Almost everyone believes in human rights.

Left. Right. Religious. Secular.

We argue endlessly about which rights matter most, but very few people question the idea that humans have rights at all.

But historically, that belief is anything but obvious. For most of human history, value flowed from power. If you were weak, conquered, disabled, poor, or enslaved, you didn’t have “rights.” You had a role, to serve the strong.

So where did the idea of universal, inherent human dignity actually come from?

Not from evolution. Not from democracy. And not even, strictly speaking, from the Enlightenment.

In this episode, we trace the uncomfortable history behind human rights, starting in the ancient world where equality didn’t exist, moving through the Christian claim that every human bears the image of God, and ending with why modern secular culture still believes in dignity it struggles to justify.

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