You know King Midas as the man who turned everything he touched to gold. The historical Midas, an eighth-century BCE Phrygian warrior king known to the Assyrians as Mita of the Mushki, reportedly died by drinking bull's blood, a euphemism for liquid arsenic pigment, while nomadic Cimmerians burned his capital of Gordium. This episode separates the Iron Age ruler from the fairy tale.

We trace the oracle and wagon story that legitimized his dynasty, the origin of the Gordian knot, and how the river Pactolus's natural electrum deposits and Queen Damodice's role in early coinage explain the Golden Touch better than Dionysus does. We also decode the donkey ears legend through a Bronze Age royal seal, visit the Great Tumulus excavated by Rodney Young in 1957, and explain why tree-ring dating suggests that tomb belonged to Midas's father, Gordias. ...