The Children's Crusade of 1212: The Myth and the Mistranslation
In 1212, legend says tens of thousands of children marched across Europe toward the Mediterranean, expecting the sea to part so they could peacefully reach Jerusalem. Instead, the story ends in shipwr...
30 Jun 20min
The Man Who Drank Radium: The Tragic Death of Eben Byers
Eben Byers was a wealthy industrialist, Yale athlete, and 1906 U.S. Amateur Golf champion who seemed to have everything. After a 1927 arm injury, a doctor recommended a patent medicine called Radithor...
30 Jun 10min
London After Midnight: Hollywood's Greatest Lost Film
In 2014, an anonymous buyer paid $478,000 for a movie poster advertising a film no living person has seen. That film is London After Midnight, the 1927 silent mystery horror directed by Tod Browning a...
30 Jun 22min
The Nazi Sun Gun: A Plan to Boil Oceans From Orbit
Imagine a weapon of mass destruction with no warheads, no chemicals, and no nuclear fallout, one that weaponizes sunlight itself. This episode explores the Sonnengewehr, or Sun Gun, a theoretical orbi...
30 Jun 24min
Philippe Petit's Twin Towers Walk: The Artistic Crime of the Century
On the morning of August 7, 1974, French highwire artist Philippe Petit stepped onto a steel cable strung between the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, 1,350 feet above Manhattan, with no safety net. ...
30 Jun 22min
Disco Demolition Night: The Riot That Killed a Genre
On July 12, 1979, a 98-cent baseball promotion at Chicago's Comiskey Park spiraled into a full-blown riot. Radio DJ Steve Dahl, fired when his station switched to disco, detonated a crate of records b...
30 Jun 22min
Henry Every: The Pirate King Who Vanished With a Fortune
Henry Every pulled off the most profitable heist in maritime history, triggered the world's first recorded global manhunt, and then disappeared completely. Known in his time as the King of Pirates, he...
30 Jun 23min
Rabbit Island's Dark Secret: Japan's Hidden Poison Gas Factory
Okunoshima, known today as Rabbit Island, draws nearly 200,000 visitors a year to feed thousands of tame, fluffy rabbits in the Seto Inland Sea. But this idyllic paradise was once erased from official...
30 Jun 23min
