A shy Midwestern kid has his art rejected by his own high school yearbook. As a soldier, he aims his machine gun at the enemy and realizes he forgot to load it. He proposes to the love of his life and she marries another man. That exact string of failures became the blueprint for a billion-dollar empire read in 75 countries.

This episode goes far past the lunchboxes and holiday specials to the complex, often painful life of Charles "Sparky" Schulz. It reveals how he packaged heavy adult themes of dread, failure, and unrequited love inside soft drawings of children and beagles, building a disguised autobiography that let millions process their own anxieties.

• How the "little red-haired girl" was born from a real rejected marriage proposal
• Why he hated the name Peanuts that the syndicate forced on him
• The single five ...