In the summer 1925, the run-down Appalachian town of Dayton, Tennessee, played host to one of the most famous trials in history, pitting the former Secretary of State and 3-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan against the notorious criminal defence lawyer Clarence Darrow over the question of whether a local schoolteacher would have to pay a fine. 

Where did Akbar the Great get the idea for the experiment from? Given that he didn't have access to Herodotus, this episode looks at precedents in Ancient Indian and Medieval Islamic thought, before moving on to how questions of language acquisition and the origin of language developed since Akbar's time, bringing in a 'Wild Boy' from the South of France, several people claiming to have had languages revealed to them by God, and something called the 'Yo-He-Ho Theory'.

The Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great's conquests led to him ruling most of the Indian Subcontinent - and he became obsessed with learning everything he could about the various religions practiced in his Empire. But amid his religious enquiry, he's said to have conducted another, more sinister investigation, into the mechanisms of language acquisition.

James IV's language deprivation experiment supposedly had the result that the children in question spoke Hebrew. In an effort to explain why someone at the time might have found this plausible, this episode looks at several colourful Renaissance figures who studied the Hebrew language, and their ideas, some more sensible than others. 

In 1493, on the uninhabited island of Inchkeith, in the Firth of Forth, King James IV of Scotland conducted a linguistic experiment like that conducted by Psamtik and Frederick II (at least, so the 16th-century historian Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie says).

The Holy Roman Emperor and amateur ornithologist Frederick II was alleged by the chronicler Salimbene di Adam to have conducted (among other sadistic experiments), a linguistic experiment similar to that of Psamtik. A look at that rumour in the context of medieval ideas about the origin of language.

The Greek historian Herodotus describes how the Egyptian Pharaoh Psamtik I conducted a strange and cruel investigation into the origins of language.

More on the media coverage of the Mary Toft Incident, as well as John Maubray, known as "the sooterkin doctor", and the strange Dutch creatures that gave him his nickname. We also find out what happened to Mary Toft and the Doctors afterwards.

After the Mary Toft Rabbit Hoax is exposed, the doctors involved become the subject of relentless mockery from the media. Features me singing. Twice.

This episode includes quite a lot of quotes from primary sources that are not safe for work.

Music: The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave), Op. 26 by Felix Mendelssohn, played by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, from musopen.org

A crowd gathers in a boarding-house in the West End of London, waiting for Mary Toft to produce another rabbit. The second episode in a 4-part miniseries on Mary Toft.

This episode contains graphic anatomical detail, and quotes from primary sources that are not safe for work

Music: The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave), Op. 26 by Felix Mendelssohn, played by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, from musopen.org