In 1889, a teenage girl with a permanent limp was smuggled across the Russian border hidden under a pile of straw, the priest driving claiming he was taking her to be baptized. In reality, she was fleeing the secret police on her way to becoming one of the most brilliant and dangerous political theorists of the 20th century.

This episode unpacks the life, ideas, and brutal assassination of Rosa Luxemburg, the marginalized Polish Jewish outsider who declared humanity must choose between socialism or barbarism. We act strictly as guides through her analytical framework, from Marxist economics to her prophetic warnings about authoritarianism.

• Why she campaigned against Polish independence based on hard economic data about fused markets
• Her clash with Eduard Bernstein over reform versus revolution, captured in the leaky boat  ...