Conceived when his mother swallowed an emerald, creator of modern humanity by bleeding onto bones retrieved from the underworld, and undone by a shameful pulque bender that ended in self-immolation and transformation into Venus: Quetzalcoatl's resume defies ordinary biography. This episode traces the feathered serpent from an Olmec carving at La Venta around 900 BC, through Teotihuacan's fanged stone serpents and the bearded Maya Kukulkan, to his place among the Aztec creator gods and the conch-shell wind jewel worn on his chest.

The hosts then untangle the merger of the god with the 10th-century Toltec ruler Ce Acatl Topiltzin, the use of his name as a priestly title and military rank, and the great pyramid of Cholula. They examine the claim that Moctezuma II mistook Cortes for the returning god in 1519, the 52-year calendar cycle that mak ...