Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchThe man who broke Barings Bank
Episode 6399
A 28-year-old with no university degree, whose first banking job was sorting paper checks, single-handedly bankrupted the United Kingdom's oldest mer…
1 week, 4 days ago
The Man Isaac Newton Erased From History
Episode 6398
He coined the word "cell," helped rebuild London after the Great Fire, deduced fundamental gravitational principles before Newton, and has been calle…
1 week, 4 days ago
The Magnificent Disasters of Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Episode 6397
His creations laid the structural groundwork for the modern industrial world, and almost every one of them ended in financial ruin, engineering disas…
1 week, 4 days ago
The Low Frequency Hum Only You Hear
Episode 6396
The neighborhood is silent, yet you hear it: a persistent low-frequency throb, like a diesel truck idling outside your bedroom window. Your partner h…
1 week, 4 days ago
The Lost Jewish Empire of Khazaria
Episode 6395
An empire with no ruins to visit: the Khazar Khaganate was the medieval world's ultimate toll booth, a steppe superpower that halted the Arab conques…
1 week, 4 days ago
The Lost Gnostic Gospels of Nag Hammadi
Episode 6394
In late 1945, a teenage Egyptian farmer digging for fertilizer near Nag Hammadi struck a sealed clay jar and froze, terrified a djinn waited inside. …
1 week, 4 days ago
The legal architect behind the icon
Episode 6393
She tied for first in her class at Columbia Law, and a Supreme Court justice refused to even consider her for a clerkship because she was a woman. Th…
1 week, 4 days ago
The Lawgiver who Executed his Own Sons
Episode 6392
September 1566, at the siege of Szigetvar: the most powerful man in the world dies in his imperial tent, and his inner circle hides it for 48 days, f…
1 week, 4 days ago
The Juggling Genius Who Invented Bits
Episode 6391
1943, deep inside a classified Bell Labs facility: engineers race to perfect radar, Alan Turing paces the halls working on encrypted speech, and down…
1 week, 4 days ago
The industrial meatgrinder at Verdun
Episode 6390
Ten million artillery shells pulverized the landscape until it ceased to resemble Earth: forests erased, hills reshaped, soil churned with metal and …
1 week, 4 days ago