Linus Torvalds: The Rude Finnish Genius Who Built Linux and Git and Changed Computing Forever
Linus Torvalds built the Linux operating system kernel as a hobby project in his Helsinki bedroom, then created Git — the version control system that underpins virtually all modern software developmen...
16 Juni 22min
Murasaki Shikibu: The Court Lady Who Secretly Wrote the World's First Novel
Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji around the year 1000 — a work many scholars consider the world's first novel. She was a lady-in-waiting at the Heian Japanese court who hid her Chinese literac...
16 Juni 19min
John Keats: The Surgeon-Poet Who Wrote Immortal Verse and Died at Twenty-Five
John Keats trained as a surgeon, abandoned medicine for poetry, produced "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," and some of the most beautiful lines in the English language, and died of tuber...
16 Juni 19min
Daniel Defoe: The Secret Spy and Serial Bankrupt Who Wrote Robinson Crusoe
Daniel Defoe went bankrupt multiple times, was pilloried for seditious writing, and worked as a secret agent for the British government — spying on Scottish political movements while pretending to be ...
16 Juni 19min
Lord Kelvin: The Victorian Genius Who Called Radio Useless and Got the Age of the Earth Spectacularly Wrong
Lord Kelvin was one of the greatest physicists of the nineteenth century — he laid the transatlantic cable, established absolute zero, and formulated the second law of thermodynamics. He also declared...
16 Juni 20min
Jonathan Swift: The Ruthless Political Satirist Whose Pen Was More Dangerous Than Any Weapon
Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, and some of the most savage political satire in the English language — all while serving as the Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. H...
16 Juni 22min
Soichiro Honda: The Rebellious Mechanic Who Built a Global Empire From a Bicycle Engine
Soichiro Honda had no engineering degree, no business training, and no patience for convention. He strapped a surplus radio generator engine to a bicycle, sold enough motorized bikes to fund a factory...
16 Juni 19min
Matsuo Basho: The Ninja-Trained Wanderer Who Became Japan's Greatest Haiku Master
Matsuo Basho may have been trained as a ninja in the Iga region where he grew up. He abandoned whatever covert skills he possessed to become a wandering poet, walking thousands of miles across Japan a...
16 Juni 21min
