The man behind the most terrifying fire-and-brimstone sermon in American history did not shout. He spoke in a quiet, calm voice, obsessed over the delicate beauty of ballooning spiders, and ultimately died advocating for the cutting-edge science of vaccines. The screaming-zealot stereotype is completely wrong.

This episode strips away the myth to reveal one of America's most original philosophical theologians. We trace Edwards from child prodigy reading Locke and Newton, through the revival he studied with clinical precision, his spectacular firing by his own congregation, and the deep moral contradictions, including his own participation in slavery, that complicate his legacy.

• How scientific rigor supercharged rather than eroded his faith, against the deist drift of the Enlightenment
• The dark turn of the Great Awakening  ...