Mobituaries with Mo Rocca

<p>In honor of the anniversary of the first-ever sitcom broadcast on a U.S. television network (fun fact: it was "Mary Kay and Johnny" back in November 1947), we're revisiting "Sitcom Deaths and Disappearances."...

<p>This special episode comes from the audiobook edition of ROCTOGENARIANS, a brand-new collection of stories from Mo Rocca that celebrates the triumphs of people who made their biggest marks late in life.</p>...

<p>Long before her turn as the sermonizing Aunt Esther on "Sanford and Son," LaWanda Page was dazzling Black nightclub audiences - first as the flame-swallowing “Bronze Goddess of Fire”. Then, following in the footsteps...

<p>Between 1854 and 1929, 250,000 orphans and abandoned children were placed on East Coast city trains and sent west to live with new families. A desperate solution to a desperate problem, some of the stories turned out...

<p>There’s no shortage of sports teams that change cities or names over the course of their franchise history. But what about the teams that just cease to exist? Perhaps no team story packs more drama into one year of...

<p>If you were a kid watching TV in the 1980s and 1990s, you probably saw a fair number of “Very Special Episodes,” when the usual blissful bubble of the sitcom world was punctured by real-world issues for a half-hour...

<p>Starting in the early 1970s, Norman Lear changed the face of television, fusing comedy with social commentary. Lear died on December 5th at the great old age of 101. Mo revisits their 2015 conversation for CBS Sunday...

<p>For centuries European royals married only each other. It was believed to be the best way of consolidating power. But rampant royal inbreeding had increasingly negative consequences––including genetic abnormalities...

<p>“Nepo Baby” is a term popularly used to describe the celebrity children of celebrity parents. But family connections affect every field of work, and always have. And where family is involved, so is drama. Mo tells...

<p>November 22, 2023, marks 60 years since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the end of one of the era's biggest comedy acts. During Kennedy's term, Vaughn Meader’s impersonation of the president made...

<p>When Candice Bergen describes her childhood as weird and eccentric, she isn’t exaggerating. She grew up with a world-famous sibling, who met presidents and movie stars. He was also a dummy – the kind made of wood...

<p>On this podcast we’ve honored some of our past’s most outstanding and underappreciated people and things. May they live on in memory. But let’s face it, some things deserve to disappear and be consigned to the...

<p>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...

<p>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...

<p>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...