The Mark Steel Lectures - Newton

Whatever life may have in store for you, chances are you will never amount to anything even remotely resembling the kind of immortal legacy that Sir Isaac Newton was able to secure for himself: rock star scientist and genius, discoverer of fundamental laws of nature (before people even knew there may be such things!), masked superhero (oh yeah...). Then again, he was a total dick and kind of a woo-worshiper, so maybe you don't want to resemble him too much either...

You are probably familiar with the fact he performed ground-breaking experiments into the nature of light (proving that white light is a complex combination of all other colors and not a simple color, as had been thought previously), that he developed a theory of gravity that would reign supreme for about three hundred years, or even that he freaking invented calculus! But did you know about his obsession with alchemy and the occult? Or about how much more time he spent trying to decipher secret codes in The Bible than he actually spent doing science? Or about the fact that he really was a masked vigilante even though he didn't have a Batmobile? And did you know you could learn a lot of these things while sitting back and watching the following amusing documentary with Mark Steel?

If you want more laughs, check out the rest of the episodes in this series.