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NARRATOR (GEORGE):
The Toy Museum has its quiet corners—
where Squishmallows wait to be hugged,
and where a teddy bear smells like home.

Tonight is not one of those corners.

Tonight, the Night Watchman
has wandered into the game aisle—

the place where toys don’t just sit and get held.
They demand players.
They demand rules.
They demand noise.

[Footsteps on carpet, then a slightly hollo w thunk as he bumps a shelf.]

NARRATOR:
Board games stare at Mr. Smith from every direction—
cardboard boxes promising strategy,
mystery,
family bonding,
or at least a temporary truce.
But halfway down the aisle,
a smaller box catches his eye.
Bright colors.
A cartoon pigeon
with a wild stare.
A plastic bird-shaped shaker
peeking through a clear window.
The title is simple,
and more than a little concerning.

NIGHT WATCHMAN:
“Exploding…
Pigeon.”

Of course.

Because apparently
“calm, soothing pigeon”
didn’t test well with focus groups.

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Ebenezer is back.

This is the second night for Ebeneezer Smith as the new night watchmen at the Metropolitan Museum of toys and childhood artifacts KEY in lock. DOOR opening.]

EBENEZER (muttering to himself):
Well, I’m here. Again.

This time I doubt I’ll meet any human beings I can talk with…
The toys might be a different story.

But honestly? I don’t understand what happened last night. I have no idea if that conversation with Slinky was a one-time deal—

—or just a bit of bad beef.

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Hello my name is Ebeneezer Smith
Thank you for staying with me.(mutters to himself)
All right. Let’s see what kind of neighbors I’ve got.
There is a set of plastic building bricks.
There is a board game whose box I remember arguing over with my cousins.
And in the “Comfort and Companions” section, a bear that looks suspiciously like something I once slept with every night until I was far too old to admit it.

[SOUND: Footsteps slow.] And I admit this is the kind of atmosphere that does make you want to talk to yourself

Well, hello there, middle-school emotional support system.

Footsteps

Everything is quiet.
Ordinary.
Almost disappointingly normal.

Let me see - here is a gallery labeled: “American Playthings: 1940s–1960s.”

A soft metallic… whisper.

[SOUND: Very faint first shhhink… shhhink…]

It has to be nothing.
The building settling.
A vent conductor rattling.
The ghost of a shopping cart from the discount store next door.

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Our story tonight doesn’t start in a toy store.
No bright aisles.
No sales.
No blinking “Buy One, Get One Free” signs.
Instead, we begin on a quiet city street, just after closing time, in front of an old stone building most people walk past without ever truly seeing.

During the day, it’s a respectable institution:
The Metropolitan Museum of Toys and Childhood Artifacts.

But tonight… it’s dark.
The front doors are locked.
The lights are dim.

And a slightly nervous job applicant stands on the front steps of this museum, wondering whether this was really such a good idea.
Interview interview

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Now today’s episode is a little different.

Usually, we spend our time tracking the lives of composers, musicians, and artists—people whose names end up in history books, or on album covers, or carved into theater walls. We talk about how they changed the sound of a century, or rewired what pop music could be, or turned their lives into performance.

But for a while now, I’ve been quietly working on something a bit… stranger.

For December, I’m moving us into a different kind of gallery altogether—one where almost nothing is bigger than a shoebox, and yet the stories are enormous.

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In this series, we’ve been spending time with artists who didn’t just make hits — they rewired popular music itself.

Some of them crashed.
Some of them burned out.
Some of them never got old enough to figure out who they might have become.

In the previous episode, we talked about Michael Jackson — a man whose genius was wrapped in pressure, pain, and dependency, and whose life ended in an overdose in a rented mansion in Los Angeles.

Today’s story easily could have ended the same way.

But it didn’t.

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Today, we’re going to spend some time with a figure who shaped pop music, dance, music videos, and the idea of celebrity itself—only to become a tragic warning about what happens when that level of fame collides with a fragile human body and mind.

Michael Joseph Jackson was born August 29, 1958, in Gary, Indiana—a working-class steel town in the Midwest. He was the eighth of ten children in the Jackson family, packed into a small house where money was tight, tempers could be hot, and music was both escape and opportunity.

His father, Joseph—“Joe” Jackson—worked in a steel mill and played guitar in a local R&B band on the side. His mother, Katherine, loved gospel music and encouraged her kids to sing in church. Out of this stew came something unusual: a whole family act, and in the middle of it, a little boy who shone like a spotlight was glued to him.

Michael once described watching his father’s band rehearse in the living room, feeling this almost physical need to join in. He and his brothers—Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon—began rehearsing as a group, first informally, then obsessively. Joe Jackson realized they had something, and he ran rehearsals like a drill sergeant: long hours, no nonsense, and a clear goal—this was going to be their ticket out of Gary.

Here’s the strange thing: from the very beginning, there were two Michaels.

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Today, I want to put two lives—and two mythologies—side by side. Not as gossip. Not as tabloid spectacle. As a question:

What happens when two Black artists rise from a Houston salon and a Brooklyn housing project to a place where they can rewire the business, the sound, and the story of popular music—and do it as a partnership?

Let’s start in Houston.

Beyoncé Giselle Knowles grows up in a middle-class Black family. Her mother, Tina, runs a salon. Her father, Mathew, works in sales. Church, local performances, talent shows—this is the rehearsal hall of her childhood.

There’s a shy little girl here who transforms when the music starts.

By the early 1990s, she’s part of a girls’ group that evolves into Destiny’s Child. This is not magic; this is labor. They rehearse until the harmonies are automatic, the choreography is drilled, the breathing is perfectly placed. Influences pour in: Michael and Janet, Whitney, En Vogue, gospel quartets, hip-hop swagger, pop hooks.

Destiny’s Child signs with Columbia. There are lineup changes, management controversies, public drama—exactly the kind of storms that break most young acts. But out of that storm come songs that define an era of young womanhood: independence, betrayal, loyalty, resilience.

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