How to Be Grateful: An Aztec Guide to the Art of Gratitude - Pablo of Texcoco

Written by Pablo of Texcoco
Read by Gary Tiedemann
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 128 Kbps
Unabridged

A delightful Aztec work that has much to teach us about the value of giving thanks—to our contemporaries, our elders, and our ancestors

Centuries before anyone ever thought of keeping a gratitude journal, the Aztecs understood the profound value of being grateful. For generations, specially trained Aztec public speakers presented traditional dialogues at marriages, births, funerals, government ceremonies, and other important occasions. In these dialogues, people of different generations are imagined speaking to each other with mutual respect and gratitude across time, encouraging listeners to be grateful to their contemporaries, elders, and ancestors, as well as the divine, and reminding the living what they owe to future generations. In the late 1500s, one of these Aztec speakers, Pablo of Texcoco, recorded a collection of these dialogues, now known as the Bancroft Dialogues. In How to Be Grateful, Nahuatl- or Aztec-language specialist Frances Karttunen and Camilla Townsend, Cundhill History Prize-winning author of Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs, present this fascinating work in an accessible translation.

Length: 1 hr and 38 mins
Release date: 11-18-25