The Lindy Way of Living

A technology lawyer named Paul Skallas argues we should be gleaning more wisdom from antiquity.

In a tumultuous time humanity looks to the ancient world for guidance and inspiration. It’s a dynamic at least as old as Petrarch, the 14th-century Italian poet whose scholarship on the Greeks and Romans helped kick-start the Renaissance. Paul Skallas, a 36-year-old technology lawyer and writer, has today picked up antiquity’s torch. He’s an evangelist for wisdom derived from the distant past: like, say, skip the mouthwash. “Everyone tells you to do it. Your breath is clean, it feels like the right thing to do,” he said during a Zoom call from Deauville, France, where he moved from New York City last fall to ride out the pandemic. “And then you read about higher cancer rates for people who used it, and how it destroys good and bad bacteria, and you go, ‘You’re right, there was no mouthwash back then.’”