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Citation Needed

Citation Needed Mediacitationpod.com
The podcast where we choose a subject, read a single Wikipedia article about it, and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now.
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Episodes

Nutmaxxing

Mostly taken from this GQ article here: https://www.gq.com/story/meet-the-nutmaxxers-obsessed-with-shooting-bigger-loads

Nov 05, 202542 minSeason 1Ep. 447

Time travel claims and urban legends

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel_claims_and_urban_legends Multiple accounts of people who allegedly travelled through time have been reported by the press or circulated online. These reports have turned out to be either hoaxes or else based on incorrect assumptions, incomplete information, or interpretation of fiction as fact . Many are now recognized as urban legends ....

Oct 29, 202531 minSeason 1Ep. 446

QAnon Shaman vs. USA et al

https://azdailysun.com/news/state-and-regional/qanon-shaman-files-40-trillion-lawsuit-against-trump-with-plan-to-revolutionize-america/article_5f4ad841-60ef-4060-9ff3-7f33d7ee4f0d.html

Oct 22, 202559 minSeason 1Ep. 445

Bike Batman

https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/biking/real-life-superhero-who-beats-cops-bike-thieves/

Oct 15, 202540 minSeason 1Ep. 444

Broadcast signal intrusion

A broadcast signal intrusion is the hijacking of broadcast signals of radio , television stations , cable television broadcast feeds or satellite signals without permission or licence . Hijacking incidents have involved local TV and radio stations as well as cable and national networks....

Oct 08, 202538 minSeason 1Ep. 443

"Rube" Waddell

George Edward "Rube" Waddell (October 13, 1876 – April 1, 1914) was an American pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB). A left-hander , he played for 13 years, with the Louisville Colonels , Pittsburgh Pirates , and Chicago Orphans in the National League , as well as the Philadelphia Athletics and St. Louis Browns in the American League . Born in Bradford, Pennsylvania , and raised in Prospect, Pennsylvania, Waddell was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946 . Waddell is best remembered fo...

Oct 01, 202533 minSeason 1Ep. 442

History's Most Expensive Party

The 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire, [1] officially known as the 2,500-year celebration of the Empire of Iran ( Persian : جشن‌های ۲۵۰۰ ساله شاهنشاهی ایران, romanized : Jašn-hây-e 2500 sale' šâhanšâhi Irân ), was hosted by the Pahlavi dynasty in the Imperial State of Iran in October 1971. Concentrated at Persepolis , it consisted of an elaborate set of grand festivities that sought to honour the legacy of the Achaemenid Empire , which was founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. [2] [3]...

Sep 24, 202540 minSeason 1Ep. 441

ChatGPT convinced a guy that he's a superhero

Over 21 days of talking with ChatGPT, an otherwise perfectly sane man became convinced that he was a real-life superhero. We analyzed the conversation. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/technology/ai-chatbots-delusions-chatgpt.html

Sep 17, 202548 minSeason 1Ep. 440

Victorian Mummy Mania and Sundry Weirdness

Mummia, mumia, or originally mummy referred to several different preparations in the history of medicine , from "mineral pitch " to "powdered human mummies ". It originated from Arabic mūmiyā "a type of resinous bitumen found in Western Asia and used curatively" in traditional Islamic medicine , which was translated as pissasphaltus (from "pitch" and "asphalt") in ancient Greek medicine . In medieval European medicine , mūmiyā "bitumen" was transliterated into Latin as mumia meaning both "a bitu...

Sep 10, 202531 minSeason 1Ep. 439

The Vasa

Vasa (previously Wasa ) (Swedish pronunciation: [²vɑːsa] ⓘ ) is a Swedish warship built between 1626 and 1628. The ship sank after sailing roughly 1,300 m (1,400 yd) into her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. She fell into obscurity after most of her valuable bronze cannons were salvaged in the 17th century, until she was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping area in Stockholm harbor. The ship was salvaged with a largely intact hull in 1961. She was housed in a temporary museum calle...

Sep 03, 202540 minSeason 1Ep. 438

Exxon Valdez

The Exxon Valdez oil spill was a major environmental disaster that occurred in Alaska 's Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989. The spill occurred when Exxon Valdez , an oil supertanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company , bound for Long Beach , California, struck Prince William Sound 's Bligh Reef , 6 mi (9.7 km) west of Tatitlek, Alaska at 12:04 a.m. The tanker spilled more than 10 million US gallons (240,000 bbl) (or 37,000 tonnes ) [1] of crude oil over the next few days. [2]...

Aug 27, 202540 minSeason 1Ep. 437

Olestra / Olean

Olestra (also known by its brand name Olean) is a fat substitute food additive that adds no metabolizable calories to products. It has been used in the preparation of otherwise high-fat foods, thereby lowering or eliminating their fat content. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved olestra for use in the US as a replacement for fats and oils in prepackaged ready-to-eat snacks in 1996, [2] concluding that such use "meets the safety standard for food additives, reasonable certainty of no ...

Aug 13, 202534 minEp. 435

Pluto

Pluto ( minor-planet designation : 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt , a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune . It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun . It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris . Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock and is much smaller than the inner planets . Pluto has roughly one-sixth the mass of the Moon and...

Aug 06, 202540 minEp. 434

Defenestration

Defenestration (from Neo-Latin de fenestrā [1] ) is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window . [2] The term was coined around the time of an incident in Prague Castle in the year 1618 which became the spark that started the Thirty Years' War . This was done in "good Bohemian style", referring to the defenestration which had occurred in Prague's New Town Hall almost 200 years earlier (July 1419), and on that occasion led to the Hussite war . [3] The word comes from the Neo-Latin [...

Jul 30, 202536 minSeason 1Ep. 433

Moving Day

Moving Day was a tradition in New York City dating back to colonial times and lasting until after World War II . On February 1, sometimes known as "Rent Day", landlords would give notice to their tenants what the new rent would be after the end of the quarter, [1] and the tenants would spend good-weather days in the early spring searching for new houses and the best deals. [2] On May 1 , [3] all leases in the city expired simultaneously at 9:00 am, causing thousands of people to change their res...

Jul 23, 202541 minEp. 432

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist , and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced", [1] with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature ". [2] Twain's novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), [3] with the latter often called the " Great American Novel ". He also wrote A Connect...

Jul 16, 202536 minEp. 431

The Juniper Tree

"The Juniper Tree" (also "The Almond Tree"; Low German : Von dem Machandelboom ) is a German fairy tale published in Low German by the Brothers Grimm in Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1812 (KHM 47). [1] The story contains themes of child abuse , murder , cannibalism and biblical symbolism and is one of the Brothers Grimm's darker and more mature fairy tales....

Jul 09, 202537 minEp. 430

Optograms and Wife Salves

Optography is the process of viewing or retrieving an optogram, an image on the retina of the eye. A belief that the eye "recorded" the last image seen before death was widespread in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was a frequent plot device in fiction of the time, to the extent that police photographed the victims' eyes in several real-life murder investigations, in case the theory was true. The concept has been repeatedly debunked as a forensic method....

Jul 02, 202535 min

Charge of the Light Brigade

The Charge of the Light Brigade was a military action undertaken by British light cavalry against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War , resulting in many casualties to the cavalry. On 25 October 1854, the Light Brigade, led by Lord Cardigan , mounted a frontal assault against a Russian artillery battery which was well-prepared with excellent fields of defensive fire. The charge was the result of a misunderstood order from the commander-in-chief, Lord Raglan , who had...

Jun 25, 202535 minEp. 428

The Barkley Marathons - The Immortal Horizon - Part 2

The Barkley Marathons is an ultramarathon trail race held each year in Frozen Head State Park in Morgan County, Tennessee , United States. Described as "The Race That Eats Its Young", it is known for its extreme difficulty, purposefully difficult application process, and many strange traditions, having been completed only 26 times by 20 runners since 1995....

Jun 18, 202535 minEp. 427

The Barkley Marathons - The Immortal Horizon

https://www.thebeliever.net/the-immortal-horizon/ The Barkley Marathons is an ultramarathon trail race held each year in Frozen Head State Park in Morgan County, Tennessee , United States. Described as "The Race That Eats Its Young", it is known for its extreme difficulty, purposefully difficult application process, and many strange traditions, having been completed only 26 times by 20 runners since 1995....

Jun 11, 20251 hr 2 minSeason 1Ep. 426

Operation Channel Fireball & Operation Fantasia

Psychological warfare (PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PsyOp), has been known by many other names or terms, including Military Information Support Operations ( MISO ), Psy Ops, political warfare , "Hearts and Minds", and propaganda . [1] [2] The term is used "to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people". [3]...

Jun 04, 202542 minEp. 425

Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong [a] is a video game series and media franchise created by the Japanese game designer Shigeru Miyamoto for Nintendo . It follows the adventures of Donkey Kong , a large, powerful gorilla, and other members of the Kong family of apes. Donkey Kong games include the original arcade game trilogy by Nintendo R&D1 ; the Donkey Kong Country series by Rare and Retro Studios ; and the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series by Nintendo Software Technology . Various studios have developed spin-offs in...

May 28, 202535 min

Fax Machines - RERELEASE

We had errors with our podcast service provider and they released another show on our feed. We are still fielding questions regarding people not having access to last weeks show so we are rereleasing it. If you missed last week's show becuase the podcast on that feed was wrong, here it is again. If you heard our podcast last week - this is nothing new. Sorry for the snafu. Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission...

May 26, 202536 minEp. 423

Fax Machines

Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other output device. The original document is scanned with a fax machine (or a telecopier), which processes the contents (text or images) as a single fixed graphic image, converting it into a bitmap , and then transmitting it through the telephone system in the form...

May 21, 202534 minEp. 423

Ruby Ridge

The Ruby Ridge standoff was the siege of a cabin occupied by the Weaver family in Boundary County, Idaho , in August 1992. On August 21, deputies of the United States Marshals Service (USMS) came to arrest Randy Weaver under a bench warrant for his failure to appear on federal firearms charges after he was given the wrong court date. [1] The charges stemmed from Weaver's sale of a sawed-off shotgun to an undercover federal informant , who had induced him to modify the firearm below the legal bar...

May 14, 202541 minEp. 422

The Moon

The Moon is Earth 's only natural satellite . It orbits Earth at an average distance of 384399 km (238,854 mi; about 30 times Earth's diameter ). The Moon's orbital period ( lunar month ) and rotation period ( lunar day ) are synchronized by Earth's gravitational pull at 29.5 Earth days, making the same side of the Moon always face Earth. The Moon's pull on Earth is the main driver of Earth's tides ....

May 07, 202538 minEp. 421

Security incidents involving Barack Obama

Barack Obama , the 44th president of the United States , was involved in multiple security incidents, including several assassination threats and plots, starting from when he became a presidential candidate in 2007. Secret Service protection for Obama began after he received a death threat in 2007, while serving as the junior United States senator from Illinois and running for president . This marked the earliest time a candidate received such protection before being nominated. [1] Security was ...

Apr 30, 202530 minEp. 420
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