This week's podcast has a bit of a mobster flair. It's a two parter with the first part dedicated to the life of Henry Hill, the subject of the movie Goodfellas and mentioned a bit previously on our podcast about the Lufthansa Heist. From there we turn our attention to the Copacabana, the NY nightclub famed for some of it's early mob connections and amazingly still open today (if you believe in the Ship of Theseus).
In today's episode we turn our attention to a non-cryptid animal that inspires fear in many,.. the shark. The book and film Jaws have made many afraid to go in the water, but did you know that the events of the book are loosely based on events that happened early in the 20th century? In July 1916 four people were killed by sharks in 11 days at the Jersey shore, some well inland on a river. The resulting fear and media explosion causing millions of dollars in losses to the tourist industry in the...
In this week's podcast we discuss Baldwin IV, King of the Crusader state of Jerusalem and most famously known as The Leper King. Baldwin contracted Leprosy at an early age but it was slow to develop which allowed him to become king before being diagnosed. While leprosy was often a very shunned disease, he became a beloved and effective ruler even though is life and reign were short.
The Boston Tea party is an iconic even that still lives on in American culture and politics. However, how much do you know about the event itself and what led up to it. Who planned it? Was it planned at all? Take a listen this week and find out all about America's favorite protest.
Ever wondered where your glass of foamy beer got its start? Turns out beer has been around just about as long or longer than written record. It seems that once humans had figured out how to grow grains they also started figuring out how to ferment them. Take a listen this week and learn about the history of beer.
The Duchess Elisabeth Amalie Eugenie in Bavaira, better known as Sisi, became the Empress of Austria in 1854 when she married Emperor Franz Jospeh the First. She was not raised to be a public figure and never quite fit in as Empress. While she was famed for being beautiful and intelligent, she generally hid from public view and had a controversial reign before being assassinated in 1898. However, after her reign she has become somewhat of a feminist icon and has enjoyed continued fame and popula...
This week's podcast revolves around a couple of mental health issues and the story surrounding them. The first is the Pellagratic Delirium or Pellagrous Encephalopathy. This condition is due to lack of Niacin (vitamin B3) and became a widespread problem in the Venetian Empire after the introduction of corn meal to the diet of the poor population. This outbreak resulted in the creation of multiple psychiatric hospitals that treated tens of thousands of people. The second issue is Munchausen syndr...
This week's subject is King Tut. While the discovery of his tomb and the legend of the related curse has made his name well known around the world, who was he really? Learn a bit about what we know about the man (or more accurately boy) behind the name and myth.
While we have discussed Napoleon in the past on this podcast, today we talk about his younger sister Pauline. Famous for her beauty and scandalous affairs, she is the only sibling to visit him in exile on Elba. While she only lived to be 44 she certainly lived life to its fullest. Take a listen and learn all about Paula Maria Bonaparte Leclerc Borghese
This week's podcast is dedicated to the search for the Yeti, not the top end drink cooler, but the Cryptid that is rumored to roam the Himalayas eating yaks and sometimes people. The Yeti has attracted the attention of some very famous mountaineers including Sir Edmund Hillary who spent a decent chuck of the late 50's searching for the creature and claimed to have found its prints on his legendary first summiting of Mt. Everest. Is the Yeti real or just a local legend passed down for thousands o...
Mary Anning was a pioneer in the field of paleontology, working in the early 19th Century, she discovered many famous dinosaurs and marine reptiles such as Ichthyosaurus. Her contributions were often overlooked due to her gender and social status, which let to her being ineligible to join the Geological Society of London or often receive no credit for her contributions. Among other things she is considered to be the subject of the well known tongue twister "she sells sea shells by the sea shore"...
Today's podcast is about one of America's favorite conspiracy theories, The Roswell Incident. In 1947, debris was recovered from a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico that was recovered by personnel from the nearby Army Air Field. The stuff of conspiracy began when the Army announced it had picked up a "flying disc" before retracting the statement the next day. The debris was then claimed to be that of a weather balloon although it was later reveled to be from a balloon made to monitor Soviet nuclear...
The Pack Horse Library Project was part of the WPA's attempt to relieve rural poverty in Kentucky. Since many people in Appalachian Kentucky didn't have access to books, the "book ladies" of the Pack Horse library brought books to them in remote areas via packhorses. The librarians would haul hundreds of books into the back country via horseback, serving rural communities and promoting literacy and education in communities that didn't have any books. Women would ride routes that covered over 100...
While there might be some debate about what is indeed the world's oldest profession, what might be the world's oldest medical profession is that of the midwife. Women have most likely been helping other women give birth since before modern humans were a thing. Take a listen this week and learn about the history of the midwife... from revered helper, to outcast witch, and back again over the millennia, midwives have been a key part of brining new humans into the world for as long as there have be...
This week we discuss the invention of the graham cracker... the tasty snack that is used for making smores, pie crusts, and other fun snacks. However, its history is not what you might expect. The original graham cracker was invented by the reverend Sylvester Graham in the late 1800s. He was a proponent of avoiding lustful thought by eating the blandest food possible and made a completely dull tasteless cracker using unsifted flour and no salt or sugar. It wasn't until much later that the cracke...
This week we look at one of the most ubiquitous things in modern dieting... calorie counting. When did we first start paying attention to the caloric content of food and worrying about how much energy we were taking in vs. burning off? The popularization of counting calories for weight loss and management was popularized by Lulu Hunt Peters, a doctor who had been the head of the pathology lab at Los Angeles County General Hospital and who was the first person to look at the calorie as something ...
Hello all! This week we discuss humanitarian and urban missionary Margaret Prior and her founding of the American Female Moral Reform Society, a progressive group originally created to help the plight of poor women stuck in sex work in pre-Civil War New York City. Prior worked tirelessly to help fellow women, believe in a hand out and a hand up. The society tackled the issues in a frank and forthright way, noting that there would be no sex work if men weren't purchasing it and if women were to b...
Ever wondered why a worthless item being sold as a miracle cure is referred to as Snake Oil? Like just about everything else in Modern America is dates back to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. Clark Stanley sold snake oil to relieve aches and pains. The amazing thing is that Snake Oil really can help with these issues, unfortunately Snake Oil is something the Snake Oil salesman wasn't actually selling. His concoction was full of things like turpentine mineral oil, defrauding people and resultin...
This week's topic, coinciding with St. Patrick's Day, is Grace O'Malley. O'Malley controlled a large portion of County Mayo in the late 1500s and was known as a pirate queen. She famously met on equal terms with Queen Elizabeth I, and received her protection from Richard Bingham, the English lord nominally put in charge of the province of Connacht.
If you are like me, you mainly know Horace Greeley for the expression "Go West Young Man" and are generally aware that he was a newspaper editor. You might be aware that he was a congressman and crossed paths with just about every famous person of the mid 19th century. Abraham Lincoln (check), Karl Marx (check), Mark Twain (check), etc. Take a listen this week and see how burnout can be a very bad thing.
This week we take a look at the top five archeology stories in the news, ranging from Greek sculpture finds in Athens, to an ancient woodhenge in Denmark, to kids tripping over ancient idols in Isreal, there's plenty up in the archeological world.
The Shroud of Turin is a mysterious cloth kept in the city of Turin/Torino, Italy that is purported to be the burial shroud of Jesus. The shroud contains an image of a man baring the marks of crucifixion as if he had burned an image into it while laying on one half with the other half folded over him. The whereabouts of the are first reported in the 1300s when it was ruled a fake. However, over the years its claim to be the true burial shroud of Jesus has gained traction. Now, many people flock ...
In the 8th Century an exorcism was performed on a 16 year old girl. The girl began to speak in Latin, which she did not know, claiming to be a demon named Wiggo. The demon claimed to have been roaming the countryside doing terrible things because the lack of piousness and Christian behavior of the people and their leaders allowed his presence. Was this a case of demonic possession or a cover for the priest and chronicler to publish a critique of the powers that be under cover of claiming it was ...
On the 13th of July, 1955, Ruth Ellis became the last person to be executed in the United Kingdom. Her story is a tragic one, beginning with childhood abuse and ending with the public shooting of her lover outside a London Pub possibly at the behest of another. While she felt no remorse and didn't seek to appeal her conviction, her family is still working to clear her name to this day.
The Nazca lines have become famous over the years for their mysterious origins and purpose. Residing in the high desert in Southern Peru, the lines were created by removing the top layer of desert rocks, exposing the different colored clay beneath. Some of the lines appear to be an astronomical calendar, some are drawings of birds and beasts, and some seem to have no known purpose. The mystery of their purpose has led to them becoming a favorite topic of the pseudoscience community in recent dec...
If you were to think of the quintessential family feud that first thought for most Americans is the Hatfields and McCoys. Two families whose fame is solely based on hating each other. While their feud is famous, the actual details of it are not. Most of us only know that McCoys hate Hatfields and Hatfields hate McCoys, not why that might be the case. The podcast this week dives into the feud, what started it, what happed during its height, and what eventually became of it. Spoiler alert... they ...
Today's episode is dedicated to a gem that is probably more famous for the rumors and often false history surrounding it then its own beauty... The Hope Diamond. The Hope Diamond is now known to have been cut from a gem owned by the Royal Family of France and looted during the early days of the revolution. A lore of the cure of the Hope Diamond made it famous and it now resides in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. where it can be visited by the public. Take a listen to our podcast and le...
This week's topic is the Lore of Thor. Legends and religions involving Thor come from ancient Northern European roots and have spread around the world, most notably in recent years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ever wonder how a random god in the Norse pantheon became universally known today in the form of film and Thursdays? If so, take a listen, our topic this week is for you.
The English countryside is often associated with many things, rivers, lakes, moors, hedgehogs, but not large predators. The largest official remaining predator in the UK is the badger. While you might not want to back one into a corner, they're not about to go on a wild killing spree. However, several locations in the UK report continued sightings of big cats. Is there a hidden native cat roaming the moors of Cornwall? Many people think they have spotted them, though the film footage is often as...
When you think about it, the human reaction to tickling is quite odd. Why do we laugh when someone grazes your feet with a feather or digs their fingers into your unsuspecting ribs? While a little tickling can be fun, it has been used as a device of torture in different societies throughout history. Take a listen this week and find out all about tickle torture.
