Radical History: Greek Gods, Roman Emperors and Religion (with Tom Holland from The Rest Is History)
Radical with Amol Rajan
BBC
4.5 • 919 Ratings
🗓️ 1 January 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Historian and co-host of The Rest Is History podcast Tom Holland joins Amol to explore the history of radical ideas and what it means to be radical today.
Tom explains why Christianity represented such a radical break from what came before, how it shaped secular thought in the West and how that compares to other religions. He also talks about his interest in Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire.
And Tom discusses the phenomenal success of The Rest Is History, which he presents with fellow historian Dominic Sandbrook.
GET IN TOUCH * WhatsApp: 0330 123 9480 * Email: radical@bbc.co.uk Episodes of Radical with Amol Rajan are released every Thursday and you can also watch them on BBC iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002f1d0/radical-with-amol-rajan Amol Rajan is a presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He is also the host of University Challenge on BBC One. Before that, Amol was media editor at the BBC and editor at The Independent.
Radical with Amol Rajan is a Today Podcast. It was made by Lewis Vickers with Anna Budd. Digital production was by Gabriel Purcell-Davis, Sophie Millward and Joe Wilkinson. Technical production was by Mike Regaard. The editor is Sam Bonham. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:07.2 | We get it. Life is busy. You want to keep up with the news, but there's just too much going on. |
| 0:13.0 | Which is where newscast comes in. We do the work, and when you're ready to dig deeper into the day's news, you just pop us into your ears. |
| 0:23.1 | It does mean we have to put in the hard work though. |
| 0:26.2 | Listen to newscast every day on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.6 | Before we get started, I need more of your radical questions for one of our absolutely fantastic guests. This is something, if you recall, that we started just a few weeks ago as a little |
| 0:36.8 | experiment, and it's gone rather well. In fact, we're so pleased with how it's going, that we started just a few weeks ago as a little experiment, and it's gone rather well. |
| 0:39.2 | In fact, we're so pleased with how it's going that we're going to continue it into the new year, into 2026 and maybe even beyond. |
| 0:45.7 | In the first week of January, I'm going to be talking to an influential young academic called Louisa Munch, who has built a huge following on social media where she applies her field of |
| 0:55.6 | critical theory to the political issues of the day. She is particularly concerned about the |
| 1:01.6 | rise of the far right and the power of nostalgia in politics, so we're going to talk a bit about |
| 1:06.3 | that, and also about why, in her view, higher education should be free. |
| 1:11.4 | You can ask her about any of that, |
| 1:13.5 | or perhaps you'd like to know more about life as an academic |
| 1:15.9 | or how she built her quite substantial social media following. |
| 1:20.4 | Whatever it might be, WhatsApp your question to us on 033-123, 9480. |
| 1:27.8 | Or you can email us radical at BBC.com.uk. |
| 1:31.7 | We would love to get your radical questions for Louisa Munch. |
| 1:50.8 | Hello, it's Amol here. Happy New Year, happy Radical 2026. What we normally do on Radical, as you hopefully know a bit about by now, is we explore the deep global trends changing our world and offer |
| 1:56.8 | some really radical ideas for the future. But to begin this year, we're going to do something |
| 2:00.6 | slightly different because we have an eminent historian and, yes, an eminent podcaster with us, |
| 2:07.1 | who has thought pretty hard about what the word radical means. I'm going to talk to Tom Holland, |
... |
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