Before he drew a famous mouse, Walt Disney survived a nervous breakdown, a bankruptcy, and having his company stolen out from under him. This episode strips away the Uncle Walt persona to examine him as a ruthless, chain-smoking, risk-addicted founder in the mold of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. We start with the 4:30 a.m. Kansas City paper route he worked for six years, the forged birth certificate that got him into the Red Cross as an ambulance driver in France, and the 1923 collapse of his Laugh-O-Gram studio when he was just 21.

From there we trace the 1928 confrontation in which distributor Charles Mintz hired away his animators and kept the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the train ride home that produced Mickey Mouse, and the decision to bet on synchronized sound with Steamboat Willie. We follow the four-year, $1.5 million gamble ...