Explaining Machiavelli's Darkest Ideas to Help You Sleep

The man whose name became a word for ruthless never ruled anything. He was a government clerk, and he wrote The Prince while out of work on a farm outside Florence, catching thrushes by day and reading the old Romans by night. Tonight we go slowly through Niccolò Machiavelli's darkest ideas, at the moments in his life that produced them. The friar executed in Florence's main square and the rule about armed and unarmed prophets. The hired soldiers who wandered off. Cesare Borgia and the governor he sacrificed. The fox and the lion at Senigallia. Cruelty done once. The farmer militia that broke at Prato, the prison, and the famous question of whether it's better to be loved or feared. Then the other Machiavelli. The longer book where he sides with ordinary people against princes, the comedy that made Florence laugh, the line about ends and means he never actually wrote, a mission to a meeting of friars, a letter home about the family's mad little mule, and the psychologists who borrowed his name in the 1960s. You don't need any background. Let it play, and drift off whenever you like. Chapters 00:00 Opening 02:37 Florence and the Unarmed Prophet 13:01 The Clerk and the Hired Swords 23:25 Cesare Borgia and the Hated Deputy 32:45 Senigallia, the Fox and the Lion 43:46 The Farmer Militia and Prato 54:30 Prison and the Poems 1:03:54 The Farm, the Thrushes and The Prince 1:16:07 The Other Book: the Discourses 1:26:32 Mandragola, the Friars and the Ends and the Means 1:37:14 1527 and the Making of a Villain 1:48:36 The Psychologists Who Borrowed His Name 1:57:34 The River and the Banks Sources Machiavelli, The Prince (1513) and Discourses on Livy (about 1515 to 1519) Machiavelli, letters to Francesco Vettori (10 December 1513) and to his son Guido (2 April 1527) Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini, letters from Carpi (May 1521) Luca Landucci, A Florentine Diary, entry for 15 February 1506 Isaiah Berlin, The Originality of Machiavelli (1972) Richard Christie and Florence Geis, Studies in Machiavellianism (1970) Paulhus and Williams, The Dark Triad of Personality (2002) O'Boyle and colleagues, meta-analysis of the Dark Triad and work behavior (2012) Jonason and colleagues, the Dark Triad and night owls (2013) Miller and colleagues, Psychopathy and Machiavellianism (2017) Roberts and DelVecchio, rank-order consistency of personality traits (2000) Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, book 4