Very Special Episodes

In the summer of 2016, the entire world was going crazy for a new mobile game. All these years later, it’s easy to forget the wildest part about Pokémon GO: the whole thing began as an April Fools’ jo...

1 Apr 202419min

A Superman fan in Illinois is horrified to discover his entire stockpile of memorabilia has gone missing. As police search for the thief, the collecting community delivers their own brand of justice. ...

27 Mar 202433min

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the main event. The greatest botany rivalry in history! It's Vavilov vs. Lysenko for the fate of the Soviet Union.  In the 1920s and '30s, Nikolai Vavilov was a big de...

20 Mar 202459min

Very Special Episodes is a new podcast hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English. Follow us down a different rabbit hole every Wednesday. In 2011, after many delays, one of the most an...

13 Mar 20241h 4min

The biggest Nancy Drew mystery isn’t hidden in the plots of the books. It’s right there on the cover. If “Carolyn Keene” is a pseudonym, who really wrote the series? For 50 years, two women laid claim...

6 Mar 202455min

With help from "Leap Day Lady" Raenell Dawn, Dana Schwartz makes the case for making Leap Day a national holiday.  * Very Special Episodes is a new podcast where we tell one incredible story each week...

29 Feb 202412min

In today's Episode, Dana, Zaron and Jason tackle a 130-year-old mystery. Although American schoolchildren still recite The Pledge every morning in nearly every classroom, we still aren't sure who actu...

21 Feb 202446min

After a middle-aged manual laborer goes back to school to turn his life around, he’s reborn as a college football standout. But as midlife crises go, this one is going to hurt. (Portions of today's ep...

15 Feb 202444min