Have you ever wondered about that old timey accent so many actors used in black and white movies? Hollywood stars like Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis and Orson Welles, who sounded sort of British … but not quite. Was it all a put on or did people back then talk that way in real life? Mo […]
When gold medalist Jim Thorpe was dubbed “the world’s greatest athlete” at the 1912 Olympics, it wasn’t hype. Football, baseball, lacrosse, even ballroom dancing … Thorpe was the world’s first multi-sport superstar. But when the Native American icon had his Olympic medals unjustly stripped from him, he faced his toughest hurdle yet. Mo talks to […]
There were so many different Peggy Lees: The woman who defined cool in the 1950s with songs like “Fever.” The songwriter of hits including the score to “Lady and the Tramp.” The icon who inspired Miss Piggy, originally named Miss Piggy Lee. (Yes, really.) But all those Peggy Lees can be traced back to the […]
When it comes to obituaries, Mo has always been obsessed with the phenomenon of public figures who share the same death day. So he’s asked CNN anchor and 60 Minutes correspondent Anderson Cooper to join the podcast to talk about who gets top billing and why. You’ll hear about the case of one person’s death […]
Mo Rocca is back with another fascinating season of Mobituaries, exploring the people and things that are no longer with us but deserve a second look. You’ll hear all about notable figures who “Died on the Same Day” along with the three “Things Mo Wishes Would Die.” There’s also the story behind the Queen of […]
When Andrew Lloyd Webber’s original Broadway production of the musical Cats premiered in 1982, a young dancer named Timothy Scott was just entering his prime. Cast in the role of Mr. Mistoffelees, he left audiences (including a young Mo) spellbound with an acrobatic dancing that seemed to defy physics. But before the end of the […]
Before his name became synonymous with treason, Benedict Arnold was a bonafide hero of the American Revolutionary War. At critical moments Arnold inspired the Patriots with his grit and determination and earned the admiration of George Washington. Despite his popularity and battlefield prowess, Benedict Arnold eventually broke bad. Mo talks with author Nathaniel Philbrick about […]
The banana we eat today is not the same kind our grandparents grew up eating. Today’s variety, called the Cavendish, is generally regarded as the bland successor to the richer tasting Gros Michel (French for “Big Mike”) of yesteryear. But when a deadly fungus ravaged the Gros Michel in the mid-20th century, the banana barons […]
At one of the most dangerous moments in the Cold War, an ordinary 5th grade girl from Maine wrote to the leader of the Soviet Union with a simple plea for peace. When he wrote back with an invitation to visit the Soviet Union in the summer of 1982, it became an international news story […]
We love historical “Firsts” so much that we end up ignoring the people who come right after them. But without these runners-up, the trailblazers are just one-offs or oddities––instead of the beginning of big change. Mo celebrates the Black baseball great who joined the major leagues just eleven weeks after Jackie Robinson, the second American […]