Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchZelda Fitzgerald: The Muse Who Fought to Write Her Own Story
Episode 11853
Confined to a psychiatric clinic in 1932, Zelda Fitzgerald secretly drafted an entire novel in a matter of weeks and sent it straight to her husband'…
5 days ago
Who Was Homer? The Oral Tradition Behind the Iliad and Odyssey
Episode 11852
The most influential author of the ancient world might never have existed. With no birth records, letters, or verifiable documents, reconstructing th…
5 days ago
Arthur Conan Doyle: Sherlock's Creator Who Believed in Fairies
Episode 11851
The man who invented the ultimate avatar of cold deduction spent his fortune promoting psychic mediums, attended seances, and publicly defended photo…
5 days ago
Upton Sinclair: The Jungle, EPIC, and the Muckraker Who Misfired
Episode 11850
Upton Sinclair spent seven weeks undercover in Chicago's slaughterhouses to expose the human cost of unregulated industrial capitalism. When The Jung…
5 days ago
The Typewriter: From Blind Aid to QWERTY, IBM Selectric, and Samizdat
Episode 11849
The typewriter was not invented once. It was independently conceived and built at least 52 times, and its earliest working versions were accessibilit…
5 days ago
Truman Capote: In Cold Blood, the Swans, and a Self-Made Ruin
Episode 11848
At a 1988 Halloween party at Joanne Carson's Bel Air estate, someone stole Truman Capote's ashes along with a haul of jewels. The urn turned up days …
5 days ago
George Sand: Trousers, Cigars, and the Woman Who Outsold Hugo
Episode 11847
In 1831 Paris, a woman needed a police permit to legally wear trousers. Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin got one, put on men's coats and a cravat, smoked…
5 days ago
Peter Mark Roget: The Troubled Polymath Who Built the Thesaurus
Episode 11846
Picture the man who wrote the thesaurus and you probably imagine a sheltered Victorian gentleman sorting synonyms in a parlor. The real Peter Mark Ro…
5 days ago
Anton Chekhov: The Doctor Who Reinvented the Short Story and Stage
Episode 11845
In the summer of 1904, a dying Anton Chekhov sat up in a German spa town, announced he was dying, drained a glass of champagne, and quietly passed aw…
5 days ago
Victor Hugo: The Turbulent Life of the Ocean Man of French Letters
Episode 11844
Victor Hugo drew more than two million mourners to the streets of Paris for his funeral, is worshipped as a saint in a Vietnamese religion, and wrote…
5 days ago