Titus Lucretius Carus described atoms, sketched the survival of the fittest, and laid out the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Age sequence roughly two thousand years before those ideas became science, yet his own life is almost entirely erased. What survives instead is a rumor from Saint Jerome, writing four centuries later, that he was driven mad by a love potion and died by suicide. This episode weighs that account as likely character assassination and reconstructs what can be deduced about a wealthy, educated Roman living through the chaos of the late Republic.

We then explore De Rerum Natura, his 7,400-line poem introducing Epicureanism to Rome: a universe of atoms and void with no divine puppet master, a soul that disperses at death, and an ethical mission to free people from religious fear. We cover his mechanistic account of adaptation, his  ...