Celebrate Poe

Send us a textNARRATOR:Welcome back to the Metropolitan Museum of Toys and Childhood Artifacts—where the lights dim, the doors lock, and the exhibits do what exhibits are not supposed to do.[SFX: A security door clicks shut.]NARRATOR (cont.):Tonight, our night watchman makes his rounds with a thermos of tea, a sensible flashlight, and the quiet confidence of a man who believes no object smaller than a breadbox could possibly ruin his evening.[SFX: Footsteps. Keys jingle softly.]NIGHT WATCHMAN (EBENEZER SMITH):All right, Mr. Museum… let's see what you've got for me tonight. No juggling dolls. No ventriloquist dummies practicing stand-up. No remote-control cars attempting a heist.[SFX: He stops walking. The ambience hushes slightly.]NIGHT WATCHMAN (cont.):Oh. The Digital Fads case.NARRATOR:A glass display case labeled “Pocket Companions: 1990s–2000s.” Inside: a pager, a flip phone, a tiny handheld game, and—resting on a velvet stand like a jewel—an egg-shaped plastic keychain with three little buttons.[SFX: A tiny electronic “BEEP-BEEP!”]NIGHT WATCHMAN:…No.[SFX: “BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!” intensifies.]NIGHT WATCHMAN (cont.):Absolutely not. We are not doing this tonight. I remember you. I remember the… the neediness.NARRATOR:The night watchman leans closer. The little screen glows with a pixelated face that looks… concerned. Accusatory. Dramatic.[SFX: “BEEP!” a little sadder now.]NIGHT WATCHMAN:Fine. All right. Rule of the museum: if you're going to speak, you tell me your name and what you are. No mysterious beeping from the shadows. Understood?[SFX: One polite beep. Then a short, proud chime.]Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNIGHT WATCHMAN (mildly amused, to himself):All right, Museum. Let's see what you've got tonight. No stampedes. No… spontaneous karaoke from the animatronics. And if the wind-up monkey even looks like it's planning something—no.SFX: a faint plastic “tap… tap… tap”   NIGHT WATCHMAN:What was that?SFX: tiny clicks, like pegs being nudged in a bowlNIGHT WATCHMAN (approaching):Okay. Either a mouse has learned arts and crafts… or—LITE-BRITE (grand, theatrical, as if onstage):Behold.NIGHT WATCHMAN:…Hello?LITE-BRITE (with dignity):Hello, wanderer of dim hallways. Guardian of velvet ropes. Keeper of “please do not touch” signs. You may address me as—(a beat —the Artist-in-Residence.NIGHT WATCHMAN (dry):You're a Lite-Brite.For a basic explanation, I am a classic art toy: a flat plastic board with a grid of tiny holes, a sheet of black paper you place over the board, and lots of small colored pegs. You push the pegs into the holes, and when the light behind the board is turned on, the pegs glow like little stained-glass dots. Kids can follow printed pattern sheets—or freehand their own designs—so it's part craft, part puzzle, part “tiny theater marquee” for your imagination.But I like to think of myself as a luminary medium. I am mood lighting with a mission. I am the living marriage of electricity and vision.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNIGHT WATCHMAN (EBENEZER, cheerful):All right, toys—another calm, orderly night.Nothing's going to—SFX: A sudden electronic WHIRR from a glass case.SFX: Tiny motor clicks: eyelids opening.SFX: A bright chirp, then a giggle.FURBY (loud):KAH! DOO-AY! NOO-LAH! NOO-LAH!NIGHT WATCHMAN (startled, then amused):…And right on schedule, the museum installs a tiny chaos engine.FURBY:A-LOH! MAY-MAY! A-LOH MAY-MAY!NIGHT WATCHMAN:Hello to you too, Sir Fluffington.Let's keep it classy. We're in a museum.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNARRATOR:It's Christmas Eve at the Metropolitan Museum of Toys and Childhood Artifacts—after the last visitor has gone,after the gift-shop lights click off,after the lobby wreath stops smelling like “busy” and starts smelling like “quiet.”[SFX: KEY RING JINGLE. DOOR CLICKS. FOOTSTEPS ON TILE.]NIGHT WATCHMAN (GENTLE, CONTENT):All right, everybody…Merry Christmas Eve.(beat)Now… let's have a peaceful night.No surprises.No—NIGHT WATCHMAN (LOOKING UP):…No surprises.NARRATOR:In the Seasonal Traditions Gallery, under the dim night-lights, something small sat on a shelf as if it had always belonged there.An elf doll.Not blinking.Not moving.Just… waiting.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNARRATOR:It's Christmas Eve at the Metropolitan Museum of Toys and Childhood Artifacts—after the last visitor has gone,after the gift-shop lights click off,after the lobby wreath stops smelling like “busy” and starts smelling like “quiet.”[SFX: KEY RING JINGLE. DOOR CLICKS. FOOTSTEPS ON TILE.]NIGHT WATCHMAN (GENTLE, CONTENT):All right, everybody…Merry Christmas Eve.(beat)Now… let's have a peaceful night.No surprises.No—NIGHT WATCHMAN (LOOKING UP):…No surprises.NARRATOR:In the Seasonal Traditions Gallery, under the dim night-lights, something small sat on a shelf as if it had always belonged there.An elf doll.Not blinking.Not moving.Just… waiting.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textThis episode begins with the night watchmen engaged in conversation with Rubik's Cube.NIGHT WATCHMAN:Mr. cube, I want the museum-tour version of how to start.RUBIK'S CUBE:Very well.Rule one:Choose one face to become your “home.”Many begin with white—because it is easy to recognize.But any color will do.RUBIK'S CUBE:Rule two:Do not attempt to solve everything at once.Solve a layer.Then another.Then another.NIGHT WATCHMAN:So… first you build a little island of order.RUBIK'S CUBE:Yes. And then you expand it.NARRATOR:The Night Watchman nods like this is simple.Which is exactly how the cube likes to begin.NIGHT WATCHMAN:Okay, I'm going to try.No promises.RUBIK'S CUBE:Promises are unnecessary.Attention is enough.NARRATOR:Ebenezer turns the cube, slowly.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNARRATOR:In the center of the case sits a classic 3×3 Rubik's Cube—a pocket-size universe that has humbled presidents, professors, and perfectly confident ten-year-olds.It's the kind of toy that whispers:“Go ahead. Touch me.I will teach you something about yourself.”[SFX: A TINY CLICK. LIKE PLASTIC TURNING—JUST ONCE.]NIGHT WATCHMAN (startled):…Did you just…?RUBIK'S CUBE (CALM, PRECISE):You heard correctly.NIGHT WATCHMAN:You talk?RUBIK'S CUBE:Only when the building stops pretending it's busy.NIGHT WATCHMAN:All right, then.Who—what—are you, exactly?RUBIK'S CUBE:A puzzle.A mirror.A small, stubborn cathedral for the human attention span.NIGHT WATCHMAN:That's… a lot to put on a little cube.RUBIK'S CUBE:So are the expectations.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNARRATOR (WARM, LOW):Welcome to Celebrate Creativity…and Conversations with Toys.  This episode is VIEW-MASTER: CLICK INTO WONDER.This podcast is a dramatization that blends historical research with fiction, satire, and imagined conversations between people, toys, and other objects. It is not a documentary and not professional advice of any kind. No character, toy, product, or brand depicted in this podcast is authorized by, endorsed by, or officially affiliated with any company, manufacturer, museum, or organization; references to specific names are for storytelling only and do not imply sponsorship or approval.I'm George Bartley… now let's have some fun.It's after hours at the Metropolitan Museum of Toys and Childhood Artifacts—the place where the lights go low,the cameras blink like sleepy fireflies,and the toys… well.The toys finally have time to talk.[SFX: KEY RING JINGLE. A DOOR SOFTLY CLICKS SHUT.]NIGHT WATCHMAN (EASY, FRIENDLY):Evening, everybody.All right… let's see what kind of trouble you're in tonight.[SFX: FOOTSTEPS SLOW. THEN STOP.]Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNIGHT WATCHMAN (reading):“Betsy Wetsy. Vintage baby doll.A ‘practice baby'—a caretaking toy reflecting changing ideas about childhood play and domestic life…”NARRATOR:He pauses, as if the next line might argue back.NIGHT WATCHMAN (continuing):“Please do not touch the exhibits.”That last part—I wrote myself.[SFX: Another tiny plastic creak.]BETSY WETSY (bright, polite, slightly prim):Mr. Smith.NIGHT WATCHMAN (not surprised, just tired):Evenin', Betsy.BETSY WETSY:You're reading it incorrectly.NIGHT WATCHMAN:I'm reading what it says.BETSY WETSY (pleasantly firm):Yes. Incorrectly.NARRATOR (smiling):Betsy Wetsy has the tone of someone who has been misunderstood by history…and would like to speak to the manager of time.NIGHT WATCHMAN:All right.What's the complaint tonight?BETSY WETSY:The label suggests I am… novelty.NIGHT WATCHMAN:It says “caretaking toy.”BETSY WETSY:That is correct.A caretaking toy is not a novelty.A caretaking toy is training.NARRATOR:The Night Watchman looks at the bottle.Then the diaper.Then the “no demonstrations” sign he definitely wrote after “The Incident.”NIGHT WATCHMAN:Betsy… I'm gonna say this kindly.If you're about to make a point that requires…liquid proof…the answer's no.BETSY WETSY (innocent):Mr. Smith.I am a lady.NIGHT WATCHMAN:A lady with plumbing.BETSY WETSY (cheerful):A lady with realism.NARRATOR:And there it is—Betsy's proudest word.Realism.Because dolls like Betsy weren't only meant to be held.They were meant to be managed.They turned play into a routine: bottle, burp, diaper, lullaby.Not just “pretend you have a baby,” but “pretend you have a schedule.”BETSY WETSY (warmly instructive):I taught responsibility.NIGHT WATCHMAN:You taught somebody to carry a spare outfit.BETSY WETSY:That is responsibility.NIGHT WATCHMAN (dry):That's also… preparedness.BETSY WETSY (proud):Exactly.NARRATOR:If you've never met Betsy Wetsy, here is the simplest way to say it:she was designed as a “practice baby”—a doll built to imitate baby care in an era when toys were becoming more lifelike, more interactive, more… convincing.And for a certain kind of childhood, she became a rite of passage.A tiny domestic universe with a bottle as the sun.BETSY WETSY (softly pleased):I was beloved.NIGHT WATCHMAN:You were… frequently cleaned.BETSY WETSY:That is also love.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textThe alphabet blocks are gathered around the bobble head figure of Edgar Allan Poe - complete with Raven.  The alphabet blocks seem to be fascinated by Mr.Poe's use of language and are clearly intrigued by his words until the night watchmen makes an announcement.Block aYou are famous for your work of terror. Could you share with us your scariest poem.Mr. Poe.That really depends on your opinion - what you believe is scary.Many people believe my poem The Conqueror Worm is the scariest.As you probably know, my birth mother was an actress and the stage was very important to her. Some people may not realize it at first but my poem The Conqueror Worm uses the theater as a metaphor for a hopeless death - that we all are ultimately food for worms after we die - so there is no hope.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textTonight we leave the playhouse wing and walk—quietly—into a different kind of stage: a mirrored room, a window, and a tube of glass and brass pointed at the sky. Because when Edgar Allan Poe looks up, he doesn't just want a story. He wants an explanation.SFX: soft footsteps, a faint “gallery hum,” a distant night security beep.Different exhibit tonight, folks. Same rule, though—no touching the artifacts… even when they start talking back.Now a telescope, such as the one you see, can be an instrument.But in the hands of the curious—especially the young—it behaves like a toy in the best sense: not a trinket, but a machine that turns wonder into a habit.And Poe… Poe was the kind of mind that didn't outgrow wonder.He made literature from it.He weaponized it.NARRATOR (leaning into awe):At first, it's simple: you look through the tube and the sky stops being a ceiling.The moon becomes a place with edges.Stars become objects, not decorations.But Poe doesn't stop at looking. He starts asking the dangerous question:“If the universe looks like this… then what must it be?”And that's how you get Eureka: not a poem, not a lecture, not quite a treatise—but Poe's late-life attempt to tell the grandest story of all: how everything began, how it holds together, and how it might end.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNARRATOR / NIGHT WATCHMAN (gentle, amused):It's amazing what feels different in a museum at midnight.In the daytime, the lights are bright, the brochures are tidy, the gift shop is cheerful……but when the doors are locked and the echoes stretch a little longer…you start to notice the small things.The way the glass cases hold their breath.The way the EXIT signs glow like tiny red moons.And, sometimes…the way one little plastic head keeps nodding…long after everyone's gone home.Tonight, we're back in the Metropolitan Museum of Toys and Childhood Ar    tifacts.And down one of the quieter aisles—past the superhero lunchboxes, past the snow globes that never stop snowing—Somewhere between Shakespeare in his ruffled collar and a slightly bewildered Jane Austen…there he is.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNARRATOR (WARM, INVITING)Welcome to Celebrate Creativity and Conversations with Toys,our after-hours visit to the Metropolitan Museumof Toys and Childhood Artifacts—where the lights are low,the alarms are set,and words wait quietly on the shelves…until someone notices them.NarratorAnd we see the action figure of William Shakespeare - complete with quill - surrounded by a group of alphabet blocks. He continues to talk about his life and literary career.ShakespeareMany scholars believe that it was around this time that I wrote the comedy As You Like It with its famous all the world's a stage monologue.  By the way, the word sans in the last line of this monologue means without - as you can probably tell, much of my language was quite different from today.All the world's a stage,And all the men and women merely players;They have their exits and their entrances,And one man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchelAnd shining morning face, creeping like snailUnwillingly to school. And then the lover,Sighing like furnace, with a woeful balladMade to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,Seeking the bubble reputationEven in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,In fair round belly with good capon lined,With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,Full of wise saws and modern instances;And so he plays his part. The sixth age shiftsInto the lean and slippered pantaloon,With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wideFor his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,Turning again toward childish treble, pipesAnd whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,That ends this strange eventful history,Is second childishness and mere oblivion,Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textShakespeare  Hello Mr. Smith. This is William Shakespeare the action figure, and I would be most remiss if I did not continue my narrative regarding my education in Stratford. You see, like many boys of my station, I probably attended the King's New School in Stratford. It has been so long that I must admit I am a bit foggy. The curriculum would have been heavy on Latin, rhetoric, and the classics. Day after day, I was been drilled in the works of Ovid, Seneca, and Plautus. Later, echoes of those schoolroom authors would resurface in my plays — such as Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night's Dream, as well as the Roman senators in Julius Caesar. Night watchmenSo when did you start using the alphabet and language so masterfully?ShakespeareI certainly intend to address that, but for now be patient, my fellow toys, be patient. You see, by 1582, when I was only eighteen, I married a lady by the name of Anne Hathaway,  Some scholars Believe that my wive's name was actually Agnes. In any case, our first daughter, Susanna, was born the following year. Twins, Hamnet and Judith, followed in 1585.  Unfortunately my dear son Hamnet later died as a result of the plague. And then comes the mystery: the so-called “lost years.” Between 1585 and 1592, I completely disappear from the historical record. No plays, no mentions, no documents, but what we do know is that by 1592, I was in the city of London and making a name for myself. A rival playwright, Robert Greene, derided me in print as an “upstart crow.” For all its venom, the insult is proof that I had arrived — I was already challenging the university-trained writers and beginning my rise to the very top of the Elizabethan stage.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNight watchmanI must admit that my first impression of the William Shakespeare action figure was - what is all the big deal.  I even have a background in Shakespeare acting - though I don't have a job with that training. But if you look at the William Shakespeare action figure - even though he has a scroll and quiil - your first reaction is what is all the fuss for?NarratorAs the narrator of this podcast episode, my suggestion is to look at the history of the character behind the William Shakespeare action figure, complete with quill.  Do you have any comments, Mr. Shakespeare. I would be surprised if you didn't.English ShakespeareYes gentlemen, if you visit the city of Stratford-upon-Avon in England today, the first thing you'll probably hear is that I was born in 1564. We don't actually know the exact day, but we do know that I was baptized on April 26th at Holy Trinity Church. Since baptisms usually happened a few days after birth, tradition has settled on April 23rd — St. George's Day — as my birthday. A fitting coincidence, since St. George is England's patron saint and many individuals said during an after my life that Iwould become England's greatest poet.Night watchmenMr. Shakespeare, I am from the State of Mississippi in the United States, and am currently employed as a night watchmen in this toy museum. Could you tell us about YOUR background in Stratford-upon-Avon.ShakespeareCertainly. I was the son of John Shakespeare, a glove maker and part-time wool dealer who rose to become an alderman in the town, and Mary Arden, who came from a well-off farming family.  My parents gave me a household connected both to trade and to old Warwickshire landowners.Night watchmanI can't believe I'm talking to a toy - especially such a small toy - but I guess it isn't every day that you get a chance to talk to the world's greatest writer - even if it is an action figure. Well I might as well ask you - you obviously know that you are very small and stature - but what seems to bother you the most? ShakespeareAh, let's view things in perspective one must realize that after midnight, the Toy Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Toys and Childhood Artifactsis a very opinionated place.The teddy bear has thoughts about immigration.The race cars debate who's the fastest.And down one quiet aisle,between a plastic model of the Globe Theatreand a bucket of foam swords,stands a small figure in black.Black doublet.White ruff.Quill pen forever poised above a tiny scroll.And my name tag reads:“William Shakespeare Action Figurec. 2010 – Plastic, Paint, and a Suspiciously Confident Smirk.”ShakespeareGood even, kind sir.You may put “suspiciously confident smirk” in the catalogue if you like,but 'twas crafted by a very cheap mould.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNARRATOR (WARM, INVITING)Welcome to Celebrate Creativity and Conversations with Toys,our after-hours visit to the Metropolitan Museumof Toys and Childhood Artifacts—where the lights are low let's get the disclaimer out of the way this podcast behind every line of Shakespeare behind every Erie sentence from Poe behind every every    the alarms are set,and words wait quietly on the shelves…until someone notices them.NARRATOR (WARM, WRAP-UP):The alphabet blocks settle back into their tray,quiet again behind glass—twenty-six little doorswaiting for the next set of handsto open them.Wherever you are listening from tonight,I hope you'll remember them the next timeyou see a word on a page,or a sign, or a screen.Behind every line of Shakespeare,behind every eerie sentence from Poe,behind every text, email, and grocery list,there's still a tiny alphabet,stacked up like toy blocks,holding the whole thing together.Thank you for spending this after-hours visitat the Metropolitan Museumof Toys and Childhood Artifacts.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNARRATOR (WARM, INVITING)Welcome to Celebrate Creativity and Conversations with Toys,our after-hours visit to the Metropolitan Museumof Toys and Childhood Artifacts—where the lights are low let's get the disclaimer out of the way this podcast behind every line of Shakespeare behind every Erie sentence from Poe behind every every    the alarms are set,and words wait quietly on the shelves…until someone notices them.NARRATOR (WARM, WRAP-UP):The alphabet blocks settle back into their tray,quiet again behind glass—twenty-six little doorswaiting for the next set of handsto open them.Wherever you are listening from tonight,I hope you'll remember them the next timeyou see a word on a page,or a sign, or a screen.Behind every line of Shakespeare,behind every eerie sentence from Poe,behind every text, email, and grocery list,there's still a tiny alphabet,stacked up like toy blocks,holding the whole thing together.Thank you for spending this after-hours visitat the Metropolitan Museumof Toys and Childhood Artifacts.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNARRATOR (GEORGE):The Toy Museum isn't all hard plastic and sharp corners.Some shelves are quieter.Softer.Places where the edges give wayand the labels blur a little.Tonight, the Night Watchman has wandered awayfrom Barbie's high heels and Ken's molded hairinto a part of the museumthat feels more like a pillow aisle.[Footsteps slow. There's a soft rustle, like fabric against fabric.]NIGHT WATCHMAN:Okay. This… is new to me.NARRATOR:The shelf in front of him doesn't look like the stuffed animals of his childhood.No glass eyes.No stitched noses.Just a row of round, squishy shapes—cats, frogs, bears, foods,all with the same simple recipe:Big eyes.Tiny smile.Bodies like friendly moons.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNARRATOR (GEORGE):The Toy Museum remembers everything.It remembers the first teddy bear sewn by an immigrant.It remembers Barbie striking a pose at a 1959 toy fair.It remembers dragon trucks that eat carsand tiny supermarkets where children practice being grownups.But tonight,the museum is thinking in rectangles.Bricks.Studs.The quiet click that has becomeone of the most recognizable soundsin the toy world.The Night Watchmanhas wandered into the construction wing.[Footsteps on a slightly hollow floor; faint echo.]NARRATOR:Shelves of building sets stretch in both directions—castles, spaceships, cities,boxes with age ranges on the frontand smiling children on the back.But on a low pedestal near the center,there's a quieter scene.A cluster of green plates,a few stalks of brick-built bamboo,and three black-and-white figuresassembled from a modest handful of pieces.NIGHT WATCHMAN:Ah. And pandas.Two things I've seen everywhereand never really put together.Aquarium from Carnival of the Animals by composed by Camille Sans-Saen, Performed by the Seattle Youth Orchestra. Source: https://musopen.org/music/1454-the-carnival-of-the-animals/. License: Public Domain (composition) / Creative Commons (recording).Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textThe Toy Museum has its own kind of gravity.Once you've visited a shelf, it tugs at you.Tonight, the Night Watchman finds himselfback in the Barbie gallery.Same pink glow.Same tiny shoes.But the spotlight is different.It's shifted to the left.[Soft click of a case light turning on.]NARRATOR:Onto a smiling man,molded hair,permanent tan,and a wardrobe that never quite decides what he does for a living.NIGHT WATCHMAN:All right, then.Your turn.KEN (slightly nervous, friendly):Wow.Okay. Hi.Uh… this is weird.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNARRATOR (GEORGE):The Toy Museum never really sleeps.It sighs. It settles. It adjusts its labels.But somewhere, between the glass cases and the security cameras, the night gets… strange.Previously, the Night Watchman met a bear who smelled like home.Tonight, he's walked into a different kind of dream—one made of high heels, sequins, and an alarming number of tiny pink shoes.[Footsteps slow. A light switch clicks. A faint, glamorous “whoosh” of spotlights.]NIGHT WATCHMAN:…Oh.Wow.NARRATOR:He has found the Barbie gallery.Rows of dolls in glittery boxes.Outfits on miniature hangers.Convertible cars. Dream houses.An entire closet that looks like it explodedand politely arranged itself into product lines.NIGHT WATCHMAN (softly):Teddy, I owe you an apology.I thought your shelf was intense.[Small, sparkling chime – your “toy waking” sound.]Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNARRATOR (GEORGE):The Toy Museum KNOWS how to roar.It has dragons that eat cars,tiny metal racers that dare gravity,and shelves of toys that glow and beep and shout.But sometimes,the museum does something much quieter.It turns the dullest errands of adult lifeinto a stage for children.  Tonight, the Night Watchmanhas wandered away from speeding carsand plastic teeth,into a corner of the museumthat feels… suspiciously like a grocery store.[Footsteps slow. A trolley rattle, very small.]All right, that's tonight's story.I'll make my roundsand see who's ready to talk tomorrow.In this place,there's always one more toywith something to say.NIGHT WATCHMAN:Let me guess.Next stop: frozen peas?NARRATOR:Not quite.In front of him, on a low platform,is a play set laid out like a tiny supermarket.There's a checkout counter with a little conveyor belt,a scanner,a beeping register,plastic fruits and vegetables,milk cartons the size of his thumb,and a trolley just big enoughfor two small blue heelers to fight over.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNARRATOR (GEORGE):The Toy Museum has currents, like an ocean.Soft shelves, hard shelves, loud shelves, quiet ones.Last night, the Night Watchman nearly fell asleepleaning against a Squishmallow—no-questions-asked softness in pastel colors.Tonight, the current drags him somewhere else.Somewhere harder.Sharper.Louder.FootstepsNARRATOR:He's entered the vehicles area.Rows of tiny cars.Trucks.Motorcycles.Helicopters frozen mid-rescue,race cars mid-victory lap.And at the end of the aisle—taking up an entire platform—something stranger.NIGHT WATCHMAN:Well.That's… a lot.NARRATOR:Picture a semi truckdesigned by a child who had equal accessto car magazines and dragon drawings.A massive hauler with a dragon's head at the front,a dragon's tail at the back,and another dragon—smaller, meaner—perched on top like a hungry backpack.Orange track coils from its sideslike captured lightning.NIGHT WATCHMAN:Let me guess.Hot Wheels?NARRATOR:He's not new to the brand.He remembers having a few tiny metal cars as a boy,a single strip of orange trackpropped on a stack of books.One or two loops,if you were lucky.But this…This looks like someone asked,“What if the car carrier was a fire-breathing monsterthat eats the traffic jam and turns into a racetrack?”Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNARRATOR (GEORGE):The Toy Museum has its quiet corners—where Squishmallows wait to be hugged,and where a teddy bear smells like home.Tonight is not one of those corners.Tonight, the Night Watchmanhas wandered into the game aisle—the place where toys don't just sit and get held.They demand players.They demand rules.They demand noise.[Footsteps on carpet, then a slightly hollo   w thunk as he bumps a shelf.]NARRATOR:Board games stare at Mr. Smith from every direction—cardboard boxes promising strategy,mystery,family bonding,or at least a temporary truce.But halfway down the aisle,a smaller box catches his eye.Bright colors.A cartoon pigeonwith a wild stare.A plastic bird-shaped shakerpeeking through a clear window.The title is simple,and more than a little concerning.NIGHT WATCHMAN:“Exploding…Pigeon.”Of course.Because apparently“calm, soothing pigeon”didn't test well with focus groups.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textEbenezer is back.This is the second night for Ebeneezer Smith as the new night watchmen at the Metropolitan Museum of toys and childhood artifacts KEY in lock. DOOR opening.]EBENEZER (muttering to himself):Well, I'm here. Again.      This time I doubt I'll meet any human beings I can talk with…The toys might be a different story.But honestly? I don't understand what happened last night. I have no idea if that conversation with Slinky was a one-time deal——or just a bit of bad beef.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textHello my name is Ebeneezer SmithThank you for staying with me.(mutters to himself)All right. Let's see what kind of neighbors I've got.There is a set of plastic building bricks.There is a board game whose box I remember arguing over with my cousins.And in the “Comfort and Companions” section, a bear that looks suspiciously like something I once slept with every night until I was far too old to admit it.[SOUND: Footsteps slow.] And I admit this is the kind of atmosphere that does make you want to talk to yourselfWell, hello there, middle-school emotional support system.FootstepsEverything is quiet.Ordinary.Almost disappointingly normal.Let me see - here is a gallery labeled: “American Playthings: 1940s–1960s.”A soft metallic… whisper.[SOUND: Very faint first shhhink… shhhink…]It has to be nothing.The building settling.A vent conductor rattling.The ghost of a shopping cart from the discount store next door.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textOur story tonight doesn't start in a toy store.No bright aisles.No sales.No blinking “Buy One, Get One Free” signs.Instead, we begin on a quiet city street, just after closing time, in front of an old stone building most people walk past without ever truly seeing.During the day, it's a respectable institution:The Metropolitan Museum of Toys and Childhood Artifacts.But tonight… it's dark.The front doors are locked.The lights are dim.And a slightly nervous job applicant stands on the front steps of this museum, wondering whether this was really such a good idea.  Interview interviewSupport the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textNow today's episode is a little different.Usually, we spend our time tracking the lives of composers, musicians, and artists—people whose names end up in history books, or on album covers, or carved into theater walls. We talk about how they changed the sound of a century, or rewired what pop music could be, or turned their lives into performance.But for a while now, I've been quietly working on something a bit… stranger.For December, I'm moving us into a different kind of gallery altogether—one where almost nothing is bigger than a shoebox, and yet the stories are enormous.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textIn this series, we've been spending time with artists who didn't just make hits — they rewired popular music itself.Some of them crashed.Some of them burned out.Some of them never got old enough to figure out who they might have become.In the previous episode, we talked about Michael Jackson — a man whose genius was wrapped in pressure, pain, and dependency, and whose life ended in an overdose in a rented mansion in Los Angeles.Today's story easily could have ended the same way.But it didn't.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday, we're going to spend some time with a figure who shaped pop music, dance, music videos, and the idea of celebrity itself—only to become a tragic warning about what happens when that level of fame collides with a fragile human body and mind.Michael Joseph Jackson was born August 29, 1958, in Gary, Indiana—a working-class steel town in the Midwest. He was the eighth of ten children in the Jackson family, packed into a small house where money was tight, tempers could be hot, and music was both escape and opportunity.His father, Joseph—“Joe” Jackson—worked in a steel mill and played guitar in a local R&B band on the side. His mother, Katherine, loved gospel music and encouraged her kids to sing in church. Out of this stew came something unusual: a whole family act, and in the middle of it, a little boy who shone like a spotlight was glued to him.Michael once described watching his father's band rehearse in the living room, feeling this almost physical need to join in. He and his brothers—Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon—began rehearsing as a group, first informally, then obsessively. Joe Jackson realized they had something, and he ran rehearsals like a drill sergeant: long hours, no nonsense, and a clear goal—this was going to be their ticket out of Gary.Here's the strange thing: from the very beginning, there were two Michaels.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday, I want to put two lives—and two mythologies—side by side. Not as gossip. Not as tabloid spectacle. As a question:What happens when two Black artists rise from a Houston salon and a Brooklyn housing project to a place where they can rewire the business, the sound, and the story of popular music—and do it as a partnership?Let's start in Houston.Beyoncé Giselle Knowles grows up in a middle-class Black family. Her mother, Tina, runs a salon. Her father, Mathew, works in sales. Church, local performances, talent shows—this is the rehearsal hall of her childhood.There's a shy little girl here who transforms when the music starts.By the early 1990s, she's part of a girls' group that evolves into Destiny's Child. This is not magic; this is labor. They rehearse until the harmonies are automatic, the choreography is drilled, the breathing is perfectly placed. Influences pour in: Michael and Janet, Whitney, En Vogue, gospel quartets, hip-hop swagger, pop hooks.Destiny's Child signs with Columbia. There are lineup changes, management controversies, public drama—exactly the kind of storms that break most young acts. But out of that storm come songs that define an era of young womanhood: independence, betrayal, loyalty, resilience.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textIn this current series, we've been living in the neighborhood of giants—artists who didn't just have hits, but re-wired what popular music could be.Today… someone different again.A man who refused categories, ignored rules, blurred gender lines, shredded guitars, whispered falsettos, wrote anthems for other people in his spare time, and turned a small Midwestern city into the center of a new universe.Prince.Not “Prince the nostalgia act.”Prince the problem.Prince the possibility.Prince the system update.Let's step into Minneapolis.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textIn this series, we've spent time with giants—singers, songwriters, bands, entire movements. Some of them changed my life from a distance, through vinyl and radio and the accidental sacrament of a TV set in the living room.Today's subject changed my life at arm's length.Not in a stadium, not in a Broadway theater, not on a movie screen, but in a small brick house in Richmond, Virginia—the Edgar Allan Poe Museum—where a visiting diva looked across a desk and aimed one very sharp line straight at a truth I was not ready to say out loud.Today we're talking about Bette Midler—The Divine Miss M. Her unlikely beginnings in Hawaii, her nights in the New York bathhouses, her Broadway stints and Hollywood turns, her persona that seems to mix stand-up comic, torch singer, drag queen, Jewish mother, and Vegas showgirl… and that one five-minute encounter that told me more about myself than any song ever had.Let's start far from Broadway, far from Manhattan clubs and Hollywood sound stages.Bette Davis Midler w she studied drama for a while at the university of Hawaii at Manoa and even worked as an extra and the 1966 film Hawaii showing up very briefly as a seasick passenger not exactly a star making moment         as born on December 1, 1945, in Honolulu, Hawaii—the third of four children in a working-class Jewish family in a mostly Asian neighborhood. Her mother, Ruth, was a seamstress and housewife; her father, Fred, worked as a painter at a Navy base and did house painting on the side. Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textThis is the story of Bruce Springsteen—“The Boss”—a kid from a working-class town who turned everyday American lives into epic songs, who built a career on sweat, loyalty, doubt, faith, and three-hour marathons onstage that left entire arenas wrung out and grinning.Let's walk through where he came from, what shaped him, how he broke through, who he's influenced—and why, decades in, Bruce Springsteen still matters.Picture central New Jersey in the 1950s and 60s. Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen is born September 23, 1949, in Long Branch, and grows up in nearby Freehold Borough in a blue-collar Catholic family. His father, Doug, bounces between jobs—factory work, bus driving, prison guard. His mother, Adele, is the steady one, working as a legal secretary and keeping the family afloat. The house is tight, money is tight, tempers are tight.Young Bruce doesn't thrive in school. He's restless, alienated; teachers remember him as the loner with the faraway look who really cared about one thing: the guitar. Then comes that moment. Like so many of his generation, he sees Elvis Presley on television—this wild, electric presence shaking up the polite living rooms of America. Soon after, he discovers the twin pillars who will haunt his work: Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. Guthrie teaches him that songs can stand with the powerless. Dylan shows him that lyrics can be literature without losing their bite.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday we are stepping straight into four decades of controversy, choreography, and calculated control.Madonna.Not just “the Queen of Pop,” but an artist who has treated her own life as a long, shape-shifting performance about power—who gets it, who's allowed to keep it, and what happens when a woman refuses to sit down, shut up, or age politely.I'm George Bartley. Let's begin.Madonna Louise Ciccone was born August 16, 1958, in Bay City, Michigan, and raised in the Detroit suburbs in a large, strict Catholic family.Her mother dies of breast cancer when Madonna is only five.That single loss—mother, faith, home base—echoes under almost everything that follows.You see it in the Catholic imagery she wears and tears apart, in the recurring themes of abandonment, guilt, and confession. The tabloids called it “blasphemy.” But for Madonna, it's also biography: a daughter arguing with the Church that shaped her and the God who took her mother.As a girl, she is a paradox: straight-A student, disciplined dancer, cheerleader, troublemaker. Teachers remember intelligence and defiance. She wants to be seen, but very much on her own terms.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textIf you've been following this series of modern day musicians, you may remember a concert I mentioned with the Rolling Stones. It is true that the Stones were able to hold the audience and follow their hands, so to speak. But even before Mick Jagger strut out on stage, the opening act was Stevie Wonder = a living definition of a hard act to follow. If I had just seen his opening act, I could've left knowing that I had seen a great show = but I admit I would've definitely been disappointed at missing the Stones.  But there was no question that Stevie Wonder had prepared the crowd for the excitement of Mick JaggerToday,ΩåΩ I would like to talk about an artist who can fill a stadium with joy using one riff, one chord change, and one impossibly confident note on a harmonica.That same Stevie Wonder.Composer, singer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, activist.A child prodigy who did not burn out.A hitmaker who refused to choose between romantic love songs and songs that tell hard truths.A blind musician whose music often seems to see the world more clearly than many of us who use our eyes.   In this episode, I'd like to walk through his background,the forces that shaped him,the run of hits that re-wired popular music,his effects on other artists,and how his blindness is not a side note, but part of how he developed an uncanny vision for sound, people, and justice.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday, we're going to spend some time with a figure who shaped pop music, dance, music videos, and the idea of celebrity itself—only to become a tragic warning about what happens when that level of fame collides with a fragile human body and mind.Michael Joseph Jackson was born August 29, 1958, in Gary, Indiana—a working-class steel town in the Midwest. He was the eighth of ten children in the Jackson family, packed into a small house where money was tight, tempers could be hot, and music was both escape and opportunity.His father, Joseph—“Joe” Jackson—worked in a steel mill and played guitar in a local R&B band on the side. His mother, Katherine, loved gospel music and encouraged her kids to sing in church. Out of this stew came something unusual: a whole family act, and in the middle of it, a little boy who shone like a spotlight was glued to him.Michael once described watching his father's band rehearse in the living room, feeling this almost physical need to join in. He and his brothers—Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon—began rehearsing as a group, first informally, then obsessively. Joe Jackson realized they had something, and he ran rehearsals like a drill sergeant: long hours, no nonsense, and a clear goal—this was going to be their ticket out of Gary.Here's the strange thing: from the very beginning, there were two Michaels.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday, we turn to an artist who never seemed entirely earthbound.David Bowie.For some listeners, Bowie is the sound of discovery: that first moment you realize a song, a costume, a performance can make the world feel bigger than the town you're standing in.For others, he's a gallery of snapshots:Ziggy Stardust in orange hair and stardust makeup.The Thin White Duke in a waistcoat and a stare like a searchlight.Jareth in Labyrinth, juggling crystal balls and rewiring childhoods.And finally, the enigmatic figure of Blackstar, composing a farewell while the rest of us didn't yet know to call it goodbye.Tonight, I'd like to walk through Bowie's life and work in a way that fits this series:his background,his influence,his first appearances in the United States,and the movies that made him more than “just” a rock star.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textTonight we turn to a musician whose name has become shorthand for guitar mastery, blues devotion, and, depending on who you ask, the very idea of the rock “guitar hero.”Eric Clapton.For some listeners, he is the ultimate guitarist: the Yardbirds prodigy, the “Clapton Is God” graffiti on London walls, the molten solos with Cream, the aching beauty of “Layla” and “Tears in Heaven,” the tasteful bends and vocal-like phrasing that defined what an electric guitar could say.For others, his legacy is more complicated—shaped not only by brilliance, but by band breakups, addictions, controversies, and changing times.Today I want to trace how a quiet, art-school kid obsessed with American blues records became one of the most influential guitarists in history, move through the bands that forged his sound, and look at how his work helped define what “great guitar playing” means for generations of musicians.Eric Patrick Clapton was born March 30, 1945, in Ripley, Surrey, England. Raised believing his grandparents were his parents and his mother was his older sister, he grew up with a complicated sense of identity and a strong inwardness that would later surface in his playing — that mix of control, melancholy, and sudden intensity. Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textIn this podcast episode, we'll walk through where they came from, what shaped them, how they crashed into the United States—and then spend some real time inside Tommy: not just as an album, but as a story that refused to stay put, leaping from vinyl to concert halls, movie screens, and the Broadway stage.Imagine that it is Post war England and you are in West LondonBomb sites are turning into parking lots and playgrounds. Teenagers caught between their parents' memories of wartime suffering and a new world of consumer goods, television sets, and American rock records.Roger Daltrey grows up in a working-class family, handy with his fists and tools, assembling his own future piece by piece.Pete Townshend, the intense, sharp-nosed kid, is surrounded by music early—his parents are professional musicians—so the idea of a musical life is precarious, but not absurd.John Entwistle is the quiet one, a brass-band kid who picks up the bass and makes it sing.Daltrey starts a band called The Detours. He pulls in Entwistle. Entwistle brings Townshend. They grind through pubs, youth clubs, and dance halls. Then, after a name change detour as the High Numbers, shaped by managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, they emerge with the name that finally fits the impact:Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textIn this series, we've been spending time with artists who didn't just make hits—they changed the language of modern music.Today, we turn to a group that took blues, folk, volume, and mystery… and built a sound so iconic that entire genres still live in its echo.Led Zeppelin.Not just “loud.” Not just “wild.” Four musicians who fused session-honed precision, deep musical curiosity, and a taste for the epic into something that still feels massive generations later.Tonight, we'll look at where they came from, how they rose so quickly, why their time together burned so intensely, and how their shadow still stretches over rock and beyond.Led Zeppelin doesn't begin with rune symbols and stadiums.It starts with working British musicians paying their dues.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday we meet an artist who doesn't blow the doors off with volume or choreography, but with something quieter—and in many ways, just as radical.A woman alone with a guitar in an open tuning.A voice that can sound like a bell, a blade, or a diary you were never meant to read.A songwriter who refuses to keep her feelings, or her harmonies, inside the lines.But inwardly a mother with empty arms carrying shame that didn't belong to her and grief she poured into songs that people around her could feel even if they didn't know why  both sides now Chelsea morning  Joni Mitchell.In this episode, I want to explore:Her background: prairie girl, painter, survivor.Her influences: folk clubs, jazz giants, poets, painters, and her own wounds.Her effect on music: especially the singer-songwriter era and beyond.Her life's arc: including the hidden child, the fame she never really trusted, the experiments that confused critics, the silence, the aneurysm, and the astonishing later-life return.Because if Hendrix reimagined what a guitar could do, Joni Mitchell reimagined what a song could say.Small-town skies, big inner worldSupport the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textOur story begins not with sequins but with a housing project.Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard both grew up in Detroit's Brewster-Douglass projects, one of the first federally funded housing developments for Black families. Diana Ross, who grew up nearby, joined that same orbit.Detroit in the 1950s and early 60s was a complex place:Automobile money and factory work.Northern promise and stubborn segregation.Church choirs, street-corner harmonies, jazz clubs, rhythm & blues, gospel pouring out of radios.Music wasn't a luxury; it was a language.The three girls—at first part of a broader group of friends—found each other through that language. They called themselves The Primettes, designed as the “girl group” counterpart to a rising male group called The Primes (who would evolve into The Temptations).Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday, we turn to a musician whose care there were moves separations long stretches were Jimmy simply simply had to figure things out on his own no one was buying but whose shadow is so long that every electric guitarist since has had to walk through it.Jimi Hendrix.He didn't just play louder. He didn't just play faster. He changed what the electric guitar meant. He changed the expectations for sound, for performance, for what a song could hold.In this episode, I want to step past the posters and the legends—the burning guitar, the psychedelic clothes, the famous take on “The Star-Spangled Banner”—and really look at four things:His background: the fragile, human story underneath the icon.His influences: because Hendrix was not a meteor out of nowhere.His effect on music: how he reshaped the instrument and the stage.His life and his death: and the pressures and possibilities that surrounded him at the end.At the end of this journey, we'll eventually look forward—to some very different voices who were changing the sound of the 1960s in their own way: Diana Ross and The Supremes.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday we turn to a voice that has become a kind of measuring stick. A singer you can't ignore, can't casually imitate, and certainly can't replace.Aretha Louise Franklin.You can line up all the adjectives: legendary, iconic, incomparable. But with Aretha, those words almost sound lazy. The real story is more interesting. It's the story of how a shy, brilliant preacher's daughter walked out of a Detroit church and, without surrendering where she came from, changed what mainstream American music could sound like — and what it could mean.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textIf you grew up in a certain era, his name isn't just a performer on a poster. It's a weather system. A shift in air pressure. A bulletin from the fault line where art, politics, faith, doubt, youth, age, and trouble all collided.And at the end of this episode, I'm going to tell you about one night—one Bob Dylan concert—that coincided with the most frightening turn my own life had taken up to that point, and how, in a way, it nudged me toward paying attention to people many others don't see.But let's start with the man himself.Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota, and grew up in the mining town of Hibbing on the Mesabi Iron Range. Hibbing was not Greenwich Village, not California, not London. It was wind, work, winters, and radio.Inside that small-town house, though, the signals of the wider world were pouring in: country music, blues, early rock 'n' roll, gospel, and crooners—all collapsing into one restless imagination. He listened hard. He absorbed. And he did what born artists do: he tried things on.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday's pairing may look odd until you start really listening:The Beach Boys and The Grateful Dead.Two California bands. Two American institutions. Two completely different ideas of what a band is for.One built pop cathedrals in the studio and spent decades trying to bring that sound to the stage.The other built a moving city on the road and treated the studio almost like a postcard from their real life's work.Let's spend some time with both—and with the very different concert worlds they created.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday I want to put two names in the same frame—Joan Baez and Taylor Swift—not because they sound alike or have the same values but because they tell us how the culture around music, fandom, and accessibility to their shows have changed in less than one lifetime.Same art form. Very different worlds.This episode is about those two worlds.No boxing match.No “who's better.”Just what it means that one night with Baez cost you five dollars, and one night with Swift might cost someone else a small fortune.In one: Joan Baez at Catholic University—five dollars a ticket. A guitar, a voice that sounds like it  dropped in from a kinder universe, and the feeling that history, morality, and music are all sitting beside you.In the other: Taylor Swift in a sold-out stadium—tens of thousands of phones glowing, a three-hour epic of costume changes and choreography, and ticket prices that can look like a month's rent.Before I go any further, a brief portrait of Joan Baez - she was born January 9, 1941, in Staten Island, New York and raised in a Quaker family with a strong social conscience. She emerged at the end of the 1950s folk revival, her pure, ringing vibrato and unadorned guitar style making traditional ballads and spirituals feel both ancient and immediate. Her breakthrough came with performances at the Newport Folk Festival (1959–60) and early albums that brought folk music—and later protest music—to a mass young audience. Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textIn a recent episode, we spent time with a man who changed popular culture and then became a warning about what fame, isolation, and addiction can do to a single human body—Elvis Presley. Brilliant, iconic, but ultimately tragic.Today… similar voltage. Very different story.This is about a band that came out of the same storm system of sex, drugs, and rock and roll… but somehow did not end as a cautionary tale on a bathroom floor. Instead, they turned danger into discipline, scandal into strategy, and raw rebellion into one of the longest-running creative partnerships in modern music.In this series, we've already met Frank Sinatra, who turned phrasing and breath into a method—and Chuck Berry, who wired the circuitry of rock and roll into the American imagination. Elvis showed us how a single, fragile human can be crushed under the weight of that circuitry.Today's story is different. This is what happens when that same dangerous current is handed to a band that refuses to burn out.The Rolling Stones.This is not just a tale of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. This is the story of staying power.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textI'd like to begin, not in Liverpool or Hamburg or Abbey Road, but in an American living room—mine, and millions of others—on a Sunday night in 1964.It's February 9th. The television is a piece of furniture. The picture is black and white. Ed Sullivan is the gatekeeper of what “really matters.” We've heard rumors about four long-haired boys from England. Maybe we've seen a little newspaper photo. Maybe a DJ has spun “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and sounded half amused, half alarmed, while the phone lines lit up.And then there they are.John. Paul. George. Ringo.Matching suits. Hair just long enough to scandalize parents without terrifying them. Tight harmonies. Songs that feel simple and impossibly fresh at the same time. Sullivan reading his cards. Teenage girls screaming. Camera cutting to faces in the audience already past language.Seventy-three million people watching at once. Almost 40 percent of the country. Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.

Send us a textToday we're stepping into complicated territory.Not a personal hero of mine.Not a composer whose scores I pore over, or a bandleader whose arrangements I quote with delight or a singer I enjoy listening to.We've just spent time with artists like Frank Sinatra, who turned phrasing into a method, and Chuck Berry, who wired rock's circuitry with wit and precision. Both, in their own ways, were architects of how modern music sounds.Today's subject is someone you simply cannot walk around if you're tracing how popular music, celebrity, and American culture twisted themselves together in the second half of the twentieth century.Elvis Presley.For some, he's the thrilling young rebel in black and white. For others, he's a cartoon in a white jumpsuit. For many, he's a brand—lunchboxes, impersonators, Halloween costumes—more than a musician.For me, and for this podcast, he's something else: a case study in what happens when a very real, very shy Southern kid with a remarkable voice is plugged directly into a machine that never turns off.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.