Episode 12 – Expert Opinion – Teresa Bejan
We enter the early modern age with an expert opinion featuring Teresa Bejan, associate professor at Oriel College, Oxford University and author of “Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of […]
Category: Episodes
Episode 11: The Great Disruption – Part II
In episode 11 we continue to survey the wreckage after hurricane Luther was unleashed on Europe with the Reformation. When the Reformation mutated and spread across the continent a […]
Episode 10 – The Great Disruption: Part I – The Printing Press and the Viral Reformation
The disruptive effects of the internet and social media on the spread of information are unprecedented. Or are they? In episode 10 of Clear and Present Danger, we cover […]
Episode 9 – Expert Opinion – Christine Caldwell Ames
Our last stop in the Middle Ages is an interview with professor Christine Caldwell Ames, who is an expert on medieval heresy and inquisition in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. […]
Episode 8 – The hounds of God – medieval heretics and inquisitors
From the High Middle Ages, Europe developed into a “persecuting society,” obsessed with stamping out the “cancer” of heresy. But questions about how this was accomplished — and the consequences […]
Episode 7 – Expert Opinion – Peter Adamson
In our second expert opinion episode, Jacob Mchangama talks with Peter Adamson, who is a professor of philosophy at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and host of the podcast “History […]
Episode 6 – The not-so-Dark Ages, medieval intellectuals, and freethinkers
In episode 6, we get medieval! Find out why the Middle Ages were as much a period of reason and inquiry as inquisition and superstition. Why was the famous […]
Episode 5 – The Caliphate
Why did the medieval Abbasid Caliphs have almost all ancient Greek works of philosophy and science translated into Arabic? How did the long list of medieval Muslim polymaths reconcile abstract […]
Episode 4 – Expert Opinion – Paul Cartledge
In our first expert opinion segment, Jacob Mchangama talks to Emeritus Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge University Paul Cartledge. With his intimate knowledge of ancient Greece, we dive deeper […]
Episode 3 – The Age of Persecution
Why did the polytheist Ancient Romans persecute the followers of the new Jewish sect of “Christians” in the first three centuries AD”? How high was the price that Christians […]