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A monk who kept banned books in a secret library under the nose of the Pope; an abbess who designed outlandish royal garments for her nuns; a magician who practised the dark arts to advise Queen Elizabeth I; archaeologists who discovered a goddess just in time for feminism; utopians who never quite found what they were looking for; explorers who searched for the ten lost tribes of Israel but found new continents instead; a nation that was convinced it was a lost race and started a world war to prove it; an eccentric doctor and a mad monk who intuited scientific truths well before future generations would prove their theories were right. These are just some of the astonishing stories in which religious quests have spurred humankind on to great discoveries or enabled them to realise their dreams. In Curious Obsessions: Stories from the Ark, based on the ABC Radio National program, Rachael Kohn - one of Australia's leading religious broadcasters and academics -explores subjects from science to spirituality through the lens of a host of fascinating characters and in this intriguing and wide-ranging book.