Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchSir Humphry Davy: Laughing Gas, New Elements, and the Miners' Safety Lamp
Episode 13230
Sir Humphry Davy was a poet-chemist who breathed untested gases, threw laughing gas parties with Coleridge and Southey, and nearly killed himself wit…
4 days, 15 hours ago
Saigo Takamori: The Last Samurai Who Built and Then Fought Modern Japan
Episode 13229
Saigo Takamori helped bring down the Tokugawa shogunate and build Japan's new national army, and a few years later that same army was hunting him dow…
4 days, 15 hours ago
The Real Marco Polo: Silk Road Survival, Kublai Khan, and His Famous Book
Episode 13228
Forget the swimming pool game and the myth about pasta. This episode pieces together the true story of the Venetian merchant who first met his father…
4 days, 15 hours ago
Leonidas I of Sparta: The Real King Behind the Battle of Thermopylae
Episode 13227
Long before Hollywood made him an icon, Leonidas I was a Spartan middle son buried deep in a messy line of succession. This episode looks past the po…
4 days, 15 hours ago
Hippocrates: The Real Father of Medicine Behind the Myths
Episode 13226
Hippocrates is called the father of medicine, and his name is attached to the oath that still guides doctors, yet he almost certainly did not write i…
4 days, 15 hours ago
Malcolm X: From Detroit Red to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
Episode 13225
As a top student in Michigan in the late 1930s, Malcolm Little told a teacher he wanted to be a lawyer and was told that was an unrealistic goal for …
4 days, 15 hours ago
David Bowie: Ziggy Stardust, Reinvention and the Art of Identity
Episode 13224
In 1962, a schoolyard punch left a teenager with a permanently dilated pupil and a striking, mismatched gaze. David Robert Jones would turn that inju…
4 days, 15 hours ago
Francis of Assisi: The Rich Party Boy Who Became a Radical Saint
Episode 13223
The gentle garden-statue image of Francis of Assisi hides a far more radical story. Born around 1181 to a wealthy silk merchant, Francis was a fashio…
4 days, 15 hours ago
Richard Feynman: The Playful Genius Behind Quantum Electrodynamics
Episode 13222
At the Trinity test in 1945, Richard Feynman was the only observer who refused dark glasses, reasoning that a truck windshield would block the harmfu…
4 days, 15 hours ago
Francisco Pizarro: The Ruthless Conquest of the Inca Empire
Episode 13221
In 1541, Francisco Pizarro was cut down by assassins in his own palace in Lima, drawing a cross in his blood before he died. This episode traces how …
4 days, 15 hours ago