Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. But not everybody really knows what it is, either. In his book, the writer Cullen Murphy sets the record straight about the Catholic Church's 700-year persecution of its enemies, both real and imagined. And he says the "inquisitorial impulse" lives on - in America's massive surveillance and routine use of torture in the wake of 9/11, for example. Murphy joins Doug to remind us the Inquisition isn't something safely relegated to the past. (Rebroadcast)
Cullen Murphy is the editor at large at Vanity Fair and the former managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly. His book is called God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World.
Music from today's RadioWest:
- "Paranoid Android (Album Version)" by Brad Mehldau
- "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" by Radiohead
- "Videotape" by Radiohead