Podcast Episodes
Back to Search7174: Henry Purcell — The Baroque Genius Whose Music Inspired the Power Chord | pplpod
Episode 7174
Henry Purcell died at thirty-six and left behind music so emotionally direct it still sounds modern. He wrote the first great English opera, reinvent…
5 days, 8 hours ago
7173: Dizzy Gillespie — How the Clown Prince of Jazz Reinvented American Music | pplpod
Episode 7173
Dizzy Gillespie wore a beret, puffed his cheeks into balloons, and played with his trumpet bell bent skyward. The showmanship made people laugh. The …
5 days, 8 hours ago
7168: Charlton Heston — From Marching with MLK to Leading the NRA | pplpod
Episode 7168
Charlton Heston marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963 and lobbied Congress for the Civil Rights Act. Three decades later he stood before t…
5 days, 8 hours ago
7172: George Bernard Shaw — How the Original Provocateur Hacked the Attention Economy | pplpod
Episode 7172
George Bernard Shaw understood a century before social media that controversy is currency. He made himself the most quoted man in the English-speakin…
5 days, 8 hours ago
7171: Antonio Vivaldi — The Red Priest Who Vanished from Music History for 200 Years | pplpod
Episode 7171
Antonio Vivaldi was the most famous musician in Europe during his lifetime. Within a decade of his death he was completely forgotten. It took nearly …
5 days, 8 hours ago
7169: Gregory Peck — The Private Struggles Behind Hollywood’s Moral Compass | pplpod
Episode 7169
The American Film Institute named Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch the greatest movie hero in cinema history. Audiences saw unshakable integrity. What th…
5 days, 8 hours ago
7170: The Beatles — Hamburg Grit and the Most Spectacular Implosion in Music History | pplpod
Episode 7170
Before the screaming fans and matching suits, the Beatles were five rough Liverpool teenagers playing eight-hour sets in Hamburg strip clubs. They sl…
5 days, 8 hours ago
7165: Agatha Christie — The Secret Life Beyond the Queen of Crime | pplpod
Episode 7165
Agatha Christie sold two billion books and created two of fiction’s most enduring detectives. Her real life held bigger mysteries — an eleven-day dis…
5 days, 8 hours ago
7166: Arthur C. Clarke — Prophet of the Space Age Who Saw the Future First | pplpod
Episode 7166
Arthur C. Clarke predicted geostationary communications satellites in 1945, two decades before one existed. The boy from Somerset who mapped the moon…
5 days, 8 hours ago
7167: Charles Mingus — Jazz Symphonies, Volcanic Rage, and a Cat Training Manual | pplpod
Episode 7167
Charles Mingus composed jazz that sounded like a symphony orchestra arguing. He fought club owners with his fists, fired musicians mid-set, and once …
5 days, 8 hours ago