Shows / 8 minute lives
8 minute lives
**8 Minute Lives** tells the stories of remarkable people in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee. Each episode delivers one life story - covering the defining moments, struggles, achievements, and choices that shaped a life and left a mark on history.
Episodes
- 8 minute lives
Nezahualcoyotl — The Poet-King of Texcoco
Hi there, and welcome to 8 Minute Lives. Picture a fifteen-year-old boy hiding in the branches of a tree, looking down through the leaves at a battlefield…
- 8 minute lives
Zoroaster — The Prophet Behind Three Faiths
Hi there, and welcome to 8 Minute Lives. Today's subject may be the most influential human being you can't place on a timeline. Somewhere in ancient Iran or…
- 8 minute lives
Razia Sultana — The Woman Who Ruled Delhi
Hi there, and welcome to 8 Minute Lives. In the year 1236, in the great mosque of Delhi, something happened that had no precedent anywhere in the Islamic world…
- 8 minute lives
Amelia Earhart — The Disappeared Pioneer Pilot
Hi there, and welcome to 8 Minute Lives. Just after eight in the morning on July 2nd, 1937, a radio operator on a US Coast Guard ship near a tiny Pacific…
- 8 minute lives
Yi Sun-sin — The Admiral Who Never Lost
Hi there, and welcome to 8 Minute Lives. In the autumn of 1597, a Korean admiral stood on the deck of a warship in a narrow strait, watching over a hundred…
- 8 minute lives
Rumi — The Poet Read 800 Years Later
Hi there, and welcome to 8 Minute Lives. Every year, somewhere near the top of the poetry bestseller lists in the United States, you'll find a man who died in…
- 8 minute lives
Karl Marx — The Thinker Who Inspired Revolutions
Hi there, and welcome to 8 Minute Lives. On a grey March afternoon in 1883, a small group gathered in Highgate Cemetery in London to bury a stateless…
- 8 minute lives
Ada Lovelace — The First Computer Programmer
Hi there, and welcome to 8 Minute Lives. In 1843, a scientific journal in London published a translated article about a machine that didn't exist. The machine…
- 8 minute lives
Isabella I of Castile
Hi there, and welcome to 8 Minute Lives. In December 1474, a twenty-three-year-old woman walked through the streets of Segovia behind a nobleman carrying an…
- 8 minute lives
Julius Caesar
Hi there, and welcome to 8 Minute Lives, the show where we tell the story of a remarkable life in about the time it takes to make a decent cup of coffee…
- 8 minute lives
Plato
Hi there, and welcome to 8 Minute Lives. In 399 BC, in Athens, a roughly seventy-year-old man drank a cup of poison hemlock, surrounded by his friends. His…
- 8 minute lives
Toussaint Louverture
Hi there, and welcome to 8 Minute Lives. On April 7, 1803, in a stone fortress in eastern France near the Swiss border, an elderly prisoner died alone in his…
- 8 minute lives
Sundiata Keita
Hi there, and welcome to 8 Minute Lives. In villages and cities across West Africa, there are musicians called griots. They're historians, praise singers…
- 8 minute lives
Christine de Pizan
Hi there, and welcome to 8 Minute Lives.In the summer of 1429, an old woman was living in a convent outside Paris. She'd been there for eleven years…
- 8 minute lives
Boudica
Hi there, and welcome to 8 minute lives.If you picture Boudica, you may see a warrior queen in a bronze chariot, red hair flying, leading a last desperate…
- 8 minute lives
George Washington
Hi there, and welcome to 8 minute lives.In the winter of 1776, George Washington was struggling. Badly.His army had been driven across New Jersey, the British…
- 8 minute lives
Galileo Galilai
Hi there, and welcome to 8 minute lives.In the year 1633, an old man sat before the judges of the Roman Inquisition and did something that would echo through…
- 8 minute lives
Mansa Musa
Hi there, and welcome to 8 minute lives.If you wanted to make the whole world stop and notice your wealth, you could do worse than to cross the Sahara with…
- 8 minute lives
Joan of Arc
Hi there, and welcome to 8 minute lives.Joan of Arc was a teenage girl from a small village in northern France who helped turn the tide of a war, frightened…
- 8 minute lives
Genghis Khan
Hi there, and welcome to 8 minute lives.In about 1162, on the grasslands of Central Asia, a boy named Temujin was born into a world where survival depended on…