Katsushika Hokusai: The Artist Who Produced 30,000 Works and Still Felt Like an Amateur
Katsushika Hokusai created The Great Wave off Kanagawa — the most reproduced image in the history of art — when he was seventy years old. He changed his name over thirty times, moved house ninety-thre...
15 Jun 21min
Diego Velazquez: The Court Painter Who Captured Truth and Faked His Own Noble Bloodline
Diego Velazquez painted the Spanish royal court with such unflinching honesty that he made kings look human and dwarfs look dignified. Las Meninas is considered the most analyzed painting in Western a...
15 Jun 23min
Cormac McCarthy: The Uncompromising Recluse Who Wrote America's Darkest Masterpieces
Cormac McCarthy lived in poverty for decades rather than compromise his writing, gave almost no interviews in sixty years, and produced novels of such violent beauty that critics compared him to Faulk...
15 Jun 16min
Joseph Haydn: The Starving Servant Who Invented the Symphony and the String Quartet
Joseph Haydn was thrown out of his choir when his voice broke, spent years sleeping in attics and busking on the streets of Vienna, and became a servant in the Esterhazy household — where he spent thr...
15 Jun 19min
Robert Frost: The Secret Darkness Behind America's Favorite Folksy Poet
Robert Frost is remembered as the kindly New England farmer-poet who wrote about birch trees and snowy woods. The real Frost was consumed by depression, rage, and guilt — a man whose son committed sui...
15 Jun 22min
Giacomo Puccini: The Operatic Genius Whose Scandalous Private Life Nearly Destroyed Him
Giacomo Puccini composed La Boheme, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot — operas of such emotional intensity that they remain the most performed works in the repertoire. His private life was equally...
15 Jun 25min
Franz Liszt: The Piano Rockstar Who Became a Monk and Invented the Modern Concert
Franz Liszt was the first rock star. Women fainted at his concerts, fought over his cigar butts, and wore his portrait in brooches. He was the greatest pianist who ever lived, and he invented the solo...
15 Jun 25min
William Faulkner: The Nobel Winner Who Failed English Class and Reinvented the American Novel
William Faulkner dropped out of high school, failed a university English course, and worked as a postmaster who was fired for reading on the job. He then wrote The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, ...
15 Jun 21min
