Explore every episode of the podcast Literature and History
Dive into the complete episode list for Literature and History. Each episode is cataloged with detailed descriptions, making it easy to find and explore specific topics. Keep track of all episodes from your favorite podcast and never miss a moment of insightful content.
Rows per page:
50
1–50 of 126
Title
Pub. Date
Duration
Episode 120: The Rashidun Caliphate
15 Dec 2025
02:24:45
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.
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 19: The One Who Struggles with God (The Historical Books and Biblical Archaeology)
29 Jun 2016
02:08:30
The Old Testament, Part 5 of 10. The Historical Books tell of Israel's conflicts with Syria, Assyria, Egypt, and finally, exile to the corridors of Babylon.
Episode 18: The 613 Commandments (The Pentateuch's Prescriptive Materials)
15 Jun 2016
01:44:18
The Old Testament, Part 4 of 10. Eden, the Flood, the Commandments– all fine. But what's with all the stuff about tents, sacrifices, and – uh – testicles?
Episode 17: Roots of the Pentateuch (The Pentateuch and Comparative Mythography)
01 Jun 2016
01:56:14
The Old Testament, Part 3 of 10. Hear the Biblical story of creation and the first founders of Israel, and the texts that may have influenced this story.
Episode 16: Four Main Parts (Introduction to the Bible's Structure)
25 May 2016
01:13:31
The Old Testament, Part 2 of 10. There are tons of books, thousands of proper nouns, and many versions of the Old Testament. But all of it fits into four main parts.
Episode 15: Canaan (Biblical History and Archaeology)
13 May 2016
01:32:10
The Old Testament, Part 1 of 10. 1207 BCE. Two world empires. And between them, an unassuming strip of seacoast land that has been at the center of history, ever since.
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.
Episode 3: He Who Saw the Deep (The Epic of Gilgamesh)
12 Feb 2016
02:03:55
The Epic of Gilgamesh, composed 3,000-5,000 years ago, and first translated in the 1860s and 70s, was one of the greatest literary discoveries of all time.
Episode 2: Before the Flood (The Enuma Elish and Atrahasis)
12 Feb 2016
01:40:30
The Enuma Elish and the Atrahasis, in circulation 3,800 years ago, were Mesopotamia's creation and flood epics, making them 1,000 years older than Genesis.
Benjamin Foster's Before the Muses (1,000-page anthology of Akkadian Literature)
Stephanie Dalley's Myths from Mesopotamia (Shorter collection that includes the Epic of Gilgamesh)
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 Mar 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 Feb 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.
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 99: The Boy Who Stole Pears (Augustine's Confessions, Books 1-7)
10 Dec 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.