Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchAlexandre Dumas: The Author Who Lived Wilder Than His Own Fiction
Episode 7325
Alexandre Dumas wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, but his real life outpaced both novels. Born the grandson of a Haitian slav…
3 days, 6 hours ago
Christiaan Huygens: The Genius Newton Overshadowed
Episode 7327
Christiaan Huygens invented the pendulum clock, discovered Saturn's rings, and developed the wave theory of light. In any era without Isaac Newton, h…
3 days, 6 hours ago
Pablo Escobar: Inside the $30 Billion Narco Empire
Episode 7344
Pablo Escobar built the Medellín Cartel into a $30 billion operation that supplied 80 percent of the cocaine entering the United States. He bribed ju…
3 days, 6 hours ago
Anselm of Canterbury: The Monk Who Defied Kings With Pure Logic
Episode 7326
Anselm of Canterbury crafted the ontological argument for the existence of God, an idea philosophers still wrestle with a thousand years later. But h…
3 days, 6 hours ago
Edmond Halley: Far More Than the Man Behind the Comet
Episode 7328
Edmond Halley predicted the return of the comet that bears his name, but that famous prediction was just one line on an extraordinary résumé. He fina…
3 days, 6 hours ago
Maxim Gorky: The Writer Trapped in Stalin's Gilded Cage
Episode 7340
Maxim Gorky rose from homelessness to become the most celebrated writer in Russia. He championed the Bolshevik revolution, then watched it devour his…
3 days, 6 hours ago
George Sand: The Woman Who Outwrote the Men of Paris
Episode 7330
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin adopted the pen name George Sand and became the most prolific and controversial writer in 19th-century France. She wore …
3 days, 6 hours ago
Epictetus: How a Slave Became the Freest Mind in Rome
Episode 7338
Epictetus was born into slavery in the Roman Empire and became one of the most influential Stoic philosophers in history. He never wrote a word. Ever…
3 days, 6 hours ago
Naguib Mahfouz: The Nobel Laureate Who Survived the Assassin's Knife
Episode 7342
Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988, the first Arabic-language writer to receive the honor. Six years later, an Islamic extremis…
3 days, 6 hours ago
Otto Hahn: The Chemist Who Split the Atom and Wept
Episode 7343
Otto Hahn discovered nuclear fission in 1938, a finding that led directly to the atomic bomb. When he learned what his discovery had done to Hiroshim…
3 days, 6 hours ago