Thomas Cahill

From the inimitable and bestselling author Thomas Cahill, another popular history, focusing on the Renaissance and Reformation and how this innovative period changed the Western world.

After the long period of cultural decline known as the Dark Ages, Europe experienced a rebirth of scholarship, art, literature, philosophy, and science and began to develop a vision of Western society that remains at the heart of Western civilization today. On visits to the great cities of Europe--monumental Rome; the intellectually explosive Paris of Peter Abelard and Thomas Aquinas; the hotbed of scientific study that was Oxford; and the incomparable...

A history of the Dark Ages showing that as Europe was in an intellectual decline, Ireland became a haven for scholarship.

Sex is a major focus for the Bible rules, and in this episode, we find some of the more surprising commands in the Bible, including one that warns a woman against grabbing the crotch of an attacking man in order to defend her husband.

The Bible rules forbid Israelite armies from cutting down the trees of enemy cities. Is this a clue to a 3000-year-old green movement or is something else going on here? Hint: It's all about the olives. By deconstructing the rules about war.

The use and abuse of alcoholic beverages goes back to deepest antiquity, and so it comes as no surprise the Bible has a lot to say on the subject. Yet wine and spirits played a very different role in the ancient world than they do today.