7246: Charles II — From Fugitive Prince to England's Ruthless Merry Monarch | pplpod
Charles II hid in an oak tree while Cromwell's soldiers hunted him, fled to France disguised as a servant, and spent nine years in impoverished exile. When he returned to claim the English throne, the...
17 Jun 23min
7245: Buzz Aldrin — The Long, Lonely Descent After Walking on the Moon | pplpod
Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon and came home to a depression so severe he could barely function. The second man on the lunar surface spent years battling alcoholism and a sense that nothing on Earth c...
17 Jun 24min
7244: Sandy Koufax — Why Baseball's Most Dominant Pitcher Walked Away at Thirty | pplpod
Sandy Koufax pitched four no-hitters, won three Cy Young Awards, and was the most dominant pitcher in baseball. Then, at thirty years old and at the absolute peak of his abilities, he retired. His lef...
16 Jun 20min
7243: Miles Davis — The Relentless Genius Who Never Looked Back | pplpod
Miles Davis reinvented jazz at least five times. Every time the world caught up to what he was doing, he abandoned it and started something new. Cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, jazz fusion, electroni...
16 Jun 20min
7242: Edmund Hillary — The Shy Beekeeper Who Conquered Mount Everest | pplpod
Edmund Hillary kept bees for a living and described himself as an average New Zealander with modest abilities. In 1953 he and Tenzing Norgay became the first confirmed climbers to reach the summit of ...
16 Jun 21min
7241: Joe Montana — The Invisible Metrics Behind Football's Coolest Quarterback | pplpod
Joe Montana never had the strongest arm or the fastest legs. What he had was an ability to process information under pressure that no metric could capture and no defender could rattle. He won four Sup...
16 Jun 19min
7240: Hayao Miyazaki — The Fierce Contradictions of Animation's Greatest Living Artist | pplpod
Hayao Miyazaki has announced his retirement at least four times and come back every time. He hand-draws thousands of frames for films that gross hundreds of millions, rages against the modern world wh...
16 Jun 20min
7239: Freddie Mercury — The Shy Refugee Behind Rock's Greatest Frontman | pplpod
Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar, fled a revolution as a teenager, and arrived in England as a quiet, self-conscious immigrant. He transformed himself into the most electrifying li...
16 Jun 23min
