Episodes by Circa

Kimpa Vita, 21-year-old Kongolese prophet burned at the stake in 1706, asked a question the world is still answering.

Pierre Bayle championed tolerance and intellectual humility in an age of religious violence, offering a model for living with deep disagreement without dehumanization.

A reflection on Samuel Sewall, and how public repentance reshaped moral responsibility.

Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz wrote theology, poetry, and defiance by candlelight.

John Bunyan chose a prison cell over silence, and gave the world a map of the soul that still finds its way to ordinary people today.

Nicolas Steno founded modern geology and modeled how science and spiritual inquiry can illuminate different layers of the same reality.

A reflection on Zera Yacob and the moral courage to test belief against reason, justice, and human dignity.

Brother Lawrence discovered that ordinary work, done with love and attention, becomes prayer itself---a truth that still matters today.

John Amos Comenius championed universal education for all children while in exile, planting seeds that grew into modern schooling and global learning infrastructure.

Blaise Pascal's wager invites us to live as if love is real---even in a world where certainty has faded and old religious forms no longer hold.

Though she never left her cell, Mara de Jess de greda became a spiritual presence across cultures, continents, and centuries.

Roger Williams, the exiled minister who refused to let faith become a tool for political power

How Felipe Guaman Poma's unread chronicle created permanent indigenous witness, demonstrating that truth-telling has value independent of immediate results.

Jean de Léry's encounter with the Tupinambá people in 1558 Brazil pioneered cultural humility as spiritual practice, offering timeless wisdom for our interconnected world.

Mughal emperor Akbar gathered mystics, priests, monks, and scholars into a single candlelit room

As empire and inquisition tightened their grip on Spain, this barefoot nun turned inward-and found a kind of freedom no authority could touch.

Bartolomé Carranza fought for universal access to Scripture in an age when cheap paper made his dream inevitable, foreshadowing our digitally connected world.

A reflection on Sebastian Castellio, moral restraint, and how naming injustice changes what societies refuse to do.

The story of Bartolomé de las Casas and the radical recognition of shared humanity across difference in an emerging global society.

Guru Nanak built structures of dignity that endure to this day.

Menno Simons chose a third way between corrupt power and violent revolution, building peaceful communities whose legacy endures five centuries later.

Princess Mirabai sings to Krishna not as a distant god but as her true beloved.

Harmonia traces the life of Juan Luis Vives, Renaissance humanist and exile, who argued for the dignity of the poor and education of women in a world that was burning people for less.

How Hans Denck's exile for defending freedom of conscience planted seeds for religious liberty and the understanding that genuine faith requires genuine freedom.

Conrad Grebel drew the line between state and conscience in 1525. Harmonia asks whether we still know where it is.