Peter Abelard was the most celebrated thinker of 12th-century Europe, drawing students from across the continent to Paris, until a single night of orchestrated violence destroyed his reputation, his career, and his body. This episode follows the French philosopher, theologian, and poet (1079-1142) from his noble Breton origins and rejection of a knight's life to his combative rise through dialectic, publicly humiliating his own masters William of Champeaux and Anselm of Laon.

We trace his secret affair and marriage with the brilliant Heloise, the birth of their son Astrolabe, the brutal castration ordered by her uncle Fulbert, and his turbulent years as a monk fact-checking the founding myth of St. Denis, building the Oratory of the Paraclete, and clashing with Bernard of Clairvaux. We also explore his ethical masterpiece Know Thyself and i ...