Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchJomo 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…
1 week, 2 days 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…
1 week, 2 days 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…
1 week, 2 days 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 …
1 week, 2 days 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…
1 week, 2 days ago
Otto von Bismarck: From Reckless Student Duelist to the Iron Chancellor Who United Germany
Episode 7094
Otto von Bismarck fought twenty-five duels as a university student, drank prodigiously, and showed no signs of the political genius that would make h…
1 week, 2 days ago
Mohammad Mosaddegh: The Democratically Elected Leader the CIA Overthrew for Oil
Episode 7100
Mohammad Mosaddegh was the democratically elected prime minister of Iran who nationalized the country's oil industry — taking it back from the Britis…
1 week, 2 days ago
Bertha Benz: The Woman Who Saved the Automobile by Stealing Her Husband's Car
Episode 7087
Bertha Benz took her husband Karl's motorcar without telling him, loaded her two teenage sons into it, and drove sixty-five miles from Mannheim to Pf…
1 week, 2 days ago
Douglas MacArthur: The God-Emperor of Japan Who Got Fired by His Own President
Episode 7090
Douglas MacArthur ruled postwar Japan as a virtual god-emperor — rewriting its constitution, dismantling its military, and reshaping its society with…
1 week, 2 days ago
David Ben-Gurion: The Violent Blueprint That Built Israel From Nothing
Episode 7088
David Ben-Gurion declared the independence of Israel on May 14, 1948 — and within hours, five Arab armies invaded. He had spent thirty years building…
1 week, 2 days ago