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You are actually radioactive.
Then everything alive is...
Unexpected Elements from the BBC World Service.
Search for Unexpected Elements wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
In the Capitol Building in Washington DC, in the United States,
is a chamber where members of the US Congress meet to debate and pass federal law.
Around the walls of the gallery above the chamber are 23 marble relief sculptures,
known as lawgivers,
who's worked to establish legal codes in their own time and place influenced America's founding fathers.
Among the sculptures of figures from history,
such as the French leader Napoleon, is one of Suleiman I,
the sultan who ruled the Ottoman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East for almost half a century,
until his death in 1566.
Suleiman's role in codifying Ottoman law earned him the epithet, Suleiman the Lawgiver,
but beyond the Ottoman Empire, he became known as Suleiman the Magnificent.
The head of a dynasty whose splendor in the sixteenth century was the envy of the world.
Hello, I'm Brigid Kendall and you're listening to the Forum from the BBC World Service.
Joining me are three experts in Ottoman history who will explain for us why Suleiman was both feared and admired by his contemporaries.
In the United States is Gabor Agustin,