Howard Hughes was the richest man in America, a record-setting aviator, a Hollywood producer, and the owner of an airline, a hotel empire, and defense contracts worth billions. Then he disappeared into a series of sealed hotel penthouses, grew his fingernails into claws, lived on codeine and chocolate, and was not seen by the public for the last fifteen years of his life.

This episode traces Hughes from his inherited Texas fortune through the aviation records, the Hollywood years, the TWA empire, and the obsessive-compulsive disorder that gradually consumed him — turning the most glamorous man in America into a recluse whose own executives could not confirm he was alive.

• Hughes’s early fortune, his Hollywood productions, and the aviation records that made him a celebrity
• The acquisition of TWA, RKO, and the defense contracts that built his invisible business empire
• The OCD that slowly took over his life — the sealed rooms, the rituals, the isolation
• The final reclusive years, the forged autobiography hoax, and the death that triggered a legal war