Imagine an island where money is abolished, no one locks their doors, the workday is capped at six hours, hospitals are free, priests can marry and can be women, and there is not a single lawyer in sight. This episode explores Thomas More's 1516 book Utopia through the life of its author, a man who became Lord Chancellor of England, burned religious reformers at the stake, and was executed by his own king. We begin with More's years living beside a Carthusian monastery, his decision that he would rather be a good husband than a bad priest, and his front-row seat to the enclosure crisis, where landlords fenced off common land for sheep and evicted tenants were hanged for stealing bread.

We then tour the island itself: the fifteen-mile channel dug to sever it from the mainland, fifty-four identical cities, houses rotated every ten years, mand ...