A lot to unpack today! Who are the Amish? Why do they dress and live like it's still the 17th century? How are they related to Mennonites? What interpretation of Christianity led to them to the lifestyle they live today? Are they happy? Are they a cult? Today we'll explore the Anabaptist, Protestant Reformation origins of the Amish and how they differ from Mennonites. We'll look at their practices of Rumspringa and shunning. We'll examine why the refuse to drive cars or use computers. We'll also...
Feb 21, 2022•2 hr 48 min
At 1:40AM on February 2nd, 1980, a group of inmates at the New Mexico State Penitentiary attacked three guards doing their nightly count. What followed was one of the deadliest prison riots in US history. Drunk and angry inmates seized the prison, and 36 hours of Hell on Earth followed. 12 guards were taken hostage, 33 inmates were killed, and over 200 people were raped. Inmates were lit on fire, beheaded, and brutally tortured. When it was all over everyone wanted to know- what led to such carn...
Feb 14, 2022•2 hr 13 min
Attila the Hun! Does his name conjure up images of savagery in your mind? Of a bloodthirsty warrior-king who ruthlessly tortured and killed his enemies as he sacked city after city? An especially barbaric man who stood out for violence in a time known for so much violence? OR - was he a man of his times? Was he no more or less violent than the Romans, whose historians wrote his story? And when they wrote his story, how much was truth and how much was hyperbole and slander? Today we look into 5th...
Feb 07, 2022•2 hr 14 min
Arthur Shawcross was born on June 6th, 1945 in Kittery, Maine and he would grow up to terrorize the people of Watertown and Rochester, both in New York. Family, neighbors, schoolmates, and anyone else who met him knew he was "different" from an early age. He said odd things, he reacted unnaturally to various situations, he talked to himself, he didn't understand tone, sarcasm, irony, etc. And he was angry. And he was scary when he was angry. Soon, he was torturing and killing small animals and t...
Jan 31, 2022•2 hr 46 min
Did Scott Peterson REALLY kill Laci Peterson? Did you know that zero direct evidence tied him to these crimes? And a lot of the circumstantial evidence in this case was... very loose. And there were huge holes in the prosecution's case against him that they jury just didn't seem to care about. Did you know that numerous neighbors spotted Laci walking her dog in the neighborhood after Scott definitely left their home to head to the San Francisco Bay where and when he supposedly dumped her dead bo...
Jan 24, 2022•2 hr 33 min
Get ready for a brain buster. Or at least prepare to witness my brain being busted. Celtic mythology is... tricky to understand. And no one understands perfectly because the source material is scarce. A LOT has been written about Celtic mythology but so much of it is conjecture presented as fact. The ancient Celts themselves didn't write anything down. Their enemies did. As did the Catholic monks who came to island to conquer a people the Roman army could not. Today we familiarize ourselves with...
Jan 17, 2022•2 hr 26 min
Did you know that if lots of people have lots of unprotected sex and the men never ejaculate you can help Jesus create his kingdom on Earth? No? Well then you would NOT have been accepted into the Oneida Community Cult and you would've never gotten to live in a 93,000 square foot compound in Oneida, NY with around three hundred other followers. This is just one of the super crazy messages John Humphrey Noyes taught the followers living in his community. He also taught them that he was perfect. L...
Jan 10, 2022•2 hr 23 min
What, EXACTLY, is “prostitution”? How is it defined? Are prostitute and sex worker interchangeable terms? Why are most prostitutes women? Why are most clients men? Where does prostitution occur around the world? What is sex tourism? How does it harm? How does it help? What should the government’s role be regarding prostitution? Should it be legal or not? What do sex robots have to do with the future of prostitution? These are just a few of the questions we try to answer today with a particularly...
Jan 03, 2022•2 hr 42 min
Robert Smalls! He was born a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina in 1839. Then he'd pull off a daring sea-faring escape to the Union during the Civil War, then become the first black captain for the Union, then becoming a member of the US House of Representatives. He would die in the house he was born in - his former slave master's - a house he bought after the Civil War. His story is one of perseverance and grit - of refusing to quit no mater how the odds are stacked against you. After his story,...
Dec 27, 2021•2 hr 30 min
The Flatwoods Monster. The Whirling Whimpus. Devil Dogs and Sheepsquatch. The Virginia Moonshine Man-Possum, GreenBrier Skink-Skank, the Tiddle-Whisper Dragon of Johnson City, the Rocky Branch Giant Rape-Beetle, the Snallygaster. Which one of these are cryptids thought to exist by people in Appalachia? Which are creatures I made up for this episode? How do you say Appalachia? What does it mean to be Appalachian? Why does the hillbilly stereotype come from Appalachia? Why is the banjo associated ...
Dec 20, 2021•2 hr 25 min
In early 1992, young married couple Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka seemed to have a lot going for them. They'd just gotten married, Paul was making good money, and they were living in a nice house in scenic Port Dalhousie, Ontario. But they were harboring some real, real dark secrets. Paul was the Scarborough rapist - authorities had been looking for the man that raped over a dozen women going back at least five years. And together, the pair had now raped and killed at least two women. And thei...
Dec 13, 2021•2 hr 35 min
Did you know that Hunter S Thompson of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas fame was one of the first people to bring national attention to the Hells Angels? Or that they were founded by soldiers returning home from World War 2? Or that a Marlon Brando movie in the 1950's also lead to growth of not just the Hells Angels but other Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, as the US Justice Department likes to call them? Who are the real Sons of Anarchy? Big informative episode today about the Hells Angels, the history ...
Dec 06, 2021•2 hr 36 min
Covering a lot of ground today! Going over the history of human opioid usage - the opium poppy is one helluva plant. What different types of opiates and opioids are out there? Why are we having a record number of opioid overdose deaths now when we've been using opiates going back at least as far as the ancient Sumerians? What changed in the 1980's to lay the ground work for the opioid epidemic we have today in the United States? What is Big Pharma's role in this epidemic? What are we doing to he...
Nov 29, 2021•2 hr 48 min
I had a lot of fun on this one taking a nostalgic look at US culture in 1989 and 1993. Also found the story of Lyle and Erik Menendez incredibly interesting. Why did two brothers viciously murder their parents with shotguns in the summer of 1989? Erik was about to enroll in UCLA. Lyle was attending Princeton. Their parents spoiled them with money for lavish shopping trips, vacations, fancy cars, condos, and more. They grew up in affluence. Their parents lived in a Beverly Hills mansion that Mich...
Nov 22, 2021•2 hr 48 min
Levi Boone Helm. The Kentucky Cannibal. Born in 1828 in Kentucky, and hanged in Montana Territory in 1864, this guy was mayhem on legs. He spent nearly his entire adult life fighting, robbing, killing, and running from the law. He killed at least 18 men in various shootouts and other violent encounters. He ended up stuck way out in the woods on numerous occasions with no option for food other than to eat another grown man, which he did if he got hungry enough. He spent his final days riding with...
Nov 15, 2021•2 hr 13 min
Aum Shinrikyo was a Japanese doomsday cult led by psychotic madman Shoko Asahara, a man who claimed to be Jesus who was nicknamed the Japanese Charles Manson. He was actually a much more dangerous cult leader than Manson was. He pulled tens of thousands into his dark insanity, instead of just a handful. He had thousands of followers willing to help him violently bring about the end times. Aum started in the 1980s as a small spiritual group based on tenets of Buddhism. And then he soon incorporat...
Nov 08, 2021•2 hr 22 min
Who put the rock-a-bye-baby up in the tree branch, and why? Seems irresponsible. When it was raining and pouring, why didn't the old man get out of bed after bumping his head? Did he die? What is Ring Around the Rosie really about? The bubonic plague? Why are we singing to small children about cutting the tails off of three blind mice? Who wrote all the strange, often dark, mostly weird old nursery rhymes kids have been memorizing for centuries? We look into all of this and more today. Such a fu...
Nov 01, 2021•2 hr 11 min
Happy Halloween! This episode feels appropriately dark enough for Halloween week. French serial killer Marcel Petiot was an evil genius. A master manipulator. And the greatest scam artist we've covered here so far. He likely lied his way into a medical degree. He ended up working at a psychiatric hospital when he was supposed to be a patient. He collected 100% disability payments while working full time as a doctor while also double charging his patients. He built his practice up by slandering o...
Oct 25, 2021•2 hr 18 min
The Oregon Trail was 2,100 plus mile journey from Independence, Missouri all the way to Oregon City, Oregon. And along this trail and its offshoots, between 1841 and 1869, somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 travelers headed West, motivated by the philosophy of Manifest Destiny and the hope for economic prosperity. The Homestead Act and the Monroe Doctrine also fueled US westward expansion. The journey to get oneself a 160 acre homestead was not for the faint of heart. Somewhere between 1 in 1...
Oct 18, 2021•2 hr 34 min
Oh boy. This is an especially weird one. Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. In the summer of 1965, John C. Lilly, a medic and neuroscientist, and his assistant Margaret Howe, a young lady who just happened to live nearby, would set up a partially-flooded house on St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, where Margaret would spend nearly twenty-four hours a day with a young bottlenose dolphin named Peter. Where she would have sex with this dolphin. Why? To help it learn English. Why? So...
Oct 11, 2021•2 hr 13 min
Today we head to The Rock, America's Devil Island - Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. So much prison-related info and history to go over today! I'll share the history of Alcatraz Island - how it was discovered by a Spanish explorer, then went from a lighthouse and US military fort, to a US military prison, to the end of the line for the most unruly prisoners in the United States federal penitentiary system, to a national park. I'll share brief bios on some of its most infamous inmates, like Al Capo...
Oct 04, 2021•2 hr 37 min
William Bonin is a little known serial killer who died via lethal injection in 1996 in San Quentin, after sitting on California's death row for over a decade. Surprising that he isn't more well known considering how shocking his crimes were. He was only active as a serial killer for a year, from May of 1979 to June of 1980, but he would be convicted of fourteen murders. And law enforcement was certain he killed at least another seven victims. All boys and young men. All bound, beaten, sodomized,...
Sep 27, 2021•2 hr 26 min
I'm guessing you know of the Jehovah's Witnesses. You've heard of them. Maybe you've noticed their "Kingdom Halls." Maybe they've knocked on your door. But - do you really know anything about them? Before this week, I didn't. Now that I do, I will NEVER look at them the same way again. The Jehovah's may not live on a compound, but, in my opinion they are a dangerous doomsday cult. Their continual focus on impending Armageddon has hurt so, so many lives. And so has their "Two Witness Rule." The G...
Sep 20, 2021•2 hr 47 min
Lonnie David Franklin Jr. was but one of the numerous prolific serial killers preying on sex workers in South Central Los Angeles in the 1980s. And then after possibly going to "sleep" during the 1990s, he started killing again in the first decade of the 2000's. The Grim Sleeper preyed almost exclusively on black, female, crack-addicted sex workers in South Central where he lived. South Central was in the midst of a crack epidemic when he got started in 1985 (or possibly 1984), and by the time h...
Sep 13, 2021•2 hr 33 min
Robin Williams knew how to make people feel deeply. He could give you a belly laugh - or a cathartic cry. He knew how to entertain you in a way that only he could. He seemingly had so much energy it's like he vibrated around instead of walking like the rest of us. His mind seemed to move so FAST. And then his brilliant mind betrayed him. Or, rather, his mind just wasn't able to defend him from the cruel and degenerative disease of Lewy Body Dementia. With the diagnosis not coming until two years...
Sep 06, 2021•2 hr 36 min
Let's get royal, Meatsacks! Born a minor aristocrat, Diana Spencer grew up to become one of the most famous people of all time. For years, she was the most photographed person in all of England if not the entire world. The tabloids adored her. Why? She appeared to be the real-life version of possibly the most popular fantasy ever - the fabled princess swept up by Prince Charming! But her life was no fairy tale. She suffered mental health issues, was married to a man who never loved her, bullied ...
Aug 30, 2021•2 hr 12 min
Oh boy. Did you know that some people think that Avril Lavigne, Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Eminem, some guy named Donald Marshall, and many other celebrities have been cloned? There are conspiracies revolving around underground cloning centers created and run by illuminati global elites who sometimes kill celebrities who don't follow orders and then clone them to keep making music money mostly. Donny and his clones have been busy writing hit songs since before he was five years old. Most of the mu...
Aug 23, 2021•2 hr 22 min
Mark Twitchell really wanted to become a serial killer. In 2008, after discovering the Showtime series, Dexter, it had become his latest obsession. The aspiring filmmaker felt like he related to Dexter Morgan, the methodical serial killer so good at continually covering his tracks. Mark thought he was just as clever as Dexter, and would be able to get away with murder just as easily. Boy was he wrong. Mark constantly overrated his abilities. As a filmmaker, as a businessman, as a lover, and as a...
Aug 16, 2021•2 hr 32 min
A very recent Christian militant cult, the Aggressive Christianity Mission Training Corps was founded in the late 1970s by married couple Lila and Jim Green. Lila would later change her name to Deborah, after the biblical prophetess of the God of the Israelites and the only female judge mentioned in the Bible. And she ruled her cult with an iron fist. And then, after decades of keeping her cult members continually worried about the devil and engaging in strange rituals like giving birth to spiri...
Aug 09, 2021•2 hr 56 min
Lot to unpack in this one! Today we are blending history, aliens, and conspiracy. We'll be talking about the Ancient Sumerians - quite possibly the world's first civilization. Who were they and what "firsts" did they contribute to human civilization? Why did their culture flourish so long ago? We'll go over one of the oldest, if not the oldest written story in the world - the epic of Gilgamesh. And then, we'll look into how Ancient Sumerians connects to Ancient Aliens/Astronaut Theory. What is t...
Aug 02, 2021•2 hr 38 min
