Episode 47: Secular

Today's episode serves as an epilogue to the series on Biblical etymology. Secular means ‘unaffiliated with religion,’ but originally, it was a word used to describe the measurement of long spans of time. Roughly equivalent to a century, the saeculum, as it was known in Ancient Rome, was celebrated with pagan rituals (ironic), theater, and games. Over the course of the episode, we trace the development of the saeculum from antiquity to the 19th century philosophical movement of secularism.