The Medici Podcast

The Kingdom of Kongo establishes a rare partnership with an up-and-coming European power, Portugal, to the point that the King of Kongo and his family embrace Christianity and take Portuguese royal names. However, this partnership will also be ground zero for one of the greatest atrocities in human history.
Sources:
Almeida, Marcos Abreu Lelitão de. “Speaking of Slavery: Slaving Strategies and Moral Imaginations in the Lower Congo” (Doctoral dissertation, Northwestern University, September 2020).
Bosma, Ulbe. The World of Sugar: How the Sweet Stuff Transformed Our Politics, Health, and Environment over 2,000 Years (Harvard University Press, 2023).
Etherington, Norman. “Christian Missions in Africa", The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to African Religions, ed. Elias Kifon Bongba (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).
Garretson, Peter P. "A Note on Relations Between Ethiopia and the Kingdom of Aragon in the Fifteenth Century." Rassegna di studi etiopici 37 (1993): 37-44.
Gondola, Ch. Didier. The History of Congo (Greenwood Press, 2002).
Hanno. “Gorilla Warfare.” Lapham’s Quarterly, Last accessed: 3/12/2026. https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/animals/gorilla-warfare 
Klein, Herbert S. The Atlantic Slave Trade, 2nd edition (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
MacGaffey, Wyatt. “Economic and Social Dimensions of Kongo Slavery (Zaire)", Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, eds. Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff (University of Wisconsin Press, 1977).
Russell-Wood, A.R. The Portuguese Empire, 1415-1808: A World on the Move (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).
Thornton, John. A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250-1820 (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
___________. Afonso I,  Mvemba a Nzinga, King of Kongo: His Life and Correspondence, trans. Luis Madureira (Hackett Publishing Co., 2023). 
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A genius prodigy sets out to change the world by resolving all philosophical and religious disputes with one book, his own 900 Theses, and a debate in Rome between Europe's brightest intellectual lights. And he will leave his mark on history, just not in the way he wants...
Sources Cited:
Hanegraaf, Wouter J. Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
Bradatan, Costica. Dying for Ideas: The Dangerous Lives of Philosophers (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (Chatto &Windus, 1965).
Mirandola, Pico della. Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486), ed. and trans. S.A. Farmer, 2nd edition (Arizona State University, 2003).
____________. “Oration on the Dignity of Man”, trans. Cosma Rohilla Shaizi. Cosma’s Home Page, 21 November 1994. Last accessed 2/23/2025: . 
Slattery, Luke. “A Renaissance Murder Mystery.” The New Yorker (20 July 2015).Last accessed 2/25/2025: .
Stethern, Paul. Death in Florence: The Medici, Savonarola, and the Battle for the Soul of a Renaissance City (Pegasus Books, 2015).

As the sixteenth century begins following plague, turmoil, traumatic defeats, and the discovery of new continents, people from all faiths feel that the end of history and salvation are at hand while others look to the past to find hope for the future.

What is Turning Modern, and why the "early modern West"?

Anna Maria Luisa, the last representative of the main branch of the Medici, saves her family's legacy through an innovative agreement. Also we survey Tuscany's post-Medici future and the branches of the family that survived into the 21st century.