Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchRumi: How a Medieval Islamic Jurist Became the Best-Selling Poet in America
Episode 7139
Rumi was a respected Islamic law professor in thirteenth-century Konya when a wandering mystic named Shams-i-Tabrizi walked into his life and shatter…
6 days, 2 hours ago
Niccolo Paganini: The Violinist Who Was So Good People Thought He'd Sold His Soul to the Devil
Episode 7137
Niccolo Paganini played the violin with such supernatural skill that audiences genuinely believed he had made a pact with the devil. He could play en…
6 days, 2 hours ago
Du Fu: How Failure, War, and Starvation Forged China's Greatest Poet
Episode 7140
Du Fu failed the imperial examinations, never held a significant government post, and spent most of his adult life as a refugee fleeing the An Lushan…
6 days, 2 hours ago
Ray Bradbury: The Roller-Skating Library Kid Who Wrote His Way From Depression-Era Los Angeles to Mars
Episode 7144
Ray Bradbury roller-skated to the library every day as a kid because his family could not afford books, wrote Fahrenheit 451 on a rented typewriter i…
6 days, 2 hours ago
Bram Stoker: How a Dublin Bureaucrat Created Dracula and Invented Modern Horror
Episode 7138
Bram Stoker was a civil servant in Dublin Castle who moonlighted as the business manager for actor Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre. He had no lite…
6 days, 2 hours ago
Li Bai: The Outlaw Poet Who Drank, Dueled, and Wrote China's Most Beloved Verses
Episode 7142
Li Bai was a sword-carrying wanderer, a legendary drinker, and the most celebrated lyric poet in Chinese literature. He claimed descent from the impe…
6 days, 2 hours ago
Hafez: The Persian Poet Who Outwitted Tyrants and Became Iran's National Oracle
Episode 7135
Hafez wrote poetry so beloved in Iran that his collected works sit in nearly every household and are used as a fortune-telling oracle — you open the …
6 days, 2 hours ago
J.R.R. Tolkien: How the Trenches of World War I and a Love Story Built Middle-earth
Episode 7143
J.R.R. Tolkien created Middle-earth in the trenches of the Somme, where he watched his closest friends die in the mud of World War I. The Shire was t…
6 days, 2 hours ago
Guglielmo Marconi: The Self-Taught Tinkerer Who Networked the World Without Wires
Episode 7136
Guglielmo Marconi had no university degree and no formal training in physics. He taught himself from textbooks in his father's attic, transmitted rad…
6 days, 2 hours ago
John Donne: From London's Most Scandalous Poet to the Pulpit of St. Paul's Cathedral
Episode 7141
John Donne wrote the most explicitly erotic poetry in the English language — and then became the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, preaching sermons of s…
6 days, 2 hours ago