Episode #167
2021-06-18 12:09:38
Download
“I think it was around 3:00 a.m., and that’s when I heard a strange man’s voice waking me from sleep.”
Episode #166
2021-06-04 12:16:45
Download
On November 12th, 2012, the Accomack County volunteer fire departments got a call. An abandoned house had suddenly gone up in flames. And then, just hours later, a second fire was reported. Then a third. Over the next few months, there would be a lot more fires—nearly 90 in all. It was all anyone could talk about in Accomack. Someone was burning down the entire county.
Episode #165
2021-05-21 12:44:15
Download
In August 1934, Ann Cooper Hewitt was having lunch with her mother when she suddenly felt pain in her abdomen. When she went to the doctor, he told her she would have to have her appendix removed. He never examined her abdomen. She later told papers that when she woke up from surgery, she heard a nurse saying that Ann “didn’t suspect a thing.”
Episode #164
2021-05-07 15:01:36
Download
After 32 years in the United States, José Chicas was told he had to leave. He bought a plane ticket to El Salvador, but then a local church offered another option.
Episode #163
2021-04-23 15:44:23
Download
The Pacific Northwest was said to be terrorized by a serial killer in the early 20th century. A local police chief told reporters that he believed that they were dealing with “the greatest murderer of the age.” But the real story was a lot more complex.
Episode #162
2021-04-09 12:10:36
Download
The song “I Fought the Law” by the Bobby Fuller Four reached number 9 on the Billboard Charts in the week of March 12, 1966. Just months later, Bobby Fuller was found dead. The mystery of what happened to him has been called “the rock and roll version of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.”
Episode #161
2021-03-26 12:35:39
Download
When Joan Borsten married actor Oleg Vidov, also known as “the Soviet Robert Redford,” he introduced her to beautiful Soviet animations created in Moscow’s Soyuzmultfilm studio. They eventually acquired the rights to distribute the films outside of the former Soviet Union. One day, Joan realized someone was undercutting their business, and she devised a very Hollywood solution.
Episode #160
2021-03-12 13:02:33
Download
In 2010, a $16.5 million Hot Lotto ticket was sold at a gas station in Des Moines, Iowa. At first, no one showed up to claim the prize. And then, a series of lawyers tried to claim the money on behalf of a client they would not name. Things got stranger, and eventually investigators uncovered what has been called the biggest lottery fraud in U.S. history.
Episode #159
2021-02-26 13:00:36
Download
One Sunday afternoon, a man named William Mumler decided to take a self portrait. He said he was alone in the photography studio, but as the photograph developed, he saw something very strange—the image of someone else, sitting beside him.
Episode #158
2021-02-12 13:03:32
Download
“What I recall most is the way that she grabbed my wrist and, shaking a bit, she said over and over again, ‘If it happens, run. Don't let that happen to you. Run. If it ever happens, run.’”
It was years before Cynthia Brown understood what her great-grandmother, Athalia Howe, was talking about.
Episode #157
2021-01-29 12:50:30
Download
Qandeel Baloch grew up in a conservative village in Pakistan, a place where it was shocking to see a woman swimming outdoors. She ran away from home, changed her name, and eventually became “Pakistan’s first social media star.” By 2015, she was reported to be one of the 10 most Googled people in Pakistan. The next year, she was dead.
Episode #156
2021-01-15 12:20:39
Download
In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean was invited to write a letter to a man on death row named Elmo Patrick Sonnier. She told us, "I thought that all I was going to be doing was writing letters. And lo and behold, two years later, I am in that execution chamber." She's now 81, and has been present at the executions of six men.
Episode #Bears on Ice
2020-12-24 14:18:10
Download
A day in the life of the town of Kalispell, Montana.
Thanks very much for listening this year, and happy New Year.
Episode #155
2020-12-18 13:06:02
Download
With Covid-19 shutdowns, people have been taking advantage of quiet highways to drive as fast as they can from New York City to Redondo Beach, California. They’re trying to break records set in an unofficial and secretive race called the “Cannonball.” In today’s episode, the history of the illegal cross country race, how it has evolved since 1971, and why fans say it will never go away.
Episode #154
2020-12-04 12:51:30
Download
When Nathan Myers and Clifford Williams were charged with murder, neither of them were worried they would be convicted. They had dozens of witnesses that could confirm that they had been at a party when the shots were fired. But during their trial, not a single one of those witnesses was asked to testify.
Episode #153
2020-11-20 14:11:49
Download
One Sunday night in November 1987, something very odd happened in the middle of the nine o’clock news in Chicago. As one television viewer said, it felt like someone threw “a brick through your window.” A little boy said it was “very, very funny.”