Meet the self-educated genius who mapped the nation's capital, predicted the stars, and boldly challenged Thomas Jefferson on racial equality.

In this episode of pplpod, we dive deep into the extraordinary life of Benjamin Banneker, a free African-American mathematician, astronomer, surveyor, and almanac author born in Maryland in 1731. Despite having little to no formal education, Banneker taught himself advanced science, built a functioning wooden clock from scratch that ran for over fifty years, and published a commercially successful series of astronomical almanacs and ephemerides in the 1790s.

We explore Banneker's major turning points, including his vital (and often debated) role assisting Major Andrew Ellicott in the 1791 survey of the original borders  ...