Ghoulish Acts & Dastardly Deeds
In the 1950s, an anonymous terrorist planted a pipe bomb in a New York City public space. Then another. And another.
Jul 29, 2017•54 min
Damn Interesting
The audio side of DamnInteresting.com: Legitimately intriguing true stories from history, science, and psychology. Audiobook-like narration with sound effects and music.
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Episodes
No Country For Ye Olde Men
Britain’s practice of transporting convicts to American colonies was a fearsome punishment, but not for the chronic criminal James Dalton.
Jul 17, 2017•13 min
Fire And Dice
The story of a tragic hotel fire of Rube Goldberg proportions.
Jun 12, 2017•23 min
The Reconstruction of Ulysses S. Grant
As a civilian, the beloved American Civil War general and two-term president failed at every attempt to make money. Except for one.
Apr 11, 2017•25 min
The Greatest Baroque Composer Never Known
A 300-year-old hunt for the unsung hero of Salzburg.
Mar 06, 2017•20 min
Foreign Exchanges
He made a name for himself organizing the world’s most important economic conference, only to have it tarnished by an outrageous accusation.
Dec 28, 2016•30 min
Starving For Answers
During WWII, 36 American conscientious objectors volunteered as subjects in a brutal science experiment to measure the body's response to starvation.
Nov 30, 2016•15 min
Ten Minutes In Lituya Bay
A remote bay in Alaska is home to an odd and occasionally catastrophic geology. In 1958, a handful of people experienced this firsthand.
Sep 26, 2016•25 min
The King's Letters
The 15th-century scholar who upset the Korean aristocracy by creating a native script for the Korean language, and thus wean it off Chinese characters.
Aug 06, 2016•20 min
Mobilis In Mobili
A 1930s effort to reach the Earth's northernmost point via antiquated submarine.
Jun 13, 2016•24 min
Into The Bewilderness
Charles Waterton was a pioneer of conservation. He was also extremely nutty, in ways that suggest he may have over-identified with his animal subjects.
May 11, 2016•18 min
Colonels Of Truth
The tumultuous true story of the life of a fast food icon.
Mar 13, 2016•54 min
89, 263, 201, 500, 337, 480
The story of the Beale Ciphers; a set of three encrypted notes from the nineteenth century purportedly describing the location of hidden treasure. Only one has been deciphered.
Dec 14, 2015•16 min
The Japanese Art of Self Preservation
On the ancient Japanese Buddhist practice of self-mummification.
Nov 28, 2015•11 min
Faxes From The Far Side
Faxes From The Far Side by Damn Interesting
Oct 21, 2015•20 min
The Petticoat Rebellion Of 1916
When women in a poorly administered Oregon town hacked an election in order to repair the town's problems.
Oct 10, 2015•11 min
The First Ten Years
A happy-tenth-birthday-to-us retrospective.
Sep 23, 2015•26 min
Up In The Air
As night fell over the East German town of Pössneck on the evening of 14 September 1979, most of the town's citizens were busy getting ready for bed. But not Günter Wetzel. The mason was in his attic, hunched over an old motor-driven sewing machine, desperately working to complete his secret project. Wetzel and his friend H. Peter Strelzyk and their families had been working on their plan for more than a year and a half, and by now the authorities were looking for them. They were nearly out of t...
Aug 02, 2015•24 min
The Zero Armed Bandit
"I don’t think it belongs here." Such was the assessment of Bob Vinson, the graveyard shift supervisor at Harvey's Wagon Wheel Casino in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. The "here" Vinson referred to was a nook just outside the telephone equipment room in the employees-only portion of the second floor of the hotel. The "it" was a curious piece of equipment of unknown origin loitering conspicuously in the cramped side room. It was a metallic gray box about the size of a desk, with a smaller box attached on to...
Jun 14, 2015•56 min
The American Gustation Crisis Of 1985
(This is a podcastification of an older article to observe the 30th anniversary of the events discussed herein). In April 1985, it is rumored that a collection of executives gathered at their corporate headquarters for an emergency meeting. On the table before them sat six small canisters which had been smuggled from their chief competitor's manufacturing plant. Inside the metal cylinders lurked a secret compound which represented the next strike in a long-running war: an altered version of thei...
Apr 18, 2015•19 min
The Derelict
Under ordinary circumstances, the final evening of a cruise aboard the luxury turbo-electric ocean liner SS Morro Castle was a splendid event. Hundreds of lady and gentlemen passengers would gather in the Grand Ballroom in their finest evening attire for the customary Farewell Dinner, where veteran sailor Captain Willmott would captivate his guests with salty tales from his years at sea over endless glasses of champagne. Reality, bills, hangovers, and economic depression were all far away, on th...
Jan 11, 2015•49 min
Surface Tension
Low-pressure weather systems are a familiar feature of the winter climate in the northern Atlantic. While they often drive wind, rain, and other unpleasantness against Europe’s rocky western margin, this is typically on a “mostly harmless” basis. Early in the evening of 31 January 1953, the weather in northern Europe was damp, chilly, and blustery. These unremarkable seasonal conditions disguised the fact that a storm of extreme severity was massing nearby, and that an ill-fated assortment of me...
Sep 02, 2014•19 min
Welcome To The Jungle
In 1744, a young geographer living in Spanish-colonial Peru with his wife and children decided the time had come to move the family back to his native France. Jean Godin des Odonais had come to Peru in 1735 as a part of a small scientific expedition and had ended up staying much longer than expected. He’d married a young woman from a local aristocratic family and now the couple had two children and a third on the way. But news from France eventually brought word of Godin’s father’s death, meanin...
Jul 06, 2014•26 min
The Clockmaker
It was the middle of a cool September night in Munich, Germany. The year was 1939. In an otherwise unoccupied auditorium, a man knelt on hands and knees chiseling a square hole into a large stone pillar. The lights were out, but a small flashlight dimmed with a handkerchief provided a pallid puddle of light. The man's chisel was also wrapped in cloth to quiet his hammer strikes. Whenever there was some unexpected sound, he froze. Whenever a truck rumbled past the building, he seized the opportun...
May 28, 2014•24 min
White Death
In April of 1938, representatives from the USSR approached the Finnish government and expressed a concern that Nazi Germany could attempt to invade Russia, and such an attack might come through parts of Finland. The Finns replied that they were officially neutral, but any Nazi incursion on Finland’s borders would be resisted. This did not mollify the Soviets. Hitler’s manifesto, Mein Kampf, was published thirteen years previous with specific note that the Nazis would need to invade the Soviet Un...
May 04, 2014•10 min
Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Spuds of War
Staple though it is today, the lowly potato had a hard time reaching its preeminent status in Western cuisine. Perhaps its lengthy purgatory has something to do with the tale that when Sir Walter Raleigh gave some potatoes to Queen Elizabeth, her cooks tossed aside the roots and served up the boiled greens instead, causing a court-wide case of indigestion. Whether that's the case or not—and there's no evidence that Raleigh ever so much as set eyes on a potato—for decades Europeans would have not...
Apr 09, 2014•13 min
Absolute Zero is 0K
Near the heart of Scotland lies a large morass known as Dullatur Bog. Water seeps from these moistened acres and coalesces into the headwaters of a river which meanders through the countryside for nearly 22 miles, until its terminus in Glasgow. In the late 19th century this river adorned the landscape just outside of the laboratory of Sir William Thompson, renowned scientist and president of the Royal Society. The river must have made an impression on Thompson--when Queen Victoria granted him th...
Mar 19, 2014•30 min
It Came From Beneath The Sea
Alarming events were in store for Sicily at the beginning of the summer of 1831. On 28 June, small earthquakes rocked the western end of the island, and these continued occurring day after day. On 4 July, the unpleasant scent of sulfur spread through the town of Sciacca. On the 13th, the people of St. Domenico spotted smoke from far offshore. Normally, volcanic activity would be the obvious culprit, but these black plumes were out on the water. Maybe, the residents suggested to one another, a bo...
Mar 03, 2014•10 min
The Supernatural Bunnymother Of Surrey
The men from London arrived just in time to see Mary Toft give birth to her fifteenth rabbit. It was the winter of 1726, and Nathaniel St. André and Samuel Molyneux arrived in the market town of Godalming in Surrey to meet Mary Toft, a short, stout peasant of "stupid and sullen temper" (per St. André's later, embittered description). They found the country-woman waiting at the house of local man-midwife John Howard. She was lingering on the edge of a bed, stripped down to her corset. Howard assu...
Feb 09, 2014•18 min
Three Thrown Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Sometime in the 1940s an improbable encounter occurred at a mental institution in Maryland. Two women, each of whom was institutionalized for believing she was the Virgin Mary, chanced upon one another and engaged in conversation. They had been chatting for several minutes when the older woman introduced herself as "Mary, Mother of God." "Why you can't be, my dear," the other patient replied, unable to conceive of such a notion. "You must be crazy. I am the Mother of God." "I'm afraid it's you w...
Nov 21, 2013•30 min
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