Kalosyni's 2025 EpicureanFriends Year in Review

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    Hi Everyone! Here are some reflections on the past year -- EpicureanFriends 2025 Year in Review, highlighting forum events and projects, and member contributions:

    • The Lucretius Today Podcast, co-hosted by Cassius and Joshua, started the year off with episodes on key concepts in Epicurean philosophy. Then at the beginning of March the podcast team started a new series of episodes reviewing Cicero's Tusculan Disputations from an Epicurean perspective. Cassius and Joshua make quite the team, with their complimentary contributions rounding out the weekly insights into Epicurus and his philosophy. And we are especially grateful to have Joshua as part of the podcast, both because he is a wonderful and enjoyable human being to know, and because of his dedication, enthusiasm, and his many insightful contributions to the study of Epicurus.
    • Throughout the year we continued our Wednesday Night Zoom for level three participants focused on the study of Usener's Epicurea, based on translation and research conducted by  Bryan. Bryan's PDF is one of the best sources available for studying Usener's collected quotations, which Usener himself prepared in Greek and Latin. The Wednesday night Usener study Zoom group began back in April 2024, and we continue with our gratitude and enjoyment for all the facinating new details Bryan presents, as well as our great appreciation for his calm and centered presence that he brings to our meetings. And gratitude to our dedicated Wednesday night attendees -- you bring both the reason and the fun!
    • In May of 2025 we began a new weekly afternoon (EST) Sunday Zoom targeted to make it easier for friends in Europe to attend. We began with a review of basic topics from our forum FAQ, and then in November started a study of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura.
    • Late in the year we replaced our "First Monday" Zoom with a special Fourth Sunday Zoom to which we invited more recent forum participants. The Fourth Sunday Zoom will focus on topics of special interest to modern Epicurean living.
    • We also continued our monthly Twentieth Commemoration Zoom to continue the tradition established by Epicurus, as a time for established members to commemorate together and reconnect.
    • Over this past year our founding member ElliPensa deserves great credit for being a dedicated voice for Epicurean philosophy from Epicurus' own homeland. Elli's native language is Greek and she continues to produce cutting-edge articles on hot-topic issues. She is a valuable Epicurean resource, as well as a wonderful person! In 2025 she contributed a large number of articles and her most recent article: The Epic of Epicurus - Ithaca and the Garden: Dialectic and the Canon talks about the life of Epicurus and the paradigm change that he brought into the world - a joy to read for both new and longtime students of Epicurus.
    • Over the past year our member TauPhi deserves special credit both for his regular contributions and also for his work on preparing PDFs of: 1) Diogenes Laertius' Book Ten, featuring parallel side-by-side English translations, and 2) Bernier's version of three essays on Happiness, Virtue, and Liberty from the work of Gassendi. TauPhi always presents deep and challenging ideas with a smile. He is an all-around great guy who helps keep us on our toes during our weekly meetings with his unflappable honesty and kindness.
    • And also gratitude for Donwho continues to be a great help and resource for analysis on Greek text, and also his video which is a very important resource (Bread And Water - Debunking The Idea Of Epicurean Asceticism). And also Martin who is a great resource on physics (as shown by his recent contribution to the physics article from one of our new participants). And also Godfrey for his help in the moderation discussions -- So grateful to all of you on the EpicureanFriends moderation team!
    • And also a huge shout-out to all our regular forum members not mentioned here who have contributed to this website through posts and participation in our Zoom meetings! - It shows how coming together we can build great things while having lots of fun!

    In the past we've waited until the annual 20th (January 20th) to talk about the past year, but this year I thought it might be nice to get a head start, here and now, and for the full forum. I've compiled the above list (with some help from Cassius) hoping to highlight what we have done both together and individually.

    And now, also, I want to make a shout-out of gratitude to Cassius for everything he has done and continues to do as the Admin (and founder) here on the EpicureanFriends forum. I especially want to say how much I appreciate his warm encouragement, down-to-earth guidance, and detailed presentation of the philosophy of Epicurus, in all of our weekly Zoom meetings - so thank you Cassius!

    Having covered this here, that means for our January 20th Zoom, we will have more time in that meeting to talk about future developments for the year 2026...and it will also be Epicurus' Annual Birthday Celebration!

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    Quote from Don

    Which in a sense is everyone who's on the forum. Well played!

    In a very strong sense. The purpose and benefit of the forum is to allow us to communicate with and be inspired by like-minded people. There are many other regular contributors who could have been listed, and I would name Kochiekoch and Patrikios and DaveT and Eikadistes and Pacatus and Raphael Raul among them.

    Further, there are those who do not post regularly in public, but who either by private conversation or simply by showing up regularly on our recent visitors list let us know that they are interested in what the forum is doing. In this last group I won't try to name names but they know who they are.

    But I do want to single out Eikadistes for special mention. Among all of us who pursue Epicurean philosophy, Eikadistes is the one who has set up his own website, prepared very substantive original materials, published them, and generally become and independent source of Epicurean learning. There are many different approaches among those of us who are really "into" the study of Epicurus. What Eikadistes has done in pursuing an independent path without unnecessary negativity about the path of others is an example that deserves special consideration for what all of us might do in our own ways.

Finding Things At EpicureanFriends.com

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