Curated playlist
Religion and politics
- SecularismIn 1851, a British writer picked the word secularism because atheism felt too aggravating.
- Investiture ControversyIn 1076, King Henry IV called Pope Gregory VII a false monk in a letter. It began a fight over who appoints bishops.
- PolygamyHimalayan brothers often married the same woman to keep family land whole. Farmland was too scarce to split.
- Edict of ThessalonicaThe Edict of Thessalonica is the first known secular law to define Christian orthodoxy in its preamble.
- English ReformationIn 1527, Henry VIII asked the pope to end his marriage. The refusal led England to break with Rome.
- Vatican CityOn the 11th of February 1929, two men signed a treaty at the Lateran Palace and created Vatican City.
- Divine right of kingsThe divine right of kings is the claim that a monarch answers to God and to nobody on earth. In 1193, Richard I of England gave that claim voice at his trial during the diet at Speyer. He said: "I am born in a rank which recognizes no…
- Keston InstituteThe Keston Institute began when a British exchange student counted Moscow's working churches in the 1950s.
- Sovereign Military Order of MaltaThe Sovereign Military Order of Malta has no country of its own, yet it strikes its own coins, prints its own postage stamps and issues its own passports. Its full name is a mouthful: the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John…
- Holy SeeThe Holy See lost all its territory in 1870 yet kept sending diplomats. It is not the same thing as the Vatican.
- IranIranian students seized the US embassy in 1979 and held 52 hostages for 444 days.
- PopeWhite smoke from a narrow chimney above the Sistine Chapel is how the world learns that a new pope has been chosen. The pope is the bishop of Rome and the head of the Catholic Church, which has 1.4 billion members. The most recent man to…