Curated playlist
Simple living advocates
- Mahatma GandhiOn the day India won freedom, Gandhi refused to celebrate. He fasted and spun cloth in Calcutta, pleading for peace.
- HoraceHorace, the Roman poet, said he ran from the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC without his shield.
- Jean-Jacques RousseauRousseau refused a king's pension after Louis XV loved his opera. Friends were exasperated by his choice.
- Leo TolstoyLeo Tolstoy spent his last hours on a train, preaching non-violence to strangers.
- Ruhollah KhomeiniAt Ruhollah Khomeini's 1989 funeral, the body fell out of the coffin. Grieving crowds in Tehran forced a second funeral.
- Ignatius of LoyolaA cannonball broke Ignatius of Loyola's leg and ended his soldiering. The Spanish knight later founded the Jesuits.
- John ChrysostomThree places claim to hold the skull of John Chrysostom. Vatopedi, Florence and Pisa all say they have it.
- Francis of AssisiFrancis of Assisi crossed enemy lines during a crusade to meet a sultan. He returned unharmed.
- RumiA wandering dervish named Shams-e Tabrizi arrived in Konya in 1244 and upended Rumi's settled life.
- Ted KaczynskiTed Kaczynski wrote a letter to The New York Times in 1995 and attached a promise to it. If the Times or The Washington Post printed his essay in full, he would "desist from terrorism." The essay ran to roughly 35,000 words and carried the…
- ZoroasterA sculpture of Zoroaster, completed in 1896 by Edward Clark Potter, towers over the Appellate Division Courthouse of New York State at East 25th Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Potter intended it to stand for the judicial wisdom of…