Hans Christian Andersen: The Outsider Who Built Fairy Tales
The man who invented our modern idea of childhood wonder spent his own childhood wishing he was someone else's illegitimate son, and his adulthood getting completely ghosted by his biggest literary he...
23 Kesä 19min
Harriet Beecher Stowe: Grief, Genius and Glaring Blind Spots
Mark Twain remembered her as a softly slippered phantom who would sneak up and let out a piercing war whoop before drifting to the piano to sing melancholy songs. Strip away the marble-statue image of...
23 Kesä 18min
Harvey Korman: The Dramatic Actor Who Anchored Comedy Chaos
A World War II Navy veteran rigorously trained in heavy psychological theater somehow ended up playing a four-armed parody of Julia Child in the notorious Star Wars Holiday Special and voicing a tiny ...
23 Kesä 19min
Henny Youngman: The One-Liner King's Secret Devotion
His entire public identity was built on complaining about his wife, with brutal one-liners delivered to audiences worldwide. Yet when she fell ill and grew terrified of hospitals, he built a fully fun...
23 Kesä 21min
Henry Ward Beecher: Love, Rifles and a Sex Scandal
Crates stenciled 'Bibles' arrived in 1850s Kansas packed with military-grade Sharps rifles, bought and shipped by the most beloved clergyman in America. The man who preached a gospel of absolute love ...
23 Kesä 23min
Henry Clay: The Great Compromiser's Power and Hypocrisy
He once won a fortune worth a million dollars in today's money at the card table, then waived nearly all of it, a stunning display of how he understood power and leverage. Henry Clay was the most powe...
23 Kesä 23min
Heraclius: The Emperor Who Saved Rome Then Lost It All
He pulled the Byzantine Empire back from total annihilation, personally recovered Christianity's holiest relic, and was hailed as a legendary hero. Then he watched every monumental victory evaporate, ...
23 Kesä 21min
Ali Wong: From Fulbright Scholar to Comedy Icon
Imagine prowling a theater stage in a skin-tight striped dress, seven months pregnant, delivering an hour of raunchy, unapologetic comedy that short-circuits every expectation society has about mother...
23 Kesä 17min
