HeyJaredExploring the Analects
Exploring the Analects takes you passage by passage through the collected teachings of Confucius. Host Elliott Bernstein brings each quote to life with fresh translations, historical context, and insights for Chinese learners—all while showing how 2,500-year-old ideas still…
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 5
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- Sep 25, 2026
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- Jul 10, 2026
Latest episodes
A Pleasure to Have in Class (opens the original)
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Dig out an old report card. At the top, letter grades: English, history, math. Near the bottom, a stock phrase or two: "Works hard." "A pleasure to have in class." The things most of us would say matter more than diagramming a sentence — showing up, pulling your weight, keeping your word — got the stock phrase, because nobody knows how to test them. Twenty-five hundred years ago, Confucius set out four subjects, and only one of them would get a real grade in a modern school. In this twenty-fifth
Sitting Shiva with Confucius (7.9, 7.10) (opens the original)
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In this twenty-fourth episode, host Elliott Bernstein reads two passages about how Confucius carried himself around the bereaved. 7.9: "When with mourners, the Master would never eat his fill." 7.10: "On days he wept, the Master would not sing." Neither opens with the usual 子曰 — these aren't quotations but descriptions of conduct, recorded because his students thought the conduct was the teaching. As the Song commentator 馮椅 put it, in his own day these practices weren't being observed, but the M
Love and Hate (4.3, 4.4) (opens the original)
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In 1665, London's Lord Mayor ordered every stray dog and cat in the city killed to stop the plague. Those strays were the very thing hunting the rats whose fleas were spreading it. He was not negligent, and he was not malicious — he was wrong, and countless numbers may have died for it. So how do you judge a man like that? In this twenty-third episode, host Elliott Bernstein reads passages 4.3 and 4.4 — "Only the human-hearted are capable of loving people and capable of hating people," and "If y
The Side Quest Trap (2.16) (opens the original)
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Side quests are in every game these days. Help Bopeep find her sheep, track down 900 Korok seeds, spend twenty hours decorating a house you'll barely visit. They can be the best part of a game — but every hour spent on one is an hour not spent on the thing you actually set out to do. Confucius watched his own students wander off into farming, medicine, astronomy, and board games, and gave them eight characters about it. In this episode host Elliott Bernstein reads passage 2.16 — 攻乎異端，斯害也已, "Labo
Parting Ways (15.40) (opens the original)
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道不同，不相為謀 — seven characters Chinese speakers still use to tell someone it's time to go their separate ways. But did Confucius mean that people on different paths can't plan together, or that they shouldn't ? In this twenty-first episode, host Elliott Bernstein works through passage 15.40 and the two readings that have divided it for two thousand years. In the neutral one, clashing goals simply make collaboration impossible — picture two partners who both love pizza but agree on nothing else, and
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