On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we talk about bats. Yes, they get a bad rap since a few species are vampires and drink the blood of horses and cattle. But they are an amazing creature, as helpful to human society as bees are, and aren’t really a threat. In fact, they weren’t considered evil or a menace until Bram Stoker used them in Dracula, where they were permanently married to Halloween and all things dark. These crazy critters use sonar to hunt, live in sophisticated colonies, poll...
Dec 23, 2022•1 hr 23 min
On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we talk about a unique group called the Bajau people. They are a group of sea nomads who have genetically evolved to be the perfect sea-goers. Their bodies have adapted to hold their breath insane amounts of time and regulate oxygen in ways no other human can. Some have held their breath for as long as 13 minutes and have dived as deep as 200 feet with no ill effects. They live on boats and coral reefs, call no nation their home, and some spend 60% of th...
Dec 23, 2022•1 hr 22 min
On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the Godfather of Soul, Mister James Brown! James Brown is arguably the most influential artist on the birth of soul, funk, and hip hop. Everyone from Justin Timberlake to Public Enemy to Kanye West say they would not be in music if not for James. He was born in the backwoods on a turpentine plantation and then after both his parents abandoned him, he moved in to his aunt’s brothel. He fell into jail, but upon his release he was...
Dec 15, 2022•1 hr 30 min
On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we discuss the myth, facts, science and searches for Noah’s Ark. This ancient myth tells of the global flood and Noah creating a boat that could carry all of life for 40 days and drop it safely ashore when the flood died down. Cool story, bro, but do you even science? We start this one talking about the hard physics and facts of what would go into making and maintaining such a craft, and then we go into the many, many expeditions to find it. For hundreds...
Nov 18, 2022•1 hr 28 min
On this episode of Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the life and laughs of Will Ferrell. This juggernaut has made some of the greatest comedies of all times and helped to launch the careers of many other comedians. He started as a Groundling and soon moved to Saturday Night Live; it was a time when ratings were at their all-time low, and Lorne Michaels himself thinks Will Ferrell was the only thing that brought it back to life. He left it to make movies like Anchorman, Old School, Elf, and Talla...
Nov 16, 2022•1 hr 34 min
On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we talk about one of the most sensationalized murders of the 1920s, the Hall-Mills murder. In September of 1922, Dude Passerby and his girlfriend stumbled upon the bodies of Edward Hall and Eleanor Mills. Hall was the local pastor, and Mills was in the church choir. But the details got crazy. First, the entire congregation knew of the affair. Second, Hall was married to an older heiress of the Johnson & Johnson company and thought to be a gold digger...
Nov 04, 2022•1 hr 9 min
On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the infamous Fyre Festival. This aborted music festival was supposed to happen on Pablo Escobar’s private island and headlined by Blink 182 and celebrity chefs. It ended up being a disaster where guests lived in rained-out FEMA tents and ate slices of wilted cheese on wheat bread. There was no power, no water, no Wi-Fi, no food, no toilets. Quite simply, there was no festival; hundreds found out too late and were stranded there...
Nov 02, 2022•1 hr 33 min
On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we talk beer. The history of beer is no less than the history of human civilization. Archaeologists and historians can track most major human innovations back to the need to make better beer. Its history is thousands of years old, and people think everything from the wheel to money and agriculture all come from a desire for people to have this fizzy goodness. It fed the Egyptians, pleased the Babylonians, and helped fuel the industrial revolution. If you...
Oct 28, 2022•1 hr 19 min
On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we get our nerd on and talk about Magic: The Gathering. Magic was the brainchild of Richard Garfield, and he published it through the little known gaming company called Wizards of the Coast. His concept was a card game that was cheap to make and was infinitely expandable. So, unlike other games, you didn’t just buy one copy and call it a day, but collected it and always had a thirst for more. In the past 30 years, this indie game has become ...
Oct 25, 2022•1 hr 35 min
On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we travel back in time to the end of World War Two and the Nuremberg Trials. These trials were a worldwide sensation at the end of the war. Their goal was complex: to bring justice to the world by trying the worst of the Nazi leaders. The top architects of the Third Reich had all killed themselves, but that left millions of Nazis to deal with. This trial created the notion of crimes against humanity and even had to invent the word Genocide to deal with t...
Oct 21, 2022•1 hr 27 min
On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look at one of the most famous bank robbers in American history, John Dillinger. Responsible for a dozen bank robberies in just one year of his crime spree, he became the ultimate dark celebrity of his day. Though he broke out of many prisons, murdered people, and spent nearly a decade in jail, he was a cult figure of an early American pop-culture. He ran with the likes of Baby Face Nelson and came up with some very creative ways to rob banks and sell...
Oct 18, 2022•1 hr 44 min
On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the ultimate music factory--Motown! This enterprise was like nothing else in the history of modern music. It released hundreds of top-ten hits and helped discover and cultivate acts like Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Rick James, and Lionel Ritchie. The head of the show was Berry Gordy Junior, the grandson of a plantation owner and slave, turned music mogul. Gordy hunted and honed musi...
Oct 07, 2022•1 hr 39 min
On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the legend that is Sean Connery. He was of course the first James Bond, a roll that rocketed him to global fame. For many, he’s the only Bond that ever mattered, eventually causing Bond’s creator Ian Fleming to even alter his books to be more like Connery. He was a legit badass, with famous fist fights between street gangs and gun toting American mobsters. Sean Connery’s ex-wife made claims of abuse, and though he said some unf...
Sep 30, 2022•1 hr 20 min
On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we travel back in time and look at the Pony Express. The Pony Express ran for only a year and a half, but was such an epic adventure that it still lives on as part of the mythology of the Old West. In 1860, several business men developed a system of riders going nonstop with mail, only pausing to eat and swap for a fresh horse. It was a dangerous job, especially since it took place in the middle of the Paiute War! Before the express, it took almost a mon...
Sep 28, 2022•1 hr 49 min
On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the infamous disappearance of Tara Calico. This true crime tale is over thirty years old, and it has some strange twists and turns. On September 20, 1988, she went on her daily bike ride and never came home. Chillingly, she told her mom that if she wasn’t back home by noon, she should come looking for her. Witnesses said a truck was stalking her, and signs of a scuffle and broken Walkman were found. Then? Nothing. Months later,...
Sep 23, 2022
On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we talk about one of the greatest athletes in all of recent history, Bo Jackson. Bo dominated sports and popular culture in the 1980s. He was the only athlete in history to be the MVP on both professional football and professional baseball. He broke record after record in the MBA and NFL, and when younger he was even up for the Olympic track and field team. He was made extra famous from the “Bo Knows” ad campaign from Nike. Bo wasn’t named Bo, but earned...
Sep 21, 2022
On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we travel back in time to look at one of the most badass lawmen of all time, Bass Reeves. You may not have ever heard of Bass Reeves. And that may be because he was black. Reeves was a deputy marshal and arrested over 3000 fugitives (the highest amount ever) in the most dangerous territory in the US. He was born a slave, fought in the Civil War on both sides, got in 14 gunfights with bandits, and is thought by some to be the genesis of everything from Th...
Sep 16, 2022•1 hr 14 min
On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the wild life, tragic death, and amazing comedy of Chris Farley. If you lived through the 90s, you couldn’t escape his presence. He was a break-out star on Saturday Night Live, and he was in some of the top comedies of his day (I’m looking at you Tommy Boy). He rolled with the likes of Adam Sandler, David Spade, and Chris Rock, and he partied. He partied a bit too hard. He was checked in to rehab a dozen times in two years, and...
Sep 15, 2022•1 hr 29 min
On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we take a look at the global Sand Mafia. Sand seems like a strange thing for organized crime to mess with, but it has become a global, dangerous phenomenon. With 50 billion tons of sand consumed globally, third world countries are selling off their sand through a mysterious system of third party corporations. Though sand is legal, the way it is mined is not. So, how dangerous is the Sand Mafia? Where do they operate? How much political pull ...
Sep 09, 2022•1 hr 16 min
Daves not here man .... This episode of the Sofa King Podcast is a discussion of the brutal regime of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Born Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili in December of 1878, he changed his name to Koba (a sort of Russian Robin Hood) and eventually settled on the new name of Stalin which meant “Man of Steel.” He was born to ordinary parents, but had a series of health complications as a child and a strange relationship with his mother, who wanted him to become a priest. If you...
Sep 02, 2022•1 hr 26 min
Daves not here man .... When he is we will be back =) On this episode of The Sofa King Podcast, we throw on our protective tinfoil headgear and step into a Faraday cage to talk about the famous Phoenix Lights. First witnessed on Thursday, March 13, 1997, the Phoenix Lights have been a topic of discussion among friends, colleagues, and strangers alike. Seen above the night skies of Arizona, the two events were witnessed and recorded by a number of people and while some settled for the delayed gov...
Aug 30, 2022•1 hr 39 min
On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the little-known secret of “closed towns,” most notably Russia’s City 40. City 40 was the old code name for what is now known as Ozersk. This is the birthplace of the Soviet Nuclear weapons program after the end WWII, and to this day, nobody is allowed into the city except its citizens. There are an estimated 100,000 people living in City 40 today, and it is the hub of Russian nuclear technology. A documentary called City 40 (directed by Sa...
Aug 23, 2022•1 hr 14 min
On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we turn to some True Crime and discuss the case of Leopold and Loeb. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb killed 14-year-old Bobby Frank on May 21, 1924. Why? Well, that one gets complicated. Both Leopold and Loeb were prodigies, child geniuses. They had each graduated from Ivy League colleges by age 17 or 18. Leopold thought that he was a Nietzschean superman and that typical laws and morality were below him. Loeb, apparently, was just down for ...
Aug 16, 2022
On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the Supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park. The Yellowstone Supervolcano is one of the few in the world, and if it ever erupts, it will be a world-ending, cataclysmic event. America will pretty much be a wasteland (and a good chunk of Canada…sorry neighbors to the north). If there is a super eruption, it will last for months, send magma nearly 70 miles into the sky, and bury a significant portion of the U.S. in over ten feet of burnin...
Aug 10, 2022•1 hr 19 min
On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about one of the most intelligent animals on planet earth, the Orca. People call them killer whales, which is pretty wrong on both parts. One, they aren’t whales. Second, they aren’t really killers—at least not of humans. Sure, the ones held captive will kill after they are driven mad, but in the wild, they treat humans playfully. They form one of the most sophisticated animal cultures on earth, have a robust language, and teach thei...
Aug 04, 2022•1 hr 31 min
On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we look at the one of the best comedic minds of our generation, Mike Judge. Judge blew up with his smash TV show Beavis and Butthead. It was an anthem to Generation X and a huge hit on MTV, spawning movies, and forcing people to do bad impressions of the main characters for years. He created King of the Hill which was a ratings hit, and he directed live action cult films such as Office Space and Idiocracy. Mike Judge has suffered controversy...
Jul 29, 2022•1 hr 24 min
On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we talk about a strange case of True Crime known as the Chowchilla Bus Kidnapping. In 1976, three men (Frederick Woods, James Schoenfeld, and Richard Schoenfeld) did the unthinkable. As bus driver Ed Ray was driving 26 children back from a pool outing, the kidnappers boarded their school bus and held them at gunpoint. Then, the children and Ray were forced to endure an 11 hour claustrophobic bus ride and were dumped into a buried moving truck for 16 hour...
Jul 28, 2022•1 hr 20 min
On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we turn our eyes to the heavens and talk about Solar Flares. These nasty little critters blast off of the sun in eleven year cycles and can wreak havoc with high tech equipment. In the past, people didn’t care much about this phenomenon. For one, they didn’t have telescopes to see them, and even once they did, they just didn’t matter. But now, living in a world of satellites, GPS, cell phones and radio waves, these bursts of electromagnetic energy could ...
Jul 22, 2022•1 hr 22 min
On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look at MTV. This little upstart cable channel first aired in 1981with very little content but a big dream. It fulfilled those dreams and then some. There would be no 1980s culture without MTV. The music, the fashion, the videos, all of it was first seen here. It low-key launched the careers of people like Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Spike Jonez, and John Stewart. It gave us Madonna’s sexy lace, Prince’s swagger, hair metal, music news, and Beavis and ...
Jul 15, 2022•1 hr 47 min
On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the king of the chase scene, Burt Reynolds. Reynolds gave us classic movies such as Smokey and the Bandit, Cannonball Run, and Hooper and became an icon and sex symbol for decades. From the disturbing Deliverance to the porn-heavy Boogie Nights, he ended having a wide range as an actor. He fell off the scene for a while and had a resurgence and Oscar nomination in the late 90s. What director did he hate working with? What did M...
Jul 12, 2022•1 hr 47 min
