Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchBenjamin Franklin: The Fugitive Apprentice on the Hundred Dollar Bill
Episode 6868
Benjamin Franklin ran away from his brother's print shop as a teenage fugitive, arrived in Philadelphia with almost nothing, and spent the next six d…
1 week, 1 day ago
Peter the Great: The Seven-Foot Giant Who Dragged Russia Into the Modern World by Force
Episode 6870
Peter the Great stood nearly seven feet tall, personally tortured prisoners, pulled teeth for entertainment, and forced Russian nobles to shave their…
1 week, 1 day ago
James Madison: The Five-Foot-Four Frail Man Who Engineered the American Constitution
Episode 6867
James Madison stood five foot four, weighed barely a hundred pounds, suffered from nervous exhaustion, and never fought in a single battle. Yet this …
1 week, 1 day ago
Harry Truman: The Failed Haberdasher Who Dropped the Bomb and Remade the World
Episode 6866
Harry Truman was a failed farmer, a bankrupt hat shop owner, and the only modern American president without a college degree. He was chosen as vice p…
1 week, 1 day ago
Louis XVI: The Locksmith King Whose Hobbies Couldn't Save Him From the Guillotine
Episode 6865
Louis XVI preferred making locks and hunting deer to governing France — and his kingdom paid the price. He inherited a bankrupt nation, failed to pus…
1 week, 1 day ago
Paul Revere: The Copper Titan and Master Craftsman Behind the Midnight Ride
Episode 6864
Paul Revere is remembered for one night — and that night did not happen the way Longfellow's poem described it. The real Revere was not primarily a h…
1 week, 1 day ago
Lyndon Johnson: The Brutal Paradox of America's Most Effective and Most Tragic President
Episode 6863
Lyndon Johnson passed more transformative legislation than any president since FDR — the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid,…
1 week, 1 day ago
Shah Jahan: The Brutal Mughal King Who Built the Taj Mahal for Love
Episode 6862
Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal as a monument to his dead wife Mumtaz — one of the most beautiful buildings in human history, constructed by one of th…
1 week, 1 day ago
Napoleon Bonaparte: The Corsican Artillery Officer Whose Brutal Genius Remade Europe
Episode 6861
Napoleon Bonaparte rose from minor Corsican nobility to Emperor of France in fifteen years, conquered most of Europe, rewrote its legal systems, and …
1 week, 1 day ago
Park Chung-hee: The Military Dictator Behind South Korea's Violent Economic Miracle
Episode 6858
Park Chung-hee seized power in a 1961 military coup and ruled South Korea for eighteen years until his own intelligence chief shot him dead at a dinn…
1 week, 1 day ago