Mark Twain was born in 1835 when Halley’s Comet streaked across the sky, and he predicted he would die when it returned. He was right — he died on April 21, 1910, one day after the comet’s closest approach. Between those two celestial appearances, Samuel Clemens became America’s most beloved writer and its most dangerous satirist, attacking racism, imperialism, and organized religion with a humor that made the medicine go down.

This episode traces Twain from his Missouri childhood through his years as a riverboat pilot, prospector, and journalist, the novels that defined American literature, and the personal tragedies and financial disasters that darkened his final decades.

• Twain’s childhood on the Mississippi and the riverboat years that gave him his pen name
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — the novel Hemingway said all American literature comes from
• His anti-imperialist activism and savage critiques of religion and racism
• The financial ruin, family deaths, and the Halley’s Comet prophecy that framed his life