Where does creative genius come from? And what are the costs?

This episode of Last Rites digs into one of the most culturally explosive moments of the 20th century - the jazz renaissance of the 1950s - through Sonny Rollins, the maestro who helped define it.

Rollins had his demons: he was an obsessive who never rested on his laurels and disappeared from the spotlight again and again, who kicked a heroin habit and went to jail for armed robbery.

He was also a genius who helped revolutionise jazz with contemporaries such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane, known for his extraordinary improvisational technique and mastery of the saxophone.

This week we look at Birutė Galdikas, a primatologist who went into the rainforests of Borneo in 1971 to study one of the world’s least understood great apes: the orangutan. One of Louis Leakey’s famed “Trimates,” alongside Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, Galdikas spent more than five decades documenting orangutan lives and fighting to protect their habitat against loggers and the exotic pet trade.

This week we discuss how Georgia wrote Matthew Perry's obituary before he died, and what this can tell us about the craft of obituary writing more generally.

Ted Turner turned a small Atlanta television station into a media empire, then changed the rhythm of the world by launching CNN in 1980: the first 24-hour cable news network. Brash, restless, and often outrageous, Turner helped invent the modern news cycle, with effects that continue to shape democratic politics today.

This week we take a look at Billy "the Brush" Mumford, an affable East Ender who fooled the art world to become one of Britain's most prolific art forgers.

In our first episode, we reflect on the life of Annette Dionne, the last surviving member of the famed Dionne quintuplets. Born in Canada during the Great Depression, the sisters became a global sensation almost overnight. But behind the headlines lay a story of exploitation, loss, and resilience.