Episodes

Sunday Sep 03, 2023
HoP 427 - Brave New World - Shakespeare’s Tempest and Colonialism
Sunday Sep 03, 2023
Sunday Sep 03, 2023
Can Shakespeare’s Tempest be read as a reflection on the English encounter with the peoples of the Americas?

Sunday May 14, 2023
HoP 421 - With Such Perfection Govern - English Political Thought
Sunday May 14, 2023
Sunday May 14, 2023
The evolution of ideas about kingship and the role of the “three estates” in 15th and 16th century England, with a focus on John Fortescue and Thomas Starkey.

Sunday May 07, 2023
HoP 420 - No Place Will Please Me So - Thomas More
Sunday May 07, 2023
Sunday May 07, 2023
What is the message of the famous, but elusive, work "Utopia", and how can it be squared with the life of its author?

Sunday Jun 19, 2022
HoP 399 - Seriously Funny - Rabelais
Sunday Jun 19, 2022
Sunday Jun 19, 2022
In his outrageous novel about Pantagruel and Gargantua, Rabelais engages with scholasticism, humanism, medicine, the reformation, and the querelle des femmes.

Sunday Oct 24, 2021
HoP 382 - No Lord but God - the Peasants’ War and Radical Reformation
Sunday Oct 24, 2021
Sunday Oct 24, 2021
Faced with massive political upheaval and the rise of the Anabaptists, Luther argues for a socially conservative version of the Reformation.

Sunday May 23, 2021
HoP 373 - Lords of Language - Northern Humanism
Sunday May 23, 2021
Sunday May 23, 2021
Rudolph Agricola, Juan Luis Vives and other humanist scholars spread the study of classical antiquity across Europe and mock the technicalities of scholastic philosophy.

Sunday Jul 26, 2020
HoP 354 - Greed is Good - Economics in the Italian Renaissance
Sunday Jul 26, 2020
Sunday Jul 26, 2020
Leon Battista Alberti, Benedetto Cotrugli, and Poggio Bracciolini grapple with the moral and conceptual problems raised by the prospect of people getting filthy rich.

Sunday Jul 12, 2020
HoP 353 - The Good Place - Utopias in the Italian Renaissance
Sunday Jul 12, 2020
Sunday Jul 12, 2020
Tommaso Campanella’s “The City of the Sun” and other utopian works of the Italian Renaissance describe perfect cities as an ideal for real life politics.

Sunday Jan 13, 2019
HoP 316 - Just Measures - Law, Money, and War in Byzantium
Sunday Jan 13, 2019
Sunday Jan 13, 2019
Legal and economic thought in Byzantium: the sources of the law’s authority, the relation of church and civil law, just price, and just war.

Sunday Oct 08, 2017
HoP 286 - On the Money - Medieval Economic Theory
Sunday Oct 08, 2017
Sunday Oct 08, 2017
Changing ideas about money, just price, and usury, up to the time of Buridan, Oresme, and Gregory of Rimini.