Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchNikolai Gogol: The Man Who Burned Dead Souls and Starved Himself to Death
Episode 6957
Nikolai Gogol wrote Dead Souls — the novel that Nabokov called "the greatest Russian prose masterpiece" — and then burned the manuscript of Part Two …
1 week, 2 days ago
Emily Bronte: The Recluse of Haworth Who Wrote Wuthering Heights and Died at Thirty
Episode 6960
Emily Bronte left the Yorkshire moors only a handful of times in her entire life, refused to see a doctor as she was dying, and produced a single nov…
1 week, 2 days ago
Miguel de Cervantes: The One-Armed Soldier Who Created the Modern Novel With Don Quixote
Episode 6958
Miguel de Cervantes lost the use of his left hand at the Battle of Lepanto, spent five years as a prisoner of Barbary pirates, failed at every career…
1 week, 2 days ago
Alexander II: The Tsar Who Freed Twenty Million Serfs and Was Blown Apart by the People He Liberated
Episode 6956
Alexander II freed over twenty million Russian serfs in 1861 — the largest single act of emancipation in human history. He reformed the courts, expan…
1 week, 2 days ago
Pierre de Fermat: The Lawyer Who Revolutionized Mathematics in His Spare Time
Episode 6955
Pierre de Fermat was a full-time lawyer and part-time mathematician who scribbled one of history's most tantalizing notes in the margin of a book: "I…
1 week, 2 days ago
Alan Turing: The Codebreaker Who Invented the Computer and Was Destroyed by the Country He Saved
Episode 6953
Alan Turing broke the Enigma code and shortened World War II by an estimated two years, saving millions of lives. He then conceived the theoretical f…
1 week, 2 days ago
Vladimir Nabokov: The Butterfly Scientist Who Wrote Lolita and Scandalized the World
Episode 6952
Vladimir Nabokov was a world-class lepidopterist whose butterfly classifications are still used by scientists today. He was also the author of Lolita…
1 week, 2 days ago
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: The Forgotten Genius Who Invented Binary Code Three Centuries Too Early
Episode 6954
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz invented calculus independently of Newton, designed a mechanical calculator, and developed the binary number system — the f…
1 week, 2 days ago
Emile Zola: The Novelist Whose Murder Was Disguised as an Accident
Episode 6950
Emile Zola wrote "J'accuse" — the open letter that exposed the French military's framing of Alfred Dreyfus and became the most famous act of public i…
1 week, 2 days ago
Petrarch: The Poet Who Invented Humanism and Launched the Renaissance
Episode 6948
Petrarch climbed Mont Ventoux in 1336 for no practical reason — just to see the view — and the moment is often called the beginning of the Renaissanc…
1 week, 2 days ago