Think of Pythagoras and you picture the equation and a dusty chalkboard. But modern scholars believe the man himself probably never did significant mathematics in his life and almost certainly didn't invent the theorem bearing his name. The historical Pythagoras was a charismatic, white-robed cult leader with a rumored golden thigh who claimed to remember past lives, including a stint as a Trojan War hero and another as a beautiful courtesan.

This episode uncovers the real story behind history's greatest PR heist: the divine birth prophecy, the suspiciously well-traveled resume, and the secretive Croton commune where initiates kept five years of total silence before laying eyes on the master. It follows the schism between mystics and mathematicians, the soul-transmigration doctrine that gave us vegetarianism, the bean-field death legend, and the long afterlife of his ideas in Plato, Copernicus, and Kepler's hunt for the music of the spheres.

• Resume padding, ancient edition: the Egypt, Persia, and India journeys that probably never happened
• Five years of silence: the compliance test that built absolute devotion in the Croton commune
• Listeners versus learners: the factional split between ritual mystics and proto-scientists
• Reincarnation, the dog with a friend's voice, and why Pythagoreans wouldn't touch beans
• From mystic commune to Copernicus: how a cosmic symphony became the Scientific Revolution