How To Be Old

I’ll admit: I side-eyed the idea of an AI voice narrating a 2,000-year-old text about human frailty. But the choice turns out to be weirdly perfect. The virtual narrator’s flat, almost robotic delivery strips away any whiff of nostalgia, forcing you to engage with Cicero’s logic like a legal brief. When he declares, *“Old age is only hated by those who haven’t learned how to live”*, the absence of dramatic inflection makes it hit harder—like a truth too sharp for embellishment. The pacing is relentless, matching Cicero’s own urgency, though I occasionally wished for pauses to digest his denser rhetorical flourishes (the section on memory’s decline could use breathing room). The real revelation here is how *modern* Cicero sounds when he’s not being quoted in fragments. His rant about young people’s disrespect? Could’ve been tweeted yesterday. His defense of gray hair as a *“crown of wisdom”*? Try telling that to a dermatologist pushing Botox. My two critiques: First, the production’s lack of chapter markers makes it hard to revisit specific arguments—a missed opportunity for a text this quotable. Second, Cicero’s blind spots (his assumption that leisure requires servants, his dismissal of women’s aging) go unchallenged; a brief introductory note contextualizing his privilege would’ve added depth. Still, as a counterbalance to today’s anti-aging hype, this audiobook is a molotov cocktail of clarity. Just don’t expect hand-holding.