Young Heretics Soundfront

The name Machiavelli calls a thousand things to mind: pitiless conquest, hard-nosed realism, violent death. But who was the man, really, and why did he leave such a mark? Machiavelli was a man in full—humanist, diplomat, scholar, mastermind. In this episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan gives Machiavelli the fresh introduction he deserves.
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This is the story they don't want you to hear about the holiday they don't want you to celebrate. In this episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan walks through the real history of Thanksgiving—the good, the bad, and the amazing about the Pilgrims' journey from Europe to America. It's a story of faith, providence, human nature, and the small mercies of God in the sad history of human affairs. Here's the amazing story of our proud country's improbable beginnings.

Shakespeare's "Macbeth" is a gory, nail-biting, creepy romp. But it's also a brilliant depiction of how the world caves in upon a man who violates the law of God, and how intimate, personal relationships can change the course of history. In this episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan dives into his first Shakespeare episode (but certainly not his last) to take a look at how free will and fate overlap to make one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the West.

How you think about your founding fathers determines how you think about yourself. That's something America is learning right now, and it's something of which ancient civilizations were acutely aware. In this episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan tells the story of how the Trojan hero Aeneas became Ancient Rome's central founding figure through Virgil's "Aeneid"—and what that means for politics in Rome and America.

Happy Halloween! It's a bizarre year—Halloween is basically forbidden in some of the stricter lockdown states. On this special episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan, with help from the great American master of horror Edgar Allan Poe, dives into the history of the day and explains why the people who attack it are absurd.

This. Is. Sparta!!!! "300," the blood-soaked Zack Snyder movie adapted from Frank Miller's graphic novel, is based on stories of the Persian War told by the first historian ever, Herodotus. But how accurate is "300" really, and does it matter? In this episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan tells the real story of the 300 at Thermopylae, and argues that "300" is a better take on the whole thing than you might expect.