Imagine inventing the printing press, then using your first major demonstration to print a piece of destructive propaganda. That is the paradox of D.W. Griffith, the man who invented the visual language of modern cinema and then weaponized it for one of the most damaging films ever made.

This episode tracks Griffith from a broke Kentucky kid and failed playwright to the director Charlie Chaplin called 'the teacher of us all.' We examine how he pioneered cross-cutting and close-ups, then attached those revolutionary tools to The Birth of a Nation, a film that helped revive the KKK and ultimately got his name stripped from the industry's highest honor.

• How he borrowed cross-cutting from Charles Dickens' novel structure
• The bizarre belief that films over 15 minutes would physically hurt audiences' eyes
• The Birth of a ...