Constantine the Great: The Saintly Emperor Who Murdered His Wife and Son
Constantine the Great legalized Christianity, presided over the Council of Nicaea, and is revered as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church. He also executed his eldest son Crispus and had his second ...
15 Jun 25min
Ramesses II: Ancient Egypt's Greatest PR Genius and the Pharaoh Who Lived to Ninety
Ramesses II ruled Egypt for sixty-six years, fathered over a hundred children, and built more monuments to himself than any pharaoh in history. He fought the Battle of Kadesh against the Hittites to a...
15 Jun 22min
Ludwig Boltzmann: The Physicist Who Killed Himself Because Nobody Believed in Atoms
Ludwig Boltzmann spent his career arguing that atoms were real, physical entities — not just convenient mathematical fictions. The scientific establishment, led by Ernst Mach and Wilhelm Ostwald, atta...
15 Jun 18min
Justinian I: The Peasant Emperor Who Nearly Rebuilt the Roman Empire
Justinian I was born a Latin-speaking peasant in the Balkans and became the most ambitious emperor in Byzantine history. He reconquered North Africa, Italy, and southern Spain, codified Roman law into...
15 Jun 19min
Linus Pauling: The Two-Time Nobel Laureate the Medical Establishment Called a Quack
Linus Pauling won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on chemical bonding and the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign against nuclear testing — the only person to win two unshared Nobel Prizes. T...
15 Jun 11min
Vespasian: The Mule Trader's Son Who Rebuilt Rome After Nero Burned It Down
Vespasian came from a family of mule traders and tax collectors — the least glamorous origins of any Roman emperor. He seized power during the Year of the Four Emperors, restored order after Nero's ca...
15 Jun 24min
Nicolaus Copernicus: The Man Who Secretly Moved the Earth and Was Too Afraid to Publish
Nicolaus Copernicus figured out that the Earth orbits the Sun and then sat on the discovery for over thirty years because he was terrified of the reaction. He finally allowed his book to be published ...
15 Jun 24min
Ivan Pavlov: The Nobel Laureate Who Dictated His Own Symptoms as He Lay Dying
Ivan Pavlov conditioned dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell and became the most famous experimental psychologist in history. But his final act was the most Pavlovian of all — as he lay dying of pn...
15 Jun 20min
