In 1974, a skinny barefoot kid from South Florida walked up to Weather Report's Joe Zawinul and announced that he was the greatest bass player in the world. The wildest part is that he was not lying. This episode explores the life of Jaco Pastorius, who dragged the electric bass out of the background and into the lead voice, and whose refusal to accept boundaries both made his music revolutionary and left his personal life unsurvivable.

We follow a hyperactive kid nicknamed Mowgli by his brother, a football injury at 13 that ended his drumming, and the Florida humidity that cracked his upright bass and sent him to a 1962 Fender Jazz Bass. The conversation breaks down how he pried out the frets with a butter knife, filled the gaps with marine epoxy, and created the singing fretless tone of the Bass of Doom, along with his artificial harmonic ...