all the way to the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire.

It's not so niche, but we try to every week just let people enjoy the life of learning and learning about the ancient world, even if it's just for 10 minutes in your inbox once a week, you know.

Jeremy Tate (12:55.823)
I'm wondering if you can comment on just kind of the current moment that we're in. It seems like, I think back about the origins of CLT we launched in 2015, I feel like the difference between just then and now in terms of folks that have heard about the classical education movement, who have opinions about it, have a perspective on it, it seemed like back then it was very much off the radar.

And you've got this international vantage point. Are we experiencing the beginnings of what could be a renaissance of classical education? What are your thoughts on this?

Anya Leonard (13:33.418)
You know, I really think so. I mean, I tell people all the time, the classics are coming back. And I genuinely think that we've got enough of a mess on our hands, and everybody feels it. You know, politics are super polarized. I mean, people are unhappier at a higher rate than ever before. I mean, our sort of the emptiness of the cell phone culture and the

Jeremy Tate (13:58.721)
Oh.

Anya Leonard (14:03.506)
lonelier than ever, the communities have broken down, and people feel that, and that's heartbreaking. And the thing is, is that this, none of these problems are new. I mean, yes, of course, like doom scrolling is not necessarily something Aristotle would have written about, but talking about how to be happy to live a virtuous life, a meaningful life, this is something people have genuinely been discussing for thousands of years. So it's...

Jeremy Tate (14:06.543)
Totally.

Jeremy Tate (14:22.225)
Uh...

Anya Leonard (14:33.774)
to tap into that resource, to remember that there is that resource, this toolbox of wisdom that's been around for thousands of years, it's so reassuring. It's so fulfilling. And when you sit down and you throw the phone across the room and you pick up a book that has survived time and you kind of connect with that level of the sublime, it literally nourishes your soul in a way that I think people really...

Jeremy Tate (14:44.535)
Hmm.

Anya Leonard (15:02.99)
crave. And when they get that, when they get that, even that first contact of that, it's so rewarding. I understand why people are needing it more than ever now.

Jeremy Tate (15:14.287)
Are you seeing in Argentina, are you seeing are there are there classical schools? I mean can families homeschool? What is it like for families saying? Yes, this is this is the way we want to educate our

Anya Leonard (15:28.454)
There isn't as much like the specific classical education movement here that there is in the U.S. There isn't as much of a culture of homeschooling. But they haven't departed from the classics as much either. So when you go to any newspaper stand on the street, there is going to be a classical text there. You will find...

Jeremy Tate (15:45.859)
Hmm.

Anya Leonard (15:53.91)
Thucydides or Xenophon or Plato or Aristotle in your local magazine stop. I mean, everywhere. The history and love of the classics is so much more recent, like the Eco Parque, like the gardens have big classical statues everywhere. In the Eco Parque, they're just, it's right next door to my house, is like an example of like the classics being so relevant here. There is a...

Jeremy Tate (15:56.855)
Whoa.

Anya Leonard (16:21.198)
temple, a perfect replica of the temple of Vesta, like the Vestal Virgins that's set up in the thing. And it was set up 100 years ago to be a place where mothers could go breast feed and take care of their children in the park. And so it's just a lot more ingrained already. Like the culture here, too, is so much more family-orientated, so much more friend-orientated that they're not suffering the same problems.

Jeremy Tate (16:34.232)
Wow.

Anya Leonard (16:50.93)
yet, maybe they will, I mean, I hope not, but the community structure is so much stronger and so much more important to the people here that they're not, I guess, needing the Renaissance as much.

Jeremy Tate (17:06.255)
Okay, totally. That's helpful. That's very helpful. And I'm understanding that you are kind of in the beginning phases of taking what you've done with classical wisdom and extending this even down to third graders and young children. Tell us about that.

Anya Leonard (17:23.33)
Well, you know, as I was saying just from the very beginning, like, the love of classics starts so young. And just being familiar with the characters and the ideas and the way of thinking from an early age means that later on when you're wanting to study more seriously, none of it is intimidating. You're already familiar with some of these characters. And so I just, I have an eight-year-old daughter, so part of it is just completely selfishly.

I'm enjoying getting to help teach her and sharing that process with my readers along the way. So it's kind of just a natural extension of what I already have with Classical Wisdom and sort of bringing it to my daughter. But it's so much fun because we will study and discuss these things and then we'll go to a museum and she'll be like, oh my God, that's the judgment of Paris. She gets excited about...

learning these stories, but then that's really reinforced in studying the history of Western culture right up to the 19th century because everybody else was so influenced by the classics. So she enjoys museums at another level. I mean, it's a really rewarding process just personally, so I kind of want to work to extend that out to all my readers and to the community and let other people enjoy that same process.

Jeremy Tate (18:47.359)
You know, I was just having this conversation this morning. There's not a clear line, and you kind of alluded to this when you were talking about what education is like in Argentina. There's not a clear line that anyone can say exactly where something becomes classical education. You know, that it's more of a spectrum. The way you put it is they had never lost classical education to the degree to which it's been replaced and lost, you know.

in the United States. But to you, what describe the fullness of a classical education, of a student receiving this, from third grade on? What does their day look like? What do their weeks look like?

Anya Leonard (19:29.558)
You know, the beauty, in a way, of the classics is that it doesn't get as organized as we think about it today. And I think when you realize how things can just neatly and beautifully interconnect, then it's really fulfilling. So, you know, when you realize that philosophy, and math, and history kind of all combine, it's great. So a lot of it can start with just...

Jeremy Tate (19:48.684)
Yeah.

Anya Leonard (19:58.466)
For us, we try to, again, make it as sort of natural and organic as possible. So we'll go through the park and we'll just have discussions about ideas, about what it means to be a good friend, what is virtue. We'll talk about those things and then as we'll come to a statue and there'll be a statue of Archimedes and we'll be like, okay, let's talk about Archimedes. Like what are some of the cool inventions he did and why did he create these? And so...

Jeremy Tate (20:22.063)
Mm.

Anya Leonard (20:26.49)
for us, like I do try to follow some books and I try to create some structures right now. I kind of focusing on a different historical figure each month as like a starting point and then seeing where that can take us. But it's also just a lot of reading, discussion, I like, I love art, I studied art history for a long time. So going to museums and seeing the paintings and just having conversations.

My daughter loves drawing, so we'll bring our sketchbooks and we can sit in front of a piece of artwork. There's so much beautiful artwork about the classical world. It kind of just can happen so easily in that way.

Jeremy Tate (21:05.213)
Oh.

Jeremy Tate (21:09.039)
Wow. Well, what would you say? I mean, I think there is this kind of debate or tension within the classical movement in some ways of kind of the tension between kind of rigor and school as learning, as leisure, you know, school as rest. And yeah, I'm interested in kind of your commentary because at the end of the day, what we all want to do is we want to cultivate

you know, a love for learning, cultivate wonder in students. I mean, I remember some students from my time in the public school, some of the top students, students who went to the Ivy League, you know, they didn't have anything less than 98% in any class. They didn't really seem to love learning. They seem to be determined to never get below a 98%. How do you do that? How do you cultivate these affections of the heart as an educator?

Anya Leonard (22:04.006)
It's tricky, and I think that I don't necessarily have the answer with regards to trying to decide whether it should be structured and disciplined versus completely free-flowing and organic. I mean, I too vacillate between thinking, okay, no, we need more structure versus not. But as you say, I think the key is if you can...

plant the seed of autodidactism and the tools to learn how whatever field you want to, then at a certain point, you don't have to do much. And that's actually, like you can nurture, you can help, you can provide more resources. But I think that culture of autodidactism is critical for actually the self-realization of any individual.

Jeremy Tate (22:44.776)
Mm.

Jeremy Tate (23:00.776)
So define that term for our audience, if you would. Autodidactism.

Anya Leonard (23:04.918)
Well yeah, and it's great because it's so much Greek in it. But it's basically self-learning. And when you think about our own selves, like just when do you learn the most is when you're interested. And when are you interested is because you're pursuing your own line of interests and thoughts. I go in wormholes, I'm sure everybody does.

with regards to inquiries and thoughts that they wanna follow through. And even if it's something as simple as like, you're looking up a Wikipedia page, you go, I wonder what that is. You click through and you click through. And like that love of finding out and curiosity, like that's the stuff you remember. And like that's kind of critical because you remember what you're paying attention to. So if you're sort of being forced to do something, you know, it's much harder. So how do you, but if you just do completely,

completely child-led. Well, kids aren't going to know. They don't know what they don't know, right? So they can't possibly be able to say, I'm interested in astrophysics if they don't even know what astrophysics is. So it kind of has to be a balance between kind of demonstrating all there is to learn and then letting them get excited about what they want to learn. So even... And I do this with adults too. Like we do in a central Greek school.

Jeremy Tate (24:13.871)
Okay.

Anya Leonard (24:24.686)
course. And in it, we do Homer to Aristotle, a good fundamental, foundational six-week course on how to approach the classics. And there's a lot of reading material depending on how much you want to read. I mean, it comes with the essential Greek book. We've got lots of text. Of course, there's infinite amount of reading you can do. And some of my sort of students who are...

Jeremy Tate (24:43.084)
Yeah.

Anya Leonard (24:52.182)
in the mentality that you were saying before, like, I've got to get to 98%, they're like, oh, no, I can't keep up, or I've got to read everything else, and they get kind of stressed out. And I say, no, no. Don't worry. Read little bits as you go, but make a note of what you want to continue learning more about. Like, you don't have... We don't have time in our lives to read every single thing that there exists. So if you get a taste of... You know, it's like going to the buffet. Like, you see what there is, and then you go, okay, now I want to go back for that.

I think that's kind of critical.

Jeremy Tate (25:26.071)
Love that, love that. For years now, we've concluded the Anchor podcast by asking our guest, what is the book that has been most formative for you, the book that you go back and reread? I wanna kinda change that up a bit. I'm wondering, because you've referenced characters and the way the characters from literature impact us.

I'm wondering if you had to say that there's one character that has been most influential on your life, on your imagination, from any novel, from Homer to the present, who would that be?

Anya Leonard (25:57.654)
Now is this a fictional or non-fictional character?

Jeremy Tate (26:01.143)
Let's go fix you all.

Anya Leonard (26:03.874)
Oh, okay. That's harder. Because I was going to say, as a historical person, completely no. I mean, if I were to...

Anya Leonard (26:22.378)
Well, hmm. I've got a few contenders in my mind. And you know, I kind of want to go with Penelope because, you know, she is really the hero of the Odyssey. She's like the most clever character. She outwits Odysseus.

Jeremy Tate (26:34.603)
Nice, okay.

Jeremy Tate (26:43.784)
Ugh.

Anya Leonard (26:52.614)
Her role, and I think it's always an important reminder for people that in the Bronze Age, women actually had a lot more power than they did in the Classical Age. And she was the kingmaker. She held the power. And I think her ability to handle a very complicated situation with grace and pose, I mean, I just, I always think she's really awesome.

Jeremy Tate (27:22.835)
And what a great example of just, I mean, not just wits and kind of cunning and there's that part of Penelope, but thinking of the scene where she's weaving and undoing the blanket every night to kind of keep the suitors at bay, but also kind of just this fidelity of heart to Odysseus. It's just a really, really beautiful.

Beautiful image. That's a great choice. First time we've done that question on you. So put you on the spot. You had no warning that was coming and I love that. Love the response there. Awesome. So we're here with Anya Leonard, the founder and the director of Classical Wisdom. Anya, if folks want to learn more about Classical Wisdom, more about your work, if they want to get their children plugged into what you're doing on the elementary school side, where do they go?

Anya Leonard (28:10.786)
Just classical wisdom.com has everything. You can sign up for our free newsletter or help support our project. You can see a big tab for kids at there. So classical wisdom kids.com is where you can find all the kids stuff. We're on social media because that's where people are. So if even if you want a little tasting, you know, you can get on our Facebook page or YouTube. We've got lots of interviews and discussions that we've been having.

over the years, but really at our site we've got access to everything there. So we've got our books and our courses. You can find everything in one spot at Classicalism.

Jeremy Tate (28:52.151)
Awesome, again here with Anya Leonard, founder of Classical Wisdom. Anya, thank you for the work that you're doing, that you've been doing for a decade now to bring classical wisdom, classical education to so, so many people. I know a lot of folks who are big fans of you and your work. Come back and join us again in the future.

Anya Leonard (29:10.102)
Well, thank you so much for having me.