Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchJules Verne: Why the Father of Science Fiction Was Not a Prophet
Episode 7363
Jules Verne wrote about submarines, space travel, and circumnavigating the globe decades before any of it was possible. He is often called a prophet …
2 days, 9 hours ago
John Stuart Mill: The Boy Raised as a Thinking Machine
Episode 7360
John Stuart Mill began studying Greek at three, Latin at eight, and had read most of the classical canon before he turned twelve. His father designed…
2 days, 9 hours ago
William Burroughs: The Writer Who Shot His Wife and Chased the Ugly Spirit
Episode 7364
William Burroughs killed his wife Joan Vollmer in a drunken game of William Tell in Mexico City in 1951. He spent the rest of his life writing some o…
2 days, 9 hours ago
Pablo Neruda: The Poet Whose Bones May Hold a Murder Mystery
Episode 7355
Pablo Neruda died twelve days after the Pinochet coup in 1973. The official cause was cancer, but his driver and personal assistant said he was injec…
2 days, 9 hours ago
Konrad Lorenz: The Nobel Laureate With a Nazi Past Who Loved Geese
Episode 7353
Konrad Lorenz won the Nobel Prize for his work on animal behavior, including his famous studies of imprinting in greylag geese. He also joined the Na…
2 days, 9 hours ago
Stefan Zweig: The Writer Who Inspired The Grand Budapest Hotel
Episode 7361
Stefan Zweig was the most translated author in the world during the 1930s. When the Nazis rose to power, he lost his homeland, his audience, and his …
2 days, 9 hours ago
William of Ockham: The Fugitive Monk Who Invented Occam's Razor
Episode 7351
William of Ockham gave philosophy its most famous rule: do not multiply entities beyond necessity. He also spent years on the run from the Pope, exco…
2 days, 9 hours ago
Peter Abelard: The Medieval Philosopher Who Invented the Ethics of Intention
Episode 7345
Peter Abelard argued that sin lies not in the act but in the intention behind it, a claim that scandalized 12th-century Paris. His affair with Héloïs…
2 days, 9 hours ago
Frederick Sanger: The Quiet Man Who Sequenced Our DNA
Episode 7359
Frederick Sanger won two Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, a feat matched by almost no one in history. He sequenced the amino acids of insulin and then deve…
2 days, 9 hours ago
Federico García Lorca: The Unsolved Murder of Spain's Greatest Poet
Episode 7358
Federico García Lorca was arrested by Nationalist forces in Granada in August 1936, taken to a hillside, and shot. His body has never been found. The…
2 days, 9 hours ago