On this week's episode, we discuss several failed publicity stunts, like the one in "Crush, Texas." Crush, Texas was a temporary "city" established as the site of a one-day publicity stunt in the U.S. state of Texas in 1896. William George Crush, general passenger agent of the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad (popularly known as the "Katy", from its "Em-Kay-Tee" initials), conceived the idea in order to demonstrate a staged train wreck as a public spectacle . No admission was charged, and train fa...
Oct 09, 2019•45 min
Enron Corporation was an American energy , commodities , and services company based in Houston , Texas . It was founded in 1985 as a merger between Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth , both relatively small regional companies. Before its bankruptcy on December 3, 2001, Enron employed approximately 29,000 staff and was a major electricity , natural gas , communications and pulp and paper company, with claimed revenues of nearly $101 billion during 2000. [1] Fortune named Enron "America's Most Inn...
Oct 02, 2019•54 min
There is no way to summarize this episode. --- Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here . Be sure to check our website for more details.
Sep 25, 2019•38 min
The Voyager program is an American scientific program that employs two robotic probes , Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 , to study the outer Solar System . [1] The probes were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable alignment of Jupiter , Saturn , Uranus and Neptune . Although their original mission was to study only the planetary systems of Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 2 continued on to Uranus and Neptune. The Voyagers now explore the outer boundary of the heliosphere in interstellar space ; t...
Sep 18, 2019•50 min
There are many conspiracy theories that attribute the planning and execution of the September 11 attacks against the United States to parties other than, or in addition to, al-Qaeda [1] including that there was advance knowledge of the attacks among high-level government officials. Government investigations and independent reviews have rejected these theories. [2] [3] Proponents of these theories assert that there are inconsistencies in the commonly accepted version, or evidence that was either ...
Sep 11, 2019•47 min
Vlad III Dracula , known as Vlad the Impaler ( Romanian : Vlad Țepeș , Bulgarian : Влад Цепеш, pronunciation: [ ˈ v l a d ˈ ts e p e ʃ ] ) or Vlad Dracula ( /ˈdrækjələ/ ( Romanian : Vlad Drăculea , pronunciation: [ ˈ d r ə k u l e̯a ] , Bulgarian : Влад Дракула); 1428/31 – 1476/77), was Voivode of Wallachia three times between 1448 and his death. He is often considered one of the most important rulers in Wallachian history and a national hero of Romania. Our theme song was written and performed ...
Sep 04, 2019•40 min
The Bhopal disaster , also referred to as the Bhopal gas tragedy , was a gas leak incident on the night of 2–3 December 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal , Madhya Pradesh, India. It is considered to be the world's worst industrial disaster . [1] [2] Over 500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas. The highly toxic substance made its way into and around the small towns located near the plant. [3] --- Our theme song was written and performed b...
Aug 28, 2019•55 min
Washington Irving Bishop , also known as Wellington (4 March 1855 – 13 May 1889) was an American stage mentalist . He started his career as an assistant under the muscle reader J. Randall Brown , but was most well known for his performance of the blindfold drive . [1]...
Aug 21, 2019•40 min
Gunslinger /ˈɡʌnslɪŋər/ and gunfighter are words used historically to refer to men in the American Old West who had gained a reputation of being dangerous with a gun and had participated in gunfights and shootouts. Gunman was a more common term used for these individuals in the 19th century. Today, the term "gunslinger" is more or less used to denote someone who is quick on the draw with a pistol, but can also refer to riflemen and shotgun messengers . The gunfighter is also one of the most popu...
Aug 14, 2019•41 min
Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera ( /ˈɡʊzmæn/ ; [6] Spanish: [xoaˈkin aɾtʃiˈβaldo ɣusˈman loˈeɾa] ; born 4 April 1957), [7] known as " El Chapo " ("Shorty", pronounced [el ˈtʃapo] ) because of his 168 cm (5 ft 6 in) stature, is a Mexican drug lord and former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel , an international crime syndicate. He is considered to have been the most powerful drug trafficker in the world. [8] [9] Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show ...
Aug 07, 2019•41 min
The Oneida Community was a perfectionist religious communal society founded by John Humphrey Noyes in 1848 in Oneida, New York . The community believed that Jesus had already returned in AD 70, making it possible for them to bring about Jesus's millennial kingdom themselves, and be free of sin and perfect in this world, not just in Heaven (a belief called perfectionism ). The Oneida Community practiced communalism (in the sense of communal property and possessions), complex marriage , male sexua...
Jul 31, 2019•40 min
The trolley problem is a thought experiment in ethics . The general form of the problem is this: You see a runaway trolley moving toward five tied-up (or otherwise incapacitated) people lying on the tracks. You are standing next to a lever that controls a switch . If you pull the lever, the trolley will be redirected onto a side track, and the five people on the main track will be saved. However, there is a single person lying on the side track. You have two options: Do nothing and allow the tro...
Jul 24, 2019•51 min
Aleister Crowley ( /ˈæleɪstər ˈkroʊli/ ; born Edward Alexander Crowley ; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist , ceremonial magician , poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. He founded the religion of Thelema , identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. A prolific writer, he published widely over the course of his life. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to suppo...
Jul 17, 2019•47 min
Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 was an effort to reach the North Pole in which all three expedition members perished. S. A. Andrée , the first Swedish balloonist , proposed a voyage by hydrogen balloon from Svalbard to either Russia or Canada, which was to pass, with luck, straight over the North Pole on the way. The scheme was received with patriotic enthusiasm in Sweden, a northern nation that had fallen behind in the race for the North Pole....
Jul 10, 2019•44 min
Mary Toft (née Denyer ; c. 1701–1763), also spelled Tofts , was an English woman from Godalming , Surrey, who in 1726 became the subject of considerable controversy when she tricked doctors into believing that she had given birth to rabbits . Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here . Be sure to check our website for more details....
Jul 03, 2019•40 min
The Mountain Meadows massacre was a series of attacks on the Baker–Fancher emigrant wagon train at Mountain Meadows in southern Utah . The attacks began on September 7 and culminated on September 11, 1857, resulting in the mass slaughter of most in the emigrant party by members of the Utah Territorial Militia from the Iron County district, together with some Southern Paiute Native Americans . Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per epi...
Jun 26, 2019•44 min
Project MKUltra , also called the CIA mind control program , is the code name given to a program of experiments on human subjects that were designed and undertaken by the United States Central Intelligence Agency —and which were, at times, illegal. [1] [2] [3] Experiments on humans were intended to identify and develop drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations in order to weaken the individual and force confessions through mind control . The project was organized through the Office of Sc...
Jun 19, 2019•49 min
The Finland conspiracy states that Finland is not a real country. Not only is it not a real country but there is actually no landmass there at all, and the space between Sweden and Russia is actually empty ocean. (Source: Reddit. So you know it's legit.) Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here . Be sure to check our website for more details....
Jun 12, 2019•31 min
The demon core was a 6.2-kilogram (14 lb) subcritical mass of plutonium measuring 89 millimetres (3.5 in) in diameter, which was involved in two criticality accidents , on August 21, 1945 and May 21, 1946. The core was intended for use in a third World War II nuclear bomb, but remained in use for testing after Japan's surrender. It was designed with a small safety margin to ensure a successful explosion of the bomb. The device briefly went supercritical when it was accidentally placed in supercr...
Jun 05, 2019•40 min
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard ( /ˈhʌbərd/ HUB-ərd ; [1] March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986) was an American author of science fiction and fantasy stories, and the founder of the Church of Scientology . In 1950, Hubbard authored Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and established a series of organizations to promote Dianetics . In 1952, Hubbard lost the rights to Dianetics in bankruptcy proceedings, and he subsequently founded Scientology. Thereafter Hubbard oversaw the growth of the Church ...
May 29, 2019•59 min
The Scopes Trial , formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial , was an American legal case in July 1925 in which a substitute high school teacher, John T. Scopes , was accused of violating Tennessee 's Butler Act , which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. [1] The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee , where it was held. Scope...
May 22, 2019•39 min
Topsy (circa 1875 – January 4, 1903) was a female Asian elephant put to death at a Coney Island , New York , amusement park by electrocution in January 1903. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here . Be sure to check our website for more details....
May 15, 2019•45 min
Ching Shih [1] :65 ( Chinese : 鄭 氏 ; literally: 'widow of Zheng') (born Shih Yang ( Chinese : 石 陽 ; 1775–1844), a.k.a. Cheng I Sao ( Chinese : 鄭 一 嫂 ), was a Chinese pirate leader who terrorized the China Seas during the Jiaqing Emperor period of the Qing dynasty in the early 19th-century. She commanded over 300 junks (traditional Chinese sailing ships ) manned by 20,000 to 40,000 pirates [1] :71—men, women, and even children. She entered into conflict with the major nations, such as the British...
May 08, 2019•28 min
Phineas P. Gage (1823–1860) was an American railroad construction foreman remembered for his improbable [B1] :19 survival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain's left frontal lobe , and for that injury's reported effects on his personality and behavior over the remaining 12 years of his life—effects sufficiently profound (for a time at least) that friends saw him as "no longer Gage." [H] :14 --- Our theme song was written ...
May 01, 2019•38 min
When a 14-year-old British boy was savagely stabbed, no one could have imagined the bizarre chat-room fantasy world that lay behind the attack. A story of a near-fatal Internet attraction. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2005/02/bachrach200502 --- Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here . Be sure to check our website for more details....
Apr 24, 2019•49 min
The Ludlow Massacre emanated from a labor conflict: the Colorado National Guard and Colorado Fuel and Iron Company guards attacked a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado , on April 20, 1914, with the National Guard using machine guns to fire into the colony. Approximately twenty-one people, including miners' wives and children, were killed. The chief owner of the mine, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. , was widely excoriated for having orchestrated the massacr...
Apr 17, 2019•35 min
William Chaloner (1650 – 22 March 1699) [1] [2] was a serial counterfeit coiner and confidence trickster , who was imprisoned in Newgate Prison several times and eventually proven guilty of high treason by Sir Isaac Newton , Master of the Royal Mint . He was hanged on the gallows at Tyburn on 22 March 1699. [1] [3] Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here . Be sure to check our website f...
Apr 10, 2019•45 min
Dr. Chuck Tingle is a pseudonymous author of gay niche erotica. [1] [2] [3] He self-publishes his works through Amazon.com , primarily as ebooks , but also as paperbacks and audiobooks (narrated by Sam Rand). [4] [5] [6] [7] Tingle began his career by writing dinosaur erotica and expanded to stories based on unicorns , Bigfoot , and various anthropomorphized objects and even concepts. [8] [9] The bizarre nature of Tingle's writing has led to his developing a cult reputation . [10] [11] [12] [13]...
Apr 03, 2019•50 min
Since August 20, 2007, at least 20 detached human feet have been found on the coasts of the Salish Sea in British Columbia , Canada, and Washington , US. The first discovery, on August 20, 2007, was on Jedediah Island in British Columbia. Feet have been discovered on the coasts of islands in British Columbia, and in the US cities of Tacoma and Seattle ....
Mar 27, 2019•43 min
David Koresh ( /kəˈrɛʃ/ ; born Vernon Wayne Howell ; August 17, 1959 – April 19, 1993) was the American [2] [3] leader of the Branch Davidians sect, [4] believing himself to be its final prophet . Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here . Be sure to check our website for more details....
Mar 20, 2019•46 min
