Professor Julia Guernsey from UT's Department of Art and Art History combines the methodology of history, art history, and archaeology to offer a new look into this mysterious period at the beginning of recorded history in the Americas.

Guest Richard Bautch from St Edward's University in Austin discusses current thinking about the formation of the Pentateuch during the time of Ezra.

Art Historian Stephennie Mulder has spent the past decade working in Syria and shares a new look at history of Sunni and Shi'a in Syria during the medieval period; and how both histories are threatened by ISIS and the Syrian Civil War.

Shainool Jiwa illuminates an often overlooked chapter in the history of Islamic sectarianism, one in which religious differences were used to unify diverse populations under the rule of a minority government, rather than to divide and alienate them.

Ben Wright of UT’s Briscoe Center for American History has been working with the Bexar archives to document how Spain’s–and Texas’s–efforts to divert sources of food and funding to American colonial troops.

Guest Henry Wiencek explores the deep contradictions and equally varied representations of John D. Rockefeller, the self-made millionaire whose name became synonymous with industry and free enterprise.

In picking up where Episode 57 left off, guest Shahrzad Ahmadi describes the tragic turn of events that sent shockwaves through the nascent Islamic community, and that continue to reverberate today.

Nearly every world history textbook on the market explains the origins of sectarianism in the Islamic world as a dispute over the succession to Muhammad. It seems simple—but was it?

Guest Michelle Daneri helps us understand contemporary thinking about the ways that Spanish and Native Americans exchanged ideas, knowledge, and adapted to each others' presence in the Southwest.

Guest Brian Levack explains that medieval accusations of witchcraft are not supernatural at all, but based in the human need to explain the ordinary cycles of birth, death, sickness, wellness, and the constant struggle between rich and poor.