Josephine Quinn is Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge, the first woman ever to hold the position, and the author of How the World Made the West: A 4,000-Year History. On this episode of Unapologetic, we sit down with her in her Cambridge office to take apart one of the most powerful ideas in modern politics: the idea of "civilisations," where it came from, who invented it, and why it's less than 200 years old.

We talk about how the concept of "civilisation" was built, how it was used to justify empire and colonial violence, why the Middle East's borders don't fit the myth of the "ancient nation," what the Crusades actually did to Europe, how cities are really just nodes of connection, how a group of homesick miners in Egypt invented the alphabet, why the "Dark Ages" were never actually dark, and how the House of Wisdom in Baghdad ran ...