This week A-A-Ron treats the boys to the first half of a biography of the man who would later be called by Nixon, “the most dangerous man in America,” Timothy Leary. Here Aaron charts Leary’s conservative beginnings in a religious home, military school and service in the Second World War before entering academia and having a fateful encounter with psychedelic drugs!
Matt delivers a maniacal portrait of a woman who left the Catholic church in Spain in the 16th century only to become a marauding menace to colonial South America, all while dressed as a man. She escapes death, incredibly meets family members a world away, and achieves glory and worldwide fame before death! Holy shit!
This week Johnboy shares the bizarre and tragic saga of a cultish stable of “pups” who’s “master” led them to drastically alter their bodies to cartoonish levels any way he wanted - from their muscles to their testicles - ultimately leading the greater queer community to shun the group before a member lost his life in pursuit of their insane fetish goals!
This week Matt chronicles the life of a Japanese-American who went from the WW2 internment camps on the West coast to the heights of organized crime in Chicago by running gambling operations and executing rivals. But when his own execution goes awry, Joe disassembles The Outfit like one of his victims!
This week Johnboy shares a documentary about a Brooklyn cop who moonlighted as a ninja crime fighter and focused on youth outreach during the heyday of gang violence in New York!
This week Matt brings us the story of a true American scoundrel whose riverboat card talent and trickery as a youth turned into a career as a hustler of all contests from tossing horseshoes to golfing and beyond! Hanging with and cheating mobsters, marrying girls that are way too young, golf’s outlaw origins, it’s all here, folks!
This week Johnboy treats the lads to the tale of a rich boy of the Victorian era that fancied himself a thespian and paid his way onto stage,finding audiences that were so amused and revolted by how terrible and unconventional the performances were that he became an overnight sensation! But does he know what a laughing stock he’s turned into as he becomes the subject of satirical plays himself?
This week Aaron treats the lads to the entrepreneurial saga of Benihana founder “Rocky” Aoki, an immigrant success story whose rise played out amid various side obsessions including boat racing, gambling, backgammon and of course, women!
This week Matt brings us the story of Canada Lee, a gifted black child musician who abandoned the violin to become a jockey and then a pro boxer before ultimately turning to acting and becoming a pioneer in the art form alongside Orson Welles!
This week the boys submerge into the topical history of submarines with a look at the CSS Hunley, the craft used in the only successful submarine attack of the civil war - but it’s flawed design killed more working and testing the craft than Northern enemies and it’s designer would go on to the world of bomb makers and con men before mysteriously dying and reappearing in another scam!
This week Matt treats the lads to the saga of Crazy Eddie, the sales and advertising icon of New York who pioneered as much in advertising as he innovated inventory and tax scams while battling the jealousy within his own family!
This week Johnboy treats the lads to the saga of the second famed mayor rocking the crack pipe! We follow Rob’s municipal achievements, see the network he built that made him a populist sensation and crush the competition for mayor before unraveling spectacularly in office!
This week Johnboy tells the boys about the original health nut and tabloid news pioneer who eschewed medicine in favor of starvation and pseudoscience, wrestled his employees and brought news reporting to a whole new low!
The boys are back this week with yet another media episode! This time we’ve got a cross section of porn titles, a Japanese Twin Peaks coffee commercial series, a train enthusiast on YouTube, bizarre music videos, an NFL rap song, a penis pump pitchman and so much more!
This week Matt treats the boys to the story of the prison that started a baseball team full of rapists, thieves and murderers - and one forger - to play for the public while the players awaited execution! But was their star player truly guilty of murder?
Matt brings the boys another South Pole dance; this time on a mission to cross the continent! Ernest Shackleton and his crew have lost their ship and spiral out into the ocean on ice flows! Now a small crew have decided to brave a passage of ocean to send for help - who will survive and what will be left of them?
This week Matt tells the harrowing tale of the British race to reach the South Pole against the Norwegian explorers trying to get there first amid brutal weather conditions, betrayal and very poor decisions made beforehand!
This week Johnboy shares the story of the man who destroyed his body with tar while portraying a racist monstrosity and found that the disaster left him immune to pain and made a career out of being thrown, kicked, beaten by bats, fists, cudgels and even the world heavyweight boxing champion with a pool cue!
This week Johnboy provides four Irish lads that are all a bit off! The thug who used his head to break down doors! The one eyed man who successfully snuck into political and sporting events! The unofficial prison tour guide and "jail groupie!" The man who attacked cops and wrote poetry about it! Featuring Werner Squirts-Hog!!!!
This week Johnboy treats the lads to the story of a bigoted thug whose reputation was so fearsome that nobody dared challenge him when his double life and hypocrisy were exposed! But first, Matt goes mango mad in Cultural Revolution-era China!
This week Johnboy shares the tale of the congressman who started as a New Deal progressive before descending into an alcohol-fueled manic rampage that lasted half a year and included starting riots in Puerto Rico, driving on the White House lawn, and taking reporters on drunk driving rampages through the Capital before his shocking life comes to a screeching halt!
This week Matt treats the lads to the brilliant inventor who was far ahead of his time, inventing freon and leaded gasoline - while suffering horrifying injuries along the way - before his life ends cryptically with yet another invention involved!
This week Johnboy zeroes in on an unabashed necrophiliac woman who rose to underground fame in the 80s after granting a frank interview that told all about the practice of sneaking into funeral homes, having sex with male corpses, and the run-ins with the law that ensued as a result! Hey everybody! We're all gonna get laid to rest!
This week Matt takes the lads on a tour of the life of a young boy who ignored an arm injury and inadvertently created a motionless wing that would serve as a perfect goalie stick arm as he grew up. Terry Sawchuk would become a hockey legend, but would continue to ignore medical advice to even greater detriment!
Returning a few days after the death of Blake, this week Johnboy wraps up the saga of the actor and the woman who sought fame until it killed her. We are introduced to a cast of sketchy stuntmen, vagrants and jilted lovers who may have played a role in the killing before exploring the flawed criminal trial, a curious dedication by Tarantino and beyond!
This week Johnboy begins the story of the relationship between professional grifter Bonnie Lee Bakley, faded film and TV star Robert Blake and the baby that would lead them individually into schemes of fraud, kidnapping and murder.
This week Aaron completes the Harry Houdini odyssey, exploring the first escape artist's superstardom, WWI patriotism, spirtual skepticism, pettiness, fame in film, showmanship, magic history academia, and so much more before covering the "first superhero's" contrversial death and enduring, endlessly fascinating legacy!
This week, in preparation for COCAINE BEAR in theaters this Friday, we take a look back at Aaron's early profiles of the real story the film is based on, first in Episode 8 and later at a live show! Plus Matt and John's stories from the live show are included - another of which still has tons of cocaine! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week A-a-ron begins the electrifying saga of Eric Weiss aka Harry Houdini from his childhood as a Jewish immigrant through his middling vaudeville performances in comedy and magic and forays into spiritualism before creating a sensational new act; the escape artist.
This week Matt brings us to the bizarre zone of comic book advertising and the strangest mogul of backpage scams like x ray spex, a Jewish man who gravitated to a strange political affiliation and made too much money from his work to be properly called out!
