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Titre
Date
Durée
Episode 130: An Introduction to Early Medieval Literature
15 oct. 2026
02:31:46
NEW BONUS CONTENT CHANNEL (100 hours of stuff. Episodes on your favorite app. First week free, $9/month, cancel any time.)
Sufism emerged in the 700s and 800s as a powerful part of Islam's development under the caliphates. This episode covers its early history, focusing on a generation of thinkers who lived between about 850 and 920.
Bashshar ibn Burd, feisty, restless, brilliant, and wise, was one of the founding figures of Classical Arabic poetry. Learn about his wife and works in this episode.
The Bundahisn is the Zoroastrian creation story. At once an epic and encyclopedia, it's also a window into the end of Zoroastrianism's ascendancy in Iran.
The hadiths are second only to the Qur'an in Islam. Short narratives about the Prophet Muhammad - the things he said and did - hadiths have been a source of wisdom and inspiration for Muslims for more than a thousand years.
From 750-861, a dynasty of ten caliphs seated in modern-day Iraq ruled one of history's largest empires. The territory they lost and won, the wars they fought, and the cultural renaissance that they helped usher in all had far reaching impacts on world history.
The Umayyad Caliphate, from 661-750, became the largest empire the world had ever known, even as it suffered through two civil wars and significant internal divisions. This episode covers its overall military, political, and cultural history.
The Rashidun caliphate, from 632-661, completely changed the history of the world. Learn the story of the greatest imperial expansion of the first millennium, together with the complex political and theological history behind it.
The Qur'an has deep roots in the Bible and in the unique religious climate of Late Antique Mecca. Learn about its many references to the Bible and ancient Arabian religion in this episode.
Learn about the foundations of Islamic Law in the Qur'an - the 350 or so verses that tell believers what they're required to do, and what's prohibited.
Episode 116: The Life of Muhammad, Part 3: Conquest
15 sept. 2025
02:04:10
During the final years of the Prophet Muhammad's life and the immediate aftermath of his death, the Muslims conquered Mecca, the first caliph Abu Bakr came to power, and the stage was set for the great Islamic conquests of the seventh century.
Episode 115: The Life of Muhammad, Part 2: Community
15 août 2025
02:15:39
Between 622 and 628, Muhammad and the first Muslims made a home from themselves in Medina, fended off assaults from the Quraysh and others, and changed the course of history forever.
Prior to the dawn of Islam, the Arabian Peninsula had a great poetic tradition, with many genres, and many poets who are still celebrated and studied today.
Leading up to the birth of the Prophet Muhammad in about 570 CE, the Arabian Peninsula was an increasingly populous and globally interconnected region.
In Episode 110, Literature and History host Doug Metzger answers dozens of listener questions about making the show, books, and how and why the podcast came to be.
Episode 109 brings our long season on Late Antiquity to a close, reviews the past 24 programs on the beginnings of the Middle Ages, and introduces our new season on early Islamic History.
One of the great scholars of Late Antiquity, Isidore (c. 560-636) left behind a compendium called the Etymologies, an encyclopedia of his epoch's knowledge, a book second only to the Bible during the Middle Ages.
The Merovingian court poet Venantius Fortunatus (c. 530-600), at work in Francia in the late 500s, shows us the world of the Middle Ages blooming from Roman ruins.
The second half of the History of the Franks (591) is a deep dive into the grime and intrigue of the Merovingian dynasty, written in a style that's as medieval as it is classical.
Gregory of Tours (c. 539-594) completed The History of the Franks in 591. The long book's account of Clovis and the Merovingian Dynasty has been one of our most important sources on early Medieval History, ever since.
Second only to the Tanakh, the 63 Tractates of the Talmud are the main text of Rabbinic Judaism, containing the teachings of thousands of ancient rabbis.
In the twilight of the Western Empire, Boethius (c. 476-523) served as consul, but ended his life imprisoned by the Ostrogothic King Theodoric, writing The Consolation of Philosophy.
Episode 102: An Old Man's Book (Augustine's City of God, Part 2 of 2)
04 mars 2023
02:27:38
Augustine's City of God, Part 2 of 2. The second half of the City of God contains some of Late Antiquity's most influential writings – most notably Augustine's take on Original Sin.
Episode 101: Against the Pagans (Augustine's City of God, Part 1 of 2)
04 févr. 2023
02:15:31
Augustine's City of God, Part 1 of 2. The first half of the City of God is a broadside against paganism – its culture, religion, and history, subjects about which Augustine had much to say.
Episode 99: The Boy Who Stole Pears (Augustine's Confessions, Books 1-7)
10 déc. 2022
01:55:25
Augustine's Confessions, Part 1 of 2. The first half of Augustine's Confessions tells of his wayward early years, his intellectual journey, and his spiritual awakening.
Episode 96: The Last Pagan Epic (Nonnus' Dionysiaca, Books 1-24)
31 oct. 2021
02:13:58
The last epic from Greco-Roman antiquity that survives in full, Nonnus' fifth-century Dionysiaca tells of the wine god Dionysus' journey eastward, to India.
One of the later Latin poets of the Empire, Ausonius' expansive body of work gives us a window into the changing world of fourth-century Roman culture.
Sulpicius Severus' (c. 363-425) life of St. Martin is one of the great hagiographies – a portrait of a timeless saint, but also of a human being and working bishop.
Athanasius (c. 297-373) wrote a wildly popular biography of the desert hermit St. Anthony, touting the ideals of asceticism and triumph over demonic temptation.
In Carthage, in 203 CE, a Roman noblewoman and her retinue were butchered in an amphitheater. Learn her story, and the earliest history of Christian martyrs.
Learn the documentary history behind how the Catholic Church was founded and set up as an organization, together with some of the works of the earliest church fathers.
Heliodorus of Emesa (3rd/4th century CE) wrote the longest novel to have survived from antiquity, an adventurous romance that reemerged into Europe in the 1500s.
In roughly the 160s CE, the Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata wrote A True Story, one of history's earliest surviving novels, with strong tinges of what we'd call science fiction.
The satirist Lucian (c. 125-180) was popular in his own time and during the Renaissance, among other things probably being the first author of science fiction.
Once pervasively described as a period of fall and decline, today Late Antiquity is often understood as a period of cultural flowering and economic revolution.
After 300 CE, Manichaeism spread quickly from its origins in modern day Iraq and Iran. Recent archaeological discoveries have finally allowed us to learn about it firsthand.
The Nag Hammadi Library, Codex Tchacos, and Berlin Codex, as they came to light in the twentieth century, radically changed our understanding of early Christianity.
Learn the basic tenets and early history of Zoroastrianism, one of the most important and widespread religions in the ancient world, and possibly earth's oldest living monotheism.