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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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.

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.

One of the biggest lies we’re told is that celebrating our ancestral past is stupid, dishonest, or worse. None of that is true. “Beowulf,” the Anglo-Saxon masterpiece about England’s Germanic forefathers, is a sophisticated tale full of weirdness, complexity, and melancholy—plus, it’s an awesome romp with lots of crazy monsters and sick fights. In this episode of “Young Heretics,” Spencer Klavan uncovers the poem’s greatness.

If you really want to talk pandemics, then let’s talk Julian of Norwich. She lived in religious seclusion, but she understood deeply that there are no guarantees in life—no safety other than in God. In this episode of “Young Heretics,” Spencer Klavan talks through the weird, intense, and powerful visions of Julian and what they say about God and womanhood.

Francesco Petrarca, commonly known as Petrarch, lived at the dawning of a new age. He’s credited with helping to revive classical learning when it went dormant, which makes him an excellent guide for our own day. In this episode of “Young Heretics,” Spencer Klavan reads Petrarch’s poems and contemplates how to revitalize the wisdom of the past—not through nostalgia, but through rebirth.

The Peloponnesian War was one of the most catastrophic conflicts of the ancient world—protracted, brutal, and disastrous for the Athenian hegemony that had grown over the course of the early 5th century BC. In this episode of “Young Heretics,” classical scholar and military history expert Victor Davis Hanson joins Spencer Klavan to discuss the war’s causes, tactics, and consequences.

How do you find authentic faith in a world that is falling to pieces around you? In this episode of “Young Heretics,” Spencer Klavan returns to his series on T.S. Eliot—this time with a study of “Four Quartets,” Eliot’s greatest Christian work.

As cancel culture is on the rise, freedom of speech is all over the news. Why do we even believe in freedom of speech in the first place? Take a look at John Milton, the revolutionary firebrand whose writing nearly cost him his life. In this episode of “Young Heretics,” Spencer Klavan explores the connections between Milton’s views on speech, sin, and revolution in “Areopagitica.”