In 1951, a last-minute guest host poured boiling water into Arthur Godfrey's prized ukulele on live television and the audience lost their minds. The man holding that soup-filled instrument was Steve Allen, and he essentially wrote the source code for modern television.

This episode explores the dizzying life of a renaissance man who wrote over 8,500 songs, invented the late-night format, hosted a show for dead historical figures, and lived a life full of fascinating contradictions. It matters because every late-night host working today is just running a software update on his original programming.

• How begging on the streets at 16 forged the high-stakes ad-libbing that became his creative engine
• The Tonight Show blueprint he built in 1954: the desk, the couch, the sidekick, and man-on-the-street interviews
• His com ...