Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchDavy Crockett: The Real Frontiersman Behind the Alamo Legend
Episode 13090
The coonskin-capped hero swinging his rifle at the Alamo is largely a product of a 1950s pop culture craze. This deep dive examines the real frontier…
4 days, 6 hours ago
David Livingstone: Mill Boy, Missionary Explorer, and Anti-Slavery Crusader
Episode 13089
David Livingstone is buried in Westminster Abbey, but his heart lies beneath a mpundu tree in present-day Zambia. This deep dive looks past the Victo…
4 days, 6 hours ago
Qin Shi Huang: China's First Emperor, Legalism, and Immortality
Episode 13088
In 210 BC, carts of rotting fish trailed a sealed royal carriage to hide the smell of a dead emperor. This deep dive tells the story of the man insid…
4 days, 6 hours ago
Bob Marley: Rastafari, Reggae, and the Revolutionary Behind the Poster
Episode 13087
In 1966, a young immigrant who went by Donald drove a forklift at a Chrysler plant in Delaware. That man was Bob Marley. This deep dive strips away t…
4 days, 6 hours ago
Otto von Bismarck: Iron and Blood, German Unification, and Peace
Episode 13086
In 1889, Otto von Bismarck recorded his voice on Edison's phonograph and chose to recite the French national anthem, nearly two decades after crushin…
4 days, 6 hours ago
Alexander Graham Bell: Teacher of the Deaf Who Invented the Telephone
Episode 13085
The man who invented the telephone refused to keep one in his study. This deep dive argues that Alexander Graham Bell saw himself first as a teacher …
4 days, 6 hours ago
Albert Einstein: The Rebel Behind Relativity and E=mc²
Episode 13084
Einstein's parents once worried he had a learning disability because he struggled to speak. This deep dive moves past the grandfatherly genius myth t…
4 days, 6 hours ago
Al-Khwarizmi: The Baghdad Scholar Behind Algebra and Algorithms
Episode 13083
The word algorithm sounds like modern tech jargon, but it is actually a centuries-old Latin rendering of one ninth-century scholar's name. This deep …
4 days, 6 hours ago
Winslow Homer: Lithography Apprentice to the Hermit of Prouts Neck
Episode 13082
Winslow Homer was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1836. His mother Henrietta, an amateur watercolorist, was his first teacher, while his father …
5 days, 3 hours ago
Winfield Scott: Wilkinson's Swamp, a Dueling Scar and Mexico City
Episode 13081
Winfield Scott, born in Virginia in 1786 and standing six foot five, studied law and watched General James Wilkinson give self-serving testimony at t…
5 days, 3 hours ago