Ernie Kovacs: The Forgotten Genius Who Invented TV Comedy
Johnny Carson, Saturday Night Live, David Letterman, and The Muppet Show all point to one influence most people have never heard of. He invented modern visual television comedy, then died deep in debt...
23 Jun 22min
Eugene Levy: The Sociology Degree Behind a Comedy Empire
As a teenager in Hamilton, Ontario, Eugene Levy walked into school to find an antisemitic slur scrawled across his campaign poster. Instead of ripping it down, he left it up for everyone to see, and w...
23 Jun 19min
Ezra Pound: The Genius Poet Who Became a Fascist Traitor
In the late 1940s, a man sat caged in an outdoor steel pen near Pisa, sleeping on bare concrete and writing poetry on scraps of toilet paper. A few years later, those exact poems won one of America's ...
23 Jun 18min
Eugene Debs: The Man Who Ran for President From Prison
In 1920, hundreds of thousands of Americans voted for a presidential candidate locked inside the Atlanta federal penitentiary. His campaign buttons read "For President, Convict No. 9653," and he fully...
23 Jun 27min
Francesco Borromini: The Tormented Genius of Baroque Rome
In 1667, the architect who bent stone into impossible weightless beauty threw himself onto his own sword. His violent end stands in stark contrast to the soaring, mathematically pure spaces he left be...
23 Jun 21min
Frankie Boyle: From Comedy's Dark Heart to Crime Novelist
A comedian so offensive that Comic Relief cut his entire set sued a newspaper for calling him a racist, won over fifty-four thousand pounds, and donated every penny to charity. That contradiction is t...
23 Jun 22min
Trevor Noah: Born a Crime, From Soweto to The Daily Show
He was born evidence of a crime. Under apartheid, his Black mother and white Swiss-German father broke the law simply by having him, and he couldn't safely walk down the street with either parent.This...
23 Jun 24min
Fred Brooks: Why Adding People Makes Late Projects Later
In the 1970s, one man proved that the maddening experience of a late project slowing down after you add more people isn't bad luck. It's an inescapable law of human nature, and it still rules software...
23 Jun 20min
