Podcasts about smithsonian magazine

Come explore the Galloway Hoard with me, a Viking era treasure hoard found buried beneath a field in Galloway, Scotland back in 2014. Silver Viking arm bands, a rock crystal jar dating back to ancient Rome, a silver vessel from 4,000 miles away in present day Iran - these treasures hidden around the year 900 are incredible. But, upon closer inspection, they raise more questions than answers. Is this actually Viking treasure? Arm bands are very Viking. But then why do they have inscriptions on them written in Anglo-Saxon runes, a form of Old English? Why is there a Christian cross? Reference to a Bishop? And what does the mysterious inscription "DIS IS IIGNA F" mean? We'll uncover all of this and more to reveal a tumultuous time in an ever changing world. Support the show! Join the Patreon (patreon.com/historyfixpodcast)Buy some merchBuy Me a CoffeeVenmo @Shea-LaFountaineSources:National Museums Scotland "Discover the Galloway Hoard"Smithsonian Magazine "A Proposed Translation Hints at the Origins of the Mysterious Galloway Hoard"NorthLink Ferries "The Galloway Hoard - an interview with Martin Goldberg"Wikipedia "Galloway Hoard"Shoot me a message! Support the show

Episode 113 For decades, the people of Cleveland watched their river catch fire—and barely seemed to care. In this special two-year anniversary episode of Crime to Burn, we dive into the astonishing history of the Cuyahoga River. Long before the Environmental Protection Agency existed, the Cuyahoga River became a dumping ground for oil, industrial waste, sewage, and chemical runoff. The result? A river that burned not once, but at least thirteen documented times. But the burning river is only half the story. As pollution worsened, Cleveland embarked on an ambitious effort to secure cleaner drinking water by constructing massive offshore intake tunnels beneath Lake Erie. What followed was a decades-long saga of explosions, cave-ins, toxic gas, decompression sickness, fires, and rescue attempts that claimed dozens of lives. In this episode, we explore: Why the Cuyahoga River kept catching fire How industrial pollution transformed a waterway into a recurring fire hazard The deadly construction of Cleveland's offshore water tunnels The 1916 tunnel disaster that killed nineteen workers Garrett Morgan's heroic rescue efforts using an early gas mask The massive 1952 river fire that became one of the largest in American history How a photograph of the wrong fire helped spark the environmental movement The surprising recovery of a river once considered biologically dead What happens when a city becomes so accustomed to disaster that a burning river feels normal? Join us as we examine one of the most remarkable environmental and industrial stories in American history—a tale of flaming waterways, deadly engineering projects, political indifference, and a river that ultimately helped change the nation. CHECK OUT MY NEW AUTHOR WEBSITE: www.anauthornamedapril.com The Crime to Burn Patreon - The Cult of Steve - is LIVE NOW! Go join and get all the unhinged you can handle. Click here to be sanctified.  Inner Sanctum Acknowledgments: Eternal gratitude to our Inner Sanctum patrons, Melanie Curtis, Jenny Mercer, Laura Pisciotta, and Jason Wolfe for helping us bring light to the stories others would rather leave in the ashes. Listener discretion is advised. Background music by Not Notoriously Coordinated  Get your Crime to Burn Merch! https://crimetoburn.myspreadshop.com Please follow us on Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok and Youtube for the latest news on this case. You can email us at crimetoburn@gmail.com We welcome any constructive feedback and would greatly appreciate a 5 star rating and review.  If you need a way to keep your canine contained, you can also support the show by purchasing a Pawious wireless dog fence using our affiliate link and use the code "crimetoburn" at checkout to receive 10% off. Pawious, because our dog Winston needed a radius, not a rap sheet.  SOURCES: Bellamy, John Stark. Cleveland's Greatest Disasters! 16 Tragic True Tales of Death and Destruction: An Anthology. Cleveland, OH: Gray & Company, Publishers, 2009. Boissoneault, Lorraine. "The Cuyahoga River Caught Fire at Least a Dozen Times, but No One Cared Until 1969." Smithsonian Magazine, June 19, 2019. Smithsonian Magazine Article Dubelko, Jim. "The 1916 Waterworks Tunnel Disaster – Twenty Clevelanders Die Four Miles Out in Lake Erie." Cleveland Historical. Cleveland Historical Article "River Burned 13 Times and Changed the Nation Forever." Wild Versus YouTube Channel, January 4, 2025. Wild Versus Video "U.S. River Burned for Over 100 Years – You Won't Believe How It Recovered." Make Tech Future YouTube Channel, February 4, 2026. Make Tech Future Video Source for the bonus story at the end: "Replacement Window." GoFundMe Campaign. GoFundMe Page

This week we're traveling back to 1940s Germany (yup, this is a heavy one, folks) with Nuremberg! Join us as we learn about real-life figures like Douglas Kelley, Emmy Goering, Howie Triest, and more! Sources: James Wylie, "The Battle to Be 'First Lady of the Third Reich.'" Daily Telegraph (London), November 14, 2019, 22,23. EBSCOhost. Richard J. Evans. 2015. The Third Reich in History and Memory. Oxford University Press. EBSCOhost. George Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality. New York: Howard Fertig, 1985 "Frau Goering Gets Year, but is Freed," New York Times, 22 July 1948, available at https://www.nytimes.com/1948/07/22/archives/frau-goering-gets-year-but-is-freed-court-also-confiscates-30-of.html https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/the-err-and-the-nazi-partys-systematic-looting-of-europe-xmbqkk/8289/ https://www.errproject.org/jeudepaume/about/err.php Douglas Kelley, 22 Cells in Nuremberg, https://archive.org/details/22-cells-in-nuremberg-douglas-m-kelley-z-library/page/n7/mode/2up  Jack El-Hai, "The Psychiatrist and the Nazi," World War II 28, no. 5 (2014): 38-45.  Jack El-Hai, "The Nazi and the Psychiatrist," Scientific American, (2011), https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-nazi-and-the-psychiatrist/  Martin Levinson, "General Semantics and PTSD in the Military," ETC: A Review of General Semantics, 72, no.3 (2015): 258-64, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24762164 . Meilan Solly, "The True Story Behind 'Nuremberg,' a WWII Drama About Hermann Goring's Cat-and-Mouse Game With an American Psychiatrist," Smithsonian Magazine (2025) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-true-story-behind-nuremberg-a-wwii-drama-about-hermann-gorings-cat-and-mouse-game-with-an-american-psychiatrist-180987621/  José Brunner, ""Oh Those Crazy Cards Again": A History of the Debate on the Nazi Rorschachs, 1946-2001," Political Psychology 22, no.2 (2001): 233-61, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3791925  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_(2025_film) Interview with James Vanderbilt, NPR: https://www.npr.org/2025/11/11/nx-s1-5487719/nuremberg-james-vanderbilt https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/nuremberg-james-vanderbilt-interview Mario Cacciotollo, "Jewish Army Translator Who Got Close to the Nazis," BBC, available at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-14706309

Today, we continue our Summer Forecast with Dr. Lanta Davis, who will be teaching "Imagination and Spiritual Formation" at Regent Summer School from June 29 - July 3. In this conversation, Lanta introduces us to how the imagination shapes our lives with God. She brings us back through Christian history to show how visual art, stories, and symbols shape our faith, identity, and understanding of God. We discuss how the contemporary imagination is being influenced by consumerism and political agendas, and reflect on the power of images of Jesus in particular. Lanta takes us deep into the fascinating world of saints' lives and bestiaries as sources that train and model our imaginative capacities, but also gives practical suggestions for ways to practice growing our imaginative capacities through visual art and literature. We hope you enjoy this conversation and consider joining us this summer for a class that may contain unicorns!Lanta's BioDr. Lanta Davis writes and teaches about the sacramental imagination, beauty, and character formation. Her book, Becoming by Beholding: The Power of the Imagination in Spiritual Formation (Baker, 2024), was named one of Christianity Today's best books of the year. Her writing has also appeared in publications such as Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic, Christianity Today, Plough, Parabola, and Christian Century. As a Professor of Humanities and Literature for the John Wesley Honors College at Indiana Wesleyan University, she has researched and lectured on topics as diverse as ancient Christian mosaics, sacred architecture, virtues and vices, pilgrimages, memento mori art, and contemporary Irish fiction. She will be teaching Imagination and Spiritual Formation at Regent from June 29 to July 3. Regent College PodcastThanks for listening. Please like, rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice and share this episode with a friend. Follow Us on Social MediaFacebookInstagramYoutubeKeep in TouchRegent CollegeSummer ProgramsRegent College Newsletter

The truth is what our minds dwell on forms us. The stories and images we behold imprint themselves on us, shape who we become, and impact how we see the world. In this way, our imaginations are powerful. In today's episode, Lanta Davis helps us better understand the power of our imaginations and how what we dwell on forms who are becoming. Lanta Davis is professor of humanities and literature in the John Wesley Honors College at Indiana Wesleyan University and the author of Becoming by Beholding: The Power of the Imagination in Spiritual Formation. Her writing has appeared in Christianity Today, the Christian Century, Smithsonian Magazine, Plough, and Christ and Pop Culture. In my time with Lanta, she discusses the importance of training our imaginations, why the imagination is a ‘stamp for the soul,' and how and why it's important to allow beauty to shape our imaginations.Lanta's insights are fascinating and formational; I can't wait for you to listen to our conversation.Buy Melissa L. Johnson's book, Soul-Deep Beauty: Fighting for Our True Worth in a World Demanding Flawless, here. Learn more about Impossible Beauty and join the community here.

This episode draws on experimental and review literature on mirror-gazing, strange-face illusions, anomalous self-experience, dissociation, agency, face pareidolia, and face-distortion disorders, especially the work of Giovanni B. Caputo, Caputo/Lynn/Houran, Mash et al., Bregman-Hai and Soffer-Dudek, Derome et al., Palmer and Clifford, and Blom et al. Historical and occult context comes from research on catoptromancy, John Dee's angelic scrying records, the British Museum's “Dr Dee's Magical Mirror,” Campbell et al.'s Antiquity study on the mirror's Mexican/Aztec obsidian origin, and Mesoamerican material on Tezcatlipoca and the “Smoking Mirror.”Links For The Occult Rejectshttps://linktr.ee/theoccultrejectsOccult Research Institutehttps://www.occultresearchinstitute.org/Cash Apphttps://cash.app/$theoccultrejectsVenmo@TheOccultRejectsBuy Me A Coffeebuymeacoffee.com/TheOccultRejectsPatreonhttps://www.patreon.com/TheOccultRejectsCore Scientific Sources: Mirror-Gazing, Strange Faces, and Altered Self-ExperienceCaputo, Giovanni B. “Strange-Face-in-the-Mirror Illusion.” Perception 39, no. 7, 2010, 1007–1008.Key use: This is the main science anchor for the episode. Caputo showed that prolonged mirror-gazing under low illumination can produce strange-face apparitions, including distortions, unknown faces, monstrous faces, animal-like faces, archetypal faces, and faces of relatives or deceased people.Caputo, Giovanni B., Steven Jay Lynn, and James Houran. “Mirror- and Eye-Gazing: An Integrative Review of Induced Altered and Anomalous Experiences.” Imagination, Cognition and Personality 40, no. 4, 2021, 418–457.Key use: This is one of the strongest overview sources. It reviews empirical studies on mirror-gazing, psychomanteum work, and eye-to-eye gazing, especially in relation to altered perception, anomalous experiences, bodily experience, and self-identity.Mash, Joanna, Paul M. Jenkinson, Charlotte E. Dean, and Keith R. Laws. “Strange Face Illusions: A Systematic Review and Quality Analysis.” Consciousness and Cognition 109, 2023, article 103480.Key use: Newer review source. Useful because it supports strange-face illusions as a reliable phenomenon in both mirror-gazing and interpersonal gazing, while also warning that stronger research is still needed on mechanisms and prevalence.Bregman-Hai, Noa, and Nirit Soffer-Dudek. “Mirror-Gazing-Induced Dissociation Impairs Self-Reported and Implicit Sense of Agency: A Causal Investigation of Dissociation and Agency Under Controlled Laboratory Conditions.” PLOS ONE 21, no. 2, 2026, e0341316.Key use: Excellent source for the agency section. This connects mirror-gazing-induced dissociation with weakened sense of agency, which pairs well with mediumship, possession, automatic writing, and the feeling that “something else” is present.Derome, Mélodie, Eduardo Fonseca-Pedrero, Giovanni Battista Caputo, and Martin Debbané. “A Developmental Study of Mirror-Gazing-Induced Anomalous Self-Experiences and Self-Reported Schizotypy from 7 to 28 Years of Age.” Psychopathology 55, no. 1, 2022, 49–61.Key use: Useful developmental source. It connects mirror-gazing-induced anomalous self-experiences with age, self-perception, and schizotypal traits.Caputo, Giovanni B. “Visual Perception During Mirror-Gazing at One's Own Face in Patients with Depression.” The Scientific World Journal, 2014.Key use: Useful for the emotion/self-face relationship section. Caputo found that strange-face apparitions were reduced in patients with depression compared with healthy controls, including shorter duration, fewer strange faces, weaker intensity, and lower emotional response.Tramacere, Antonella. “Face Yourself: The Social Neuroscience of Mirror Gazing.” Frontiers in Psychology 13, 2022, article 949211.Key use: Strong support for the idea that mirror-gazing is like seeing yourself as another. It connects self-face perception with social neuroscience and the overlap between how we perceive our own face and the faces of others.Chakraborty, Anya C., and Bhismadev Chakrabarti. “Looking at My Own Face: Visual Processing Strategies in Self–Other Face Recognition.” Frontiers in Psychology 9, 2018.Key use: Useful for the self-face recognition section. This study looks at how people process their own face compared with other faces.Conty, Laurence, Nathalie George, and Jari K. Hietanen. “Watching Eyes Effects: When Others Meet the Self.” Consciousness and Cognition 45, 2016, 184–197.Key use: Best support for the gaze/presence section. It argues that direct gaze captures attention and triggers self-referential processing, which helps explain why a mirror can make the viewer feel watched.Face Perception, Pareidolia, and Monstrous DistortionPalmer, Colin J., and Colin W. G. Clifford. “Face Pareidolia Recruits Mechanisms for Detecting Human Social Attention.” Psychological Science 31, no. 8, 2020, 1001–1012.Key use: Best source for the “face-making brain” section. It supports the idea that illusory faces are not treated as meaningless noise; they can recruit mechanisms involved in social attention.Blom, Jan Dirk, Bastiaan C. ter Meulen, Jitze Dool, and Dominic H. ffytche. “A Century of Prosopometamorphopsia Studies.” Cortex 139, 2021, 298–308.Key use: Use carefully as a comparison source, not as a direct explanation for all scrying. Prosopometamorphopsia is a rare condition where faces appear distorted, showing that face-processing systems can produce frightening facial distortions under certain conditions.Psychomanteum, Grief, and Seeing the DeadHastings, Arthur, Michael Hutton, William Braud, et al. “Psychomanteum Research: Experiences and Effects on Bereavement.” OMEGA: Journal of Death and Dying 45, no. 3, 2002, 211–228.Key use: Main grief / dead-in-the-mirror source. Use carefully. It does not prove afterlife contact, but it supports the idea that mirror-gazing, darkness, memory, and grief can produce powerful experiences interpreted as contact.Moody, Raymond A. Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones. New York: Villard, 1993.Key use: Main modern popular source for the psychomanteum as a grief-contact chamber. Use as practitioner/popular context, not as the strongest academic evidence.Terhune, Devin B., and Matthew D. Smith. “The Induction of Anomalous Experiences in a Mirror-Gazing Facility: Suggestion, Cognitive Perceptual Personality Traits and Phenomenological State Effects.” The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 194, no. 6, 2006, 415–421.Key use: Good supporting source for anomalous experiences in a mirror-gazing facility. Pairs well with Hastings and the Caputo review.Kamp, K. S., Evgenia Steffen, Louis A. Kasket, and others. “Sensory and Quasi-Sensory Experiences of the Deceased in Bereavement: An Interdisciplinary and Integrative Review.” Schizophrenia Bulletin 46, no. 6, 2020, 1367–1381.Key use: Strong source for the grief section. It supports the point that bereaved people often report sensory or quasi-sensory experiences of the deceased, including feeling a presence, seeing, hearing, smelling, or sensing the dead.Hewson, Helen, and colleagues. “The Impact of Continuing Bonds Following Bereavement: A Systematic Review.” Death Studies, 2024.Key use: Useful for continuing bonds. It helps frame ongoing inner relationships with the dead as part of bereavement rather than automatically pathological.Historical, Religious, and Occult Mirror DivinationJohnston, Sarah Iles. Ancient Greek Divination. Wiley-Blackwell, 2008.Key use: Broad academic background for ancient divination systems. Not only mirror scrying, but very useful for framing divination as a serious religious and cultural practice.“Technical Divination and Mechanics of Sacred Space.” In Technologies of the Marvellous in Ancient Greek Religion. Cambridge University Press.Key use: Useful for ancient catoptromancy. This chapter discusses mirror divination as a technical mode of ancient divination involving reflective/catoptric knowledge and assumptions about divine intervention in human knowledge.Lee, Mireille M. “The Gendered Economics of Greek Bronze Mirrors.” Hesperia 86, no. 1, 2017.Key use: Useful for Greek bronze mirrors as social, gendered, material, and possibly magical/divinatory objects.Pitt Rivers Museum. “Mirrors.” Body Arts Collection Resource.Key use: Good museum-level source for folklore around mirrors and catoptromancy. Useful for basic show-note support on the traditional belief that mirrors could reveal the future.John Dee, Black Mirrors, and ObsidianBritish Museum. “Dr Dee's Magical Mirror / Dr Dee's Magical Speculum.” Collection object 1966,1001.1.Key use: Essential object source. The British Museum identifies the object as Dr. Dee's magical mirror or magical speculum, made of obsidian, catalogued as Aztec, and broadly dated to the 14th–16th century.Campbell, Stuart, Elizabeth Healey, Jago Cooper, Naomi Speakman, and others. “The Mirror, the Magus and More: Reflections on John Dee's Obsidian Mirror.” Antiquity 95, 2021.Key use: Essential academic source for Dee's mirror. The study uses geochemical analysis to show that the British Museum obsidian mirrors are Mexican in origin, with Dee's mirror matching the Pachuca obsidian source.Nature. “A ‘Spirit Mirror' Used in Elizabeth I's Court Had Aztec Roots.” 2021.Key use: Short science-news summary of the Antiquity findings. Useful for quickly explaining that Dee's mirror was traced to a source near Pachuca, Mexico.Smithsonian Magazine. “Obsidian ‘Spirit Mirror' Used by Elizabeth I's Court Astrologer Has Aztec Origins.” 2021.Key use: Useful public-facing summary of Dee's mirror, its Aztec/Mexican origin, and its connection to Elizabethan occult culture.Dee, John, and Meric Casaubon, ed. A True & Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many YeaAlso want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball. A

People can be pretty strange. And not just people—as we'll see in one story of this week's episode, you can add all our extended family of primates to that. If you have a big brain and opposable thumbs, there's a good chance you'll be getting up to shenanigans. But as we'll see in our other story, human beings still wear the crown for weird, ridiculously confident nonsense. Join us live at Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp in Equinunk, PA, September 10-13th! Visit ⁠badmagicproductions.com⁠ for more info and to buy tickets. Tickets are on sale now for CrimeWave 2.0! Visit crimewaveatsea.com/CAMPFIRE to get your discount code for $100 off your cabin and a private meet-and-greet with us! The cruise is Feb. 8-12, 2027. Sources, Monkey Invasion case: Smithsonian Magazine: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-170-wild-monkeys-escaped-from-a-jungle-camp-and-terrorized-new-york-180985537/ NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/1935/08/23/archives/monkey-runaways-still-number-111-32-simian-flagpole-sitters-are.html https://www.nytimes.com/1935/08/22/archives/150-monkeys-flee-camp-stop-train-simians-escape-from-frank-bucks.html Farmingdale Local History Blog: https://farmingdalelocalhistory.blogspot.com/2018/07/frank-bucks-jungle-campmassapequa-zoo.html https://omeka.hofstra.edu/exhibits/show/long-island-business-and-indus/frank-buck-collection--1935-19 https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1935/08/30/issue.html https://www.newspapers.com/article/daily-news-174-monkeys-skip-jail/159743530/ https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn84026749/1935-08-24/ed-1/?sp=1&q=MASSAPEQUA&r=0.241,0.976,0.311,0.229,0 Sources, Alison Gu case: U.S. Court of Appeals filings: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-2nd-circuit/2140129.html https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/6943f1bbcfa51735e29ca3b7 Bennington Banner: https://www.benningtonbanner.com/local-news/former-winhall-woman-back-in-court-more-fraud-charges/article_f37d8ad2-dd24-11ec-94e0-4f8b05aedbae.html "Lowering the Bar," Kevin Underhill: https://www.loweringthebar.net/2025/07/defendant-recruited-seven-actors-to-testify-in-fraud-trial.html Manchester Journal: https://www.manchesterjournal.com/local-news/former-winhall-woman-headed-back-to-prison/article_63203790-1e66-11ed-ba8a-77d4d5eff5ee.html Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enTwitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: truecrimecampfirepod@gmail.comMERCH! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1936, a Russian man named Karp Lykov watched a Soviet patrol shoot his brother dead in a field — and in that moment, he made a decision. He gathered his wife and two young children, packed seeds and a spinning wheel, and walked into the Siberian wilderness. He never came back. For 42 years, the Lykov family lived in a one-room log cabin more than 150 miles from the nearest human settlement, raising two children who had never once seen another face besides their own family's. Julie and Kaycee tell the full story — the hunger, the ingenuity, the grief, and the one member of the family who is still out there today. 01:08 Podcast Intro 01:29 1978 Helicopter Discovery 03:20 Why They Fled 05:36 1936 Escape Into Taiga 08:45 Building A Mountain Life 11:55 Hunger And Hunting 14:08 Akulina Sacrifice 16:12 Faith And Isolation 20:08 First Contact 1978 23:05 Modern World Revealed 24:53 Deaths After Contact 29:08 Agafia Alone Today 31:27 Helper And Visitors 36:33 What This Survival Means 37:49 Sources And Farewell Listen AD FREE: Support our podcast at patreaon: http://patreon.com/TheCruxTrueSurvivalPodcast Email us! thecruxsurvival@gmail.com Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thecruxpodcast/ Get schooled by Julie in outdoor wilderness medicine! https://www.headwatersfieldmedicine.com/ KEY REFERENCES: Vasily Peskov, Lost in the Taiga: One Russian Family's Fifty-Year Struggle for Survival and Religious Freedom in the Siberian Wilderness (Doubleday, 1992) Mike Dash, "For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War II," Smithsonian Magazine, January 28, 2013 (updated October 2, 2024) "Lykov family," Wikipedia (citing primary Peskov reporting and Komsomolskaya Pravda archives) "Meet the Last Lykov," Vice News, 2013 (interview with Agafia Lykova) "The Lykov Family That Fled Civilization and Lived in Total Isolation for 42 Years," All That's Interesting "The Lykov Family: How They Survived 42 Years Alone in the Siberian Wilderness," Rare Historical Photos "The Lykov Family: Forty Years Beyond the Edge of the World," Utterly Interesting "The Russian Family of Six, Cut Off from All Human Contact for 42 Years," Abroad in the Yard "How Did Agafia Lykova Stay Alive," Ranker "The Lykovs' 42-Year Exile," Fun Fact / Top News Source Komsomolskaya Pravda archives, Vasily Peskov series on the Lykov family, 1982 Agafia, documentary film, RT (Russia Today) Far Out: Agafia's Taiga Life, documentary film       Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

1 lutego 2003 roku, na 16 minut przed planowanym lądowaniem, prom kosmiczny Columbia rozpadł się nad Teksasem przy prędkości 20 tysięcy kilometrów na godzinę. Zginęło siedmioro astronautów, a tysiące fragmentów wahadłowca spadły na obszar dwóch stanów.Pokazuję, jak doszło do katastrofy STS-107 i dlaczego przyczyną nie był jedynie kawałek pianki izolacyjnej, który oderwał się od zbiornika 81 sekund po starcie. Prawdziwą przyczyną była decyzja administracyjna podjęta na orbicie, gdy NASA wiedziała o uderzeniu, miała narzędzia do oceny szkód i z nich nie skorzystała. Odtwarzam też cytat Jona Harpolda, który padł dzień przed powrotem załogi i który do dziś trudno czytać bez emocji.W filmie korzystam z ustaleń komisji admirała Harolda Gehmana (raport CAIB z 26 sierpnia 2003), z osobnego raportu o sekwencji rozpadu kabiny załogowej opublikowanego w 2008 roku, oraz z dokumentacji testów aerodynamicznych na panelach kompozytowych RCC. Wyjaśniam, dlaczego mechanizm tej tragedii był tym samym mechanizmem, który zniszczył Challengera 17 lat wcześniej, choć fizyka usterki wyglądała zupełnie inaczej.Na końcu opowiadam, co tak naprawdę przetrwało misję STS-107. Odpowiedź jest zaskakująca i mówi sporo o tym, co kosmos potrafi zrobić z życiem.Posortowałem 60 komentarzy z dokumentu według trzech kategorii: źródła merytoryczne, materiały wideo (do montażu/inspiracji), i pominięte zdjęcia/grafiki.Źródła1. NASA — strona oficjalna misji STS-107: https://www.nasa.gov/mission/sts-107/2. The Atlantic, "Columbia's Last Flight" (William Langewiesche, 2003): https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/11/columbias-last-flight/304204/3. Raport CAIB, vol. 3, część 2 (govinfo.library.unt.edu): https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/caib/news/report/pdf/vol3/part02.pdf4. Smithsonian Magazine, "Shuttle Tiles": https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/shuttle-tiles-12580671/5. NASA, "Remembering Columbia STS-107": https://www.nasa.gov/remembering-columbia-sts-107/6. NASA, "Remembering STS-107: Her Crew": https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/remembering-sts-107-her-crew/7. Wayne Hale's blog, "After Ten Years Working on the Wrong Problem": https://waynehale.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/after-ten-years-working-on-the-wrong-problem/8. UCSB American Presidency Project — przemówienie George'a W. Busha do narodu po utracie Columbii: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-nation-the-loss-space-shuttle-columbia9. CRS Report (Congressional Research Service) RS21408: https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20030224_RS21408_ad5a510c3aa5e66d760f027b1aa384f291e0ef13.pdf10. collectSPACE — wystawa pamięci Columbii / safety exhibit: https://www.collectspace.com/news/news-022708a-columbia-safety-exhibit-traveling-memorial.html11. Spaceflight Now, "20 Years After Columbia Disaster: Lessons Learned": https://spaceflightnow.com/2023/02/01/20-years-after-columbia-disaster-lessons-learned-still-in-sharp-focus-at-nasa/12. IEEE Spectrum, "How to Fix a NASA Disaster": https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-to-fix-a-nasa-disaster13. Semantic Scholar — Melis & Carney, "A Summary of the Space Shuttle Columbia Tragedy": https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-Summary-of-the-Space-Shuttle-Columbia-Tragedy-and-Melis-Carney/00b3e71009903e51302b8b4fbb719bbc667c8214/figure/714. NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS), publikacja 20030093634: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/2003009363415. CBS News, "Worms Survived Space Shuttle Crash": https://www.cbsnews.com/news/worms-survived-space-shuttle-crash/16. NASA — strona oficjalna misji STS-114 (powrót programu po katastrofie): https://www.nasa.gov/mission/sts-114/

Siódmy i ostatni odcinek serii o Tadeuszu Kościuszce.1798 rok. Kościuszko wraca potajemnie z Ameryki do Europy z fałszywym paszportem.W Paryżu czeka na niego Napoleon Bonaparte z propozycją nie do odrzucenia.A w Berville pod Fontainebleau czeka na niego coś zupełnie innego.15 lat ciszy, które zmienią jego legendę na zawsze. Naczelnik kontra cesarz Francuzów Sfałszowany manifest, który wywołał burzę Obietnica cara, która skończyła się milczeniem Szwajcaria, której Kościuszko nie planował Serce, które przeżyło więcej niż jego właścicielJak wygląda życie bohatera, którego nikt już nie potrzebuje?Co robi generał, który nie może walczyć?I dlaczego to właśnie te lata, a nie bitwy, decydują o tym, kim Kościuszko jest dla nas dzisiaj?Finał serii.Przygotuj się na zakończenie, którego się nie spodziewasz. Słuchaj, inspiruj się i żyj lepiej teraz.Jeśli cenisz moją pracę nad tą serią:Wesprzyj podcast na patronite.pl/podcastlepiejteraz Postaw kawę na suppi.pl/lepiejterazŹRÓDŁA ODCINKABiografie podstawowe:Alex Storozynski, The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution (St. Martin's Press, 2009)Monica M. Gardner, Kościuszko: A Biography (1920, dostępna na Wikisource), zwłaszcza rozdział 9Tadeusz Korzon, Kościuszko: Biografia z dokumentów wysnuta (1894/1896)Feliks Koneczny, Święci w dziejach Narodu Polskiego (dostępne na NonPossumus.pl)James S. Pula, Thaddeus Kosciuszko: The Purest Son of Liberty (Hippocrene Books, 1998)Sławomir Leśniewski, Kościuszko. Rysa na pomniku? (Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2023)Gary Nash i Graham Russell Gao Hodges, Friends of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, and Agrippa Hull (Basic Books, 2008)Korespondencja i źródła pierwotne:Founders Online, National Archives (founders.archives.gov)List Tadeusza Kościuszki do Thomasa Jeffersona, kwiecień 1816List Pierre'a Josepha Zeltnera do Thomasa Jeffersona, 30 października 1818List Franza Xavera Zeltnera do Thomasa Jeffersona, 29 października 1817List Kościuszki do A. J. Czartoryskiego, Wiedeń 1815 (cyt. za Gardner)Spotkania z Napoleonem:napoleon.org, biografia: Kosciuszko, Tadeusz Andrzej Bonawenturatadeuszkosciuszko.com, „The difficult story of Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Napoleon Bonaparte”WielkaHistoria.pl, „Kościuszko i Napoleon. Cesarz Francuzów gotował się ze złości, gdy usłyszał warunki polskiego bohatera”WP Film, „To niebezpieczny despota. Posłał na śmierć ponad 100 tys. Polaków”Barbara Grochulska, Księstwo Warszawskie (PWN)Odezwa Dąbrowskiego i Wybickiego do Wielkopolan z 6 XI 1806, historia.interia.plBerville i Zeltnerowie:Wikipedia, Peter Josef ZeltnerDziennik Polski, „Tadeusz Kościuszko prywatnie”Historia Poszukaj, „Czy Tadeusz Kościuszko lubił haftować?”tombeauxpolonais.eu, „gen. Kościuszko”fr-academic.com, biografia KościuszkiKongres Wiedeński i Aleksander I:Tygodnik Powszechny, prof. Franciszek Ziejka, „Naczelnika życie po życiu”TheCollector.com, „Tadeusz Kościuszko: 6 Facts You Didn't Know”Solura, choroba, śmierć:dr Liliana Narkowicz, Rocznik SNPL, t. 17, Wilno, 2017, s. 596–603prawdajestciekawa.pl, „Kościuszko w Solurze”Schweizerbote, 10 kwietnia 1817 (cyt. za Muzeum Kościuszki w Solurze)mabpz.org, „Muzeum Kościuszki w Solurze”kosciuszko-solothurn.ch, oficjalna strona Kosciuszko Gesellschaft SolothurnWikipedia, Kościuszko Museum, Solothurndzieje.pl, „200 lat temu w Solurze zmarł Tadeusz Kościuszko”Pochówek na Wawelu, serce, kopiec:dzieje.pl, „200 lat temu Tadeusz Kościuszko został pochowany na Wawelu”pai.media.pl, „Ostatnia droga Tadeusza Kościuszki”Muzeum Historii Polski, kalendariumkopieckosciuszki.pl, oficjalna strona Kopca Kościuszki w KrakowieTestament siechnowicki i amerykański:Wikipedia, Wills of Tadeusz KościuszkoWikicytaty (pl), Tadeusz Kościuszkopolonika.pl, „Niezrealizowany testament Tadeusza Kościuszki”Smithsonian Magazine, „The Polish Patriot Who Helped Americans Beat the British” (2017)Pamięć i upamiętnienia:American Battlefield Trust, Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kosciuszkokosciuszkoheritage.com, „Thaddeus Kosciuszko Memorialised Worldwide”Wikipedia, Commemoration of Tadeusz KościuszkoBritannica, Tadeusz Kosciuszko

Alok Jha talks to Zaria Forman, an artist who captures the beauty and fragility of Antarctica's frozen landscapes in breathtaking pastel drawings. Zaria travels to remote regions of the world to collect images and inspiration for her work, which is exhibited worldwide. She has flown with NASA on several Operation IceBridge missions over Antarctica, Greenland, and Arctic Canada. She was featured on CBS Sunday Morning, CNN, PBS, and BBC. She delivered a TEDTalk, and spoke at Amazon, Google, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, exhibited in Banksy's Dismaland, and was the artist-in-residence aboard the National Geographic Explorer in Antarctica. She curated the first ever, permanent, polar art exhibitions aboard Lindblad Expeditions National Geographic Endurance and the National Geographic Resolution. Her works have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, and the Smithsonian Magazine. Zaria currently works and resides in upstate New York and is represented by Winston Wächter Fine Art in New York, NY and Seattle, WA.

The 1904 Olympic marathon in St. Louis may be the strangest race in history—featuring cheating, poison, chaos, and a winner who could barely stand. And yet… it was official.________________________________________This wasn't just a bizarre race—it was a breakdown of what “official” really means.Runners collapsed in extreme heat. One took a car. Another was chased off the course by dogs. The eventual winner was given strychnine and brandy just to keep moving.And yet… the result stood.In this episode of An Ounce, we examine the 1904 Olympic marathon—not just for what happened, but for what it reveals about systems, rules, and the gap between what's recorded… and what's real.If you value clear, honest storytelling about history, human behavior, and the limits of “official” truth—subscribe and follow along.________________________________________

He's broken several world records: largest group skydive, longest scuba dive on a single tank—and the most species of nudibranchs ever found on a single dive (71).He's spent 23 years chasing these tiny creatures, building a global following of more than 60,000 people who are equally obsessed.But what even is a nudibranch—and why are thousands of people going nuts over them?Well, they dress like drag queens, some of them can fire miniature deadly spears out of their flubbery bits, and some can even walk on water like Jesus — but upside down, and with only one foot.In this fun and outlandish interview with the world's biggest nudie fanatic, we get up close and personal with these outrageously beautiful, neon-coloured ocean jewels found in every corner of our seas.Listeners be warned: nudibranchs can be surprisingly addictive.(I mean, JUST LOOK at the nudibranch in the thumbnail image. Does he look like he's the slightest bit bothered by ANYTHING or ANYONE? Go off, you fabulous creature!)More info:Gary's Website, Gallery and Blog: www.nudibranch.com.auGary's Facebook Page: Nudibranch Central'My Nudibranch Passion': Short film about Gary showing his dive site at the Mooloolah River and many of the nudibranchs discussed in this episode."Dive Into the Exotic World of Nudibranchs, the Spectacular Slugs of the Sea" - article about Gary in Smithsonian Magazine.Cyclone Maila News Audio: Australian Broadcasting Association.Support the showHelp Keep Word on the Reef Afloat!Please take 2 minutes to fill out our Word on the Reef Listener Survey to help us apply for funding for the show!PROTECT THE REEF - Sign these Petitions Now!Australian Marine Conservation Society: Australia, it's time to lead on Climate Action!Divers for Climate: Sign the 'I'm a Diver for Climate' National StatementAustralian Conservation Foundation: No New Coal and Gas!Queensland Conservation Council: Take Strong Climate Action and Build a Positive Renewable Future!Our Islands Our Home: Protect the Torres Strait Islands from Climate ChangeGreenpeace: Save the Great Barrier Reef!WWF Australia: Protect NatureRising Tide: ...

Nearly a century ago, fish traps were banned on the Columbia River. The practice had been used by indigenous communities of the Northwest for a millenia, but when European settlers expanded west, they set up their own industrial versions, catching as much as 73 tons of salmon a season. Voters would ban these traps in Washington and Oregon in 1934 and 1948, respectively. But now some permitted experiments are being conducted using traps to sustainably harvest fish. Zach Theiler is a freelance writer who covered this issue for the Smithsonian Magazine. He joins us to share more.

Send us a text! We love hearing from listeners. If you'd like a response, please include your email. This week, Jennie and Dianne are "digging" into some truly Ordinary Extraordinary recent news stories from cemeteries across the US. First up, Lafayette, Colorado, where a local cemetery has run out of burial space, leaving families in a lurch despite owning plots. Then, on to the stunning shores of Lake Superior in Minnesota, where a historic pioneer cemetery is literally losing its graves to erosion, bringing skeletal remains to the surface and sparking a fight for state funding to save it. And finally, a story published by Smithsonian Magazine unearths a tale from the early 2000s in Chicago's historic Burr Oak Cemetery, where four men were busted for desecrating graves for profit, all thanks to a very specific type of moss! You can find the links to each of the articles here: https://www.cpr.org/2026/03/27/lafayette-cemetery-overcrowding/https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/scandia-cemetery-erosion-lake-superior-duluth/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-a-tiny-clump-of-moss-helped-the-fbi-solve-a-grave-robbing-case-180988328/Need an Ordinary Extraordinary Cemetery Podcast tee, hoodie or mug? Find all our taphophile-fun much here: https://oecemetery.etsy.comFamily Tales: A free printable, is now available! Gather 'round the table and dig into your roots! This interactive family history game is perfect for holidays, reunions, or just because. Ask, listen, and laugh your way through generations of stories and secrets. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UT_R56qEwNTIxIBrTy8KFyVmGnFOe7g8/view?usp=sharingSupport the show

Award-winning journalist and author, Matti Friedman has worked as a reporter in Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Moscow, the Caucasus, and Washington, DC. A former Associated Press correspondent, his work has appeared in the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, the Atlantic, and elsewhere. He's currently writes from Israel for The Free Press. The author of five nonfiction books that have been translated into a dozen languages and have so far been awarded The Sami Rohr Prize, the Natan Prize, the ALA's Sophy Brody Medal. His new book is Out of the Sky, Heroism and Rebirth in Nazi Europe, just out from Speigel and Grau. The QWERTY podcast is brought to you by the book The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. Read it, and begin your own journey to writing what you know. To learn more, join The Memoir Project free newsletter list and keep up to date on all our free webinars, instructive posts and online classes in how to write memoir, as well as our talented, available memoir editors and memoir coaches, podcast guests and more.

We are time-traveling back to 1934 to celebrate Baseball in Baltimore! Wait. Baltimore! Hometown of Spiro Agnew, Michael Phelps, and Spankrock. The place where Edgar Allen Poe disembarked a train and then died. Wait, stop — you don't get to intro with this cute cultural smattering, "next we'll visit Cleveland, Dreeeew Carey!" Cards out, I wanted to have a baseball game presented to an audience and have it be a historical setting. As if we were standing in the venue, time traveling dudes… and ladies. But I didn't want the insane challenge of a baseball radio broadcast set in a historically accurate saloon. Vintage fans carrying on in historically accurate ways would be an extreme challenge and so I chose the 1934 All Star Game (in a wealthy person bar). Time travel? Baltimore? Baseball? Did the Orioles even exist at this point?Ok so there was a minor league Orioles— oh! they had this pitcher Lefty Grove. A Marylander, (minor league) Oriole, Future Hall of Famer… Lefty was traded for an outfield fence in Martinsburg. Lefty Grove was very much a way I could have tied Baltimore to the 1934 All Star Game… if he was in that All Star game. ****. Lefty Grove was an All Star in '33, '35, '36, '37, '38, '39.  I tried to find the 1933 All Star Game broadcast — a game which native son Babe Ruth clobbered a two run shot and Lefty Grove secured the save. That totally would have strengthened my case for presenting the All Star Game in Charm City...And I failed to find it in full.So… 1934! Baltimore! Look I promise I found us a neat place to listen to the game. Behold, the structurally beautiful Hotel Rennert, one of the city's early skyline darlings (now a parking lot). It was the place for area titans to smoke cigars and bro it up the super formal way dudes did back then.Digging into the hotel's history turned out to be as complicated as I should have anticipated. The Hotel Rennert's fine dining reputation rested on chefs like Henry Cummings, a formerly enslaved man who moved to Baltimore and became a fixture as chef and caterer. He was an “expert in the preparation of terrapin… and all kinds of rare games in famous old Maryland style.”I found some Hotel Rennert menus (lunch and dinner) with plans to make a lazy inflationary joke (¢15 lobster?!) until I read on the back: “…From the very inception of the hostelry in 1885 it has employed only colored chefs and colored waiters." And being way out of my depth, I wondered how to digest that. Everything has been silly and light so far.  Do I ignore and move on? So Old Line Plate, a blog of Maryland culinary history, helped shed some light on why a place like Hotel Rennert might advertise its employment practices on the menu. Old Line Plate cites Afro-American's December 1915 edition: “The French chef has been tried in the south, but, except in a few rare instances, they have failed to satisfy the peculiar demands of the southern epicure or even of the tourist who, coming south, expects dishes peculiarly southern... The demand for capable colored cooks is greater than the supply." Smithsonian Magazine detailed how American recipes in the 1800s shifted from “puddings, pies, and roasted meats” to include dishes like “pepper pot, okra stew, gumbo, and jambalaya” as African foodways were woven into American cuisine.Was this about serving better food, or were there broader forces at play? This is 1934—thirteen years before Jackie Robinson. We will only hear the All Stars that were allowed to play (IE: no Willie Wells, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson). Tom Manning, Ford Bond and Graham McNamee had the call for NBC. McName got his start in radio announcing by walking into a radio station and asking if anyone needed an opera singer. 

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, we are joined by Laurie Gwen Shapiro, a bestselling author, journalist, and adjunct professor at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. A member of the Explorers Club, her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. She is the author of The Stowaway, the true story of a teenager who stowed away on a ship bound for Antarctica during the Jazz Age, and The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage that Made an American Icon, a New York Times Editors' Choice and one of the best books of the year by NPR, The New Yorker, and Smithsonian Magazine.But before our conversation with Laurie, we set the stage, because the Amelia Earhart story is deeply a Pan Am story.On January 9, 1929, three defining figures of the aviation age stood on the tarmac of Pan Am's new Miami terminal, Juan Trippe, Charles Lindbergh, and Amelia Earhart. Trippe invited Earhart aboard Pan Am's Fokker F-10A, captained by Edwin Musick, for the inaugural flight to Havana.At the center of that relationship was Fred Noonan, Pan Am's greatest navigator, who charted the transpacific routes. When Earhart assembled her team in 1937, Noonan was the navigator every conversation kept returning to. Trippe extended Pan Am's full cooperation, and Pan Am mechanics spent a week on her Lockheed Electra in Miami. On July 2, 1937, Earhart and Noonan departed Lae, New Guinea, bound for Howland Island - 2,556 miles of open ocean...and vanished.This episode also features rare archival audio from the Elgen and Marie Long oral history collection...aired publicly for the first time. Their 220-plus hours of recordings are preserved at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum as the Amelia Earhart Project Recordings. Among those voices is Pan Am's Harry Canaday, recorded in 1985 at age 76, reflecting on Noonan, the Pacific survey flights, and the world that produced the Earhart flight.These recordings are presented courtesy of David Jourdan of Nauticos and the Smithsonian Institution's Amelia Earhart Project.Support the showVisit Us for more Pan Am History! Support the Podcast!Donate to the Museum!Visit The Hangar online store for Pan Am gear!Become a Member! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!A very special thanks to Mr. Adam Aron, Chairman and CEO of AMC and president of the Pan Am Historical Foundation and  Pan Am Brands for their continued and unwavering support! 

Dëgjim të këndshëm !- Donacione në PayPal: https://paypal.me/BHasani13?country.x=DE&locale.x=de_DE- Donacione në BuyMeaCoffee: https://studio.buymeacoffee.com/dashboard- Abonime Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/buchipodcast/subscribeSot eksplorojmë teorinë e Panspermia – idenë se jeta mund të ketë udhëtuar nga një planet në tjetrin, duke shpërndarë biokimi dhe mikroorganizma përmes hapësirës. Bazuar në dokumentarë, artikuj shkencorë dhe punime të ndryshme, zbulojmë se si meteoritet, kometat dhe madje organizmat ekstremofilë mund të jenë transportues të jetës përmes sistemit tonë diellor dhe përtej tij.Nga Marsi dhe Toka, deri tek mundësitë interplanetare dhe madje galaktike, flasim për mekanizmat që mund të mbajnë mikroorganizma të gjallë për miliona vite dhe për teoritë e panspermias ndërplanetare dhe intergalaktike. Diskutojmë gjithashtu se si kjo mund të lidhet me origjinën e jetës në Tokë dhe mundësinë që ne të jemi pjesë e një rrjeti më të madh kozmik.Ky episod nuk synon të provojë teorinë, por paraqet idetë, zbulimet dhe pyetjet që shkencëtarët po eksplorojnë sot. Njihuni me bakteret ekstremofile, “delfinat” mikroorganizmike të hapësirës, dhe konceptet revolucionare që ndryshojnë mënyrën se si e kuptojmë jetën në univers.Burimet:Smith, D. “Exposed Bacteria Can Survive Years in Space.” Smithsonian Magazine, 2016.ESA. “BIOPAN and Exobiology Experiments.” European Space Agency.JAXA. “Tanpopo Mission Overview.” Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.Horneck, G. et al. “Survival of Bacillus subtilis spores in space.” Advances in Space Research, 1982.Wickramasinghe, C. & Hoyle, F. Life on Earth and Beyond: Panspermia Theory. Cambridge University Press.NASA. “Perseverance Rover and Jezero Crater Discoveries.” NASA Science, 2021.Rummel, J. D. & Conley, C. “Planetary Protection Considerations for Panspermia.” Space Policy, 2018.Wallis, M. et al. “Lithopanspermia: Transport of Microbes via Meteorites.” Astrobiology Journal, 2019.Disclaimer / Deklarim i të Drejtave të Autorit:Të gjitha materialet e përdorura në këtë episod janë për qëllime argëtuese dhe diskutimi kritik, duke u mbështetur në përdorimin e drejtë (fair use). Nuk synohet shkelje e të drejtave të autorit.Nëse jeni pronar i të drejtave të autorit të ndonjë materiali të përdorur dhe keni ndonjë problem me përdorimin e tij në këtë episod, ju lutem kontaktoni në email: buchipodcast@gmail.com.

In this episode, host Victoria Barlow interviews Dr Brooke Newman about her recent book The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas. A story hereto relatively unknown to the public (though largely accepted in academic circles), the discussion delves into how, throughout the centuries, the British monarchy heavily invested into and greatly profited from the Atlantic Slave Trade. Dealing with such a contentious but important topic, Brooke explains why she wrote it for wider audiences, and the significance that this decision might have for the royal family. Guest bio:Dr. Brooke Newman is an Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She specializes in the history of early modern Britain and the British Atlantic, with a focus on slavery and its legacies. She is the author of the award-winning book, A Dark Inheritance: Blood, Race, and Sex in Colonial Jamaica (Yale, 2018), and The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas (Mariner, 2026). Her writing and research have been featured in the Guardian, the Washington Post, Der Spiegel, and Smithsonian Magazine, and she has served as a historical expert for HBO's Last Week Tonight, Vox, the BBC, and NPR, among others. Follow Brooke Newman on social media: @drbrookenewman [instagram]@brookenewman.bsky.social [Bluesky]

Jesień 1777. Wzgórza nad rzeką Hudson w stanie Nowy York.7 tysięcy najlepszych brytyjskich żołnierzy maszeruje na Albany. Jeśli tam dotrą, Ameryka wraca pod koronę. Na ich drodze pozornie nic nie stoi.W tym odcinku zobaczysz, co się dzieje, gdy kompetencja spotyka ignorancję. Gdy jedna zignorowana rada prowadzi do katastrofy, a jedna wysłuchana zmienia losy wojny. I zadasz sobie pytanie: Czy potrafisz budować w ciszy, gdy nikt nie patrzy?To historia o porażce zamienionej w zwycięstwo. O samotności, która nie złamała. I o okopach, które okazały się ważniejsze niż szarże kawalerii.Słuchaj teraz — trzeci rozdział niesamowitej podróży Kościuszki przez Amerykę.Wesprzyj mój podcast: Będę wdzięczny za postawienie mi kawy → suppi.pl/lepiejteraz Zostań Mecenasem odcinka→ patronite.pl/podcastlepiejterazŹRÓDŁA ODCINKA:Biografie podstawowe:Alex Storożyński, The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution (2009)Francis C. Kajencki, Thaddeus Kosciuszko: Military Engineer of the American Revolution (South Polonia Press, 1998)Tadeusz Korzon, Kościuszko: Biografia z dokumentów wysnuta (1894/1896)Monica Gardner, Kościuszko: A Biography (1920, Project Gutenberg)Miecisław Haiman, Kosciuszko: Leader and Exile (1946)James S. Pula, Thaddeus Kościuszko: The Purest Son of Liberty (Hippocrene Books, 1999)Gary Nash & Graham Hodges, Friends of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson, Tadeusz Kościuszko, and Agrippa Hull (Basic Books, 2008)Źródła pierwotne – korespondencja i dokumenty:George Washington do Henry'ego Laurensa, 10 listopada 1777 (Founders Online: Washington/03-12-02-0185): „Cosieski, I think his name is… is a person of knowledge and merit”Raport Gatesa do Kongresu: „Colonel Kosciuszko chose and entrenched the position” (za Gardnerą i Kajenckim)Gates o Kościuszce – zdanie przypisywane przez Storożyńskiego, Kajenckiego i Pulę: „the great tacticians of the campaign were hills and forests, which a young Polish Engineer was skillful enough to select for my encampment” (oryginał nie zlokalizowany w archiwach cyfrowych)Artykuły i źródła akademiczne:Smithsonian Magazine, marzec 2017 – profil KościuszkiAmerican Battlefield Trust – profile bitew pod Saratogą (battlefields.org)National Park Service – Saratoga National Historical ParkMuseum of the American Revolution – wirtualny spacer po śladach Kościuszki (amrevmuseum.org)National Museum of the United States Army – biogram Kościuszki (thenmusa.org)Angry Staff Officer (blog) – „Thaddeus Kosciusko: The Polish Engineer You Never Heard of Who Saved America” (2019)Ambasador RP Piotr Wilczek, cytowany za Richmond Times-Dispatch (2018)Monticello / Thomas Jefferson Foundation – biogram KościuszkiBritannica – hasła: Tadeusz Kościuszko, Battles of Saratoga, American RevolutionKontekst historyczny Rewolucji Amerykańskiej:American Battlefield Trust – American Revolution FAQNational Army Museum (UK) – American War of Independence: OutbreakU.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian – „The Declaration of Independence, 1776″The American Yawp (podręcznik akademicki, open source) – rozdział 5: The American RevolutionCytaty źródłowe:„ziemny fort został zbudowany pod doświadczonym okiem polskiego inżyniera” – American Battlefield Trust„Cosieski, I think his name is…” – Washington do Laurensa, Founders Online„Colonel Kosciuszko chose and entrenched the position” – raport Gatesa do Kongresu„The great tacticians of the campaign were hills and forests…” – Gates, za Storożyńskim/Kajenckim/Pulą„I would say his influence is even more significant than Lafayette” – Alex Storożyński, Smithsonian Magazine„nie zgodził się i ostatecznie nie pozwolił mu zbudować umocnień na Sugar Loaf” – American Battlefield Trust, za St. ClairKajencki o Bemis Heights„Wjechał na wzgórze i zbadał teren…” – Thaddeus Kosciuszko:Military Engineer of the American RevolutionStorożyński o taktyce opóźniania: „Kościuszko ocalił uciekającą armię…” – The Peasant Prince

Co zrobisz, gdy stracisz dosłownie wszystko – w środku oceanu?W tym odcinku Kościuszko opuszcza Europę z marzeniem i… prawie nie dociera do celu.Czeka Cię:  Rejs, o którym nie piszą w podręcznikach Plaża, na której zaczyna się prawdziwa historia Spotkanie, które zmieniło losy wojny o niepodległość Ameryki Od zera do pułkownika – w 2 miesiąceMyślisz, że Ci w życiu trudno?Posłuchaj tego odcinka. Wesprzyj mój podcast: Będę wdzięczny za postawienie mi kawy → suppi.pl/lepiejteraz Zostań Mecenasem odcinka→ patronite.pl/podcastlepiejterazŹRÓDŁA ODCINKAŹródła główne:Alex Storożynski, The Peasant Prince: Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution (2009) – porwanie Sosnowskiej, ucieczka, spotkanie z FranklinemTadeusz Korzon, Kościuszko: Biografia z dokumentów wysnuta (1894/1896) – stanowisko sceptyczne wobec relacji o porwaniu, cytat: „Jest wiele opowiadań o tej miłości…”Monica Gardner, Kościuszko: A Biography (1920, Project Gutenberg) – wersja ataku w domuGottlieb Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania (1750/1756) – relacja z rejsu transatlantyckiego: warunki na statku, śmierć dzieci, jakość wody i jedzeniaSmithsonian Magazine, 2017 – rekonstrukcja spotkania z Franklinem: „Kręcone brązowe włosy młodego mężczyzny…”Źródła uzupełniające:„Nowiny” (gazeta pijarów), 16 kwietnia 1777 – list Kościuszki do Czartoryskiego, jedyne zachowane świadectwo rozbicia statkuHektoen International – artykuł akademicki o warunkach zdrowotnych na statkach XVIII w.Ludwik-Sebastian Mercier, Tableau de Paris – rytm dnia w Paryżu lat 70. XVIII w.William Coxe, Travels in Poland, Russia, Sweden and Denmark – drogi w RzeczypospolitejPublishers Weekly – recenzja The Peasant Prince, wzmianka o misji Beaumarchais'aUSNI Proceedings – ocena skuteczności blokady brytyjskiej 1775–1778Chronicles of America – opis nabrzeży FiladelfiiEncyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia – dźwięki i atmosfera miasta 1776polishhistory.pl – wywiad ze StorozynskimCiekawostkiHistoryczne.pl – relacja Kościuszki o pierwszych krokach w Amerycebreedshill.org – wersja z listami polecającymi od Lee i CzartoryskiegoLRT (Lithuanian Radio and Television) – wersja litewska o tajnym ślubieCytaty źródłowe:„Wzdłuż przystani leżały masywne…” – Chronicles of America„Synogarlice nie dla wróbli…” – Storożynski, The Peasant Prince, rozdz. 1; potw. prof. P. Ugniewski, dzieje.pl„Trzej mężczyźni, którzy znali Kościuszkę…” – Storożynski, The Peasant Prince, przypis 6 w rozdziale 1„Jest wiele opowiadań o tej miłości…” – Tadeusz Korzon, Kościuszko„Kilku jeźdźców dogania ich galopem…” / „Zamiast walczyć z ojcem ukochanej…” – Storozżynski, The Peasant Prince, rozdz. 1„Nie śmiejąc liczyć na zgodę ojca…” – Gardner, Kościuszko: A Biography (1920)„Losy szczęścia dziwnej Opatrzności Bożej zrządziły…” – „Nowiny”, 16 kwietnia 1777„Smród tak obrzydliwy, że nie sposób go sobie wyobrazić” – Hektoen International, cytujące relacje z epoki„Często bardzo czarna, gęsta i pełna robaków…” – Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania„Przerżnięte czerwonymi robakami i pajęczymi gniazdami” – Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania„Statek jest nieustannie rzucany z boku na bok…” – Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania„Dzieci w wieku od jednego do siedmiu lat…” – Mittelberger, Journey to Pennsylvania„Kręcone brązowe włosy młodego mężczyzny…” – Smithsonian Magazine, 2017„Kto miałby przeprowadzić taki egzamin…” – Storożynski via NPR

Dan & Manny welcome Author Ross Benes to discuss his book 1999 The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times. “I chose [19]99 out of all the years because it was just the wildest and most wackadoodle year of [the 90s]. You can write a similar book on 98 [...] but I think 99 is just a little more insane in the membrane.” -Ross Benes This episode of Nostalgia 101 author Ross Benes takes Manny & Dan to school on all things 1999. His book 1999 The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times seems to have foreseen the times we find ourselves in and might hold key answers to some off questions about the cultural pickle we're attempting to escape. They go from unpacking the impact of The Jerry Springer Show to The Insane Clown Posse, Juggalos, and Beanie Babies to Y2K, Napster, and the oversaturate porn industry. This is the exact type of episode that The Nostalgia Test Podcast is built for and ross Benes more than delivered. Get Ross' book. It's the sort of pop-culture analysis that satisfies the academic audience, general fandom audience, and the high-strung 90s fanatic. Oh, and he gives us a really great Rocky franchise ranking. So, grab your Trapper Keepers and pens, throw some scratch-and-sniff stickers on the pages, and get ready to learn something about the most important year of the 90s. Email us (thenostalgiatest@gmail.com) your thoughts, opinions, and topics for our next Nostalgia Test! Suggest A Test & Be Our Guest! We're always looking for a fun new topic for The Nostalgia Test. Hit the link above, tell us what you'd like to see tested, and be our guest for that episode!   Ross Benes is the author of 1999: The Year Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted OurBizarre Times. He's also a journalist and market analyst whose writing has appeared in Mental Floss, Esquire, The Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian Magazine, and Entertainment Weekly.  Buy 1999 The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times          Approximate Rundown 00:00 Meet the Guest 02:03 Ross Background 03:39 Why 1999 Matters 04:55 Wrestling and Kayfabe 10:29 Ragebait Media Machine 13:02 Tech Shifts and Y2K 15:32 Talk Show Sensationalism 19:34 When Low Culture Wins 25:34 Upsides of Trash Culture 29:44 High vs Low Pop Culture 32:24 Juggalos and Belonging 35:57 Howard Stern as Conduit 41:17 Can Anything Shock Us 44:48 Doomscroll Desensitization 45:42 Faces of Death Then Now 46:09 Algorithms Versus Choice 48:56 NFTs Pet Rock Moment 49:36 Zombie Tech Nostalgia 51:09 TomTom GPS Horror Stories 53:05 1999 Mascot and Trends 57:08 Reality TV Wins Out 01:00:34 Todays Low Culture Shift 01:04:06 Why 1999 Still Matters 01:06:24 Rocky Movie Rankings 01:14:38 Reboots and Final Wrap   Book The Nostalgia Test Podcast Bring The Nostalgia Test Podcast's high energy fun and comedy on your podcast, to host your themed parties & special events!  The Nostalgia Test Podcast will create an unforgettable Nostalgic experience for any occasion because we are the party! We bring it 100% of the time! Email us at thenostalgiatest@gmail.com or fill out the form at this link. LET'S GET NOSTALGIC!       Keep up with all things The Nostalgia Test Podcast on Instagram | Substack | Discord | TikTok | Bluesky | YouTube | Facebook   The intro and outro music ('Neon Attack 80s') is by Emanmusic. The Lithology Brewing ad music ("Red, White, Black, & Blue") is by PEG and the Rejected  

Departing from Puerto Rico with grand plans to establish a new colony, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León set out on his ill-fated second expedition to Florida on February 20th, 1521.  Ponce de León's reputation as a conquistador preceded him, with tales of his brutal conquests in Hispaniola preceding his quest for new lands. Despite being ousted from power by his rival Diego Columbus, Ponce de León received a charter from King Ferdinand to explore and govern distant territories. In this episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly reveal why de León named his ‘discovery' "Florida"; explain why the ‘tree of death' played a pivotal part in his downfall; and discover where those ‘Fountain of Youth' rumours came from…  Further Reading:  • ‘Ponce de Leon: Florida & Fountain of Youth' (HISTORY, 2009): https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/juan-ponce-de-leon • ‘Ponce De Leon Never Searched for the Fountain of Youth' (Smithsonian Magazine, 2013): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ponce-de-leon-never-searched-for-the-fountain-of-youth-72629888/ ‘Juan Ponce de León: Meet the Spanish explorer who discovered Florida' (10 Tampa Bay, 2019): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-BjLdHerRk We'll be back on Monday - unless you join CLUB RETROSPECTORS, where we give you ad-free listening AND a full-length Sunday episode every week!Plus, weekly bonus content, unlock over 70 bonus bits, and support our independent podcast.Join now via Apple Podcasts or Patreon. Thanks!The Retrospectors are Olly Mann, Rebecca Messina & Arion McNicoll, with Matt Hill.Theme Music: Pass The Peas. Announcer: Bob Ravelli. Graphic Design: Terry Saunders. Edit Producer: Ollie Peart.Copyright: Rethink Audio / Olly Mann 2026. This episode originally aired in 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In recognition of the third week of Black History Month, this episode of Oscar Mike Radio examines the extraordinary legacy of the 369th Infantry Regiment, widely known as the Harlem Hellfighters. This episode draws extensively from the research of Elizabeth De Pompei in Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Magazine. (https://digital.dav.org/publication/?i=858943&p=20&view=issueViewer) Her work significantly informed this discussion, and I am grateful for her contribution to bringing this important history to light. The Harlem Hellfighters served with exceptional courage during World War I, spending more time in continuous combat than any other American unit of their era. Despite their bravery and battlefield success, they endured profound discrimination both within the military and upon returning home. Recognition of their service was delayed for decades, a reflection of the racial injustices of the time. This episode underscores why it is so important to commemorate the achievements of Black veterans and to acknowledge the ongoing pursuit of equality in our nation. The story of the Harlem Hellfighters is not just military history; it is American history. I encourage listeners to explore this significant yet often overlooked chapter further. Additional insights can be found in Smithsonian Magazine’s reporting (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/one-hundred-years-ago-harlem-hellfighters-bravely-led-us-wwi-180968977). Thank you to our sponsors and supporters for helping us continue to tell these important stories.

This week we're covering the history of the Pacific Northwest from the late 19th century to 1968 with Train Dreams! Join us as we learn about boot memorials, Chinese and Chinese-American railroad workers, women working as fire lookouts, and more! Sources: Dina Gachman, "The History of Lady Lookouts," Smithsonian Magazine, available at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/female-fire-lookouts-have-been-saving-wilderness-over-century-180977352/ Photo of Hallie Daggett and Her Dog, Fish and Wildlife: https://www.fws.gov/media/hallie-daggett https://www.facebook.com/ottawavalleywhereabouts/posts/loggers-memorial-griffith-on-45236783-77270483located-within-the-lower-madawaska/294395130019562/ https://www.google.com/books/edition/Canoe_Country/52-2DQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=logging%20memorial%20boots%20nailed%20to%20tree&pg=PA66&printsec=frontcover https://www.facebook.com/100064525572391/posts/5518774848187361/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumoine_River https://www.imdb.com/title/tt29768334/ Bilge Ebiri, "Train Dreams Is a Staggering Work of Art," Vulture 21 November 2025, https://www.vulture.com/article/sundance-review-train-dreams-is-a-staggering-work-of-art.html  Bob Mondello, "The new film 'Train Dreams' is almost unbearably beautiful," NPR All Things Considered 7 November 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/11/07/nx-s1-5598447/the-new-film-train-dreams-is-almost-unbearably-beautiful   Brian Tallerico, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/train-dreams-film-review-2025  Justin Chang, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-current-cinema/train-dreams-is-too-tidy-to-go-off-the-rails https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/train_dreams  Jennifer Fang, "Erasure and Reclamation: Centering Diasporic Chinese Populations in Oregon History," Oregon Historical Quarterly 122, no.4 (2021): 324-41. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5403/oregonhistq.122.4.0324  Sarah M. Griffith, "Finding Chinese Immigrants in Unconventional Records," History News 58, no.1 (2003): 20-23.  John R. Wunder, "The Chinese and the Courts in the Pacific Northwest: Justice Denied?" Pacific Historical Review 52, no.2 (1983): 191-211. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3638795  Yukari Takai, "Asian Migrants, Exclusionary Laws, and Transborder Migration in North America, 1880-1940," OAH Magazine of History 23, No.4 (2009): 35-42. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40506013  Asian Workers in Kinsey Brothers Photographs of the Lumber Industry, 1890-1945, University of Washington Digital Libraries, https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/clarkkinsey/search/searchterm/asian%20japanese/field/subjec/mode/any/conn/and/cosuppress/ https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/clarkkinsey/id/416/rec/45 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/the-bloody-history-of-anti-asian-violence-in-the-west https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Asian_Americans

In this episode of Keep it Humane, Daniel and Ashley sit down with Douglas Starr, Professor Emeritus of Science Journalism at Boston University and longtime science writer, to unpack one of the most polarizing topics in animal welfare today: the no-kill movement and the influence of large national organizations like Best Friends Animal Society.Douglas joins the show to discuss his recent Smithsonian Magazine article, “The Nation's Biggest Animal Sanctuary Operates Under the Mantra ‘Save Them All.' How Controversial Is That?”, which you can read here:

This week we're traveling back to first-century Jerusalem with The Book of Clarence! Join us as we learn about Mary Magdalene, Barabbas, Biblical sick burns, and more! Sources: Martínez-Cruz, B., Mendizabal, I., Harmant, C. et al. Origins, admixture and founder lineages in European Roma. Eur J Hum Genet 24, 937–943 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ejhg.2015.201 Gresham D, Morar B, Underhill PA, Passarino G, Lin AA, Wise C, Angelicheva D, Calafell F, Oefner PJ, Shen P, Tournev I, de Pablo R, Kuĉinskas V, Perez-Lezaun A, Marushiakova E, Popov V, Kalaydjieva L. Origins and divergence of the Roma (gypsies). Am J Hum Genet. 2001 Dec;69(6):1314-31. doi: 10.1086/324681. Epub 2001 Nov 9. PMID: 11704928; PMCID: PMC1235543. James Carroll, "Who Was Mary Magdalene?" Smithsonian Magazine https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-was-mary-magdalene-119565482/   Cornelis Bennema, "Mary Magdalene: Recognizing the Shepherd's Voice," Encountering Jesus (2014). https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9m0t70.27  Meggan Watterson, Mary Magdalene Revealed: The First Apostle, Her Feminist Gospel & the Christianity We Haven't Tried Yet (audiobook).  Y'all Translation Bible, https://www.bible.com/bible/4108/JHN.20.YALL  NIV Study Bible Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_book_of_clarence_2024  Robert Daniels, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-book-of-clarence-film-review-2024  Alissa Wilkinson, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/movies/the-book-of-clarence-review.html  https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/the-book-of-clarence-review-lakeith-stanfield-1235780399/ 

We are really lucky to get lots of listener suggestions for the show, more good questions than we can possibly answer in a mailbag episode once or twice a year. So we're starting a new segment we call… Decoder Rings Back! Every month, host Willa Paskin will personally call up a listener to answer their question. In this inaugural installment of Decoder Rings Back, Willa calls up listener Dustin Malek about his cultural mystery: Why did the Mona Lisa, of all paintings, become the most famous in the world, bar none? Willa shares the story of daring heist that turned Leonardo da Vinci's enigmatic smiling subject into a celebrity.Future episodes of Decoder Rings Back will only be available to Slate Plus subscribers. So if you want to be sure not to miss them, sign up for Slate Plus! You'll get exclusive episodes and ad-free listening not just on our show, but all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen. This episode was produced by Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.Sources for This EpisodeCumming, Laura. “The man who stole the Mona Lisa,” The Guardian, August 5, 2011.Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler. “Stealing Mona Lisa,” Vanity Fair, April 16, 2009.Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler. The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection, Bison Books, 2010.Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo da Vinci, Simon & Schuster, 2018.Roberts, Sam. “Happy Birthday to the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa and Took It to Italy,” The New York Times, October 7, 2022.Sassoon, Donald. “Mona Lisa: The Best-Known Girl in the Whole Wide World,” History Workshop Journal, Spring 2001.Sassoon, Donald. Mona Lisa: The History of the World's Most Famous Painting, HarperCollins, 2016.“The Theft That Made The 'Mona Lisa' A Masterpiece,” NPR, July 30, 2011.Zug, James. “Stolen: How the Mona Lisa Became the World's Most Famous Painting,” Smithsonian Magazine, June 15, 2011. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are really lucky to get lots of listener suggestions for the show, more good questions than we can possibly answer in a mailbag episode once or twice a year. So we're starting a new segment we call… Decoder Rings Back! Every month, host Willa Paskin will personally call up a listener to answer their question. In this inaugural installment of Decoder Rings Back, Willa calls up listener Dustin Malek about his cultural mystery: Why did the Mona Lisa, of all paintings, become the most famous in the world, bar none? Willa shares the story of daring heist that turned Leonardo da Vinci's enigmatic smiling subject into a celebrity.Future episodes of Decoder Rings Back will only be available to Slate Plus subscribers. So if you want to be sure not to miss them, sign up for Slate Plus! You'll get exclusive episodes and ad-free listening not just on our show, but all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen. This episode was produced by Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.Sources for This EpisodeCumming, Laura. “The man who stole the Mona Lisa,” The Guardian, August 5, 2011.Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler. “Stealing Mona Lisa,” Vanity Fair, April 16, 2009.Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler. The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection, Bison Books, 2010.Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo da Vinci, Simon & Schuster, 2018.Roberts, Sam. “Happy Birthday to the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa and Took It to Italy,” The New York Times, October 7, 2022.Sassoon, Donald. “Mona Lisa: The Best-Known Girl in the Whole Wide World,” History Workshop Journal, Spring 2001.Sassoon, Donald. Mona Lisa: The History of the World's Most Famous Painting, HarperCollins, 2016.“The Theft That Made The 'Mona Lisa' A Masterpiece,” NPR, July 30, 2011.Zug, James. “Stolen: How the Mona Lisa Became the World's Most Famous Painting,” Smithsonian Magazine, June 15, 2011. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are really lucky to get lots of listener suggestions for the show, more good questions than we can possibly answer in a mailbag episode once or twice a year. So we're starting a new segment we call… Decoder Rings Back! Every month, host Willa Paskin will personally call up a listener to answer their question. In this inaugural installment of Decoder Rings Back, Willa calls up listener Dustin Malek about his cultural mystery: Why did the Mona Lisa, of all paintings, become the most famous in the world, bar none? Willa shares the story of daring heist that turned Leonardo da Vinci's enigmatic smiling subject into a celebrity.Future episodes of Decoder Rings Back will only be available to Slate Plus subscribers. So if you want to be sure not to miss them, sign up for Slate Plus! You'll get exclusive episodes and ad-free listening not just on our show, but all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen. This episode was produced by Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.Sources for This EpisodeCumming, Laura. “The man who stole the Mona Lisa,” The Guardian, August 5, 2011.Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler. “Stealing Mona Lisa,” Vanity Fair, April 16, 2009.Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler. The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection, Bison Books, 2010.Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo da Vinci, Simon & Schuster, 2018.Roberts, Sam. “Happy Birthday to the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa and Took It to Italy,” The New York Times, October 7, 2022.Sassoon, Donald. “Mona Lisa: The Best-Known Girl in the Whole Wide World,” History Workshop Journal, Spring 2001.Sassoon, Donald. Mona Lisa: The History of the World's Most Famous Painting, HarperCollins, 2016.“The Theft That Made The 'Mona Lisa' A Masterpiece,” NPR, July 30, 2011.Zug, James. “Stolen: How the Mona Lisa Became the World's Most Famous Painting,” Smithsonian Magazine, June 15, 2011. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are really lucky to get lots of listener suggestions for the show, more good questions than we can possibly answer in a mailbag episode once or twice a year. So we're starting a new segment we call… Decoder Rings Back! Every month, host Willa Paskin will personally call up a listener to answer their question. In this inaugural installment of Decoder Rings Back, Willa calls up listener Dustin Malek about his cultural mystery: Why did the Mona Lisa, of all paintings, become the most famous in the world, bar none? Willa shares the story of daring heist that turned Leonardo da Vinci's enigmatic smiling subject into a celebrity.Future episodes of Decoder Rings Back will only be available to Slate Plus subscribers. So if you want to be sure not to miss them, sign up for Slate Plus! You'll get exclusive episodes and ad-free listening not just on our show, but all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen. This episode was produced by Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.Sources for This EpisodeCumming, Laura. “The man who stole the Mona Lisa,” The Guardian, August 5, 2011.Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler. “Stealing Mona Lisa,” Vanity Fair, April 16, 2009.Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler. The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection, Bison Books, 2010.Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo da Vinci, Simon & Schuster, 2018.Roberts, Sam. “Happy Birthday to the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa and Took It to Italy,” The New York Times, October 7, 2022.Sassoon, Donald. “Mona Lisa: The Best-Known Girl in the Whole Wide World,” History Workshop Journal, Spring 2001.Sassoon, Donald. Mona Lisa: The History of the World's Most Famous Painting, HarperCollins, 2016.“The Theft That Made The 'Mona Lisa' A Masterpiece,” NPR, July 30, 2011.Zug, James. “Stolen: How the Mona Lisa Became the World's Most Famous Painting,” Smithsonian Magazine, June 15, 2011. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are really lucky to get lots of listener suggestions for the show, more good questions than we can possibly answer in a mailbag episode once or twice a year. So we're starting a new segment we call… Decoder Rings Back! Every month, host Willa Paskin will personally call up a listener to answer their question. In this inaugural installment of Decoder Rings Back, Willa calls up listener Dustin Malek about his cultural mystery: Why did the Mona Lisa, of all paintings, become the most famous in the world, bar none? Willa shares the story of daring heist that turned Leonardo da Vinci's enigmatic smiling subject into a celebrity.Future episodes of Decoder Rings Back will only be available to Slate Plus subscribers. So if you want to be sure not to miss them, sign up for Slate Plus! You'll get exclusive episodes and ad-free listening not just on our show, but all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Decoder Ring show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or visit slate.com/decoderplus for access wherever you listen. This episode was produced by Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is also produced by Katie Shepherd and Evan Chung, our supervising producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director.If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com or leave a message on our hotline at (347) 460-7281.Sources for This EpisodeCumming, Laura. “The man who stole the Mona Lisa,” The Guardian, August 5, 2011.Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler. “Stealing Mona Lisa,” Vanity Fair, April 16, 2009.Hoobler, Dorothy, and Thomas Hoobler. The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection, Bison Books, 2010.Isaacson, Walter. Leonardo da Vinci, Simon & Schuster, 2018.Roberts, Sam. “Happy Birthday to the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa and Took It to Italy,” The New York Times, October 7, 2022.Sassoon, Donald. “Mona Lisa: The Best-Known Girl in the Whole Wide World,” History Workshop Journal, Spring 2001.Sassoon, Donald. Mona Lisa: The History of the World's Most Famous Painting, HarperCollins, 2016.“The Theft That Made The 'Mona Lisa' A Masterpiece,” NPR, July 30, 2011.Zug, James. “Stolen: How the Mona Lisa Became the World's Most Famous Painting,” Smithsonian Magazine, June 15, 2011. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 24, 2025 is: hark back • HAHRK-BAK • verb Harking back can be about turning back to an earlier topic or circumstance, as in "a storyteller harking back to his youth," or it can be about going back to something as an origin or source, as in "a style that harks back to the turn of the previous century." // The dinner conversation harked back to the lunch debate over what counts as a traditional holiday meal. // The diner's interior decor harks back to the 1950s. See the entry > Examples: "The single harks back to Chenier's heyday when his music was produced on 45s and put into jukeboxes, says [Maureen] Loughran." — Alicia Ault, Smithsonian Magazine, 25 June 2025 Did you know? Hark, a very old word meaning "to listen," was used as a cry in hunting. The master of the hunt might cry "Hark! Forward!" or "Hark! Back!" The cries became set phrases, both as nouns and verbs. Thus, a "hark back" was a retracing of a route by dogs and hunters, and to "hark back" was to turn back along the path. From its use in hunting, the verb acquired its current figurative meanings concerned with returning to the past. The variants hearken and harken (also very old words meaning "to listen") are also used, with and without back, as synonyms of hark back.

Real Ice, a UK based start-up, has been on the forefront of exploring the viability of this new technology. Aqua Freezing involves drilling holes through sea ice to pump out the sea water below and refreeze it on the surface. Once the water freezes, it thickens existing ice to the surface. Adding snow insulation in late winter is expected to help ice persist through summer melts, thereby reducing the risk of a "Blue Ocean Event." This solution targets climate change by maintaining Arctic ice cover, which can stabilize local ecosystems and moderate global climate impacts. If the project is successful, it is projected to postpone the loss of ice caps by approximately 17 years for each year this is completed. For every four feet of water pumped onto the surface, it is projected that the ice will cover around 3 feet. The Decline of Arctic Sea IceAs climate change heightens temperatures and alters climatic conditions, summer sea ice in the Arctic is melting rapidly. By the mid 2030s, it is predicted that a “Blue Ocean Event” (or BOE) will occur, meaning that the Arctic Ocean is expected to have less than one million square kilometers of sea ice. This equates to just 15% of the Arctic's seasonal minimum ice cover of the late 1970s. As ice continues to melt, more of the ocean will be exposed to the sun's rays, thus absorbing more heat and accelerating warming. The Arctic has warmed four times faster than the rest of the world since 1979, largely due to this positive feedback loop known as Arctic amplification. Since the 1980s, the amount of Arctic sea ice has declined by approximately 13% each decade. As the BOE unfolds, it will trigger significant impacts, including droughts, heatwaves, accelerated thawing of terrestrial permafrost (releasing emissions in the process), and sea level rise. The Arctic plays a critical role in climate stabilization by acting as a large reflective surface, helping to cool the planet and maintain a stable global temperature. The BOE is thus a major climatic tipping point with catastrophic global consequences. A new methodology has been proposed to protect and restore Arctic sea ice known as Aqua Freezing. This approach uses renewable energy-powered pumps to distribute seawater on existing Arctic ice, allowing it to refreeze and thicken, helping to maintain climatic stability.The plan aims to target over 386,000 square miles of Arctic sea ice, an area larger than California. The process of refreezing already shows promise in field tests conducted over the past two years in Alaska and Canada. Proponents of refreezing Arctic sea ice believe that this technique would buy the region time while we make the necessary emissions cuts to curb the impacts of climate change. Refreezing ice would also preserve the albedo effect, which reflects sunlight back into space, preventing warming. Although AquaFreezing offers a potential solution to combat Arctic melting, scientists and policymakers doubt whether sea ice can be grown over a long enough period to make a true difference in the climate crisis. Further, the project is quite costly, equating to over 5 trillion dollars and demanding more steel than the US produces in a single year. The project would require 10 million pumps; however, this would only cover 10% of the Arctic Ocean's roughly 4 million square mile size. To cover the entire area would require 100 million pumps and roughly 100 million tons of steel each year. The US currently produces around 80 to 90 million tons of steel a year, so covering just 10% of Arctic ice would require 13% of US steel production. The production required for the project could lead to immense environmental degradation and added emissions in the process.  About Our GuestSimon Woods, co-founder and Executive Chairperson of Real Ice, is hopeful that this solution will buy the region time while we make the necessary emissions cuts to curb climate change. Real Ice believes this innovative solution can preserve sea ice and thus work to combat climate change. ResourcesArctic News, Blue Ocean EventCNN, A controversial plan to refreeze the Arctic is seeing promising results. But scientists warn of big risksRealIce, Introducing AquaFreezing: Encouraging the natural process of Arctic sea ice generation.Smithsonian Magazine, Arctic Could Be Sea Ice-Free in the Summer by the 2030sSustainability Times, Controversial Arctic Refreezing Plan Shows Promise, but Risks RemainWarp Notes, They are developing a technology to restore sea ice in the ArcticFurther ReadingYoutube, Scientists' Crazy Plan To Refreeze The ArcticFor a transcript, please visit https://climatebreak.org/real-ice-with-simon-woods/.

Christmas is here, and after a brief hiatus due to a hectic workload, Chris Fernandez-Packham returns with the traditional festive special. This year, we raise a glass to the Victorian origins of the cocktail—a “Golden Age” of social and technological evolution that saw the transition from traditional British punches to the precision of the American “sensation-drink”. From the “Ice King” who shipped New England ponds to Calcutta to the middle-class women of Chicago claiming public spaces one Manhattan at a time, we explore how spirits, science, and social change collided. We conclude, as always, with a classic Victorian ghost story: The Shadow in the Corner by M. E. Braddon. Key Topics Covered: The Original Manuals: Comparing Jerry Thomas's legendary Bar-Tender's Guide (1862) with the defensive British response in Drinking Cups & Their Custom (1869). The Science of Bitters: The medicinal origins and industrialization of Angostura and Peychaud's bitters. Technological Breakthroughs: How the Coffey Still revolutionized spirit consistency and Frederic Tudor created the global ice trade. Cocktails and Gender: The role of the cocktail in helping middle-class women claim public spaces in 19th-century Chicago tea rooms. New Orleans Chemistry: The multicultural melting pot that gave us the Sazerac, the Absinthe Frappé, and the labor-intensive Ramos Gin Fizz. Royal Habits: Queen Victoria's daily Scotch-and-wine habit and her curious refusal to use ice. Festive Ghost Story: A reading and analysis of The Shadow in the Corner by M. E. Braddon. Works Cited & Sources: Jerry Thomas: The Bar-Tender’s Guide / How to Mix Drinks. Henry Porter & George Roberts: Drinking Cups & Their Custom (1869). Emily A. Remus: “Tippling Ladies and the Making of Consumer Culture” (The Journal of American History). Angostura Bitters: “Our Story”. https://angosturabitters.com/our-story/ Scotch Whisky Magazine: “Whisky Heroes: Aeneas Coffey”. Statista: “U.S. Alcohol Consumption Per Person”. Big Edition: “Queen Victoria's Food Habits”. Smithsonian Magazine: “Did New Orleans Invent the Cocktail?”. “A Brief History of Ice.” The Alcohol Professor, 19 Mar. 2018, www.alcoholprofessor.com/blog-posts/blog/2018/03/19/a-brief-history-of-ice. Accessed 20 Dec. 2025. “Commercial Ice – Cambridge Historical Society.” History Cambridge, historycambridge.org/innovation/Ice.html. Accessed 20 Dec. 2025. “Planning and Control in the 19th Century Ice Trade.” Accounting Historians Journal, vol. 11, no. 1, Spring 1984, egrove.olemiss.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1196&context=aah_journal. Accessed 20 Dec. 2025. The Ice King: https://fee.org/articles/frederic-tudor-the-entrepreneur-who-brought-ice-to-calcutta/  Sazerac Recipe and History. New Orleans & Company, www.neworleans.com/drink/cocktails/sazerac/. Accessed 20 Dec. 2025. “The Sazerac Story.” The Sazerac Company, www.sazerac.com/our-company/our-story.html. Accessed 20 Dec. 2025. “What is a Coffey Still?” Whiskipedia, 22 May 2020, whiskipedia.com/fundamentals/what-is-a-coffey-still/. Accessed 20 Dec. 2025. The Emergence of New Orleans Cuisine.” The American Menu, 5 June 2024, www.theamericanmenu.com/2024/06/the-emergence-of-new-orleans-cuisine.html. Accessed 20 Dec. 2025. “History of Craft Cocktails in NOLA.” Where Y'at New Orleans, 20 Nov. 2024, www.whereyat.com/new-orleans-craft-cocktail-history. Accessed 20 Dec. 2025. “History of the Cocktail.” New Orleans & Company, www.neworleans.com/things-to-do/history/the-history-of-the-cocktail-and-new-orleans/. Accessed 20 Dec. 2025. The post Christmas special 2025: Anyone for cocktails? appeared first on AGE OF VICTORIA PODCAST.

#HolidayHorrors | Hundreds of people have reported encounters with what looks exactly like Santa Claus — and they weren't children dreaming on Christmas Eve. If the real Santa doesn't exist, what are these witnesses actually seeing... and why does it want to be seen?IN THIS EPISODE: Many of us are familiar with the flip side of Father Christmas – the darker entity who visits and kidnaps bad children, Krampus. But when it comes to true fear, even Krampus would run in terror at the sight of Iceland's Gryla, the Christmas Witch! With roots dating back to the 13th century, Gryla is not to be messed with! (Iceland's Christmas Witch) *** It was Christmastime, 1938, and 19-year-old Margaret Martin had just graduated from Wilkes-Barre Business College with honors and was eager to secure a secretarial job. Her eagerness would lead to her disappearance. (The Murder of Margaret Martin) *** Ask anyone over the age of twelve what they think about the existence of Santa Claus and you'll most assuredly get the same answer. But that has not stopped people of all ages reporting sightings of the jolly old elf, and some of the stories are downright creepy. (People Who Swear They've Seen the Real Santa Claus) *** Two murders committed in the same house during the holidays of 1928 appear to have resulted in the spirits of Christmas past haunting the place today. (The Hundley Murders)TIME STAMPS & CHAPTERS:00:00:00.000 = They Swear They Saw Santa00:01:22.035 = Show Open00:03:20.486 = The Hundley Murders00:18:08.033 = *** People Who Swear They've Seen the Real Santa Claus00:38:56.938 = *** Iceland's Christmas Witch00:45:55.352 = The Murder of Margaret Martin00:49:25.321 = Show CloseSOURCES AND ESSENTIAL WEB LINKS…“The Strange World of True Kris Kringle Sightings” by Brent Swancer for Mysterious Universe:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8kfyka“Iceland's Christmas Witch” by Alex Palmer for Smithsonian Magazine: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/57ntaeeu“The Murder of Margaret Martin” by Troy Taylor: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/7e6xxvph“The Hundley Murders” by Troy Taylor for his book “Bloody Illinois”: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3yb3fd2p(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46=WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2024, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: December 08, 2021#WeirdDarkness #SantaSightings #ParanormalChristmas #ChristmasMysteries #SupernaturalEncounters #TricksterSpirits #UnexplainedPhenomena #GhostStories #ChristmasParanormal #TrueParanormalStorieshttps://weirddarkness.com/RealKrisKringleSightings

This week at Camp Shady Birch, we're unwrapping the worst part of the holidays: truly unhinged gift guides and the chaos of simply being alive in December! Counselor Zachariah kicks things off with a parking violation saga for the ages after he found a bright orange sticker slapped on his perfectly legal parked car and immediately took to the internet to publicly drag the culprit. Festive! Counselor Jonathan dives into the wild story of a magician who implanted an RFID chip in his hand for magic tricks and then forgot the password to his own hand. It's giving tech anxiety. Also, a new study about how urban raccoons are literally evolving shorter snouts and showing early signs of domestication just from living in our cities and eating our garbage. We love new housemates!! They should pay rent lol! We've got the annual curse of dry cracked knuckles, terrible holiday gift guides, undying love for gingerbread men and why they've finally (rightfully!!) become the face of the holiday season this year, and so much more!This episode was mixed and edited by Kevin Betts.Get your tickets to see Zachariah Porter's new Live Comedy Tour!Want BONUS CONTENT? Join our PATREON!Sponsors:➜ For a limited time, get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carver Mat frame (Wirecutter's #1 pick) at AuraFrames.com with promo code: CAMP➜ Score deals like up to 50% off at MeUndies.com/counselors and using our code: counselors➜ Go to Progressive.com to see if you could save on insurance.➜ Bring your A-game and talk to your doctor. Learn more at Apretude.com or call 1-888-240-0340.➜ Download Cash App Today: https://click.cash.app/ui6m/2daxxo2x As a Cash App partner, we may earn a commission when you sign up for a Cash App account. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures.Works Cited:➜ Pring, Joe. “Magician ‘Forgot the Password' to His Own Hand after Locking Himself Out of Implanted RFID Chip.” Dexerto, 22 Nov. 2025.➜ Hill, Marta. “Urban Raccoons Are Showing Signs of Early Domestication, With Shorter Snouts Than Their Rural Cousins.” Smithsonian Magazine, 21 Nov. 2025.Camp Songs:Spotify Playlist | YouTube Playlist | Sammich's Secret MixtapeSocial Media:Camp Counselors TikTokCamp Counselors InstagramCamp Counselors FacebookCamp Counselors TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

No dogs or cats here! A number of unorthodox pets have arrived at the White House and become part of the first family in very unusual ways throughout history. Research: “All Creatures Great and Small: Ground Floor Pet Sculptures.” The White House. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/holiday/2002/groundfloor/05.html “An Animal Often Misjudged.” Evening Star. Nov. 28, 1926. https://www.newspapers.com/image-view/618563692/?match=1&terms=raccoon%20%22white%20house%22%20coolidge “Coolidge Didn’t Leave ‘Rebecca’ Behind.” News Journal. March 11, 1927. https://www.newspapers.com/image-view/291999678/?match=1&terms=rebecca%20raccoon Coolidge, Calvin. “The Autobiography Of Calvin Coolidge.” Cosmopolitan Book Corporation. 1929. https://archive.org/details/autobiographyofc011710mbp/page/n1/mode/2up Costello, Matthew. “Raccoons at the White House.” The White House Historical Association. https://www.whitehousehistory.org/raccoons-at-the-white-house Hard, Anne. “Pets of the White House.” The Minneapolis Journal. Jan. 6, 1929. https://www.newspapers.com/image-view/811305767/?match=1&terms=%22reuben%20raccoon%22 Heiskell, Samuel Gordon. “Andrew Jackson and early Tennessee history, Vol. 3.” Ambrose Printing Co. 1921. https://archive.org/details/andrewjacksonear31heis/page/52/mode/2up?q=parrot Jack the Turkey. “On Gratitude.” President Lincoln’s Cottage. No. 27, 2014. https://www.lincolncottage.org/on-gratitude/ King, Gilbert. “The History of Pardoning Turkeys Began With Tad Lincoln.” Smithsonian Magazine. Nov. 21, 2012. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-history-of-pardoning-turkeys-began-with-tad-lincoln-141137570/ “Live Raccoon Gives Coolidge Big Problem.” The Columbus Ledger. Nov. 26, 1926. https://www.newspapers.com/image-view/855229358/?match=1&terms=raccoon%20%22white%20house%22%20coolidge McGraw, Eliza. “This raccoon could have been a president’s Thanksgiving meal. It became a White House pet instead.” The Washington Post. Nov. 25, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/11/25/this-raccoon-could-have-been-presidents-thanksgiving-meal-it-became-white-house-pet-instead/ “Meet Rebecca!” The Cincinnati Enquirer. Dec. 25, 1926. https://www.newspapers.com/image-view/103377809/?match=1&terms=rebecca%20raccoon Meyer, Holly. “Andrew Jackson’s Funeral Drew Thousands, 1 Swearing Parrot.” The Tennessean. June 7, 2015. https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2015/06/07/andrew-jacksons-funeral-drew-thousands-swearing-parrot/28664493/ Mezaros, John. “Statue of Jack the Pardoned Turkey.” Atlas Obscura. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/statue-of-jack-the-pardoned-turkey Moser, Harold D. (ed.) “The Papers of Andrew Jackson.” University of Tennessee Press. 2002. https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=utk_jackson “Odds and Ends At the Nation’s Capital.” The Buffalo News. March 1, 1928. https://www.newspapers.com/image-view/837109710/?match=1&terms=rebecca%20raccoon “Raccoon Sent to Coolidge to Be White House Pet.” Salt Lake Telegram. Dec. 1, 1926. https://www.newspapers.com/image-view/288632502/?match=1&terms=raccoon%20%22white%20house%22%20coolidge “Rebecca in Disgrace Again As She Flees White House Kennels to Spend Night Out.” The Evening Star. Dec. 14, 1927. https://www.newspapers.com/image-view/618609389/?match=1&terms=%22rebecca%20in%20disgrace%22 “Rebecca, Raccoon, Is Banished From Coolidge Domicile.” San Francisco Examiner. March 17, 1927. https://www.newspapers.com/image-view/457915005/?match=1&terms=rebecca%20raccoon Upton, Harriet Taylor. “Our Early Presidents, Their Wives and Children: From Washington to Jackson.” D. Lothrop Company. 1890. Accessed online: https://books.google.com/books?id=vzpOAAAAYAAJ&vq=alligator&source=gbs_navlinks_s “Wills House Virtual Identity: Thomas ‘Tad’ Lincoln.” National Parks Service. https://www.nps.gov/gett/learn/historyculture/wills-house-virtual-identity-thomas-tad-lincoln.htm Wootson, Cleve R. Jr. “A history of White House profanity — and one cursing presidential parrot.” Washington Post. Jan. 12, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/01/12/a-potty-mouthed-history-of-presidential-profanity-and-one-cursing-white-house-parrot/ Wright, James L. “Coolidge Heads Toward Outing Spot in Dakota.” The Buffalo News. June 14, 1927. https://www.newspapers.com/image-view/836843871/?match=1&terms=rebecca%20raccoonakota.” Zellner, Xander. “A Brief History of President-Bird Companionship.” Audubon. Feb 12, 2016. https://www.audubon.org/news/a-brief-history-president-bird-companionship See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Picture this: the gods have come and gone, dynasties have risen and face-planted, cities have popped up and crumbled, tourists have come, posed, and posted a million thirst traps on Instagram… but the Sphinx is still just sitting there like, “Yeah, I'll wait.”Today we're heading to Giza to talk about the world's most famous stone cat with a people head: the Great Sphinx of Egypt. It's massive, it's mysterious, it's eroding faster than our faith in humanity, and it sits at the crossroads of legit science, wild speculation, and whatever the hell Edgar Cayce was doing.We're going to walk through what the Sphinx actually is, what we think we know about its history, how old it might be, why people keep insisting there's a secret Atlantean library under its paws, what modern tech like ground-penetrating radar and fancy satellite scans are actually showing under the Giza plateau, and why so many folks see Dr. Zahi Hawass as the final boss of “Nothing To See Here, Move Along.”Strap on the sunscreen, adjust your tinfoil nemes, and get ready for Hysteria 51.Special thanks to this week's research sources:Main References Mentioned in the EpisodeLehner, Mark.The Complete Pyramids: Solving the Ancient Mysteries.London: Thames & Hudson, 1997.Hawass, Zahi.The Secrets of the Sphinx: Restoration Past and Present.Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1998.Jordan, Paul.Riddles of the Sphinx.New York: New York University Press, 1998.Gauri, K. Lal, John J. Sinai, and Jayanta K. Bandyopadhyay.“Geologic Weathering and Its Implications on the Age of the Sphinx.”Geoarchaeology 10, no. 2 (1995): 119–133.Schoch, Robert M.Voices of the Rocks: A Scientist Looks at Catastrophes and Ancient Civilizations.New York: Harmony Books, 1999.Reader, Colin.“A Geomorphological Study of the Giza Necropolis, with Implications for the Development of the Site.”Archaeometry 43, no. 1 (2001): 149–159.Sharafeldin, S. M., K. S. Essa, M. A. S. Youssef, H. Karsli, Z. E. Diab, and N. Sayil.“Shallow Geophysical Techniques to Investigate the Groundwater Table at the Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt.”Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems 8 (2019): 29–43.https://doi.org/10.5194/gi-8-29-2019Biondi, Filippo, and Corrado Malanga.“Synthetic Aperture Radar Doppler Tomography Reveals Details of Undiscovered High-Resolution Internal Structure of the Great Pyramid of Giza.”Remote Sensing 14, no. 20 (2022): 5231.https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14205231Hancock, Graham, and Robert Bauval.The Message of the Sphinx: A Quest for the Hidden Legacy of Mankind.New York: Crown, 1996.Cayce, Edgar Evans, and Edgar Cayce.Edgar Cayce on Atlantis.New York: Hawthorn Books, 1968.Geology, Weathering & Age of the SphinxGauri, K. Lal.“Geologic Study of the Sphinx.”Newsletter of the American Research Center in Egypt 127 (1984): 24–43.Gauri, K. Lal.“Geologic Features and the Durability of Limestone at the Sphinx.”Environmental Geology and Water Science 16 (1990): 57–62.Chowdhury, A. N., A. R. Punuru, and K. L. Gauri.“Weathering of Limestone Beds at the Great Sphinx.”Environmental Geology and Water Science 15 (1990): 217–223.Harrell, James A.“The Sphinx Controversy: Another Look at the Geological Evidence.”KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt 5, no. 3 (1994): 70–74.Matthusen, August.“A Rebuttal to Robert Schoch on the Weathering of the Great Sphinx.”(Online article, catchpenny.org, c. 1999.)Harrell, James A.“Comments on the Geological Evidence for the Sphinx's Age.”(Online article, Hall of Ma'at, 2000s.)Liritzis, Ioannis, and Asimina Vafiadou.“Surface Luminescence Dating of Some Egyptian Monuments.”Journal of Cultural Heritage 16, no. 2 (2015): 134–150.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.culher.2014.05.007Geophysics, Groundwater & Subsurface ScansSharafeldin, S. M., et al.“Shallow Geophysical Techniques to Investigate the Groundwater Table at the Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt.”Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems 8 (2019): 29–43.Sato, Motoyuki, et al.“GPR and ERT Exploration in the Western Cemetery in Giza, Egypt.”Archaeological Prospection (2024).(Ground-penetrating radar and electrical resistivity tomography survey west of the pyramids.)Biondi, Filippo, and Corrado Malanga.“Synthetic Aperture Radar Doppler Tomography…” (as above).(Satellite SAR micro-motion tomography on Khufu's pyramid.)Lehner, Mark.“ARCE Sphinx Project 1979–1983 Archive.”American Research Center in Egypt / OpenContext.(Field notes and geological collaboration with K. Lal Gauri and T. Aigner.)Alternative Chronologies, Orion / Leo & “As Above, So Below”West, John Anthony.Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt.Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 1993 (rev. ed.).Schoch, Robert M., and Robert Bauval.Origins of the Sphinx: Celestial Guardian of Pre-Pharaonic Civilization.Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2017.Bauval, Robert, and Adrian Gilbert.The Orion Mystery: Unlocking the Secrets of the Pyramids.New York: Crown, 1994.Hancock, Graham, and Robert Bauval.The Message of the Sphinx (as above).Esoteric, Hall of Records & Atlantis MaterialCayce, Edgar Evans, and Edgar Cayce.Edgar Cayce on Atlantis.New York: Hawthorn Books, 1968.Todeschi, Kevin J.Edgar Cayce on the Akashic Records: The Book of Life.Virginia Beach: A.R.E. Press, 1998.Todeschi, Kevin J.Edgar Cayce's Atlantis.Charlottesville, VA: 4th Dimension Press, 2014.Blavatsky, Helena P.The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy.London: Theosophical Publishing Company, 1888.Lewis, Harvey Spencer.Rosicrucian monographs and AMORC publications on hidden chambers at Giza (early 20th century).Zahi Hawass, Antiquities Politics & ControversiesHawass, Zahi.The Secrets of the Sphinx (as above).Murphy, Kim.“Getty Institute Probes Riddle of the Deteriorating Sphinx.”Los Angeles Times, May 16, 1990.Borger, Julian.“The Fall of Zahi Hawass.”Smithsonian Magazine, July 17, 2011.“Zahi Hawass Fired.”The History Blog, July 18, 2011.“History Catches Up to Famous Egyptologist Zahi Hawass.”The World (PRI), August 1, 2016.Egyptomania & Cultural ContextFritze, Ronald H.Egyptomania: A History of Fascination, Obsession and Fantasy.London: Reaktion Books, 2016.Email us your favorite WEIRD news stories:weird@hysteria51.comSupport the ShowGet exclusive content & perks as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at https://www.patreon.com/Hysteria51 from just $1ShopBe the Best Dressed at your Cult Meeting!https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hysteria51?ref_id=9022See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's a special podcast here at Reckoning. Early American historians Dr. Liz Covart, Dr. Michael Hattem, and Dr. Craig Bruce Smith joined me to live stream Ken Burns' new series The American Revolution and answer questions from people around the world. It's kind of like a Director's Commentary, only if the director was actually four people with degrees in history. This was a blast.About our guest:Dr. Liz Covart is a historian of the American Revolution, and the creator and host of the award-winning podcast Ben Franklin's World.  In 2022, she co-founded Clio Digital Media, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that uses digital media to foster better, more robust understandings of history. And in 2026, she will launch Scholar.DIY, a public benefit company that empowers scholars to transform their expertise into compelling digital stories— building trust, promoting media literacy, and strengthening democracy along the way.Dr. Michael Hattem is an American historian, with interests in early America, the American Revolution, and historical memory. He received his PhD in History at Yale University and has taught at The New School and Knox College. He is the author of The Memory of '76: The Revolution in American History (Yale University Press, 2024), which was a finalist for the 2025 George Washington Prize, and Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution (Yale University Press, 2020). He is currently the Associate Director of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute.Hattem's work has been featured or mentioned in The New York Times, TIME magazine, The Smithsonian Magazine, the Washington Post, as well as many other mainstream media publications and outlets. He has served as a historical consultant or contributor for a number of projects and organizations, curated historical exhibitions, appeared in television documentaries, and authenticated and written catalogue essays for historical document auctions.Dr. Craig Bruce Smith  is a professor of history at National Defense University in the Joint Advanced Warfighting School (JAWS) in Norfolk, VA. He authored American Honor: The Creation of the Nation's Ideals during the Revolutionary Era, Securing Victory 1781-1783 (out soon), and co-authored George Washington's Lessons in Ethical Leadership. Smith earned his PhD in American history from Brandeis University. Previously, he was an associate professor of military history at the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), an assistant professor of history, and the director of the history program at William Woods University, and he has taught at additional colleges, including Tufts University.He specializes in American Revolutionary and early American and military history, specifically focusing on George Washington, honor, ethics, war, the founders, transnational ideas, and national identity. In addition, he has broader interests in colonial America, the early republic, leadership, and early American cultural, intellectual, and political history. Smith was named a Jack Miller Center Scholar in 2025 and also serves as a member of their History Advisory Council. He is also the co-host of National Defense University's JAWbone podcast. 

When Rome's Emperor Valerian fell into Persian hands, his defeat became one of history's most grotesque legends — a tale of humiliation, torture, and a death said to come by molten gold. | #WDRadio WEEK OF NOV 11, 2025==========HOUR ONE: When it comes to receiving the death sentence, history has given us several ways to go about the execution. Hanging, firing squad, gas chamber, being stoned to death or burned at the stake… but you have to be some whole new level of “hated” by the people if your death blow comes by way of molten gold being poured down your throat. (Death By Golden Throat) *** Typically, when you hear the phrase “high speed chase”, you think of law enforcement trying to catch the bad guys who are in a getaway vehicle. Perhaps after a bank robbery, or after blowing a stop sign and simply refusing to pull over. But have you heard about the time that the police were involved in a high-speed chase up to 100-miles-per hour, trying to catch up to a flying saucer? (The 100mph UFO Chase) *** When the Black Plague arrived at their doorsteps, the villagers were forced to choose between life or certain doom. It's the tragic tale of England's Plague Village – the village of Eyam. (The Black Death Comes to Eyam) *** In the 1800s, women finding themselves “with child” but unmarried, were treated like second-class citizens or worse. And during a time when birth control was limited or even unavailable outside of the rhythm method, what was a girl to do if she found herself in such dire circumstances? Fortunately, there was a woman there ready to help – to take the baby off their hands and give it a good home. Or so everyone thought. (Minnie, The Baby Farmer) *** On frozen lakes near Manitowish Waters, a hooded figure appears to ice fishermen, silently guiding them to the best spots for a catch before vanishing into the winter air. (The Ice Fisherman Ghost)==========HOUR TWO: Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray devised a scheme to get rid of Ruth's husband – and they planned it so well that, okay… actually no. They were so inept they were caught immediately, and even the police publicly called them incompetent. (The Dumb-Bell Murder) *** For over 2,000 years across South and Southeast Asia, trained elephants served as living instruments of execution, crushing condemned prisoners with calculated brutality under the control of their handlers. (Execution By Elephant) *** Before he became a Civil War general, Congressman Dan E. Sickles' scandalous murder trial changed our legal system forever. He said outright that he had killed his wife's lover. So how did he avoid being found guilty of the crime he admitted to committing? (How A Congressman Got Away With Murder) *** In 1150, two children were found near Woolpit in England – they wore strange clothes, spoke oddly, but the most identifiable characteristic for both children was their skin was green. The children themselves were a mystery – but what happened when they grew up? Did they marry? Did they have children? Could there be decedents of the green children of Woolpit living among us today? (Great Grandkids of Green Children) *** In the summer of 1518, a mysterious dancing plague seized the French town of Strasbourg, compelling hundreds to dance without rest for months—some until they collapsed and died—in a frenzy that baffled authorities and remains unexplained to this day. (Dancing Plague)==========SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME: “Tom" and "Lena" are in a loving relationship and have a young child together. It sounds like the perfect family – except for one tiny detail about their relationship. Tom and Lena are biological brother and sister. (I Fell In Love With My Sister) *** In Norfolk, England the village of Eccles was slowly gobbled by the rising waters of the sea in the early 1600s. But even today, sometimes during a particularly heavy story, you can see St. Mary's Church mysteriously reappear… bringing with it, the dead buried in the church graveyard who cannot find rest. (The Disappearing And Reappearing Village of Eccles) *** Lory Price and his wife Ethel mysteriously disappeared from Marion, Illinois. But then, sometimes that happens when you are mixed up with the mob or may have learned something you weren't supposed to. (The Vanishing of Lory Price) *** The Catacombs of St. Callixtus in Rome, Italy, hold the remains of sixteen popes, several martyrs, and around half a million Christians, and according to on author, a not-of-this world entity. (The Callixtus Catacombs Entity)==========SOURCES AND REFERENCES FROM TONIGHT'S SHOW:“Death By Golden Throat” by Genevieve Carlton for Weird History https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3586qeqk, Rachel Nuwer for Smithsonian Magazine https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/18pu2d9b, and Laurie L. Dove for History https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/3vy6r2a9“The Black Death Comes to Eyam” by Stephanie Almazan for The Line Up: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/1aptirxk“Minnie, The Baby Farmer” from The Scare Chamber: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2eqd77xa“The 100MPH UFO Chase” from The Parajournal for The Times Online: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ntcaqk3y“The Ice Fisherman Ghost” by Charlie Hinz: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8nzemt“The Dumb-Bell Murder” by Troy Taylor: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/192wwaer (includes execution photo)“I Fell In Love With My Sister” by Jennifer Tillman for Vice: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/y2dmtp2e“Execution by Elephant” by Joanna Gillan for Ancient Origins: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2p8jj255“The Cursing of Christopher Case” by Gurnoor Kaur for Conspiracy Theories: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/145d147q“The Disappearing And Reappearing Village of Eccles” by Stacia Briggs for Eastern Daily Press:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/5fopg2hq“The Vanishing of Lory Price” by Troy Taylor from his book “Bloody Illinois”: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/lsi06qet“How A Congressman Got Away With Murder” by Genevieve Carlton for All That's Interesting:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/2jantfjj“Great Grandkids of Green Children” from Ancient Code: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/4u4xdypk“The Callixtus Catacombs Entity” by Ellen Lloyd for Ancient Pages: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/aqhlme0r“Dancing Plague” by Cassandra Yorgey at HubPages: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/ycke4fwe==========(Over time links seen above may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for material I use whenever possible. If I have overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it immediately. Some links may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)=========="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46==========WeirdDarkness®, WeirdDarkness© 2025==========To become a Weird Darkness Radio Show affiliate, contact Radio America at affiliates@radioamerica.com, or call 800-807-4703 (press 2 or dial ext 250).

Margherita Bassi -Regular contributor for Smithsonian Magazine, Gizmodo, Popular Science - AI Videos of animals could be dangerous, Did you fall for the Deepfake of NVIDIA CEO? My Insurance company used AI to estimate my car's damage. Going on-prem saved a company a ton of money! Can I add USB ports to my computer? Firewall dangers, Laptop Battery issues, Upgraded from cable to fiber and my network name is the same.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 18, 2025 is: rationale • rash-uh-NAL • noun Rationale refers to an explanation or reason for something said or done. It is often used with for, behind, or of. // City council members who oppose the zoning change should be ready to explain their rationale for voting against it. // She's explained the rationale behind her early retirement. See the entry > Examples: “There is a rationale for commercializing seagrass production, but ecologically sustainable production needs to be at the heart of that business model, and the numbers for doing that simply don't add up at the moment.” — Richard Lilley, quoted in Smithsonian Magazine, 7 Oct. 2024 Did you know? If someone asserts that the word rationale refers to a ration of ale, they are wrong, but that doesn't mean they don't have an actual rationale (a reason, explanation, or basis) for such a claim. “Rationale looks like the words ration and ale jammed together,” they could offer, and while that is true you'd be justified in responding: “Appearances can be deceiving.” Rationale is a direct borrowing of the Latin word rationale, with which it shares the meaning “an explanation of controlling principles of opinion, belief, practice, or phenomena.” The Latin rationale comes from a form of the adjective rationalis (“rational”), which traces back to the noun ratio, meaning “reason.” While the Latin ratio is also the forebear of the English noun ration, referring to a share of something, rationale has nothing to do with a tankard (or stein, or even a pony) of beer.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 11, 2025 is: zoomorphic • zoh-uh-MOR-fik • adjective Zoomorphic describes things that have the form of an animal. // The local bakery is famous for its wide variety of zoomorphic treats, from “hedgehog” dinner rolls to delicate, swan-shaped pastries. See the entry > Examples: “The oldest known ceramics come from a handful of sites in the Czech Republic and date back to about 28,000 B.C.E., roughly 10,000 years after the Neanderthals went extinct. A now iconic figure of a woman and assorted ceramics were found at a Czech site called Dolni Vestonice in 1925. Additional anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines were found over the ensuing decades, and in 2002 fingerprints were discovered on many of the objects.” — Jaimie Seaton, Smithsonian Magazine, 2 July 2024 Did you know? The first-known use of zoomorphic in English is a translation of the French word zoomorphique, used in a mid-19th century book on paleography to describe an ornately designed Greek letter in a manuscript from the Middle Ages: “The text commences with a zoomorphic letter, formed of two winged dragons, united by the tails, the open space being ornamented with elegant arabesques, composed of leaves and flowers …” The zoo in zoomorphique comes from the Greek noun zôion, meaning “animal,” and morphique from morphē, meaning “form.” The translation of zoomorphique to zoomorphic made perfect sense given the the existence of a similarly constructed word, anthropomorphic (“having human form”), which made its debut half a century earlier.

This episode was mixed and edited by Kevin Betts.Get your tickets to see Zachariah Porter's new Live Comedy Tour!Want BONUS CONTENT? Join our PATREON!Sponsors:➜ Bring your A-game and talk to your doctor. Learn more at Apretude.com or call 1-888-240-0340.➜ Go to Progressive.com to see if you could save on insurance.➜ Save 20% on your FIRST order and get a FREE cat toy at PrettyLitter.com/camp (Pretty Litter cannot detect every feline health issue or prevent or diagnose diseases. A diagnosis can only come from a licensed Veterinarian. Terms and conditions apply. See site for details.)Works Cited:➜ Graig Graziosi. Mystery Pilot Is Stealing a California Man's Plane before Repairing and Returning It, The Independent, 8 Aug. 2025.➜ Sarah Kuta. “Colorado Is Building the ‘world's Largest' Wildlife Overpass, Giving Elk and Other Big Creatures a Safe Path to Cross a Busy Freeway.” Smithsonian Magazine, 4 Aug. 2025.Camp Songs:Spotify Playlist | YouTube Playlist | Sammich's Secret MixtapeSocial Media:Camp Counselors TikTokCamp Counselors InstagramCamp Counselors FacebookCamp Counselors TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

At the dawn of the twentieth-century, major advances in science and technology brought incredible change to the field of medicine, enhancing and extending the lives of millions. Yet at the same time, a lax regulations and minimal oversight made it possible for countless medical grifters to get rich offering quack medical solutions to everything from whooping cough to cancer, sometimes at the expense of their patient's lives.When Linda Hazzard opened her sanitarium, the Institute of Natural Therapeutics at Wilderness Heights, in Olalla, Washington in the first decade of the 1900s, she claimed her rigid fasting and elimination approach to dieting was a miracle cure for a variety of illnesses, both trivial and serious. For years, Hazzard operated what amounted to a health retreat for the wealthy, without any oversight from the state or federal agencies. In the end, Hazzard's starvation cure resulted in the deaths of over a dozen people and her arrest and trial for manslaughter, but through all of it, she maintained it was a viable treatment—standing by her methods up until they ended her own life.Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!ReferencesHines, Terrence. 1997. "Starvation Heights." Skeptical Inquirer. Lovejoy, Bess. 2014. "The doctor who starved her patients to death." Smithsonian Magazine, October 28.Olsen, Gregg. 2005. Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest. New York, NY: Crown Publishing Group.Seattle Daily Times. 1911. "Erdman diary tells method of treatment." Seattle Daily Times, August 14.Seattle Star. 1908. "Charged with starving eight-months-old baby." Seattle Star, January 30: 1.—. 1911. "Denies she 'fasted' 2 girls." Seattle Star, August 9: 3.—. 1911. "'Fast cure' woman is arrested." Seattle Star, August 7: 3.—. 1909. "Prosecutors think they can put a stop to starvation cure." Seattle Star, June 26: 1.—. 1908. "Sign doesn't make a doctor." Seattle Star, June 8: 6.—. 1909. "Woman starves to death under care of Dr. L.B. Hazzard." Seattle Star, June 24: 1.—. 1908. "WQeeden case leads to Dr. Hazzard's arrest." Seattle Star, January 31: 1.Tacoma Daily Ledger. 1912. "Dr. Hazzard has her first inning." Tacoma Daily Ledger, Janaury 28: 1.—. 1912. "Dr. Hazzard's trial begins." Tacoma Daily Ledger, January 16: 1.—. 1912. "Final arguments in Hazzard case." Tacoma Daily Ledger, February 3: 2.—. 1912. "Heiress testifies against Dr. Hazzard." Tacoma Daily Ledger, January 20: 1.—. 1912. "Mrs. Hazzard breaks down, and is attended by a dcevoted follower." Tacoma Daily Ledger, February 5: 1.—. 1904. "Samuel Hazzard sent to Minnesota prison." Tacoma Daily Ledger, March 16: 3.—. 1912. "Witnesses deny state's charges." Tacoma Daily Ledger, January 30: 1.—. 1912. "Woman bathed by young men." Tacoma Daily Ledger, January 23: 1.—. 1911. "Woman meet before judge." Tacoma Daily Ledger, October 22: 1. Stay in the know - wondery.fm/morbid-wondery.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Read a full-length even DEEPER-DIVE article about the New England Vampire Panic in my blog at https://weirddarkness.com/vampires-new-england-mercy-brown/Across 19th-century New England, over 80 documented exhumations reveal a forgotten chapter of American history where rural communities were stirred into a vampire panic, causing them to dig up graves and burn the hearts of their own dead relatives.Join the DARKNESS SYNDICATE: https://weirddarkness.com/syndicateTake the WEIRD DARKNESS LISTENER SURVEY and help mold the future of the podcast: https://weirddarkness.com/surveyIN THIS EPISODE: If you are convinced that someone you know is possessed, never try to exorcise the demon on your own – always call an expert. One woman didn't do that. (My Couch Is Possessed By The Devil) *** When the unsinkable ship, the Titanic hit an iceberg and sent 1,500 people to an icy grave, why did many people blame it on the curse of a mummy – a mummy that wasn't even onboard the ship, but was sitting in a British museum? (Did a Mummy's Curse Sink the Titanic) **** An investigation of San Francisco's famed White Lady of Stow Lake revealed some interesting findings about the City By The Bay's most infamous phantom resident. (The Real Story Behind San Francisco's Most Famous Ghost) *** Two hundred years after the Salem witch trials, farmers became convinced that their relatives were returning from the grave to feed on the living. We'll look at the great New England panic around blood-sucking creatures of the night. (The Great Vampire Panic)ABOUT WEIRD DARKNESS: Weird Darkness is a true crime and paranormal podcast narrated by professional award-winning voice actor, Darren Marlar. Seven days per week, Weird Darkness focuses on all thing strange and macabre such as haunted locations, unsolved mysteries, true ghost stories, supernatural manifestations, urban legends, unsolved or cold case murders, conspiracy theories, and more. On Thursdays, this scary stories podcast features horror fiction along with the occasional creepypasta. Weird Darkness has been named one of the “Best 20 Storytellers in Podcasting” by Podcast Business Journal. Listeners have described the show as a cross between “Coast to Coast” with Art Bell, “The Twilight Zone” with Rod Serling, “Unsolved Mysteries” with Robert Stack, and “In Search Of” with Leonard Nimoy.DISCLAIMER: Ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. *** Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised.CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Cold Open00:03:21.686 = Show Open00:05:05.721 = The Great Vampire Panic00:38:44.175 = My Couch Is Possessed By The Devil00:42:25.783 = Did a Mummy's Curse Sink The Titanic?00:53:15.637 = The Real Story Behind San Francisco's Most Famous Ghost00:59:02.193 = Show CloseSOURCES AND RESOURCES FROM THE EPISODE…BOOK: “Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England's Vampires” by Michael Bell: https://amzn.to/2zORTSyBOOK: “Vampires, Burials and Death” by Paul Barber”: https://amzn.to/36ctToABOOK: “The New England Vampire Belief: Image of the Decline” by Faye Ringel: https://tinyurl.com/yap5h2kh(More from Faye Ringel: https://amzn.to/40qgCov)“My Couch Is Possessed by The Devil” by Paul Seaburn for Mysterious Universe: https://tinyurl.com/ycbl95w6“Did a Mummy's Curse Sink The Titanic?” by Jacob Shelton for Ranker: https://tinyurl.com/ybzdckrr“The Real Story Behind San Francisco's Most Famous Ghost” by Katie Dowd for SF Gate: https://tinyurl.com/ydyxvnq2“The Great Vampire Panic” by Abigail Tucker for Smithsonian Magazine: https://tinyurl.com/ycy29ucu=====(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)= = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46= = = = =WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.=====Originally aired: May 19, 2020NOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.EPISODE PAGE at WeirdDarkness.com (includes list of sources): https://weirddarkness.com/VampirePanic#NewEnglandVampirePanic #MercyBrownVampire #VampireHistory #TuberculosisHistory #AmericanVampires #TheWhiteDeath #VampireExhumations #NewEnglandHistory #VampireGraves #ExeterRhodeIsland #JewettCityVampires #ConsumptionDisease #19thCenturyVampires #VampireFolklore #BurnedHearts #BeheadedCorpses #TrueVampireStories #HistoricalVampires #AmericanFolklore #DarkHistory #ForgottenHistory #VampireArchaeology #GothicAmerica #VampireLegends #MedicalHistory #VampireDocumentary #TrueCrimeHistory #ParanormalHistory #NewEnglandLegends #AmericanGothic #VampireResearch #HistoricalExhumations #VampireBurials #1892Vampire #DraculaInspiration

At the dawn of the twentieth-century, major advances in science and technology brought incredible change to the field of medicine, enhancing and extending the lives of millions. Yet at the same time, a lax regulations and minimal oversight made it possible for countless medical grifters to get rich offering quack medical solutions to everything from whooping cough to cancer, sometimes at the expense of their patient's lives.When Linda Hazzard opened her sanitarium, the Institute of Natural Therapeutics at Wilderness Heights, in Olalla, Washington in the first decade of the 1900s, she claimed her rigid fasting and elimination approach to dieting was a miracle cure for a variety of illnesses, both trivial and serious. For years, Hazzard operated what amounted to a health retreat for the wealthy, without any oversight from the state or federal agencies. In the end, Hazzard's starvation cure resulted in the deaths of over a dozen people and her arrest and trial for manslaughter, but through all of it, she maintained it was a viable treatment—standing by her methods up until they ended her own life.Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!ReferencesHines, Terrence. 1997. "Starvation Heights." Skeptical Inquirer. Lovejoy, Bess. 2014. "The doctor who starved her patients to death." Smithsonian Magazine, October 28.Olsen, Gregg. 2005. Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest. New York, NY: Crown Publishing Group.Seattle Daily Times. 1911. "Erdman diary tells method of treatment." Seattle Daily Times, August 14.Seattle Star. 1908. "Charged with starving eight-months-old baby." Seattle Star, January 30: 1.—. 1911. "Denies she 'fasted' 2 girls." Seattle Star, August 9: 3.—. 1911. "'Fast cure' woman is arrested." Seattle Star, August 7: 3.—. 1909. "Prosecutors think they can put a stop to starvation cure." Seattle Star, June 26: 1.—. 1908. "Sign doesn't make a doctor." Seattle Star, June 8: 6.—. 1909. "Woman starves to death under care of Dr. L.B. Hazzard." Seattle Star, June 24: 1.—. 1908. "WQeeden case leads to Dr. Hazzard's arrest." Seattle Star, January 31: 1.Tacoma Daily Ledger. 1912. "Dr. Hazzard has her first inning." Tacoma Daily Ledger, Janaury 28: 1.—. 1912. "Dr. Hazzard's trial begins." Tacoma Daily Ledger, January 16: 1.—. 1912. "Final arguments in Hazzard case." Tacoma Daily Ledger, February 3: 2.—. 1912. "Heiress testifies against Dr. Hazzard." Tacoma Daily Ledger, January 20: 1.—. 1912. "Mrs. Hazzard breaks down, and is attended by a dcevoted follower." Tacoma Daily Ledger, February 5: 1.—. 1904. "Samuel Hazzard sent to Minnesota prison." Tacoma Daily Ledger, March 16: 3.—. 1912. "Witnesses deny state's charges." Tacoma Daily Ledger, January 30: 1.—. 1912. "Woman bathed by young men." Tacoma Daily Ledger, January 23: 1.—. 1911. "Woman meet before judge." Tacoma Daily Ledger, October 22: 1. Stay in the know - wondery.fm/morbid-wondery.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 1935, when a jealous World War I veteran discovered 15-year-old Anna Zinn parked in the woods with his romantic rival, he shot her dead and vanished into Pennsylvania's wilderness, never to be seen again.Join the DARKNESS SYNDICATE: https://weirddarkness.com/syndicateTake the WEIRD DARKNESS LISTENER SURVEY and help mold the future of the podcast: https://weirddarkness.com/surveyIN THIS EPISODE: A fifteen year old Wisconsin girl disappeared on April 3rd 1996 – and to this day it's a mystery where she is or what has become of her. (Where Is Sara Bushland?) *** Many neighborhoods have at least one creepy house that has inspired ghost stories. That house in Los Feliz, California, located at 2475 Glendower Place, was dubbed the “Murder Mansion” - with good reason. (Murder Mansion of Los Angeles) *** What would you do if you were doing some construction in your home or business, and found a hidden bottle full of fish hooks, human teeth, shards of glass and an unidentified liquid? (The Witch Bottle In The Pub) *** A recent survey shows that 40 percent of Americans believe that a place can be haunted. Are you one of them? If so, you're in good company here with the rest of the Weirdo Family. Glen Wershing is a believer as well – and has come to that conclusion through personal experience when moving into his new home. (A New Jersey Haunting) *** We look at some of the secret séance rituals of America's largest Spiritualist community in New York. (Secret Seance Rituals) *** After he murdered a 15-year-old girl in 1935, the killer, Jefferson Walters, disappeared into thin air. (The Bowood Love Triangle)ABOUT WEIRD DARKNESS: Weird Darkness is a true crime and paranormal podcast narrated by professional award-winning voice actor, Darren Marlar. Seven days per week, Weird Darkness focuses on all thing strange and macabre such as haunted locations, unsolved mysteries, true ghost stories, supernatural manifestations, urban legends, unsolved or cold case murders, conspiracy theories, and more. On Thursdays, this scary stories podcast features horror fiction along with the occasional creepypasta. Weird Darkness has been named one of the “Best 20 Storytellers in Podcasting” by Podcast Business Journal. Listeners have described the show as a cross between “Coast to Coast” with Art Bell, “The Twilight Zone” with Rod Serling, “Unsolved Mysteries” with Robert Stack, and “In Search Of” with Leonard Nimoy.DISCLAIMER: Ads heard during the podcast that are not in my voice are placed by third party agencies outside of my control and should not imply an endorsement by Weird Darkness or myself. *** Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised.CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = Lead-In00:00:31.227 = Show Open00:02:38.866 = The Murderous Bowood Love Triangle00:18:45.226 = Murder Mansion of Los Angeles00:27:27.466 = Where Is Sara Bushland?00:35:11.317 = The Witch Bottle In The Pub00:39:49.180 = A New Jersey Haunting00:46:33.324 = Secret Seance Rituals00:55:47.123 = Show CloseSOURCES AND RESOURCES FROM THE EPISODE…“What Happened to Jefferson Walters” (Bowood Love Triangle) from Pennsylvania Oddities: https://tinyurl.com/w5x8obe“Murder Mansion of Los Angeles” from Strange Remains: https://tinyurl.com/tek3vxt“Where Is Sara Bushland?” by Redditor NukaColaDrinkerPro: https://tinyurl.com/tw535mu“The Witch Bottle In The Pub” by Jason Daley for Smithsonian Magazine: https://tinyurl.com/szevvlf“A New Jersey Haunting” from The Washington Times: https://tinyurl.com/tulc7wr“Secret Seance Rituals” by Eric Spitznagel for The New York Post: https://tinyurl.com/y2uqkwx7“Los Feliz Murder Mansion” photos: https://tinyurl.com/uahvw42“Los Feliz Murder Mansion” realtor listing: https://tinyurl.com/v67uq9hBOOK: “Weird U.S.”: https://amzn.to/3bHKL8hBOOK: “Seance” by Shannon Taggert: https://amzn.to/3dIMsny=====(Over time links may become invalid, disappear, or have different content. I always make sure to give authors credit for the material I use whenever possible. If I somehow overlooked doing so for a story, or if a credit is incorrect, please let me know and I will rectify it in these show notes immediately. Some links included above may benefit me financially through qualifying purchases.)= = = = ="I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46= = = = =WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.=====Originally aired: October 08, 2019NOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.EPISODE PAGE at WeirdDarkness.com (includes list of sources): https://weirddarkness.com/BowoodLoveTriangle#AnnaZinnMurder #JeffersonWalters #AlfredThorpe #BowoodPennsylvania #UnsolvedMurder1935 #FayetteCountyMurder #PennsylvaniaColdCase #LoveTriangleMurder #NewGenevaPennsylvania #UnsolvedTrueCrime #VintageCrime #1930sMurder #CedarGroveCemetery #NicholsonTownship #DisappearedKiller #PennsylvaniaManhunt #LaurelCaverns #TrueCrimeCommunity #JealousLoverMurder #PennsylvaniaMiningTowns #GreatDepressionCrime #RuralPennsylvaniaMurder #SundaySchoolTeacher #WWIVeteran #UniontownPennsylvania #AbandonedMines #MissingMurderer #HistoricalTrueCrime #PennsylvaniaUnsolvedMysteries #LoveTriangleGoneWrong #ColdCaseFiles #TrueCrimePodcast #UnsolvedCaseFiles