Podcast Episodes
Back to Search7201: Gene Wilder — The Comedy Genius Who Hid His Final Illness from the World | pplpod
Episode 7201
Gene Wilder was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2013 and told almost no one. He could not bear the thought of a child seeing Willy Wonka and le…
5 days, 3 hours ago
7203: Carl Lewis — Why the World Booed the Greatest Track Athlete of His Era | pplpod
Episode 7203
Carl Lewis won nine Olympic gold medals and set world records that stood for years. He was also booed at the 1984 Olympics by his own home crowd. The…
5 days, 3 hours ago
7200: Edvard Grieg — Why Norway's Greatest Composer Hated His Own Masterpiece | pplpod
Episode 7200
Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor is one of the most beloved pieces in classical music. Grieg himself grew to despise it, calling it dated and…
5 days, 3 hours ago
7202: Gioachino Rossini — Why Opera's Greatest Talent Walked Away at Thirty-Seven | pplpod
Episode 7202
Gioachino Rossini wrote thirty-nine operas by age thirty-seven, including The Barber of Seville and William Tell. Then he stopped. He lived another t…
5 days, 3 hours ago
7204: William Wordsworth — From French Revolutionary to England's Poet Laureate | pplpod
Episode 7204
William Wordsworth crossed the English Channel as a young man, fell in love with the French Revolution and a French woman, fathered a child, and retu…
5 days, 3 hours ago
7199: Thelonious Monk — The Brilliant Wrong Notes That Changed Jazz Forever | pplpod
Episode 7199
Thelonious Monk played notes that sounded wrong to everyone except Thelonious Monk. His angular melodies, dissonant chords, and unpredictable silence…
5 days, 3 hours ago
7196: Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Opium Dreams and the Messy Genius of English Poetry | pplpod
Episode 7196
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan after waking from an opium dream and was interrupted by a visitor before he could finish it. The fragment be…
5 days, 3 hours ago
7197: D.H. Lawrence — Banned Books, Scandal, and the Fire of English Literature | pplpod
Episode 7197
D.H. Lawrence wrote novels so frank about sexuality that they were banned, burned, and prosecuted for obscenity. The 1960 trial over Lady Chatterley'…
5 days, 3 hours ago
7198: Satyajit Ray — The Uncompromising Eye of Indian Cinema | pplpod
Episode 7198
Satyajit Ray had no film training when he began shooting Pather Panchali. He pawned his wife's jewelry to fund it, shot on weekends over three years,…
5 days, 3 hours ago
7193: Percy Bysshe Shelley — The Unburnt Heart and a Radical Poet's Wild Life | pplpod
Episode 7193
When Percy Bysshe Shelley's body was cremated on an Italian beach, his friend Edward Trelawny reached into the fire and pulled out his heart, which h…
5 days, 3 hours ago