Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchSolon: The Lawgiver Who Saved Athens and Walked Away
Episode 7378
Solon was elected archon of Athens at a moment of crisis, given extraordinary powers to reform the city's laws, and used them to cancel debts, free e…
2 days, 1 hour ago
Imhotep: The Architect Who Became a God of Medicine
Episode 7374
Imhotep designed the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, the first monumental stone building in human history. He served as vizier, priest, and physician to Pha…
2 days, 1 hour ago
Livy: The Historian Who Created the Roman Legend
Episode 7375
Livy wrote a 142-book history of Rome from its founding to his own era, and in doing so created the version of Roman history that Romans themselves b…
2 days, 1 hour ago
Gaius Marius: The General Who Broke the Roman Republic
Episode 7373
Gaius Marius saved Rome from the Cimbri and Teutones, won an unprecedented seven consulships, and opened military service to the landless poor. That …
2 days, 1 hour ago
Mark Antony: The General Who Broke Rome for Cleopatra
Episode 7376
Mark Antony was Caesar's right hand, a brilliant military commander, and a master political operator who threw it all away in Egypt. His alliance wit…
2 days, 1 hour ago
Andrei Tarkovsky: The Filmmaker Who Paid for His Art With His Life
Episode 7366
Andrei Tarkovsky made seven feature films, each one a meditation on time, memory, and the sacred. The Soviet authorities censored him, delayed his pr…
2 days, 1 hour ago
Thucydides: The Failed General Who Invented Political History
Episode 7380
Thucydides was an Athenian general who lost a crucial battle, was exiled for 20 years, and used that exile to write the History of the Peloponnesian …
2 days, 1 hour ago
Khufu: The Pharaoh Behind the Great Pyramid and a Tiny Statue
Episode 7382
Khufu built the Great Pyramid of Giza, the largest and most precisely engineered structure of the ancient world. Yet almost nothing is known about hi…
2 days, 1 hour ago
Harun al-Rashid: The Caliph Behind Baghdad's Golden Age
Episode 7368
Harun al-Rashid presided over the Abbasid Caliphate at its peak, turning Baghdad into the intellectual capital of the world. He funded the House of W…
2 days, 1 hour ago
Marc Chagall: The Painter Who Turned Survival Into Color
Episode 7383
Marc Chagall grew up in a Hasidic Jewish community in Belarus, survived two world wars and the destruction of everything he knew, and transformed tha…
2 days, 1 hour ago