In 1962, a schoolyard punch left a teenager with a permanently dilated pupil and a striking, mismatched gaze. David Robert Jones would turn that injury into part of an alien persona that conquered pop culture as David Bowie. This episode explores how he treated identity as a blank canvas and used reinvention as both art and survival.

We follow Bowie from Brixton and the American records that changed his life, through the influence of his half-brother Terry, years of failed bands and The Laughing Gnome, and his training in mime with Lindsay Kemp. We examine Ziggy Stardust and his retirement at the Hammersmith Odeon, the plastic soul and cocaine years in Los Angeles, Bowie Bonds, BowieNet, and Blackstar.

• How Terry introduced him to jazz, Buddhism, beat poetry, and the occult
• Why studying mime and commedia dell’arte taught him to build personas
• How Ziggy Stardust bled into his real personality until he killed the character on stage
• The role of his assistant Coco Schwab during his addiction in the 1970s
• Why calling Bowie a chameleon gets his legacy backwards