We said we'd post something on the 24th, didn't we? And here it is. Just a friendly chat about some of the things that have changed for the podcast, and for us as podcasters and scholars. 

Today, we have a guest, Antonio Leggieri on the podcast to talk about his phd research on the late imperial novel Guzhang Juechen. 

The 三字經, usually translated as the Three Character Classic, is a fascinating text because it functions like a "my first Confucian text." Children were given this text when they were quite young and asked to memorize the book, teaching them moral lessons that would prepare them to master the real Confucian classics later in life. In this episode, Rob and Lee debate the first few lines of the poem.

Just a note: we recorded this in 2018, and then we added a prologue to the front end of the podcast.

Today, Rob is off doing research in China, so Lee interviews Professor Van Norden. Professor Van Norden is a philosophy professor at Vassar, and he works on early Chinese philosophical texts.

He recently published a textbook for learning Classical Chinese (文言文). The book is the outgrowth of Professor Van Norden's teaching, and he seeks to make Classical Chinese more approachable than do other textbooks on the language. Professor Van Norden and Lee discuss his book and wider issues related to early Chinese texts.