7174: Henry Purcell — The Baroque Genius Whose Music Inspired the Power Chord | pplpod
Henry Purcell died at thirty-six and left behind music so emotionally direct it still sounds modern. He wrote the first great English opera, reinvented the Anglican anthem, and composed funeral music ...
16 Jun 25min
7173: Dizzy Gillespie — How the Clown Prince of Jazz Reinvented American Music | pplpod
Dizzy Gillespie wore a beret, puffed his cheeks into balloons, and played with his trumpet bell bent skyward. The showmanship made people laugh. The music behind it was the most advanced jazz anyone h...
16 Jun 20min
7172: George Bernard Shaw — How the Original Provocateur Hacked the Attention Economy | pplpod
George Bernard Shaw understood a century before social media that controversy is currency. He made himself the most quoted man in the English-speaking world by saying outrageous things with absolute c...
16 Jun 23min
7171: Antonio Vivaldi — The Red Priest Who Vanished from Music History for 200 Years | pplpod
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 two hundred years for scholars to rediscover that t...
16 Jun 22min
7170: The Beatles — Hamburg Grit and the Most Spectacular Implosion in Music History | pplpod
Before the screaming fans and matching suits, the Beatles were five rough Liverpool teenagers playing eight-hour sets in Hamburg strip clubs. They slept behind a cinema screen, took pills to stay awak...
16 Jun 17min
7169: Gregory Peck — The Private Struggles Behind Hollywood’s Moral Compass | pplpod
The American Film Institute named Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch the greatest movie hero in cinema history. Audiences saw unshakable integrity. What they did not see was the grief, self-doubt, and perso...
16 Jun 22min
7168: Charlton Heston — From Marching with MLK to Leading the NRA | pplpod
Charlton Heston marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963 and lobbied Congress for the Civil Rights Act. Three decades later he stood before the NRA holding a rifle overhead. The journey betwee...
16 Jun 17min
7167: Charles Mingus — Jazz Symphonies, Volcanic Rage, and a Cat Training Manual | pplpod
Charles Mingus composed jazz that sounded like a symphony orchestra arguing. He fought club owners with his fists, fired musicians mid-set, and once chased a trombonist offstage with a fire axe. He al...
16 Jun 24min
