Mohammad Mosaddegh: The Democratically Elected Leader the CIA Overthrew for Oil
Mohammad Mosaddegh was the democratically elected prime minister of Iran who nationalized the country's oil industry — taking it back from the British-controlled Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Britain and...
16 Jun 24min
Chinua Achebe: How Things Fall Apart Reclaimed the African Story From Colonial Literature
Chinua Achebe wrote Things Fall Apart because he was furious at how Joseph Conrad and other Western writers had depicted Africa — as a dark, primitive backdrop for European stories. His novel told an ...
16 Jun 19min
Chester Nimitz: The Quiet Texan Admiral Who Won the Pacific War
Chester Nimitz took command of the Pacific Fleet three weeks after Pearl Harbor — when the fleet was sitting on the ocean floor — and won the war. While MacArthur grabbed headlines and glory, Nimitz f...
16 Jun 24min
Heinrich Himmler: The Bureaucrat Who Built the Holocaust's Administrative Machine
Heinrich Himmler was a failed chicken farmer who became the architect of the most systematic genocide in human history. He built the SS from a small bodyguard unit into a state within a state, designe...
16 Jun 21min
Haile Selassie: The Ethiopian Emperor Worshiped as a Messiah and Overthrown as a Tyrant
Haile Selassie was the last emperor of a dynasty that claimed descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. He modernized Ethiopia, addressed the League of Nations in a speech that shamed the worl...
16 Jun 20min
Golda Meir: The Milwaukee Schoolteacher Who Led Israel Through Its Darkest Hour
Golda Meir was a Milwaukee schoolteacher who became Israel's fourth prime minister and led the country through the Yom Kippur War — the surprise attack that nearly destroyed the state she had helped b...
16 Jun 19min
Otto von Bismarck: From Reckless Student Duelist to the Iron Chancellor Who United Germany
Otto von Bismarck fought twenty-five duels as a university student, drank prodigiously, and showed no signs of the political genius that would make him the most consequential European statesman of the...
16 Jun 27min
From Radioactive Toothpaste to the Atomic Bomb: How Radiation Went From Consumer Fad to World-Ending Weapon
In the 1920s, you could buy radioactive toothpaste, radium-laced water, and uranium-glazed dinnerware. Radiation was a health fad, a miracle ingredient, and a marketing gimmick. Two decades later, it ...
16 Jun 23min
