Podcast Episodes
Back to Search7180: Felix Mendelssohn — The Prodigy Who Rescued Bach from Two Centuries of Silence | pplpod
Episode 7180
Felix Mendelssohn composed a string octet at sixteen that professionals twice his age could not match. But his most consequential act was conducting …
1 week, 2 days ago
7178: Jimi Hendrix — The Quiet Genius Beyond the Burning Guitar | pplpod
Episode 7178
The defining image of Jimi Hendrix was a guitar on fire at Monterey Pop. The reality was a shy, soft-spoken man who practiced obsessively, heard musi…
1 week, 2 days ago
7175: Madonna — How She Hacked the Music Industry and Never Stopped Reinventing | pplpod
Episode 7175
Madonna arrived in New York in 1977 with thirty-five dollars and a conviction she would be the biggest star in the world. Within seven years she was …
1 week, 2 days ago
7177: The Rolling Stones — How Rock’s Greatest Outlaws Built an Empire on Rebellion | pplpod
Episode 7177
The Rolling Stones were marketed as the band your parents should fear. What started as genuine blues devotion became the most carefully managed outla…
1 week, 2 days ago
7176: Muddy Waters — How a Mississippi Sharecropper Plugged In and Electrified the Blues | pplpod
Episode 7176
Muddy Waters was recorded on a Mississippi plantation by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. Within a decade he had moved to Chicago, plugged in …
1 week, 2 days ago
7174: 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…
1 week, 2 days 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 …
1 week, 2 days 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…
1 week, 2 days 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…
1 week, 2 days 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 …
1 week, 2 days ago