“I’m most interested in the stories and ideas that quietly shape us—and what happens when we finally drag them out into the light.”

Shawn Spainhour is a co-host of Philosophy for Lunch and the creator of Strange Epochs: History’s Most Extraordinary True Stories. He loves taking big ideas—from Stoicism and psychoanalysis to bizarre moments in medieval history—and turning them into stories that actually make sense of everyday life. On the show, he’s less of a lecturer and more of a guide, setting the scene, tracing where an idea came from, and then testing it against the messy, modern world we all live in.