Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchChester Nimitz: The Quiet Texan Admiral Who Won the Pacific War
Episode 7098
Chester Nimitz took command of the Pacific Fleet three weeks after Pearl Harbor — when the fleet was sitting on the ocean floor — and won the war. Wh…
6 days, 8 hours ago
Golda Meir: The Milwaukee Schoolteacher Who Led Israel Through Its Darkest Hour
Episode 7095
Golda Meir was a Milwaukee schoolteacher who became Israel's fourth prime minister and led the country through the Yom Kippur War — the surprise atta…
6 days, 8 hours ago
Robert Mugabe: From Liberation Hero to the Tyrant Who Destroyed Zimbabwe
Episode 7104
Robert Mugabe led Zimbabwe's independence struggle, was celebrated as an African liberation hero, and governed for thirty-seven years — during which …
6 days, 8 hours ago
Sappho: Resurrecting the Greatest Poet of the Ancient World From Trash Heaps and Mummy Wrappings
Episode 7103
Sappho was considered the greatest lyric poet of the ancient world — Plato called her the "Tenth Muse." But the Catholic Church burned her work, and …
6 days, 8 hours ago
Henri Becquerel: The Physicist Who Found Radioactivity in a Dark Drawer by Pure Accident
Episode 7102
Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity because the weather was bad. He had planned to test whether sunlight caused uranium salts to emit X-rays, bu…
6 days, 8 hours ago
Jomo Kenyatta: From Colonial Prisoner to Founding Father of an Independent Kenya
Episode 7101
Jomo Kenyatta spent seven years in a British colonial prison for allegedly organizing the Mau Mau uprising — charges many historians now consider fab…
6 days, 8 hours ago
Haile Selassie: The Ethiopian Emperor Worshiped as a Messiah and Overthrown as a Tyrant
Episode 7096
Haile Selassie was the last emperor of a dynasty that claimed descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. He modernized Ethiopia, addressed the…
6 days, 8 hours ago
Chinua Achebe: How Things Fall Apart Reclaimed the African Story From Colonial Literature
Episode 7099
Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart because he was furious at how Joseph Conrad and other Western writers had depicted Africa — as a dark, primitiv…
6 days, 8 hours ago
Heinrich Himmler: The Bureaucrat Who Built the Holocaust's Administrative Machine
Episode 7097
Heinrich Himmler was a failed chicken farmer who became the architect of the most systematic genocide in human history. He built the SS from a small …
6 days, 8 hours ago
From Radioactive Toothpaste to the Atomic Bomb: How Radiation Went From Consumer Fad to World-Ending Weapon
Episode 7093
In the 1920s, you could buy radioactive toothpaste, radium-laced water, and uranium-glazed dinnerware. Radiation was a health fad, a miracle ingredie…
6 days, 8 hours ago