Iliza Shlesinger: From Last Comic Standing to a Media Empire
At 25, a complete unknown new to the LA scene steps onto a reality TV stage where battle-hardened comedians are actively targeting her for elimination. She doesn't just survive, she becomes the younge...
23 Jun 19min
James Thurber: The Blind Humorist Who Drew From Memory
In the smoky offices of a brand-new magazine, E.B. White fishes a crumpled, childish pencil sketch of a seal out of a trash can. That rescued scrap of paper launched the artistic career of James Thurb...
23 Jun 26min
Jerome Kern: The Late-Night Poker Game That Built the Modern Musical
In May 1915, a young American composer oversleeps after a late poker game and misses his morning departure on the RMS Lusitania. That terrible alarm-clock habit saved the life of Jerome Kern, the man ...
23 Jun 20min
Laurence Olivier: The Greatest Actor Who Wasn't a Natural
On the set of Marathon Man, an exhausted, method-committed Dustin Hoffman hears his co-star dryly ask, why don't you just try acting? It's the most famous put-down in cinema history. But the real twis...
23 Jun 24min
Jimmy Carr: The Dyslexic Late Bloomer Who Engineered a Comedy Empire
A kid with dyslexia who couldn't read until he was ten. A first-class Cambridge graduate. A miserable oil-company marketing executive. Then, against all logic, one of the most successful and brutally ...
23 Jun 20min
Margaret Cho: Surviving Hollywood and Shattering the Mold
Imagine starring in a groundbreaking sitcom based on your own life, only to be told your face is too round, then starved into kidney failure before the pilot even finished, and informed you were someh...
23 Jun 18min
Mo'Nique: The Oscar Win, the Blacklist, and the Fight Back
An Academy Award is supposed to be a permanent shield against irrelevance. So why did Mo'Nique win Hollywood's highest honor and then watch the industry doors slam shut, going terrifyingly quiet for n...
23 Jun 20min
Moms Mabley: The Trojan Horse Who Smuggled Truth Into America
A 72-year-old in a floppy hat and a cheap house dress, missing her teeth, scoring a Billboard Top 40 hit. Behind that harmless grandmother caricature was Loretta Mary Aiken, one of comedy's sharpest a...
23 Jun 17min
