Johnny Cash was the first American to learn of Joseph Stalin’s death, translating Soviet Morse code at an Air Force intercept station in West Germany. This episode unpacks the contradictions of a devout Christian who battled decades of addiction, a patriot who challenged his government, and an outlaw icon who never spent more than a night in jail.

We trace his childhood in a New Deal farming colony in Arkansas, the death of his brother Jack, his rockabilly breakthrough at Sun Records, the amphetamine years and the 1965 forest fire, his recovery with June Carter, the Folsom and San Quentin prison albums, his advocacy for Native Americans, and his late-career revival with Rick Rubin and the cover of Hurt.

• How grief over his brother’s death shaped Cash’s deep bass-baritone voice
• The real origin of his jaw scar and the boom-chicka-boom rhythm
• The Georgia sheriff and the intervention that pulled him back from the brink
• Why he refused Nixon’s song requests at the White House in 1970
• What wearing black really meant as a statement of mourning and protest