Podcast Episodes
Back to Search7213: Sergei Rachmaninoff — How He Survived Depression, Revolution, and Exile | pplpod
Episode 7213
Sergei Rachmaninoff suffered a creative breakdown so severe after the failure of his First Symphony that he could not compose for three years. Hypnot…
5 days, 3 hours ago
7212: Michael Jackson — How the World's Greatest Entertainer Was Broken by Fame | pplpod
Episode 7212
Michael Jackson was performing professionally at five years old and never had a childhood. By the time he became the biggest pop star in history, the…
5 days, 3 hours ago
7215: John Lennon — The Journey from Rage to Stillness and Back Again | pplpod
Episode 7215
John Lennon wrote Imagine and then screamed his childhood trauma into a microphone on Plastic Ono Band. He preached peace while terrorizing the peopl…
5 days, 3 hours ago
7214: Joan Crawford — The Relentless Survivor Beyond the Wire Hanger Mythology | pplpod
Episode 7214
Joan Crawford reinvented herself more often than any star in Hollywood history, surviving the transition from silent films to talkies, from ingenue t…
5 days, 3 hours ago
7210: Henry Fonda — The Cold Perfectionist Behind Hollywood's Warmest Characters | pplpod
Episode 7210
Henry Fonda spent fifty years playing America's moral conscience on screen — Tom Joad, Abe Lincoln, Juror #8. Off screen he was emotionally remote, s…
5 days, 3 hours ago
7205: Babe Didrikson Zaharias — The Greatest Multi-Sport Athlete Who Ever Lived | pplpod
Episode 7205
Babe Didrikson Zaharias won two Olympic gold medals in track and field, then became the greatest female golfer of her era. She also played baseball, …
5 days, 3 hours ago
7206: Bessie Smith — The Empress of the Blues and Her Unmarked Grave | pplpod
Episode 7206
Bessie Smith was the highest-paid Black entertainer in America during the 1920s, selling millions of records and commanding enormous fees. She died a…
5 days, 3 hours ago
7208: George Harrison — The Quiet Beatle's Beautifully Contradictory Life | pplpod
Episode 7208
George Harrison spent years in the shadow of Lennon and McCartney, then released a triple album that outsold anything either of them had made solo. H…
5 days, 3 hours ago
7207: David Bowie — Ziggy Stardust, the Psychological Submarine, and Infinite Reinvention | pplpod
Episode 7207
David Bowie became famous by inventing a character, then killed that character onstage and became someone else entirely. He repeated this pattern for…
5 days, 3 hours ago
7209: Harry Belafonte — The Calypso King Who Secretly Bankrolled the Civil Rights Movement | pplpod
Episode 7209
Harry Belafonte sold more records than any other artist in the world in 1956. He used the money and fame to quietly bankroll the civil rights movemen…
5 days, 3 hours ago