Anna Akhmatova: The Poet Who Outlasted Stalin
Anna Akhmatova watched the Soviet state execute her ex-husband, imprison her son, and ban her poetry for decades. She refused to leave Russia. She refused to stop writing. And she outlived the regime ...
17 Jun 18min
Hegel and the World Soul on Horseback
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel saw Napoleon ride through Jena in 1806 and called him the world soul on horseback. That single image captures his entire philosophy: history as the unfolding of Spirit th...
17 Jun 21min
George Sand: The Woman Who Outwrote the Men of Paris
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin adopted the pen name George Sand and became the most prolific and controversial writer in 19th-century France. She wore men's clothing, smoked cigars in public, and conduc...
17 Jun 22min
Francis Bacon: Logic, Scandal, and Death by Frozen Chicken
Francis Bacon laid the foundations of the scientific method, served as Lord Chancellor of England, and died from pneumonia contracted while stuffing a chicken with snow. His life was a collision of to...
17 Jun 25min
Edmond Halley: Far More Than the Man Behind the Comet
Edmond Halley predicted the return of the comet that bears his name, but that famous prediction was just one line on an extraordinary résumé. He financed and edited Newton's Principia, captained a Roy...
17 Jun 22min
Christiaan Huygens: The Genius Newton Overshadowed
Christiaan Huygens invented the pendulum clock, discovered Saturn's rings, and developed the wave theory of light. In any era without Isaac Newton, he would be remembered as the greatest scientist of ...
17 Jun 19min
Anselm of Canterbury: The Monk Who Defied Kings With Pure Logic
Anselm of Canterbury crafted the ontological argument for the existence of God, an idea philosophers still wrestle with a thousand years later. But his intellectual life was only half the story. As Ar...
17 Jun 21min
Alexandre Dumas: The Author Who Lived Wilder Than His Own Fiction
Alexandre Dumas wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, but his real life outpaced both novels. Born the grandson of a Haitian slave and a French nobleman, Dumas fought duels, ran th...
17 Jun 21min
