I feel so special. I have my own mic here.
I am so happy to be here with you today.
I bring you wonderful greetings from Park City.
We have our Sundance coming up.
I'll be going back up to Park City
to be on the radio station to talk about all of the cool people we've talked to
the directors and filmmakers, and it's a very fun place to be.
And, my role in that place up there is to bring that content to everyone
through the wonderful new phenomenon which we've called social media.
I'm going to throw out one really cool stat for you,
and that is 80% of all Americans use an online social network
and the most used website in all of America is Facebook.
So being in social media and being in news and information,
and having a very, very strong passion, and a love of the classics,
I decided to combine the two.
I created this beautiful website called ClassicCulture.org.
At ClassicCulture.org, I bring about the best ideas.
The most beautiful artwork and incredible stories
that we are all part of, it's our heritage, it's our culture.
The Greek culture; the Romans.
And having that website, and using social social media,
I combined the two, and now, you can get everything on your phone,
and that's a big deal to me.
Gutenberg in the 1400s created the printing press.
Through the printing press,
we're able to get all this information and pass it along to each other.
It's old social media that they created.
And today Facebook, I would say,
is the most important invention since that press machine,
that was invented in Germany,
and it allows for information to pass on within the click of a button
to anywhere in the world.
Doing social media in Park City, we can take information,
the interviews that we have,
and we can post them to the countries the people come from,
Germany, Northern Europe.
And we post that immediately, instantaneously, to where they are.
So I'm just going to feature
some of this cool stuff that is on our Facebook page for ClassicCulture.
This is what Julius Caesar said:
"As a rule, men worry more about what they can't see
than about what they can."
This is another really cool quote.
It was featured on a lot on the graves in Greece and in Rome.
It said: "I was not. I have been. I am not. I do not mind."
And so, through your phone, you can access some of the best ideas.
They're not going to conform exactly with the ideas that we have today,
and that's why you want to use them.
That's why you want to bring them into your life.
It's because they give you a completely different perspective
which will help you evaluate
what you're doing today, and why you're doing it.
This is one of my favorite ones from Plato:
"If a man wants to know the origin of states and societies,
he should behold them from the point of view of time.
Thousands of cities have come into being
and have passed away, again and again, in infinite ages."
Being at this cultural hearth,
they were able to see the Egyptians and the Romans
all these incredible, diverse cultures,
and they were there, right in the thick of it.
They observed it all.
Greece is the founding civilization of our entire society: democracy,
ethics, philosophy, mathematics.
If I can ask by a show of hands, who studied Latin in K-12?
OK, three people.
Who studied Latin in college?
OK, one person.
So, for whatever reason,
the founding principles of our society, and our civilization are gone.
They're inaccessible.
They're in the back of university libraries
that no one touches, or no on accesses.
There was this Greek who founded Athens. His name was Theseus.
He concurred the labyrinth in Crete.
He found his way, and he found the minotaur.
He slayed the minotaur.
And, on his way back to Acropolis, he declared "Aphrodite Pandemos,"
and that is "beauty for the people."
That's my mission and my idea that I bring to you today.
Thank you.