Born in Oceanside, California in 1981 into a family where music was practically a genetic mandate, Chris Thile picked up the mandolin at five, formed Nickel Creek with the Watkins family at eight, won the Walnut Valley Festival mandolin championship at twelve, and had a record deal by 1993. This episode explores how a child prodigy raised in a strict fundamentalist Christian home and a rigid traditional bluegrass structure eventually tore down those walls, from the platinum, Grammy-winning success of Nickel Creek's This Side to the solo album Deceiver, on which he played every instrument himself.

The story continues through divorce, Nickel Creek's 2006 hiatus, and the formation of Punch Brothers over an expensive steak dinner with fiddler Gabe Witcher. That heartbreak produced The Blind Leaving the Blind, a 40-minute, four-movement suite de ...