Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Joshua Felty asks: Hi Gary, are you open to delving into religion and philosophy topics more? It seems like you might be after your recent episode on Confucianism. I was thinking you could make great episodes that stay fact-based on other belief systems or topics (like the making and influence of the King James Bible).

Yeah, I’ve done some episodes in the past, and I’ll be doing more in the future.

I’ve actually considered doing episodes on the King James Bible and the origins of the bible as well, including the Council of Hippo, St. Jerome, and how the books of the bible were selected. There are several apocryphal books that were not included. For several hundred years, there was no “bible” per se; it was just a collection of letters and books.

I’ve considered doing an episode on the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, which has an interesting history.

Joel had recently mentioned doing an episode on the early 19th-century Great Awakening, and I’ve thought about 19th-century utopian communities.

There are some philosophy episode ideas as well, but they tend to be harder to write because the boundaries of what should be in the episode are more ambiguous than in a straight history episode.