In the late 1920s, U.S. customs officials opened a crate from Paris and found a sleek polished spike of bronze with no face, wings, or feathers. They taxed it as industrial machinery. The legal fight over Bird in Space forced an American court to redefine what counts as art. This episode traces the life of its creator, Constantin Brancusi, born in 1876 to a peasant family in the Romanian village of Hobita, who left home at eleven, built a working violin from scrap wood at eighteen, mastered academic anatomy with a flayed-man study, and in 1904 walked across Europe to reach Paris.

We examine his decision to quit Rodin's studio after only weeks, explaining that a sapling cannot grow in the shadow of a great oak, and his turn to direct carving in stone and wood with no undo button. We compare his block-like The Kiss to Rodin's version, look at ...