In this new series we look at the history of blood feuds, starting with an obscure and scattered story from the era of Anglo-Saxon England, and a series of killings between two family lines that took place over 60 years of political upheaval, w

Episode 14f ”A Woe That Is Madness”

Jan 7th, 2022 40m 41s

In this episode we conclude our series on shipwrecks by looking at the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, a US Navy cruiser sunk by a Japanese submarine near the end of World War II. The nearly 900 survivors of the sinking were left adrift for da

Bonus: Yuletide Ghost Story, ”The Eyes”

Dec 24th, 2021 51m 36s

For our annual Christmas Eve ghost story, a reading of Edith Wharton's classic short story, "The Eyes," first published in 1910.

Episode 14e ”A Woe That Is Madness”

Nov 19th, 2021 48m 46s

In this episode we look at the sinking of the Lusitania, a British passenger liner that was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915, killing over a thousand people, including 128 Americans, and helping move the then neutral United States toward joining

Episode 14d ”A Woe That Is Madness”

Sep 22nd, 2021 58m 3s

In this episode we look at one of the most famous shipwrecks in world history: The sinking of the Titanic. An event layered in myth, melodrama and sentimentality, it captured the attention of the world and led to vast changes in international s

Episode 14c "A Woe That Is Madness"

Aug 13th, 2021 44m 56s

In this episode we look at the mystery of the Mary Celeste, a merchant ship that in 1872 was found having been abandoned for over a week floating in the Atlantic ocean, all who had been aboard it missing for no reason that anyone could discover

Episode 14b "A Woe That Is Madness"

Jul 15th, 2021 49m 31s

In this episode we look at the wreck of the Essex, a whaling ship out of Nantucket that in 1820 was attacked by a giant sperm whale in the Pacific and sunk, leaving its 20 man crew drifting on three whaleboats thousands of miles from land. The

Episode 14a "A Woe That Is Madness"

Jun 15th, 2021 55m 4s

In this episode, the first of a six part series on the history of shipwrecks, we look at one of the most famous shipwrecks of the 19th century. In 1816 a French frigate called the Medusa, through the poor leadership of its captain, struck a san

Episode 13 "Executioner's Song - Flawed Vengeance"

May 19th, 2021 49m 42s

In this episode, the first in an occasional series on the executions and executioners, we look at the issue of botched executions, instances when the normal procedure of a state execution goes tragically, sometimes gruesomely wrong. Through thi

Episode 12c "Catch Me When You Can"

Apr 20th, 2021 43m 9s

In the final entry for our series on unsolved serial killer cases, we look at the Zodiac Killer, who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area with a string of killings from 1968-69 and then for years after with disturbing letters sent to the local

Episode 12b "Catch Me When You Can"

Mar 12th, 2021 54m 39s

In the second part of our look at unsolved serial killings, we head back to the Great Depression to look at the Cleveland Torso Murders, a series of twelve murders committed by a man who left dismembered bodies all over the city. We'll look at

Episode 12a "Catch Me When You Can"

Feb 19th, 2021 57m 53s

In this episode we start a new three part series about unsolved serial killings. We begin with one of the most famous unsolved crimes in the Western world, the Jack the Ripper killings. Beginning in August of 1888, the murders would go on to be

Episode 11c "What an Artist Dies in Me"

Jan 18th, 2021 1h 1m

In the conclusion of our series on the deaths of tyrants, we look at one of the strangest and most fascinating figures of the last century, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, who ruled Libya from 1969 when he lead a coup that overthrew the country's monarch

Bonus: Yuletide Ghost Story, "Revelation From a Smoky Fire" by Robertson Davies

Dec 24th, 2020 19m

In our new Christmas Eve tradition, I present a reading of ghost story, this one from Canadian novelist Robertson Davies, entitled "Revelation From a Smoky Fire." You can find it in his collection "High Spirits," which collects the stories he w

Episode 11b "What an Artist Dies in Me"

Dec 9th, 2020 49m 30s

In our second episode in our series about the deaths of tyrants, we look at the death of Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union after consolidating power following the death of Lenin and was soon one of the most powerful and influential men

Episode 11a "What an Artist Dies in Me"

Nov 17th, 2020 48m 57s

In this new series of three episodes, we look at the lives and deaths of tyrants, starting here with the life of the Emperor Nero, the last member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and a man who's name has become synonymous with despotism. I'll be

Episode 10c "Fate Will Unwind As It Must"

Oct 17th, 2020 1h 46m

In the final episode on our series about deaths that changed history, we look at the life of 35th President of the United States John F. Kennedy. In office for only 1,036 days before his assassination on November 22nd, 1963, he oversaw some of

Episode 10b "Fate Will Unwind As It Must"

Sep 18th, 2020 1h 7m

Continuing our series on deaths that changed history, we look at the death of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism and one of the most fascinating religious figures in American history. We'll follow his life from a New England that swarmed wi

Episode 10a "Fate Will Unwind As It Must"

Sep 1st, 2020 50m 19s

We now begin a new series about deaths that changed history by happening when they did, and look at lives that could have changed history had they gone on just a little longer. In this first episode, I'll be telling the story of Julian the Apos

Episode 9c "I Speak My Own Sins"

Aug 14th, 2020 44m 10s

In the last part of our series on deaths stemming from mass hysteria, we look at the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, a violent riot that led to the systematic destruction to one of the only wealthy black communities in the country by a mob of angry white

Episode 9b "I Speak My Own Sins"

Jul 31st, 2020 39m 43s

In this episode we look at the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903, two days of looting, rape and murder directed at the Jewish community of an agricultural city in the western part of the Russian empire. The carnage of the even shocked the world and led t

Episode 9a "I Speak My Own Sins"

Jul 17th, 2020 52m 32s

In this first part of a three part series about deaths caused in mass hysteria, I look at the most famous act of mass panic in American history, the Salem Witch Trials. Lasting through most of 1692 and into 1693 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony,

Episode 8 "Death and Art - In Memoriam"

Jul 3rd, 2020 55m 53s

In this episode I look at works of art created when famous artists attempted to paint after the death of a spouse. First we look at Rembrandt, whose wife Saskia died of tuberculosis in 1647 at the height of his career, which then went into a hu

Episode 7 "Bury Me Not"

Jun 19th, 2020 44m 26s

In this episode I look at the panic over premature burial that inflamed Western culture from the mid-1700s all through the 19th century. We'll look at the waiting mortuaries of the German states, where bodies were sent to wait until putrificati

Episode 6b "Sordid Business"

Jun 5th, 2020 1h 5m

In the second of our two-part series looking at people who profited from bodies, I look at the life of Herman Webster Mudgett, aka H.H. Holmes, a swindler, bigamist, quack doctor and murderer who operated mostly around Chicago in the 1880s and