Vanna White has been on Wheel of Fortune and American television for more than 40 years. Her brother Chip White has spent a lot of that time figuring out what it means to live in her shadow.

Chip hosts Relatively Famous, a podcast about the relatives of famous people. He came up to Austin to talk with Michael about Vanna: her surprising business savvy, the misconceptions people carry about her, a Guinness World Record, and how she met her late fiancé at Chippendales. The conversation also goes into recovery, unconditional love, parenting, and the best advice Chip ever got from his sister.

This is an Extra Gravy episode — one of Famous & Gravy's off-format conversations where Michael follows his curiosity outside the usual structure. No quiz, no obituary, no category...just a little extra gravy.

Famous & Gravy is a celebrity biography podcast with a twist of self-reflection. The central question every episode asks: would you want that life?

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Dr. Ruth. Sex therapist, Holocaust orphan, Haganah sniper, Sorbonne psychology student, host of the radio show Sexually Speaking. She go her own show when she was 52, and become a household name almost a decade after that.

She survived a Kindertransport train out of Nazi Germany at ten, was trained as a sniper because her height made her a smaller target ("with a gun in my hand I am the equal of a soldier who's 6 feet 7," she said), and talked her way into the Sorbonne without ever finishing high school. By the time she died in 2024 at 96, she'd written 45 books, including Sex for Dummies, and become the only person in America who could say "masturbation" on television and have parents thank her for it.

Host Michael Osborne and guest/spouse/soulmate Alison Osborne dig into what actually made Dr. Ruth singular: the grandmotherly delivery that made taboo subjects feel safe, her outspoken support for AIDS education and the gay community at a moment when most public figures wouldn't go near either, and the real net worth that turns out to be far smaller than five decades of bestselling sex advice would suggest.

Famous & Gravy is a celebrity biography podcast. Every episode asks: would you want that life?

If you enjoyed this episode you may also like Episode 109 "Late Bloomer" (Betty Ford), Episode 20 "Notorious Dissenter" (Ruth Bader Ginsburg), and Episode 81 "Dimpled Ambassador" (Shirley Temple, re-release).

LINKS

• New York Times obituary for Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
• Ask Dr. Ruth — official trailer, Magnolia Pictures — the 2019 documentary that traces her path from Holocaust orphan to sex therapist, and the basis for a lot of the episode's biographical material
• Dead or Alive — the Famous & Gravy quiz game
• Famous & Gravy on Instagram, Facebook, Threads
• famousandgravy.com

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Robin Williams. Comedian, Oscar winner, Genie, Mrs. Doubtfire, Mork — and the person whose death in 2014 hit harder, and stayed longer, than almost anyone else of his generation. He was Juilliard-trained, cocaine-fueled, and constitutionally incapable of repeating himself — he never made a sequel, not once. Host Michael Osborne and guest Sarah Murphy dig into what actually made Robin Williams singular: the lonely Detroit childhood, the years alongside John Belushi and Richard Pryor, the Lewy body dementia diagnosis that reframes his death entirely, and the question the whole episode keeps circling — did he ever truly feel the love that was aimed at him?

Famous & Gravy is a celebrity biography podcast. Every episode asks: Would you want that life?

If you enjoyed this episode you may also like Episode 31 "The Greatest" (Muhammad Ali), Episode 75 "Love and OJ Jokes" (Norm Macdonald), and Episode 100 "Divine Neighbor" (Fred Rogers).

LINKS

• New York Times obituary for Robin Williams
• Robin — the David Itzkoff biography used in this episode
• Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind — HBO documentary featuring Billy Crystal, David Letterman, Whoopi Goldberg, and never-before-seen archival footage
• Robin's Wish — documentary about Robin Williams and Lewy body dementia told through the eyes of his widow Susan Schneider Williams
• Billy Crystal's eulogy at the 2014 Emmy Awards — the most moving four minutes of television that year
• Billy Crystal remembers Robin on The Tonight Show — a more intimate version of the same love
• Dead or Alive — the Famous & Gravy quiz game
• Famous & Gravy on Instagram, Facebook, Threads
• famousandgravy.com

TAGS: Robin Williams, Good Will Hunting, Mrs. Doubtfire, Dead Poets Society, Aladdin, Mork and Mindy, Lewy body dementia, Juilliard, Billy Crystal, Christopher Reeve, David Itzkoff, Robin's Wish, celebrity biography podcast, Famous and Gravy, would you want that life

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.