When the source material for this episode turned out to be a sprawling Wikipedia disambiguation page rather than a single biography, the first question became: which Thomas Johnson? The American Founding Father who governed Maryland and sat on the Supreme Court? The 1750s bare-knuckle boxer? The engineer who founded Celestron telescopes? Instead of tracing one life, this deep dive uses one of the most common names in the English-speaking world to take a cross-sectional slice through human history. We call it the Thomas Johnson multiverse, and it stretches from 1500s members of Parliament to a 21st-century American football linebacker.

The episode moves through three groups. First, the nation builders and bureaucrats: the Founding Father born in 1732, the Irish Labour Party leader who lived from 1872 to 1963, Tom L. Johnson, mayor of Clevela ...