For centuries, Japan was ruled by a military dictatorship, the Shogunate, and the samurais were the enforcers of this rule. The samurai was soldier, police officer, judge, jury, and executioner. He was the warrior that would rather die than bring dishonor to himself, his family, or his daimyo. His days and ways were highly ritualized. Molded by Buddhist, Confucian, and Shintoist philosophy, his sword was his soul and he carried it with him throughout his days and slept with it by his side throug...
Sep 14, 2018•1 hr 58 min
The Children of God cult aka The Family aka The Family International is still around today which is very disturbing considering their twisted origins and disgusting, sexually exploitive doctrinal past. Founded by David "Huge Perv" Berg in 1968 in Huntington Beach, California, they now operate to an unknown degree internationally, basing their existence in a highly sexualized interpretation of Biblical teachings, interpreting God's love as being expressed best through sex. Berg initially took a s...
Sep 10, 2018•1 hr 49 min
On January 22nd, 1987, forty-seven year-old R. Budd Dwyer, Republican State Treasurer of Pennsylvania, held a press conference in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to address his recent conviction on eleven counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, perjury, and interstate transportation in the aid of racketeering. The married father of two faced up to fifty-five years in prison and a $300,000 fine. He was scheduled to be sentenced the very next day, January 23rd, by a judge who he knew intended to make an exampl...
Sep 03, 2018•1 hr 44 min
Immigration! Man - what a big, complicated topic. What is the Unite State's history with immigration? How much have policies changed over the years? How does illegal immigration actually affect the economy? How does illegal immigration actually affect crime rates? Would building a wall even be effective? Who should we let in? Who should we keep out? I do my best to present as much information as possible to help us all think about this very relevant topic and keep it entertaining! I learned a lo...
Aug 27, 2018•2 hr 22 min
Dean Arnold Corll. The Candyman Killer. A Texas momma’s boy who first made friends with local kids by handing out candy from his family’s Houston candy store like the absolute creep he was. A man who then groomed a teen boy to be his murder, rape, and torture accomplice and then convinced a second teen boy to also help them; a second boy who would eventually shoot Dean dead. Before getting shot, Dean killed at least twenty-nine Houston area teens between 1970 and 1973, most dying just about the ...
Aug 20, 2018•1 hr 48 min
Well, you asked for it. We got a bunch of emails to do something special for the 100th Monday episode of TImesuck and the main request was to do Timesuck's version of Drunk History. So, the good folks from fantastic restaurant 10/six in Couer d'Alene brought over crawfish etouffee, beignets, whiskey, beer, and mixed up some hurricanes... and I got blackout drunk. I don't start out drunk - it was a steady progression. Started out buzzed for the first sixty minutes or so of the recording and then,...
Aug 13, 2018•2 hr 22 min
What actually goes on at Area 51? There are two competing narratives. One involves a series of classified Cold War projects involving covert aerial surveillance aircraft and nuclear weapons testing, and then there is the conspiracy-laden, primarily extraterrestrial-based and fascinating UFO lore. So which is it? Or, is it both? We dig into the "official" narrative based primarily on leaked CIA documents and also at conspiracies put forth by various people claiming to have witnessed what actually...
Aug 06, 2018•1 hr 41 min
Werewolves! Awhoooooooo! Shape-shifting creatures of the night with unusual speed, otherworldly strength, lightning fast reflexes, and incredibly heightened senses. Monsters who can be a gentle, thoughtful human being one moment and a feral, wild bloodthirsty beast the next. Sometimes a dark creature associated with vampires and witches, and sometimes and innocent victim of a terrible curse doomed to heed the call of the moon and feast on human flesh, the werewolf has taken many forms throughout...
Aug 03, 2018•1 hr 38 min
John Wilkes Booth wasn't some community theater bit player. He wasn't a bartender who did summer theater. He was one of the most famous actors of the day and a member of THE most famous acting family of the 19th century. And he killed the President. He killed the President after putting together several failed plans to kidnap the President. He was a heartthrob dubbed by some theater critics as "the most handsome man in America". Imagine Ryan Gosling or Tom Hardy trying to kill the President toda...
Jul 30, 2018•2 hr
Spartacus was a Thracian gladiator who escaped his gladiatorial school in Capua with about 70 other gladiators and slaves and then led a slave rebellion against the armies of Rome in the 1st century BCE , commanding a fighting force that grew to an army of 90,000–120,000 strong. We explore his fight and the interesting history of Roman gladiatorial combat in today's Suck. Men (and women!) facing off against each other in arenas, forums, and coliseums in fights that often lasted until severe inju...
Jul 23, 2018•1 hr 46 min
Billed now as the Pennhurst Haunted Asylum, Pennhurst was never an asylum. It wasn't a home for the mentally ill when it first opened its doors in 1908. It was a home for epileptics and the intellectually disabled, then called "idiotic" and "feeble-minded". And then it became a home for basically everyone society either didn't want to take care of or didn't know how to take care of. And it soon became severely overcrowded. And then it became both overcrowded and underfunded. And then it became a...
Jul 16, 2018•1 hr 42 min
WARNING/DISCLAIMER: This is the most disturbing episode of Timesuck thus far. To the point I considered not releasing it. Maybe it just hit me unusually hard for some reason but the crime scene details are very sexually explicit and haunting. If descriptions of sexual torture trigger you in any way, sit this one out! David Parker Ray, the Toy Box Killer, kidnapped, sexually tortured, and possibly murdered an untold amount of women in the American Southwest in the 1990s (and maybe even earlier th...
Jul 13, 2018•1 hr 54 min
Pancho Villa! Pancho Villa was a revolutionary fighter who despised the wealthy landowners who had subjugated the impoverished farming class, comprised of mostly indigenous people, since long before he was born. He stole from the rich and gave to the poor. He also stole from the rich to fuel the various wars he fought in, all of which had the same goal - to topple Mexico’s existing power structure and redistribute the wealth the upper 1% possessed amongst the poor. He was one of the world’s firs...
Jul 09, 2018•1 hr 42 min
The story of the Donner Party is one of the most disturbing tales of western migration during the time of Manifest Destiny, the common 19th-century belief that the United States was destined to expand across the entire continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Well, the destiny of many of the members of the Donner Party was to spread their actual bones around a frozen Sierra Nevada mountain camp as they were eaten by other members of their party. That's what they manifested. Theirs is a ...
Jul 02, 2018•1 hr 44 min
Today we’re talking about the Aztecs! The Aztecs built a vast empire, one that outpaced, out-staged, and out-populated the likes of Paris at the time. They were a powerhouse warrior based society with an interesting obsession with human sacrifice. When did they show up? When did they build their empire? And what happened when the Spaniard Hernan Cortes showed up with 400 soldiers? An amazing city built on a lake, a prophecy falsely fulfilled, the worst ball game ever played, and a lot of violent...
Jun 25, 2018•2 hr
The Knights Templar fought their last stand in the Holy Land (their last proper stand) in Acre in 1291 and shit was epic. They went down, but, they didn't go down easy. And then, less than two decades later, a corrupt French King forced a weak Pope into ending the long reign of the Knights Templar. And by 1312, according to historians, the Order of the Knights of the Temple had been completely dissolved. Or were they!?! Conspiracy theorists say no. They say the Knights have done all kinds of shi...
Jun 22, 2018•1 hr 49 min
The Knights Templar was founded in 1119 CE on the principles of chastity, obedience and poverty - but they soon, ironically became immensely wealthy and obedient to almost no one but themselves and the Pope. The Templars financed wars, built castles, ran cities, raised armies, and so much more. From meager beginnings they became as mighty an outfit as existed during the later Middle Ages. They were more powerful, wealthier, and better armed than some entire medieval kingdoms. Today, more than se...
Jun 18, 2018•1 hr 52 min
The Ma Barker gang robbed bank, after bank, after drugstore, after hardware store, clothing store, Chevy dealership, jewelry store, and still more banks in the early 1930s. They committed more robberies and took more lives than the much more famous Dillinger Gang. The Dillinger Gang was active for less than one year. The Barker-Karpis gang was active from 1931 to 1935. FDR called them out on national radio during one of his famous fireside chats, referring to them as “an attack on everything we ...
Jun 11, 2018•1 hr 57 min
On Tuesday, April 24th, 2018, Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, was taken into custody by local police and FBI agents when he stepped outside his Citrus Heights home, a quiet suburb of Sacramento. The man believed to be the East Area Rapist, also known as the Golden State Killer, the Visalia Ransacker, and the Original Night Stalker had finally been captured, forty-four years after his crime spree began. He’d started ransacking over 100 Sacramento area homes in 1974. He’d progressed from burglary to ra...
Jun 04, 2018•1 hr 52 min
Edgar Allan Poe did more than write The Raven and look creepy. He also basically invented the modern detective story. He was America's first "master of suspense" according to Stephen King and many other modern authors. He changed the way American authors wrote scary stories. He changed the way authors in general approached their craft, both creatively and business-wise. And yet he died penniless after a lifetime of financial struggle. And he married his thirteen-year-old first-cousin and died a ...
Jun 01, 2018•1 hr 52 min
Joan of Arc was BURNED ALIVE on May 30th, 1431 CE, something no one ever aspires to have written on their obituary. She fought to end the Hundred Years' War between England and France on behalf of Charles VII, the King of France she would help crown. How did a rural farmer's daughter with no military training end up in charge of thousands of French soldiers? Why did Charles even allow a seventeen year old girl into the army in an age when women didn't go to war? Prophecies fulfilled, battles fou...
May 28, 2018•2 hr 3 min
An alarming number of Japanese citizens have taken a dark pilgrimage to the Aokigahara forest, more commonly known as Japan’s suicide forest, to end their lives, most commonly by hanging themselves from some of the forest's tree branches. Why? Why here? Why is a small patch of serene forest the second most popular suicide destination in the world, thought to trail only the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco? We’re gonna break down Japan’s suicide dilemma, both within the suicide forest and outs...
May 21, 2018•1 hr 45 min
Cold Open: The Men in Black. The men who inspired the movies, not Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. Who or what are they? Aliens? Extra top secret government officials specializing in suppressing UFO-related information? Modern folklore? Absolute and utter whackadoodle, crystal-powered horse shit? All of this and more explored on a Suck that veers a little less dark than recent episodes and maybe a little more fun. Let’s get paranormal! Let’s try to explain the unexplainable! Let’s get weird, toda...
May 14, 2018•1 hr 42 min
From August seventh to September tenth, 1888, a crazed killer who came to be known as "Jack the Ripper” terrorized the Whitechapel district of London's impoverished East End. This extremely violent sadist brutally killed at least five prostitutes, mutilating their bodies in a highly unusual manner. And today we Suck into the details of his crimes, who he could’ve been, who his victims were, and how absolutely terrible life was for the economically enslaved inhabitants of the East End of London a...
May 11, 2018•1 hr 54 min
Gary "The Green River Killer" Ridgway is currently in prison in Walla Walla, Washington, having been convicted of 49 different murders, most of which took place in the early and mid-1980s. It took investigators nearly 20 years to catch this seemingly normal suburban married Seattle-area father and big rig painter by day and young prostitute murdering monster by night. But thankfully, he was caught thanks to the Green River Task Force never giving up. We cover the life and horrible times of the m...
May 07, 2018•1 hr 53 min
The Spanish Inquisition started in 1478 and lasted all the way until 1834 - and it was terrible the whole time. But it was at its worst in the first hundred years, when thousands and thousands of innocent people living in the new Spanish Empire were ruthlessly tortured and many of them burned alive for, mostly, maybe being Jewish in a country that was aggressively Catholic. Find out how the Catholic church rose to power, how the Spanish empire was formed, why inquisitions were carried out, and h...
Apr 30, 2018•1 hr 50 min
In 1973, 21 year old German college student Anneliese Michel began to descend into an existence of pure and utter madness. She had begun to see the faces of demons appear around her with increasing frequency. She awoke more and more often in the middle of the night, unable to move, unable to scream out, feeling an evil presence overtake her body. Her life had become a never ending parade of visits to doctors and prayer. And neither priest nor neurosurgeon seemed able to help her. And for the las...
Apr 23, 2018•1 hr 59 min
Anneliese Michel would die in a small, German town on July 1st, 1976. The official cause of death? Malnutrition and dehydration. But why did she stop eating? Mental illness? She’d seen a plethora of doctors for years, none of whom could determine, beyond epilepsy, exactly what was wrong. Brain scans revealed nothing abnormal. Why was she hearing voices? Was she simply suffering from a mental illness local doctors just weren’t knowledgeable enough to identify and treat? If so, how does mental ill...
Apr 20, 2018•1 hr 29 min
The Lost Books of the Bible! Is that really what we’re talking about today on Timesuck? Yes. Was I super excited to dive into this topic when I found out our Space Lizard listeners voted it in on the app? No! I mean, we just did an episode last week with a strong Christian theme! And now we’re doing another? Yep. And it's awesome. Turns out, once again, the wisdom of the Space Lizard community has surpassed my own. This is a great topic! A fascinating topic. A very hard topic to research - you g...
Apr 16, 2018•1 hr 42 min
The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), founded by hatemonger Fred Phelps, is an American church (cult) known for protesting funerals with preposterously homophobic signs and for its use of inflammatory hate speech, especially against LGBT+ people. They also hate Catholics, Jews, Muslims, soldiers, America, and more. They hate almost everyone. The Southern Poverty Law Center has called the WBC, “arguably the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America.” Find out why they believe what they do, and ...
Apr 09, 2018•1 hr 30 min
