A playlist for all the episodes I want to listen to
Gali Beeri and Joshua Boliver both live in New York City and they were both single back in March when the city was preparing to lock down. Then they decided to quarantine together, after their very fi...Show More
Ted Ngoy was among the first Cambodians to find refuge in America from the Khmer Rouge. He was scratching a living at a petrol station when he got a whiff of a donut and something clicked in him. He l...Show More
Here at the show, we get a lot of questions. Like, A LOT of questions. Tiny questions, big questions, short questions, long questions. Weird questions. Poop questions. We get them all. And over the ye...Show More
We're back with Part 2! When we dumped out our bucket of questions, there was a lot of spillover. Like, A LOT of spillover. So today, we’re chasing down answers to some bigger, little questions. Thi...Show More
When Benjamin Ferencz was 27 years old, he prosecuted his very first trial. There were 22 defendants, each of them high-ranking members of Nazi Germany's death squad. The entire world was watching. To...Show More
When Tyler Wetherall was a kid, her mother and father packed up the family car and drove through the night. They were on the run from the FBI. And by the time she was 9, Tyler had learned how to commu...Show More
Helen James grew up in a military family - her great great grandfather fought in the Civil War, her father in WWI, and her uncles in WWII. So when she enlisted in 1952, she felt like she belonged. Sho...Show More
The story behind the face of New York's Gilded Age. For more information, check out Paula Uruburu's book, American Eve. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsle...Show More
This episode picks up where Episode 91 left off. We suggest you listen to them in order. The early 20th century's biggest murder trial, and a particular brand of "madness." Visit thisiscriminal.com to...Show More
In the 1950s poodles were all the rage — one tabloid even reported that when a girl “makes the big time she traditionally acquires 3 things — minks, gems, and a poodle.” But one poodle in particular p...Show More
In 1892, a gruesome murder took place in a small fishing village in Argentina. The police had a suspect who would not confess. What happened next would change the way murders were investigated around ...Show More
The “body farm” at Texas State University is a place almost no one is allowed to see, because it’s one of very few places in the world that deliberately puts out human bodies to decompose in nature. F...Show More
When Melinda Dawson was seven years old, she learned that she was adopted under suspicious circumstances. As she got older and had children of her own, she tried to learn something about her biologica...Show More
SPOILER WARNING: Please listen to Episode 53: Melinda and Judy before you listen to this one. Melinda Dawson found out on the same day in 1998 that her adoptive mother had been killed and that her own...Show More
SPOILER WARNING: Please listen to Episode 51: Money Tree before you listen to this one. While working on our last episode, we became curious about the nature of psychopathy -- how it is defined, and w...Show More
People have been giving each other "the finger" since Ancient Greece. The first documented use is said to be a photograph from 1886 in which the pitcher for the Boston Beaneaters extends his middle fi...Show More
More than eighty years ago, a North Carolina family of nine posed for a Christmas portrait. Two weeks later, all but one of them had been shot dead. (See the portrait here.) Today, we bring you the st...Show More
Hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of rare books have been disappearing across America since the late 90s, and haven't resurfaced in the marketplace. They've just vanished, never to be seen again...Show More
The lake from one of the all-time great movies (search your feelings, you’ll find that it’s true) is turning into a dried up mudhole. Turns out it has some unusual features.
We've covered a lot of drugs in our history, and today we tackle heroin, one of the most dangerous of all.
Bras are loved and hated, sometimes at the same time. But as difficult and restrictive as they can be, they rescued women from a much cruel contraption: corsets. The question remains, though, do women...Show More
Did you know the little nursery rhyme is controversial? It’s true: Two towns in New England can barely stand to see one another on the map (kind of).
Herd immunity is an epidemiological concept that if enough people are inoculated against a disease the rest of us won’t get it. It’s been useful in holding back diseases like polio and measles, but we...Show More
The zipper may be the most unsung invention we humans have ever come up with. Prior to zippers, everyone walked around like idiots with nothing but buttons to hold their clothes together. The zipper c...Show More
Back when this episode aired, the USPS was teetering on the edge of going under and there were a lot of plans on the table to save it. With the USPS again at risk now for different reasons, join Chuck...Show More
Today Chuck and Josh take a shallow dive in the warm pool that is the NY Times Crossword Puzzle.
As if being murdering SOBs weren’t enough, the Nazis were also thieving rats. During WWII, they stole billons in gold from countries they overran and moved it to Germany. But at the end of the war, on...Show More
Perhaps you didn’t realize that when you search the web you’re only skimming the surface. In fact, the types of web pages that turn up in your search engine results represent only a mere fraction of t...Show More
Join Josh and Chuck live from Vancouver as they dive in to the ins and outs of one of the oldest businesses in the world – the bar! Learn about the history of bars, cocktails and the good people who p...Show More
The soda we get instantly mixed at a fast-food joint owes a lot to a rich history going back to the Roman baths, that features drugs, diseases and explosions. Learn all about soda and soda fountains i...Show More
Pinball was actually illegal until the 1970s in NY and other cities, hidden in the backs of pornography shops. The game was finally legalized, thanks to a Babe Ruth-style shot by the best player in th...Show More
The American Pledge of Allegiance is much more interesting than you might think. Give us 12 minutes and we'll fill you in.
Since more than 1 billion people have played it, you’re probably familiar with the board game Monopoly, but we bet you don’t know its secret origins as a left-wing socialist teaching tool. Join Josh ...Show More
We all use them! But did we always? NO!! Learn all about everyone's favorite punctuation mark today!
It’s a pretty safe assumption that people have been born with birthmarks since humanity began, and between then and now we’ve come up with some wacky, even dangerous, explanations for them – even a fe...Show More
Josh and Chuck delve into the world of 911 in today's episode.
What is barefoot running? I think you know. But we'll detail all of the ins and outs. Listen and learn!
1993 was known as the peak of a disturbing trend in America: post office shootings, carried out by postal workers. A stunned country looked for answers and turned up a toxic workplace that seemed to b...Show More
Jellyfish are among the most adaptable, competitive organisms on the planet. They can grow back into their juvenile stage when resources are scarce, reproduce in massive groups and kill an adult human...Show More
Learn 12 minutes worth of stuff about corduroy today!
What's the difference between whisky and bourbon? We'll tell you if you care to listen.
If there's one thing we've learned about Chuck over the years it's that he loves his gin. And he loves it even more now that understands it. Pour yourself a martini and cozy up to the gin-cast.
A Roman senator once said, "Mankind can live without gold, but not without salt." Right he was. The human body needs salt so much we have developed a taste for it specifically. But too much salt can b...Show More
Black boxes are designed to be the only survivor of plane crashes so they can live to tell the tale of what went wrong to prevent future accidents. Sit in with Josh and Chuck and learn about how these...Show More
Who wants fresh honey? We do! Learn all about the ancient art of beekeeping today.
Sand, we’re beginning to realize, is a non-renewable resource - and we are consuming it at a voracious pace. We use it in every construction project around the world and to create new land. And we’re ...Show More
Wait! This is actually a good episode! It turns out that America’s 48,000 miles of superhighways – possibly the largest civil works project in the history of humanity – may have also ruined what made ...Show More
MSG got a bad rap in the 70s and 80s. But what is it exactly and how bad is it for you? The answers to those questions lie within.
Barbed wire changed the Western US as much as the railroad and the six-shooter. Before barbed wire arrived, the West was free and open; after, the West became concentrated in the hands of a few big ra...Show More
Did you know there are airline codes for pilots and flight attendants? And some of them have to do with dead bodies on board? Learn all about it today!
Punk rock really needs about 10 episodes to do it justice, but we'll try and tackle anyway. Learn all about this movement right now.
The Black Death was gruesome: Symptoms included tumors, purple splotches, fevers and vomiting. But how did this disease manage to spread from the Gobi desert and kill approximately one-third of the po...Show More
In 1965, a 456-pound man walked into a hospital in Scotland and asked for help with a fast. That was the last day he ate for more than a year. Learn about the medical marvel that was Angus Barbieri.
One of the great misunderstood figures in history was the last pharaoh of Egypt. Cleopatra’s story is almost always told along with the men in her life, and from the view of the Romans who were threat...Show More
Prison food is kind of a joke, like airplane food. But there are real consequences involved. Let's get into it in today's short stuff.
Did they or didn't they? There is plenty of written evidence that the ill-fated Donner Party resorted to cannibalism - except there are no bones. Learn the details of one of the worst disasters of the...Show More
Barcodes are everywhere. Those little lines and numbers that make up one of the most recognizable barcodes, the UPC, was designed to make going to the grocery a lot less miserable. It ended up becomin...Show More
One of the off-putting byproducts of 19th century European colonialism were human zoos, living dioramas of people from far-away places made to be gawked at. Listen in to what the deeper meaning of hum...Show More
Nazis were bad people. And it turns out a lot of them were high as kites on speed. Was this a recipe for disaster? Yes it was.
Central Park in Manhattan was America’s first landscaped public park, built at a time when New Yorkers’ only option for getting some fresh air was hanging around cemeteries. Get all the info about thi...Show More
The Spanish Flu killed anywhere from 20-100 million or more people over 1918/1919. All of this played out with World War I in the foreground, one big reason why the flu spread so far, so fast. Learn a...Show More
Tune in today to learn all about the legendary NYC Rockettes, who actually got their start in Missouri.
Join Josh and Chuck today as they go down the sport shoe rabbit hole, detailing the strange tail of the brothers who brought Puma and Adidas to the world. Sibling rivalry, Nazis, shoes - there's a lot...Show More
Sure it's everywhere and there's a more-than-90-percent chance you eat it once a month. But we'll bet you don't know the full history of that pizza (or tomato pie) you're about to chow down on. Join C...Show More
A vomitorium was a place where ancient Romans went to make themselves throw up after gorging themselves at a sumptuous banquet. Everybody knows that. Except that’s not true at all. Learn about what vo...Show More
Get ready, folks. The ballpoint pen is far more interesting than you could ever imagine. For real. Brilliant in its simplicity. Took the world by storm. We love our ballpoint pens and you should too. ...Show More
For as long a shadow as it casts across the history of the Old West, the Pony Express was a failed business venture, doomed from the start, that only lasted 18 months. But since the last rider headed ...Show More
A quinceañera is the celebration of a girl of Hispanic heritage becoming a young woman on her 15th birthday. It involves family, friends, music and a lot of great food.
What must be one of the most famous natural disasters in history took place when Mt Vesuvius buried Pompeii in 79 CE. But when the town was resurrected 1700 years later, a new chapter in its history w...Show More
The '60s ended with a lot of turbulence, not the least of which was the Manson Family Murders. What made Charles Manson so alluring to his family? What makes one person kill for another? And what did ...Show More
Listen in today for the conclusion of the story of the Manson Family Murders.
Long before slide rulers and pocket protectors, civilizations across the world used their noggins to build some impressive structures. Almost all have crumbled to ruins over the millennium, but thanks...Show More
We finish our tour of the best sights of the ancient world when we get deep into the history of a lighthouse that stood for 1200 years, an unsettling statue of Zeus, the world’s first mausoleum, and C...Show More
Flight attendants have come a long way. From having to put up with rampant sexism, to the current incarnation as your first line of defense in case of an incident, they are valued airline employees. L...Show More
Cake has been around for a long time, but mostly less than great forms. It took the Industrial Revolution, the advent of plentiful sugar, and some good old American know-how to come together to make t...Show More
In this week's SYSK Select episode, Benjamin Franklin first came up with daylight saving time in 1748, and people still practice it today. But how does it work? What are the pros and cons? Join Josh a...Show More
Even though giraffes are one of the most recognizable animals on the planet, it wasn't until the 21st century that biology really set about studying them. They've found giraffes are even more amazing ...Show More
Mixing wax with pigment is something artists have been doing since DaVinci. These little implements would later go on to be called crayons and gained popularity among the elementary school set. Learn ...Show More
The U.S. Secret Service began after a mandate from President Lincoln called for a service to combat counterfeiters. Since then, they have become more well known as the agency that guards and protects ...Show More
Over or under? One ply or two? How about six? TP has not been around that long, but is has been embraced in a big way by the United States. Learn all about the interesting history behind this decidedl...Show More
In the early days of World War II, there was a secret training program in Canada that taught Allied saboteurs everything from espionage and bridge blowing to karate chops to the neck of an enemy. It w...Show More
In this week's SYSK Select episode, yes, your brain may have just flash-dried from boredom at the thought of learning about maps, but it turns out they are a lot more than just tools for navigation. M...Show More
Sure we can all agree that champagne is probably the greatest thing humans have or ever will invent, but how much do we understand how it's made?
Sure, we're doing an episode on corsets. Why do you ask?
The Shroud of Turin is no ordinary bed sheet. Some think it's the burial cloth of Jesus. Others think it's an amazing piece of artwork. The truth is, we'll probably never know what it really is. The m...Show More
In our continuing exploration of crime and punishment, we take a look at the practice of solitary confinement. To be sure, it has its place in prisons, sometimes for protection of the inmates themselv...Show More
In this first of two episodes on the Trail of Tears, learn about the forces that converged to create the series of events that formed the basis of what may be the most brutal decade in American histor...Show More
In the second of two parts, what was once a voluntary resettlement program becomes a violent, forced relocation under the leadership of President Andrew Jackson.
The estate tax, also known as the death tax, is not new. It's actually been around in some form since ancient Rome. Some say it's a necessary tax to help prevent resting on your inheritance laurels. O...Show More
Alexander Hamilton, the "ten dollar founding father," is more than the toast of Broadway. In fact, he just may be the most influential American in history. A brash genius, Hamilton wasn't much of a po...Show More
Evel Knievel was perhaps the world's most legendary daredevil. He came along at a time when the world ate up this kind of entertainment, partially in hopes that he crashed. And crash he did. A lot. Le...Show More
In today's episode, we cover part two of our Evel Knievel suite. The man, the myth, the legend. Check in and listen to the latter stages of Evel's career as the world's most legendary daredevil.
People often ask us how we do our research. We're not going to disclose all of our secrets, but we'll give you some tips on how to root out the bad studies from the good ones. Learn all about shady st...Show More
America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, right? Maybe not. And who named Australia? Find out the unusually uncertain origins of the continents and other interesting stuff in this episode.
Everybody knows how many whacks Lizzie Borden gave her mother and father with that axe, but there is plenty about the infamous double homicide that remains unresolved, like who actually did it. Travel...Show More
The Great Wall of China is one of the most visited tourist desinations in the world. How'd it get built? How old is it? What's the current condition? Learn this and more in today's episode.
Carl Sagan was the world's first mainstream media super scientist, capapble of breaking down complex ideas for the common folk. But what made him tick? Billions and billions of great ideas.
Unless you were raised alone in a basement (in which case you may be the subject of one), you probably grew up on fairy tales. That's appropriate because they may be humanity's greatest psychic projec...Show More
We've covered our fair share of pop-culture icons and here is another - Hula-Hoops. They've been around since ancient time in some form or another, but made their name in during the Hoop Boom of the 1...Show More
Pyramids can be found in ruins around the world, but no civilization perfected the feat of engineering like Pharaonic Egypt. Learn about the mysteries that still surround these giants.
The street gang problem in America peaked in the 1990s, but recent FBI reports find that gang membership doubled from 2006-2011. What's driving this increase, and gangs in general? Wander into gang te...Show More
Tupperware won immediate design acclaim when it was released in 1947, but it took a pioneering female executive to make a line of plastic food storage into an icon of the American postwar boom. Learn ...Show More
A wedding was once seen as a start of young adulthood. Now, a wedding has come to represent a crowning achievement -- a symbol that your whole life is together and you have accrued the time and space ...Show More
This episode, we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Romanov family’s execution. We’ll provide a bit of historical context before jumping into the lives of Grand Duchesses Olga and Anastasia, the...Show More
The Encyclopedia of Women in American History described her ‘one of the best educated women of her generation,’ while America’s 3rd Vice President regarded her as his most trusted confidante. The daug...Show More
This week, the most humiliating, unfortunate and regrettable things on the internet that simply will not come down. Also: the father who scours the internet for lost memories. Learn more about your ad...Show More
A man in California is haunted by the memory of a pop song from his youth. He can remember the lyrics and the melody. But the song itself has vanished, completely scrubbed from the internet. PJ takes ...Show More
It's been a week. Amid uprisings and violent police suppression, we turn to Mariame Kaba. Mariame is a longtime police and prison abolitionist, educator, and organizer who has been doing the day-in, d...Show More
The day that Amy Sherald heard that she had been chosen to paint the official portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama, she called her mom to tell her the news, and then she told her dog. But soon after,...Show More
John Green reviews Halley's Comet, a celestial body visible from Earth once in a lifetime, and cholera, an infection caused by bacteria and people. Thanks to audible for sponsoring today's episode: ht...Show More
A Wikipedia stub about the worst Florida theme park idea ever sends John on a search for the reason it never opened. Show notes: 0:45 - New Vietnam on Wikipedia 1:12 - Dolly Parton's Stampede (form...Show More
Theme parks have always been based around thrills, from their earliest days featuring sleds pushed down wooden hills covered in ice. What’s changed is the technology that is poured into making these a...Show More
Libraries get rid of books all the time. There are so many new books coming in every day and only a finite amount of library space. The practice of freeing up library space is called weeding. When the...Show More
The Irish slaves myth claims that Irish people were enslaved by the British and sent to the Americas (especially the Caribbean) to work on plantations. This myth primarily appears in emails and Facebo...Show More
Brands hold immense sway over both consumers and the American legal system. Few know this as well as Dapper Dan, who went from street hustler to fashion impresario and has spent time on both sides of ...Show More
May 7, 1824. One of the great musical icons in history, Ludwig Van Beethoven, steps onto stage at the Kärntnertor Theater in Vienna. The audience is electric, buzzing with anticipation for a brand new...Show More
Diamonds represent value, in all its multiple meanings: values, as in ethics, and value as in actual price. But what are these rocks actually worth? The ethics and costs of diamond rings have shifted ...Show More
We spend a month at a Jeep dealership on Long Island as they try to make their monthly sales goal: 129 cars. If they make it, they'll get a huge bonus from the manufacturer, possibly as high as $85,00...Show More
Alex Lacamoire is the award-winning orchestrator, arranger and conductor for the hit musical Hamilton. This hip hop homage to the revolutionary US statesman Alexander Hamilton - which was created by L...Show More
If we really want to combat climate change, why not institute a serious cap on human population? It's a common question, and on today's episode we talk about a future in which there is a global one-ch...Show More
In "How to Be An Antiracist," author and professor Ibram X. Kendi combines searing autobiography with pointed analysis to show just how deeply racism is woven into our national—and global—fabric.
A mechanical engineer teams up with an unlikely band of students who use middle school math and science to create artificial glaciers that irrigate Ladakh, a region in India hit hard by climate change...Show More
Black people all across the US are receiving the world's weirdest form of reparations: Venmo payments from white people. Producer Emmanuel Dzotsi investigates. Additional Reading: Noni's petiti...Show More
When WeWork acquired her company, she got executive training, fancy corporate retreats and a dope Patagonia jacket. It was almost enough to make her forget everything she lost. This week: Why we’...Show More
Too fast to live, too young to die, he was a rebel without a cause. James Byron Dean was an American actor in the 1950’s and is a cultural icon. He is the symbol of teenage disillusionment and social ...Show More
Cleopatra, queen of ancient Egypt, was one of the most famous female rulers in history. She was a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, which ruled Egypt for close to 300 years. The stories surrounding Cle...Show More
Today we wrap up our exploration of American liquor consumption and cocktail culture as we enter the dark drinking ages before a glorious rebirth. To get back to basics, bars and clubs had to suffer t...Show More