Imagine serving as a celebrated judge, a royal physician, and a prolific philosopher, only to be put on trial by your own government, banished, and forced to watch your books burn in the town square. Then imagine being painted into Vatican masterpieces centuries later. This episode explores the contradictory life of Ibn Rushd, known to the Latin West as Averroes, the 12th-century Andalusian polymath who was rejected by his own society and became the bridge connecting the ancient world to the modern one.

We set the scene in Cordoba under the strict Almohad Caliphate, recount the terrifying 1169 audience where the caliph asked whether the universe is eternal, and follow the commission that made him simply the Commentator on Aristotle. We cover his medical breakthroughs on the retina, strokes, and Parkinson's symptoms, his rebuttal to Al-Ghaza ...