Nikola Tesla: The Broke, Pigeon-Loving Genius Who Electrified the Modern World
Nikola Tesla invented alternating current and the polyphase electrical system that powers every building on earth. He died alone in a New York hotel room, broke and feeding pigeons. Edison got the cre...
16 Jun 18min
Benazir Bhutto: The Contradictory Life of Pakistan's First Female Prime Minister
Benazir Bhutto was Pakistan's first female prime minister in a country where women were marginalized from public life — and she was removed from power twice on corruption charges. She was a Harvard an...
16 Jun 16min
John Milton: The Blind Republican Rebel Who Dictated Paradise Lost to His Daughters
John Milton went blind, lost the political cause he had spent decades fighting for, and dictated the greatest epic poem in English to his daughters from memory. Paradise Lost was composed in total dar...
16 Jun 24min
Sei Shonagon: The Unfiltered Court Lady Whose Gossip Became Japanese Literature's First Blog
Sei Shonagon served as a lady-in-waiting at the Heian Japanese court and wrote The Pillow Book — a collection of lists, observations, complaints, and gossip so sharp and personal that it reads like a ...
16 Jun 20min
Ray Bradbury: The Roller-Skating Library Kid Who Wrote His Way From Depression-Era Los Angeles to Mars
Ray Bradbury roller-skated to the library every day as a kid because his family could not afford books, wrote Fahrenheit 451 on a rented typewriter in a UCLA library basement at ten cents per half hou...
16 Jun 21min
J.R.R. Tolkien: How the Trenches of World War I and a Love Story Built Middle-earth
J.R.R. Tolkien created Middle-earth in the trenches of the Somme, where he watched his closest friends die in the mud of World War I. The Shire was the English countryside he was fighting to protect. ...
16 Jun 20min
Li Bai: The Outlaw Poet Who Drank, Dueled, and Wrote China's Most Beloved Verses
Li Bai was a sword-carrying wanderer, a legendary drinker, and the most celebrated lyric poet in Chinese literature. He claimed descent from the imperial family, was banished for backing a failed rebe...
16 Jun 12min
John Donne: From London's Most Scandalous Poet to the Pulpit of St. Paul's Cathedral
John Donne wrote the most explicitly erotic poetry in the English language — and then became the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, preaching sermons of such power that congregations wept. The transformati...
16 Jun 22min
