451 - Panic on the TV! Do Violent Movies Create Violent Children?

In the final days of World War II and in the next few years after the war was over, the U.S. government helped hundreds and hundreds of Nazi Scientists whose knowledge and expertise was deemed crucial to the development of advanced weapons - no matter HOW complicit they were in heinous Nazi activities - to relocate to the States and become integral pieces of the US military-industrial complex. The US wanted them to continue their work on creating atomic bombs, weaponizing plagues, making chemical weapons, and sometimes, even medically experimenting on people in ways that certainly violate the “do no harm” oath that doctors take, to find out either how enemies would be affected by weapons, how US soldiers and civilians might best recover from the devastating effects of their attacks, and more. Evil stuff. We look into who some of the Nazi scientists were today, and also into how the US was crossing plenty of moral lines without their help before and after WW2. Does being really good at science and making important medical and military progress justify committing crimes against humanity? Operation contributions likely changed the outcome of the Cold War - but does that make it right? Treading some murky waters today, as we dive into a morally ambiguous, top-secret, declassified Nazi history edition of Timesuck.Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Aumvi_h-WkQ Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions/problems: store@badmagicproductions.com (copy and paste) Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 10,000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

18 Jan 20212h 20min

Shaka Zulu! I'm guessing you've heard the name. Also guessing you know very little about his story. Most don't seem too. Which is a shame because it's such a great story! Shaka took the small Zulu tribe from less than 2,000 members to around 250,000 in just a dozen years. He took them from being one of many militarily inconsequential bands of Africans living in what is now South Africa to the powerful Zulu Nation - one of the mightiest African military powers on the entire continent. He was a brilliant military tactician who changed the way his people - and many other people - would fight, not only during his reign, but for long after his death. He also seems to have been a sadistic madman who did crazy things like kill thousands of people for not grieving the death of his mother hard enough. And have others killed just for getting pregnant while he grieved. His tale is a wild one. And we use it as an excuse to not just learn a lot about him, but also about the history of South Africa. So much info today - and hopefully also a lot of fun, on another historical edition of Timesuck. Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/0rdaS70r3jI Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions/problems: store@badmagicproductions.com (copy and paste) Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 10,000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

11 Jan 20212h 22min

Can you imagine fighting a war for a country that had removed you from the land your ancestors lived on for centuries - a country actively trying to erase your language and culture? That’s exactly what the Navajo Code Talkers did in WW2. The Navajo code talkers took part in every assault the U.S. Marines conducted in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. They served in all six Marine divisions, Marine Raider battalions and Marine parachute units, transmitting messages by telephone and radio in their native language - a code that the Japanese never broke. The US government had been trying to erase the Navajo language for decades. Luckily they weren't successful, for the Navajo language and its code talkers contributed greatly to Allied victory over the Japanese. A small group of brave meat sacks built an unbreakable code from a language they’d been forbidden to speak in their childhood. Pretty crazy. The inspirational story of the Navajo code talkers, a deep dive into the Pacific theater of World War II, and of course so much more, today, on Timesuck! Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/uYl5QxBv5mE Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions/problems: store@badmagicproductions.com (copy and paste) Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 10,000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

4 Jan 20212h 13min

Viktor Frankl and his logotherapy. This is the topic we examine this week to carry on the Timesuck tradition of ending the year on a little inspirational note. Frankl had everything taken from him - his parents, his wife, his career, his home, and more - all taken by the Nazis after they stormed into Vienna during WW2. Shortly before the Nazis arrived, Frankl had just opened his own psychoanalytic private practice and was developing his own school of psychological thought - logotherapy, based around one's mental health and happiness being rooted primarily in meaning. Do you feel that your life has meaning? A sense of purpose? Why do you get out of bed each morning? Like Nietzsche, Frankl believed that if you could answer the why, you could endure any how. And then this mindset was put to the ultimate test when Frankl found himself spending years in Nazi ghettos and concentration camps - he and his family brutalized for being Jewish. And there, surrounded by death and despair, in his darkest days, Frankl still found meaning in his life. A purpose. And because of that, I find his life and therapeutic outlook incredibly inspiring. He didn't just talk the talk, he walked the walk. I hope you enjoy how I lay out his story and his beliefs. And then I end today's episode with a look back at most of what we've done here on Timesuck in 2020, and I peek into 2021 and share a bit about what we hope to accomplish. Happy New Year and Hail Nimrod, Meatsacks! Thanks for coming along for this wild and wonderful ride. For our donation this month, we raised/donated over $41,000 for the Bad Magic Productions Giving Tree, and have bought eighty Cult of the Curious families presents for Christmas. Hail Nimrod and thank you! Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4NzinIQ2RMY Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions/problems: store@badmagicproductions.com (copy and paste) Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 10,000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

28 Dec 20202h 17min

Phillip Markoff. AKA, the Craigslist Killer. On the surface, Markoff seemed like a normal guy. A guy on the path to a lot of success. He was a six-foot-three, athletic-framed, blonde hair and blue-eyed, soon-to-be doctor. A studious kid in his second year of med school in Boston. He was ambitious. He finished his undergraduate degree in just three years. He seemed like he had a good head on his shoulders. He didn't. Towards the end of his short life, Phillip was hiding a secret life from his family and his fiancée, Megan, whom he lived with. And none of them would know about it until his arrest. They had no idea he was trolling around on Craigslist looking for victims, or that he’d created some BDSM hookup profiles behind his fiancé’s back. They knew he gambled, but they didn’t know how much and how often - or what he was willing to do to get some extra poker money. They didn’t know he had random women’s panties hidden under he and his fiancé’s bed. Today, we look into both Phillip’s secret and his public life, and we dig deep into how the internet became a new tool for killers to find their victims. And how Craigslist in particular seemed to become the most popular tool to find a stranger to hurt, on another true crime edition, of Timesuck. For our donation this month, we raised/donated over $41,000 for the Bad Magic Productions Giving Tree, and have bought eighty Cult of the Curious families presents for Christmas. Hail Nimrod and thank you! Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/WzGbMbVyIbc Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions/problems: store@badmagicproductions.com (copy and paste) Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 10,000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

20 Dec 20202h 19min

General Butt Naked aka Joshua Blahyi is a complicated figure. He is now a Liberian Christian missionary helping victims or Liberia's first civil war rebuild their lives. In the early 90s, he was one of Liberia's most brutal warlords. While literally naked, and often while wielding a machete, he led an army of coked-up, brainwashed child soldiers into committing almost unimaginable atrocities. He committed child sacrifices and regularly engaged in cannibalism. And there were others nearly as brutal as he was. Liberia in the 90s was basically hell on earth. It was a nation of sexual abuse and murder and corruption and chaos. How did things get so bad? Today we learn how Liberia was formed and how decades of oppression led to two incredible bloody civil wars. For our donation this month, we raised/donated over $41,000 for the Bad Magic Productions Giving Tree, and have bought eighty Cult of the Curious families presents for Christmas. Hail Nimrod and thank you! Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Y0F2maI7-nQ Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions/problems: store@badmagicproductions.com (copy and paste) Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 10,000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

14 Dec 20202h 27min

The Dark Ages. We attempt to suck a MASSIVE topic today. A thousand year's worth of European history. And actually, since we compare life in the Dark Ages to life in the Roman Empire, we end up covering two thousand years. The period between the fall of Rome in the fifth century and the beginning of the Modern Age that began sometime in the 14th century was an especially terrible time to be a European peasant. During the Dark Ages, you were bound to spend almost your entire life toiling over a small plot of land before you died around the age of thirty - if you were really lucky. If you tried to upend the social order at all - if you tried not to pay the insane taxes that your church or lord levied upon you - you would very quickly find yourself at the business end of a breast ripper or some other horrific, medieval torture contraption. It was a crazy time to be alive, and we look into how crazy it was, and how much better we have it today, on this medieval edition, of Timesuck. For our donation this month, we raised/donated over $41,000 for the Bad Magic Productions Giving Tree, and have bought eighty Cult of the Curious families presents for Christmas. Hail Nimrod and thank you! Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/upE_rSQhR2Q Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions: https://badmagicmerch.com/pages/contact Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 10,000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

7 Dec 20202h 27min

Robert Ben Rhoades, born in 1945, started driving big rigs across America’s interstates and major highways in the mid-1970s, and he seemed to most like an unassuming and harmless trucker for the next fifteen-ish years. He wasn't. He was a monster. The Iowa native’s childhood had ended abruptly when his dad was arrested for an alarming crime and, after the way his father responded to this arrest, life seemed to spiral out of control for the man who would soon introduce himself to others as either “Dusty”, or, via is CB radio - “Whips and Chains.” Bob became a sexual sadist, obsessed with the fetish world of BDSM. Soon, he began to completely ignore the “fun and consensual” part of bondage and submission, pivoting from pleasure through pain to pleasure through rape, torture, and murder. The “Truck Stop Killer” killed an estimated fifty-plus people between roughly 1975 and 1990, most of them young women and the occasional men they were traveling with. Bob overpowered young hitchhikers and sex workers in the sleeper cab of his truck, tying them up with BDSM chains and restraints, and then raping and torturing them for days, sometimes longer, in a mobile dungeon with nipple clamps, belts, chains, handcuffs, fish hooks and more. We explore Bob's crimes, the world of BDSM he was obsessed with, and more in today's true crime edition of Timesuck. In honor of Veteran’s Day, we made a Bad Magic Productions donation of $10,000 to https://veteransfoodpantry.org/. Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ydt4VBd_NSY Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions: https://badmagicmerch.com/pages/contact Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 10,000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

30 Nov 20201h 54min