Podcast Episodes
Back to Search7227: Spencer Tracy — The Demons That Invented Modern Screen Acting | pplpod
Episode 7227
Spencer Tracy won two consecutive Academy Awards and made it look like he was doing nothing on camera. That apparent effortlessness was the invention…
1 week, 1 day ago
7228: Ted Williams — The Science of Hitting and the Physics of Immortality | pplpod
Episode 7228
Ted Williams approached hitting a baseball as a physics problem. He divided the strike zone into seventy-seven cells, calculated the probability of g…
1 week, 1 day ago
7229: Robin Williams — The Brain Disease That Betrayed a Comic Genius | pplpod
Episode 7229
Robin Williams could improvise faster than any comedian alive. His mind moved at a speed that left audiences breathless and interviewers helpless. Wh…
1 week, 1 day ago
7225: Dmitri Shostakovich — Terror, Genius, and the Midnight Elevator | pplpod
Episode 7225
Dmitri Shostakovich slept every night with a packed suitcase by his bed, waiting for the secret police to come. He composed some of the greatest symp…
1 week, 1 day ago
7226: Sophia Loren — From Wartime Curtains to the Academy Awards | pplpod
Episode 7226
Sophia Loren grew up so poor during World War II that her family made clothes from curtains. She was dismissed as just another Italian beauty until s…
1 week, 1 day ago
7223: Richard Pryor — The Comedian Who Turned His Own Fire Into Comedy Gold | pplpod
Episode 7223
Richard Pryor grew up in his grandmother's brothel, was molested as a child, and set himself on fire while freebasing cocaine. He turned every one of…
1 week, 1 day ago
7224: Sergio Leone — The Italian Outsider Who Reinvented the American Cowboy | pplpod
Episode 7224
Sergio Leone had never been to America when he reinvented the Western. He cast a television actor named Clint Eastwood, shot in the Spanish desert, s…
1 week, 1 day ago
7222: Paul McCartney — From Skiffle Bands to the Edge of AI and Silence | pplpod
Episode 7222
Paul McCartney heard skiffle on the radio as a Liverpool teenager and it changed his life. Seven decades later he used artificial intelligence to ext…
1 week, 1 day ago
7217: Lucille Ball — The Fearless Architect of Modern Television | pplpod
Episode 7217
Lucille Ball was a failed B-movie actress who became the most powerful woman in television history. She co-founded Desilu Productions, pioneered the …
1 week, 1 day ago
7219: Marlene Dietrich — The Hollywood Icon Who Fought Fascism with Glamour and Grit | pplpod
Episode 7219
Marlene Dietrich left Germany, renounced her citizenship, and spent World War II entertaining Allied troops on the front lines while the Nazis put a …
1 week, 1 day ago