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PODCAST

Famous and Gravy

14th Street Studios | Michael Osborne

We explore the lives of notable people and asks what their stories can teach us about ourselves. It’s part obituary podcast, part biography, and part existential detective work.Think you know everything about some of modern history’s most recognizable figures? We’re Amit and Michael, two pop culture enthusiasts who upend your assumptions about the iconic and the famous. Because that’s where you find the “gravy” – the rich, flavorful sauce that brings out the best parts of the dish that is

history

All Episodes

00:58:17

Simply the Best (Tina Turner)

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/09/25

This person died 2023 at age 83. In 2013, after demonstrating a proficiency in German, she became a citizen of Switzerland. In 1987, she appeared in a Pepsi commercial alongside David Bowie. She is credited with helping Mick Jagger learn to dance. In 1988, She held a concert for 180,000 people in Rio de Janeiro, breaking the record for the largest paying audience for a solo artist. Her first marriage provided much of the material for the 1993 film “What’s Love Got to Do With It”, starring Angela

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00:56:36

Boundary Breaker (Barbara Walters)

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/09/11

This person died in 2022 at age 93. In 1976, she became known as the “million-dollar baby” because of a contract with ABC that made her the highest-paid journalist, male or female, in television history. She was married three times, and between marriages she dated many prominent and powerful people, among them Senator John Warner and Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. She drove a motorcycle with Sylvester Stallone, danced the mambo with Patrick Swayze, and rode a patrol boat with Fidel Castro

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00:57:36

More Respect (Rodney Dangerfield)

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/08/28

This person died in 2004 at age 82. His big break came in 1967 when, at age 44 and relatively unknown, he won a spot on "The Ed Sullivan Show". At one point he quit show business for over a dozen years and worked as an aluminum salesman and house painter. On stage he portrayed a hapless, self-deprecating Everyman slapped around by life and searching for acceptance. He opened his own comedy club in New York, which gave early breaks to comedians including Jerry Seinfeld, Adam Sandler, and Jim Carrey

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00:57:30

Vocal Bedrock (Johnny Cash)

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/08/14

This person died in 2003 at age 71, He is considered a pioneer of rock 'n' roll, and in 1992 he was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, after he had also been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In the early 2000s, a video of his won six nominations at the MTV Video Music Awards. He fought a long battle against addiction. His voice, which projected the fateful gravity of a country patriarch, and his signature look, which suggested a cowboy undertaker, led him to be known as “The Man

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00:14:18

Famous & Gravy Announcement!

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/08/07

We’re back, and we’re sharing the exciting news that Famous & Gravy is now part of Wondery! Amit and Michael also discuss some of the behind-the-scenes work they’ve been doing to better the show in the runup to this exciting announcement. New Famous & Gravy episodes will start releasing again every other Wednesday, and also will now be available one week early and ad-free on Wondery+. LINKS: List of Wondery shows Famous & Gravy official website Famous & Gravy on Facebook,

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01:22:51

Rebel Rebel (David Bowie)

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/07/24

This person died 2016 at age 69. He suffered a blow in a teenage brawl that caused his left pupil to be permanently dilated. He experimented with startling transformations, often playing up an androgynous image. In the 1980s he had a Broadway run in the demanding title role of “The Elephant Man”. Nirvana chose to sing one of his songs in their legendary brief set on “MTV Unplugged” in 1993. He was the Thin White Duke, Aladdin Sane, Major Tom, and Ziggy Stardust. Today’s dead celebrity is David

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65:46

Dimpled Ambassador (Shirley Temple)

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/07/10

This person died in 2014 at age 85. In the 1930s, she was a determined child actress who sang and tap-danced her way to the height of Hollywood stardom. For at least 5 consecutive years, she was the most popular movie star in America. She was appointed as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly by Richard Nixon. In 1972, she held a news conference in her hospital room after her mastectomy, encouraging women discovering breast lumps to not be afraid. She was the United States ambassador to

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66:40

Super Funkhouser (Bob Einstein)

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/06/26

This person died in 2019, age 76. In 1958 when he was 14, his father died immediately after performing a roast for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. His dry delivery piqued the interest of Tom Smothers, who offered him a job in the late 1960s as a writer on the “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” He was roommates with Steve Martin for a number of years, and his younger brother is the renowned comedian and filmmaker Albert Brooks. His most famous and long-lived character was a witless, deadpan parody of

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66:59

Likable Villain (Alan Rickman)

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/06/12

This person died in 2016, age 69. In an acting career spanning more than 40 years, he played a panoply of fascinating characters. He had his early successes in stage works involving the Royal Shakespeare Company. Though he was never nominated for an Academy Award, he shrugged off the value of awards in general. He gained a worldwide audience in “Die Hard,” playing Hans Gruber, the devious, well-spoken terrorist who took over the fictional Nakatomi Plaza. More recently, he played the notorious

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78:50

Purple Reign (Prince)

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/05/29

This person died in 2016 at age 57. He won an Academy Award in 1985, and a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. He was still a teenager when he was signed to Warner Bros Records, in a deal that included full creative control. His work inspired the formation of the Parents’ Music Resource Center, which pressured record companies into labeling albums to warn of explicit content. In 1993 he changed his stage name to an unpronounceable glyph, and for a while he was referred to as “The Artist

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58:12

Hungarian Socialite (Zsa Zsa Gabor)

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/05/15

This person died in 2016 at age 99. She appeared as a nightclub manager in Orson Welles’ 1958 “Touch of Evil”, and the same year as a sexy alien in “Queen of Outer Space.” She appeared on scores of talk shows, game shows, comedy specials, and episodic dramas. In 1989, she was arrested for slapping a police officer. She was married at least eight times, and called everyone “Dahlink.” Today’s dead celebrity is Zsa Zsa Gabor. Famous & Gravy is created and co-hosted by Amit Kapoor and Michael Osborne

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71:11

Poetic Justice (Maya Angelou)

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/05/01

This person died in 2014 at age 86. She was a Tony-nominated stage actress, and a calypso dancer for a period of time.. In 2011 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was a college professor and a ubiquitous presence on the lecture circuit, and also made several appearances on Sesame Street. Throughout her writing, she explored the concepts of personal identity and resilience through the multifaceted lens of race, sex, family, community and the collective past. In 1969 she published

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72:27

Love and OJ Jokes (Norm Macdonald)

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/04/17

This person died in 2021, age 61. His brother Neil once told a reporter that he almost joined the newspaper business as a young man, but that he had deliberately botched an interview. By 1984, he spent four months opening for the comedian Sam Kinison. His sense of humor sometimes got him in hot water. A 2018 article about him said “The dedicated fan will identify two patterns in his television work: It is invariably funny, and it is invariably canceled.” He became familiar to millions as the Weekend

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63:21

The Masterclass Act

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/04/03

His mother was a former family court judge, and his father worked for the Xerox corporation. The New York Times once said “He does terminal uncertainty better than practically anyone.” He was a sleepy-looking man with uncombed hair who favored rumpled clothes. He was perhaps the most ambitious and widely admired American actor of his generation. He earned Oscar nominations for his performances in “The Master”, “Doubt”, and “Charlie Wilson’s War”, and won as Best Actor for “Capote” in 2005. Today’s

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52:05

Professor on Elm Street

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/03/20

He taught English at Westminster College in Pennsylvania, and was also a high school teacher. He directed the drama “Music of the Heart,” based on the true story of a woman, who taught violin to underprivileged children in Harlem. He directed his first feature film In 1972 , “Last House on the Left.” He directed the first four movies of the “Scream” franchise starring Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox. His most famous creation was the serial killer Freddy Krueger, who, with his razor-blade glove,

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64:10

Mind Traveler

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/03/06

When he moved to California in the early 1960s, he befriended the poet Thom Gunn, began entering weight-lifting competitions and joined the Hells Angels on motorcycle trips to the Grand Canyon. As a medical doctor and a writer, he achieved a level of popular renown rare among scientists. He first won widespread attention in 1973 for his book “Awakenings,” about a group of patients with an atypical form of encephalitis or “sleeping sickness” who responded to a new drug treatment with a partial

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63:58

Defiant One

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/02/21

In 2009, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Although often simmering with repressed anger, his characters responded to injustice with quiet determination. He once wrote “I felt very much as if I were representing 18 million people with every move I made.” In a departure from acting, he directed the 1980 comedy “Stir Crazy,” starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. He was the first black performer to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. His acting credits include “Blackboard Jungle,”

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71:35

Surely You Can’t Be Serious x Famous & Gravy

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/02/07

Imagine this: You’re on a desert island, and you can choose one actor or actress – and ONLY ONE – for whom you get their entire IMDb catalog to pass the time. It’s just you, a palm tree, a DVD player (streaming hasn’t reached desert islands), and the IMDb catalog of a single performer. Who would you choose? This thought experiment was first proposed by Michael Osborne in our Bill Paxton episode, and now we take the experiment live. Today we bring you a crossover showdown between the hosts of the

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59:58

Foul House (Bob Saget)

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/01/24

In his last year of college, he won a student Academy Award for a documentary. After his sister died of a rare autoimmune disease called systemic scleroderma, he became a board member of the Scleroderma Research Foundation. He was cast in the 1987 Richard Pryor film, “Critical Condition.” He directed “Dirty Work,” a comedy starring Norm Macdonald and Artie Lange. He said he was drawn to jokes with foul language and raw anatomical references because he wasn’t supposed to talk that way in his youth

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61:59

Sentient Princess (Carrie Fisher)

Famous and Gravy ·

2024/01/10

She was just 19 years old when she first played her most iconic role. She offered wry commentary in her books on the paradoxes and absurdities of the entertainment industry. Her first book was made into a movie, directed by Mike Nichols. She had a recurring role on the British comedy “Catastrophe”. She dated Dan Aykroyd and was married to Paul Simon. Her mother was the actress Debbie Reynolds. She played Princess Leia in Star Wars. Today’s dead celebrity is Carrie Fisher.Famous & Gravy is created

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