The Medici Podcast

Marguerite de Navarre is the sister and wife of kings. While coping with being an agent of her brother and navigating the religious turmoil , she still found the time to become a bestselling author and perhaps the "first modern woman."

Sources:
Cholakian, Patricia F. and Rouben C. Marguerite de Navarre: Mother of the Renaissance (Columbia University Press, 2006).
Gristwood, Sarah. “I Wrote a Book About Renaissance Queens. Today’s Stories of Sex Assault Sound Like Something Out of the 16th Century.” History News Network. 3 December 2017. https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/i-wrote-a-book-about-renaissance-queens-todays-sto.Last Accessed: 7/9/2026.
Knecht, Robert J. Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I (Cambridge University Press, 1994).
For more information, transcripts, and ways to support the show, go to turningmodern.com.

In 1519, Europeans made their first diplomatic contact with an urbanized empire in the Americas—and, within a few years, that empire will no longer exist, in no small part because of a failed law student from Spain.

Here is just a short update on the next episode and the state of the "Turning Modern" Patreon.

Martin Luther braves persecution by the Church to come to the city of Worms to have his case heard by Emperor Charles V. In this contest between a reviled monk who is the son of a mine owner and a monarch whose empire spans an ocean, the victor is perhaps not the person one would normally expect...

Sources
Gregory, Brad S. The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Harvard University Press, 2012).
Luther, Martin. Works: Letters I, vol. 48, ed. and trans. Gottfried G. Krodel (Fortress Press, 1963).
Parker, Geoffrey. Emperor: A New Life of Charles V (Yale University Press, 2019).
Roper, Lyndal. Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (Penguin Random House, 2016).
For more information, transcripts, and ways to support the show, go to turningmodern.com.

Writing in the years of 1516 and 1517, an inhabitant of Cairo likely witnessed firsthand a new era as Egypt lost its independence and was forcibly annexed by the Ottoman Empire. However, he not only observed the collapse of the old regime, but also the toll it took on the people.
Sources:
Finkel, Caroline. Osman’s Dream: A History of the Ottoman Empire (Basic Books, 2005).
Ibn Iyas. An Account of the Ottoman Conquest of Egypt, trans. W.H. Salmon (Royal Asiatic Society, 1921).
Ibn Iyas. Journal d’un Bourgeois du Caire, ed. and trans. Gaston Wiet (Libraire Armand Colin, 1945).
Lord Kinross. The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire (HarperCollins, 1979).
Petry, Carl F. The Mamluk Sultanate: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
For more information, transcripts, and ways to support the show, go to turningmodern.com.