pplpod

Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote the philosophical foundations of modern democracy, argued that civilization corrupts natural human goodness, and inspired the French Revolution. He also abandoned all five ...

14 Jun 25min

James Joyce left Dublin at twenty-two and never lived there again, yet he spent the rest of his life writing about nothing else. Ulysses recreated a single day in Dublin — June 16, 1904 — in such obse...

14 Jun 20min

Roberto Clemente was the first Latin American player inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, a right fielder with one of the most feared throwing arms in the sport's history, and a man who fought rac...

14 Jun 21min

Elvis Presley is buried under so many layers of myth — the jumpsuit, the Vegas shows, the sightings — that the actual human being has nearly disappeared. Before he was the King, he was a desperately p...

14 Jun 25min

Jackson Pollock dripped, poured, and flung paint onto canvases laid flat on the floor — and physicists have since discovered that his technique produced fractal patterns with mathematical properties t...

14 Jun 21min

Ella Fitzgerald had the purest vocal instrument in jazz history, but the life behind that voice was anything but smooth. She was orphaned as a teenager, spent time in a brutal reformatory, was nearly ...

14 Jun 20min

Ludwig Wittgenstein inherited one of the largest fortunes in Europe and gave every penny away so he could think without distraction. Then he wrote two of the most important works in the history of phi...

14 Jun 23min

Susan B. Anthony spent fifty years fighting for women's suffrage and never lived to see it happen. She was arrested for voting illegally in 1872, refused to pay the fine, and used the trial as a platf...

14 Jun 22min