Episode Details

In this episode of pplpod, we profile Denis Diderot, the "hot-headed" French philosopher and art critic who battled church, state, and poverty to co-create the massive Encyclopédie,,. We explore Diderot’s transition from a would-be clergyman to a disowned bohemian and atheist who spent twenty years compiling human knowledge, only to have his publisher secretly mutilate the manuscripts to avoid controversy,,.

Tune in to hear about Diderot’s eclectic literary output, from a bawdy novel about a Sultan’s ring that makes "indiscreet jewels" speak, to his prescient writings on natural selection and the evolutionary "theory of variation",. We also discuss his imprisonment for the Letter on the Blind, his complex relationship with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and his time at the court of Catherine the Great—who famously had to place a table between them to protect her thighs from his enthusiastic slapping during debates,,.