Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchRichard Dawkins: Genes, Memes, and the God Delusion That Made Him Science's Most Polarizing Voice
Episode 6888
Richard Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene and reframed evolution around the gene rather than the organism, coined the word "meme" before the internet ex…
1 week, 1 day ago
Cicero: How One Man's Words Outlasted the Roman Republic He Died Defending
Episode 6890
Cicero was Rome's greatest orator, its most published philosopher, and the man who tried to save the Republic through the power of language alone. He…
1 week, 1 day ago
King Tutankhamun: How Being Forgotten Saved the Boy Pharaoh's Tomb for Eternity
Episode 6889
Tutankhamun was a minor pharaoh who died at nineteen and was largely forgotten by ancient Egypt within a few generations. That obscurity saved him. W…
1 week, 1 day ago
Thomas Jefferson: The Soldier-Statesman Who Doubled America's Size With a Single Purchase
Episode 6883
Thomas Jefferson sent James Monroe to Paris to buy New Orleans and got half a continent instead. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 doubled the size of t…
1 week, 1 day ago
Queen Victoria: The Secret Passions and Iron Will Behind the British Empire's Longest-Reigning Monarch
Episode 6882
Queen Victoria ruled the British Empire for sixty-three years and gave her name to an entire era of supposed moral restraint. But the real Victoria w…
1 week, 1 day ago
Winston Churchill: The Flawed, Brilliant, Contradictory Man Behind the Marble Statue
Episode 6886
Winston Churchill saved Western civilization from Nazi Germany — and spent most of his career before and after that achievement being spectacularly w…
1 week, 1 day ago
John Adams: Why America Needed Its Most Abrasive, Unlikable Founding Father
Episode 6885
John Adams was vain, argumentative, jealous, tactless, and almost universally disliked by his colleagues. He was also indispensable. He pushed the Co…
1 week, 1 day ago
Juan Domingo Peron: The Wild Paradox of Argentina's Most Loved and Most Hated Leader
Episode 6884
Juan Domingo Peron was a military officer who became Argentina's most popular and most divisive president, a man claimed simultaneously by the far le…
1 week, 1 day ago
Lee Kuan Yew: The Ruthless Architect Who Turned a Swamp Into Singapore
Episode 6881
Lee Kuan Yew took a mosquito-infested island with no natural resources, no hinterland, and no military and turned it into one of the wealthiest natio…
1 week, 1 day ago
Ho Chi Minh: The Real Man Behind Uncle Ho and Vietnam's Struggle for Independence
Episode 6879
Ho Chi Minh modeled Vietnam's declaration of independence on America's — quoting Jefferson directly — and spent decades trying to convince Washington…
1 week, 1 day ago