Welcome to another deep dive. We're stepping
into a time machine today, heading back to the
early 20th century to explore a story that, well,
it feels like it was engineered in a Hollywood
writer's room, but every bit of it is historical
fact. It really is. Today we are unpacking the
rise and fall of Minsky's burlesque. The empire.
Right, the Minsky empire. And our mission for
this deep dive is to explore how four brothers
essentially stumbled into building this massive
entertainment monolith. We are going to look
at how they pioneered the modern American striptease,
trained an entire generation of legendary comedians
you still know today, and ultimately sparked
a massive citywide cultural and legal war in
New York City. It's a brilliant case study. It
is. It's this fascinating collision of high art,
pop culture, censorship, and just the sheer hustle
of American showbiz. To truly understand the
Minsky empire, we really have to start by setting
the historical stage. We need to look at New
York City in 1908. OK, paint that picture for
us. So the city is this boiling pot of cultures,
classes, and rapidly changing social norms. But
there is a profound tension at the heart of its
nightlife. On one side, you have a massive working
class population desperate for cheap, thrilling
entertainment after brutal days of manual labor.
Right, they just want an escape. Exactly. But
countering that, you have the strict, highly
formalized obscenity laws and moral standards
of the era. The civic establishment wanted entertainment
to be respectable, polite, contained. Which is
not what the working class was looking for. Not
at all. They wanted loud, brash, and boundary
pushing. And that exact friction between what
the law considered proper and what people actually
wanted to pay to see that is the soil from which
Minsky's burlesque grew. Okay, let's unpack this.
Because the origins of this family business start
with a phenomenal miscalculation. Oh, absolutely.
We are looking at the four sons of Louis and
Ethel Minsky. Abe, Billy, Herbert, and Morton.
It's 1908. And the eldest brother, Abe, gets
into the entertainment business by opening a
Lower East Side Nickelodeon. And he's not running
highbrow art films. No, he is running... racy,
slightly scandalous reels. He's directly catering
to that working -class desire for a thrill you
just mentioned. But his father, Louis, is a respectable,
prominent figure in the community, and he is
horrified. He shuts Abe down immediately. He
completely shuts him down. And Louis decides
to fix his sons by forcing them into legitimate
theater. So he buys the National Winter Garden
on Houston Street and hands it over to Abe, Billy,
and Herbert. A classic overbearing parent move.
Totally. But looking at the blueprints of this
building, Louis made a baffling choice. The theater
was on the sixth floor. It is perhaps the most
critical architectural detail in the history
of American burlesque. I just can't get past
it. Why on earth would an aspiring theater magnate
buy a venue that requires patrons to walk up
six flights of stairs? It makes zero sense from
a foot traffic perspective. Right. You are completely
eliminating casual walk ups. A couple in 1910s
New York were doing manual labor all day. They
aren't going to casually roll up six flights
of stairs for just a standard show. No, they're
exhausted. It almost feels like Louis was setting
them up to fail. Or at least he completely misunderstood
the mechanics of urban entertainment. Whether
it's naivete or a misguided real estate play,
that physical constraint forced extreme business
innovation. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Precisely. In the beginning, the brothers tried
to do exactly what their father wanted. They
tried showing respectable films, but they were
immediately crushed by the large established
theater chains. They just didn't have the leverage.
They couldn't compete on volume or distribution.
So they pivoted to Vaudeville, which was the
dominant respectable live entertainment of the
day. But again, the economics failed them. Vaudeville
was expensive. Right. The talent cost too much.
Exactly. They couldn't afford to book the headliners.
They would actually draw crowds up those six
flights of stairs. So they were sitting in the
sixth floor theater, failing at respectable film,
failing at respectable vaudeville, and staring
at an empty room. It's the ultimate back against
the wall scenario. They have the real estate,
but the barrier to entry is literally architectural.
So they look down the ladder of respectability
and pivot to burlesque. Which was a very different
industry back then. Yeah, let's talk about that.
Looking at the industry at that time, Burlesque
was largely controlled by these massive, highly
organized circuits called wheels. You had the
Columbia Wheel, the American Wheel, and later
the Mutual Wheel. It was basically a franchise
system. Right. And the Minsky's had the option
to join one of these wheels. It seems like a
no -brainer for a failing theater to plug into
an established franchise, but they refused. They
did. Why stay independent when you are bleeding
money? It came down to a mix of pure economics
and sheer ego. The wheel system was incredibly
efficient. A centralized organization supplied
a theater with a completely new show every single
week. A cross. Cast, costumes, scenery, scripts.
The turnkey operation. Exactly. It arrived on
a train, played your theater and moved on while
a new show rolled in. But even though a wheel
provided everything, you still had to pay a premium
for that centralized service and share a massive
cut of the profits. And they were already cash
strapped. Right. The Minsky's realized that if
they hustled, they could stage their own independent
shows for even less capital. But there's also
Billy Minsky's ambition at play here. Billy didn't
want to be a middle manager taking whatever prepackaged
show the Columbia Wheel handed him. No, Billy
wanted to be the next Florian Siegfeld. Yes.
Siegfeld was the undisputed king of Broadway,
the creator of the Siegfeld Follies. He was the
gold standard of theatrical glamour. Billy wanted
that level of creative control and brand recognition.
If you join a wheel, you are selling the wheels
brand. Exactly. But if you stay independent,
you build Minsky's. But ambition doesn't solve
the six story problem. Right. You still have
those stairs. Billy realized. that if they were
going to do independent burlesque and actually
get people up to the sixth floor, they needed
a hook so compelling that it defied convenience.
He understood that success in this specific art
form depended entirely on how the women were
featured. They had to push the envelope. They
had to offer something the respectable theaters
wouldn't and the established wheels couldn't.
Which brings us to Abe's trip to Paris. And what
I consider a structural earthquake in American
theater. It really was. A. Visits the Folies
Bergère and the Moulin Rouge. He studies how
European cabaret operates, which was far more
intimate and interactive than the static, separated
American stages. American stages kept a very
strict distance between performer and audience.
Right. So he comes back to New York and suggests
they physically alter the National Winter Garden.
They build a runway. A simple but revolutionary
idea. They construct a platform that extends
straight out from the stage and right into the
middle of the audience. They were the very first
to feature this in the United States. It completely
shatters the invisible wall between the performer
and the patron. What's fascinating here is the
manipulation of space and psychology. Traditional
theater puts you in the dark as a passive observer
of a bright, distant stage. You're just watching
a painting, essentially. Exactly. But the runway
brings the performer out, literally above and
among the crowd. Suddenly, the performer isn't
a figure in a tableau. She is walking just inches
from the patrons. The intimacy of that experience
was totally unprecedented for American audiences.
And Billy knew exactly what they had engineered.
He capitalized on it immediately with his marketing.
He changed the marquee out front to read burlesque
as you like it, not a family show. Not a family
show. I love that. It's an anti -endorsement
endorsement. He's actively leaning into the notoriety.
He's telling you exactly what you're walking
up those six flights of stairs to see. But when
you build a runway and invite that level of intimacy,
the performance itself is bound to mutate. And
that brings us to 1917 and the May Dix incident.
A legendary moment. This is widely considered
the birth of the American striptease as a structured
act. During a performance, Mae Dix absentmindedly
began removing her costume before she had completely
exited the runway and reached the wings. She
thought she was out of sight. Right. She broke
character and started undressing while still
visible to the audience. And the reaction from
the audience was visceral. Yeah. They were completely
electrified by this unexpected glimpse of vulnerability,
this breaking of the theatrical illusion. It
was real. It felt real. And when Mae Dix heard
the crowd erupt, she didn't run away. She turned
around, walked back out onto the runway, and
continued removing her clothing to thunderous
applause. She improvised. She turned a logistical
accident into a performance. And Billy Minsky
is watching this from the back of the house,
and he instantly sees the gold mine. He orders
that the accident be repeated every single night.
Thus creating a new genre. Right. It fundamentally
changes what burlesque is. It transitions from
merely displaying women and revealing outfits
into an interactive narrative act. It becomes
about anticipation. It becomes a psychological
science. The Minsky's emphasize that a good striptease
dancer must know exactly the right psychological
moment. to remove each garment. So it wasn't
just walking out and taking it all off. No, it
was never just about nudity. It was about finesse.
It was a highly calibrated game played at the
audience's expectations. Reading the room, feeling
the tension, holding back just long enough to
drive them crazy, and then giving them a release
at the exact second the energy peaks. That requires
so much skill. But that finesse is born out of
necessity, isn't it? Because they are operating
in this impossible paradox. The legal paradox.
Yeah. To keep drawing customers up six flights
of stairs, they had to be risque. But to keep
their theater license, they had to stay clean
enough to appease the vice squads. It was a tightrope.
If they were too clean, they went bankrupt. If
they went too far, they got raided. It was a
constant negotiation with the boundaries of the
law, which is what makes their survival so remarkable.
They learned how to walk the absolute edge of
obscenity without always crossing it. And this
delicate balance becomes even more pronounced
as we move into the 1920s. The era of prohibition.
Yes, prohibition. And the expansion of the Minsky
family dynamic. In 1924, the youngest brother,
Morton Minsky, an NYU graduate, joins the company
and takes over the Little Apollo Theater on 125th
Street. Morton brought a different energy to
the business. He did, and I was looking at Morton's
numbers, and they are absolutely staggering.
His theater was rated on his very first show,
but despite the constant police harassment, the
Little Apollo showed a weekly profit of $20 ,000
for four straight years. $20 ,000 a week in the
1920s. And that is $20 ,000 a week after Paola.
The sheer volume of bribes they were funneling
to the police and politicians just to keep the
doors open is mind boggling. It was just a massive
line of item in their budget. Exactly. And yet
they were still netting massive fortunes. It
proves that the demand for what they were selling
during Prohibition was practically insatiable.
The profits were immense, but so was the legal
friction. The most heavily debated raid of this
era occurred in April 1925 at the National Winter
Garden, featuring a performer named Mary Dawson,
who went by Mademoiselle Fifi. Oh, this is a
great story. This raid became legendary. It was
heavily mythologized in books and film. The Hollywood
version paints this night as a massive, And crucially,
she moved. Here's where it gets really interesting,
because we have to look at the sheer hypocrisy
of the obscenity laws of 1925. It's quite something.
It was entirely permissible for women to appear
topless in high -end Broadway shows staged by
Zeke Field or Earl Carroll. The law allowed it,
but under a massive caveat. The Static Tableau.
Right. The women had to appear in a Static Tableau.
If a woman is completely still, like a stacu,
it is considered art and it's legal. But the
exact second she moves, Breeze or dances while
topless, it instantly becomes obscenity. Which
is an impossible distinction. Trying to legislate
the difference between a still body and a moving
body is completely absurd. It highlights the
class divide in censorship. High art gets a pass,
working class entertainment gets raided. Exactly.
Now, the legend of the 1925 raid is that Mademoiselle
Fifi broke the tableau rule and moved. But if
you look at the historical record, The truth
is much more mundane. The primary sources tell
a different story. They do. Mary Dawson herself
later contradicted that cinematic account. And
Mortaminsky, in his own writings, stated that
the April 1925 raid was hardly epical. He brushed
it off. He called the story fun, but said the
raid itself was simply one of dozens to which
they had become accustomed. It was certainly
no big crisis. I love when the primary sources
just puncture the myth. Morton is basically saying
it was just a Tuesday, they paid the fine and
opened again Wednesday. Just the cost of doing
business. Right. But what I find even more fascinating
about this prohibition era is the demographic
shift in their audience. You'd assume the National
Winter Garden was just packed with working class
laborers. But during the roaring 20s, it became
a magnet for the cultural elite. The high society
crowd moved in. Yeah, you have novelists like
John Dospasso's, humorists like Robert Benchley,
influential critics like George G. Nathan, publishing
magnates like Conde Nast, and acclaimed poets
like Hart Crane all sitting in the audience.
Crane even wrote a poem titled National Winter
Garden. Which is wild! Why is the high society
intelligentsia suddenly flocking to a gritty
burlesque house? If we connect this to the bigger
picture, it's a fascinating sociological phenomenon
driven by prohibition. When the establishment
bans alcohol and enforces traditional morality
from the top down, vice becomes glamorous. It
becomes rebellious. Exactly. The intellectual
elite in high society begin flocking to places
like Minsky's because they are seeking authenticity.
They're rebelling against sanitized upper -class
culture. You want to see how the other half lives.
Right. They view the raw, unabashed nature of
burlesque as something visceral that you just
can't find in a polite Broadway theater. Minsky's
became chic because it was dangerous, and it
operated outside the bounds of polite society.
It's the classic trope of high society slumming
it for thrills. But that influx of upper -class
attention and capital sets the stage for the
Minsky's next massive leap. As we crash into
the 1930s, the Great Depression hits. Everything
changes. Legitimate. Respectable Broadway theaters
are closing their doors left and right because
people simply don't have the disposable income
for highbrow shows. Billy Minsky, who always
wanted to be Ziegfeld, sees the collapse of Broadway
as his ultimate opportunity. The Great Depression
acted as a massive accelerant for the Minsky
empire. By 1931, Billy leases the Republic Theater
right on 42nd Street. They made it to Broadway.
They did. He brings the Minsky brand from a sweaty
six floor walk up on the Lower East Side street
to the heart of Broadway. The Republic becomes
their flagship and Minsky's becomes the undisputed
capital of burlesque in the United States. And
it doesn't stop there. No, this move triggers
a domino effect. They expand rapidly, taking
over the empty Eltinge and Apollo theaters, eventually
controlling over a dozen venues across New York,
Baltimore, Philadelphia, Albany and Pittsburgh.
They basically became what they originally fought
against. Exactly. They became so massive that
they formed their own wheel. The system they
rejected in 1912, they completely replicated
as monarchs in the 1930s. It's a brilliant corporate
takeover. But the economics of this expansion
are so paradoxical. On the demand side, you have
an impoverished population craving cheap escapist
entertainment. Right. They needed a distraction.
But on the supply side, the collapse of legitimate
theater meant there was a massive influx of highly
trained, unemployed women, chorus girls, dancers,
actresses who desperately needed work. Burlesque
offered incredibly steady and astonishingly lucrative
employment. We often view burlesque performers
of that era through a lens of exploitation. And
while the industry certainly had its grueling
elements, the financial reality for the top performers
was genuinely empowering. Let's talk about those
salaries. The headlining strippers, legends like
Gypsy Rose Lee, Georgia Southern, Ann Corio,
Sherri Britton, they were making between seven
hundred and two thousand dollars a week during
the Great Depression. Two thousand dollars a
week in the 1930s. It's staggering. The average
American family income was around $1 ,500 for
the entire year. These women were making more
in a week than most families made in 12 months.
They were absolute economic powerhouses. They
really were. But a burlesque show wasn't just
nonstop striptease. You can't just have performer
after performer removing clothing for three hours.
The audience would become completely unruly.
The pacing would be all wrong. Which brings us
to the unsung heroes of the Minsky Empire. The
comedians. Yes. This is where Minsky's secondary
legacy comes into play. They were an unparalleled
launch pad for comedic talent. The comedians
were essential for pacing the show. They acted
as palate cleansers, resetting the energy of
the room between the striptease acts. They controlled
the crowd. Exactly. But more importantly, the
comedians protected the management from the police.
Right. And the list of comics who came out of
Minsky's is insane. Phil Silver's, Zero Mostel,
Red Skelton, Abbott and Costello, Danny Kay,
Jack Albertson. A who's who of 20th century comedy.
But wait, why did a burlesque show need these
specific types of comedians to protect the management?
You'd think a burlesque crowd would want the
dirtiest, most foul -mouthed comics possible.
It's highly counterintuitive, but the management
strictly curated the humor to be clean. Clean
humor at a burlesque show. Yes. The women on
stage were already pushing the obscenity laws
to the absolute limit. If a comedian went out
there and told dirty jokes, it gave the Vice
Squad an easy excuse to raid the theater. Ah,
I see. Dirty comics were a massive liability
and were fired quickly. The comments had to be
clean, but they also had to be funny enough to
capture the attention of a highly aggressive
audience. Think about the crucible that creates.
Imagine a young Phil Silvers or Lou Costello
having to walk out onto a stage facing a rowdy
room full of men who are actively hostile because
they just want the girls to come back out. It's
the toughest room imaginable. To capture that
audience's attention, hold it, and make them
laugh uncontrollably without relying on crude
material requires superhuman comedic timing.
If you look at Abbott and Costello's iconic who's
on first routine, that rapid fire, intensely
physical, loud comedic style was literally forged
in the fires of Minsky's. You had to be fast
and loud to survive the crowd. If you could survive
as a comic at Minsky's, you could conquer any
stage in the world, in film or later in television.
Absolutely. But despite the immense wealth, the
Broadway theaters and the legendary talent roster,
the political winds were shifting. This brings
us to the crackdown of the mid -1930s. Yeah,
things take a dark turn for the Minsky's here.
By 1935, burlesque is booming. There are 14 burlesque
theaters in New York alone, but the societal
pendulum is swinging hard the other way. Irate
citizen groups are organizing, writing letters,
and demanding action. And they find their champion
in the newly elected mayor, Fiorillo LaGuardia.
LaGuardia comes in swinging, publicly labeling
burlesque a corrupting moral influence. Now,
It's easy to pay at LaGuardia as just a prudish
villain here, but I want to look at this objectively.
Was this purely a moral panic or was there a
genuine civic infrastructural reason he wanted
these theaters gone? This raises an important
question about how political forces and morality
campaigns intersect. LaGuardia wasn't just a
moral crusader. He was a reformist trying to
modernize New York City and break the grip of
Tammany Hall corruption. Right. He was fighting
the machine. Exactly. Times Square in the 1930s
had genuine crime, prostitution, and sanitation
issues that were heavily tied to the unregulated
nightlife economy. Furthermore, the burlesque
houses were deeply entangled in the Paola system,
bribing police and local politicians. To $20
,000 a week. Exactly. For LaGuardia, shutting
down Minsky's wasn't just about stopping the
striptease, it was about dismantling a highly
visible symbol of the corrupt, old -world machine
politics he was elected to destroy. That adds
so much context. It wasn't just about the G -strings.
It was about the bribes. It was about the entire
ecosystem of corruption. Precisely. So LaGuardia
unleashes his license commissioner, Paul Moss,
to go after Minsky's. Moss tries to revoke their
license by administrative decree. But the Minsky's
fight back. They do. And the state court of appeals
actually blocks the commissioner. The court rules
that Moss doesn't have the grounds to revoke
a license without a prior criminal conviction
for obscenity. The city couldn't just shut them
down on a whim. They needed proof of a crime.
And that legal ruling sets the stage for the
final fatal blow in April 1937. It highlights
the mechanics of censorship and how authorities
will utilize a minor infraction as a wedge to
dismantle an entire industry. The city was basically
hunting them. The city's inspectors blanketed
the theaters watching every single performance
waiting for one mistake. And they finally got
it at Abe Minsky's new Gotham Theater in Harlem.
What happened? A stripper was spotted on stage
working without a g -string. One missing piece
of fabric. Just one. That single infraction leads
to an immediate raid and they get the criminal
conviction they've been hunting for. And Commissioner
Moss doesn't just revoke Abe's license for the
new Gotham. He uses that single conviction as
the legal justification to refuse to renew all
of the burlesque licenses in the entire city
of New York. In one sweeping administrative move,
the entire industry is decapitated. It's breathtaking
how fast it fell apart. The aftermath is a desperate
scramble for survival. After several legal appeals
fail, the city offers the Minsky's and their
rivals a devastating compromise. They are allowed
to reopen their theaters, but they must adhere
to strict new rules that completely forbid strippers.
The very core of their business model is outlawed.
Completely. So the owners try to play a massive
political game of chicken. They go along with
the new rules, running sanitized shows and hemorrhaging
money. Which nobody wanted to see. Nobody. They
are betting everything on the hope that Mayor
LaGuardia will be voted out of office in the
upcoming November election, and a more lenient
administration will let them bring the axe back.
It shows how deeply their survival depended on
the ballot box. But the gamble fails. Miserably.
The audiences abandon the sanitized shows, theaters
close before the election even happens, and LaGuardia
wins reelection handily. LaGuardia's victory
solidified the end of the era, and the city went
to extreme, almost surreal lengths to wipe out
the legacy. This is the craziest part to me.
They didn't just ban the act of the striptease,
they legally banned the word burlesque. You could
not use the word on a marquee or in advertising
anywhere in New York. They erased the word. And
soon after, they banned the Minsky name itself.
The city legally declared that the family name
Minsky was synonymous with obscenity. Think about
the power of language in that legal battle. Erasing
a family's name from public commerce because
they were too good at selling what the public
secretly wanted. It is a stunning overreach.
It was total erasure. With that, Burlesque and
the founding generation of Minsky's were finished
in New York. But the brand didn't die. It adapted.
Which brings us to Harold Minsky, Abe's adopted
son. Harold's story is a fascinating bridge between
the gritty origins of the Lower East Side and
the glossy modern era of entertainment. At the
height of the Great Depression, Harold starts
learning the ropes at the Gaiety Theater in Times
Square. He was just a kid. Right. The defining
moment of his early career happens when he's
just 19 years old. Every summer, his parents
would vacation in Europe. And traditionally,
New York theaters would simply close down because
they weren't air conditioned. It was too sweltering
inside a packed auditorium. Nobody wants to sit
in a 90 -degree theater. But the performers,
the chorus girls, the comedians, the stagehands,
they approach this 19 -year -old kid. They are
flat broke in the middle of the depression, and
they beg Harold to keep the doors open. They
needed the work. Harold agrees to keep the un
-air -conditioned theater running through the
brutal summer, but he makes a genius pricing
move. He drops the ticket price to just a dime.
Ten cents. Ten cents. By doing that, he ensures
the place is packed to the raptors despite the
heat. And according to his wife, Dardie Minsky,
by keeping that theater open for a dime, that
teenager made over a million dollars. It's an
unbelievable testament to his understanding of
the market. He knew exactly what the people could
afford. Harold had a phenomenal eye for talent,
too. He groomed Phil Silvers. He discovered a
14 -year -old Sherry Britton at an audition and
nurtured her into a major headliner. But Harold's
greatest strategic move was recognizing the shifting
geography of American entertainment. Moving out
west. As New York successfully pushed out vice,
that vice packed its bags and headed to the desert.
Right. In 1956, Harold takes the legendary once
-banned Minsky brand and brings it to Las Vegas.
He opens a Minsky review at the Dunes Casino.
It's a massive, glamorous production. Chorus
lines, top -rate comedians, snazzy bands, and
the strippers. High production value. He even
brings in Luke Costello to headline the 1958
edition. By moving to Las Vegas, Harold essentially
built the prototype for the modern Vegas showgirl
review. The show at the Dunes ran for six incredibly
successful years, and he expanded the Minsky
brand to other landmark casinos like the Silver
Slipper, the Thunderbird, and the Aladdin. He
became a Vegas fixture. He resided in Las Vegas,
running these legendary shows until his death
in 1977. He ensured that the Minsky name, once
outlawed by the mayor of New York, ended up in
neon lights on the Las Vegas Strip. What a redemption
arc. So what does this all mean for us? We started
on the sixth floor of a walk -up on the Lower
East Side, and we ended up in the penthouses
of Las Vegas casinos. It's quite the journey.
The Minsky brothers didn't just sell tickets.
By building that runway, they accidentally created
the blueprint for modern interactive entertainment.
They figured out that breaking the fourth wall
is the ultimate hook. They launched a generation
of comedy legends who shaped the sense of humor
for the entire 20th century. And they became
the ultimate test case for American censorship,
proving that you cannot legislate away human
desire. And this connects directly to you today
listening to this. Whenever you see a standup
comedian masterfully handling a hostile crowd,
you are seeing a skill set forged at Minsky's.
The echo of the runway. Exactly. Whenever you
witness the ongoing societal debates about what
is or isn't appropriate in media, television,
or film, you are watching the exact same ripple
effects of the battles fought over a static tableau
versus a moving dancer in 1925. The technology
changes, but the fundamental tension between
respectable society and pushing the envelope
remains identical. It really does. And I want
to leave you with a final thought to mull over.
Think about the cycle the Minsky's lived and
died by. They had to constantly, relentlessly
push the envelope just a little bit further every
single night to keep the audience's attention
right up until the system cracked down and destroyed
them. It's a dangerous game. Now look at today's
digital landscape. Look at social media algorithms
and modern content creators. Are we all just
trapped in a modern digital version of Minsky's
burlesque? That is a fascinating comparison.
Are creators today just desperately trying to
find the exact psychological moment, the exact
outrageous thumbnail or controversial take to
keep the audience cheering without getting cancelled
by the platform? Are we all just walking the
exact same runaway hoping the g -string doesn't
snap? I think we might be. It is a wild thought.
Thank you so much for joining us on this deep
dive into the history of Minsky's burlesque.
We hope you enjoyed the journey and we encourage
you to keep exploring the hidden surprising history
behind the entertainment you consume every day.