World-class biathlete Kari Swenson was on an afternoon trail run in the mountains near Big Sky, Montana in July 1984 when two men blocked her path. They were Don and Dan Nichols, a father and son pair...Show More
In 1977, a man named Robert Burns went to a funeral and shot someone, in the head, in front of 300 people. He didn’t deny it, and his lawyer, Tom Radney, didn’t deny it. Burns told a police officer: “...Show More
In 1930, a Cuban woman named Elena de Hoyos went to the hospital in Key West, Florida. She had a bad cough, and her family was afraid she had Tuberculosis. She met a German x-ray technician named Carl...Show More
SPOILER WARNING: Please listen to Episode 51: Money Tree before you listen to this one. Three years ago, we spoke with Axton Betz-Hamilton about discovering that her identity had been stolen as a chil...Show More
After a crime occurs, or when someone dies, the police aren’t responsible for cleaning up. That’s not their job. The coroner takes the body, the police conduct their investigation, and then everyone l...Show More
In 1917, 18-year-old Ruth Cruger disappeared. She’d last been seen getting her ice skates sharpened in the motorcycle shop of a man named Alfredo Cocchi. Newspapers reported that she probably ran off ...Show More
John Buettner-Janusch was one of the first Americans to study lemurs. He held prestigious faculty positions at Yale, Duke and NYU, before surprising everyone with a series of increasingly bizarre crim...Show More
“I never did anything wrong. I never had a speeding ticket. I think I just saved all my stuff up for just one thing.” This week, we speak with Toby Dorr – better known as the Dog Lady of Lansing Priso...Show More
In the late 1800s, North Carolina was trying to build a railway system through the Western part of the state. In December of 1882, something went wrong. The Raleigh News and Observer called it “too ho...Show More
Dan Stevenson has lived in Oakland’s Eastlake neighborhood for 40 years. He says crime has been an issue for as long as he can remember, but he isn’t one to call the police. He’s a pretty “live and le...Show More
One day in 1969, Paulette Cooper decided to see what she could get away with. Learn more about Paulette Cooper on her website. Here’s her 1969 Cosmopolitan piece about stowing away onboard the SS Leon...Show More
Amanda Hamm and her boyfriend Maurice LaGrone drove to Clinton Lake one night in 2003. The next day, DeWitt County Sheriff Roger Massey told a local newspaper, “We don’t want to blow this up into some...Show More
Georgia Tann of Memphis, Tennessee bragged that she had a rigorous selection process that matched the perfect child with the perfect home. Barbara Raymond's book is The Baby Thief. Say hello on Twi...Show More
In 1962, brothers John and Clarence Anglin, along with fellow incarcerated person Frank Morris, managed to escape the one prison in America that was supposed to be inescapable: Alcatraz. Alcatraz is s...Show More
On a Sunday morning in 1982, in Des Moines, Iowa, Johnny Gosch left his house to begin his usual paper route. A short time later, his parents were awakened by a phone call – it was a neighbor — their ...Show More
People have faked death to escape criminal convictions, debts, and their spouses. In 2007, a man named Amir Vehabovic faked his death just to see who showed up at the funeral (answer: only his mom). J...Show More
When Axton Betz-Hamilton was 11 years old, her parents' identities were stolen. At that time, in the early 90s, consumer protection services for identity theft victims were basically non-existent. So ...Show More
2008 was an exciting time to be a Harry Potter fan. The final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, had been released. Movies were on the way. And author Melissa Anelli was at the center of it a...Show More
In 1979, a group of labor organizers protested outside a Ku Klux Klan screening of the 1915 white supremacist film, The Birth of a Nation. Nelson Johnson and Signe Waller-Foxworth remember shouting at...Show More
Dan Stevenson has lived in Oakland's Eastlake neighborhood for 40 years. He says crime has been an issue for as long as he can remember, but he isn't one to call the police on drug dealers or sex work...Show More
The Witness Protection Program, or the Witness Security Program, was established in 1970 to protect government witnesses before, during and after a trial. Learn more about witness protection in this e...Show More
In today’s episode, we meet a young woman from Texas, born and raised, who can’t prove that she exists. Alecia Faith Pennington was born at home, homeschooled, and never visited a dentist or a hospita...Show More
Reporter Karen Duffin and her father were talking one day when, just as an aside, he mentioned the Nazi prisoners of war that worked on his Idaho farm when he was a kid. Karen was shocked ... and then...Show More
In a lucid dream, the sleeper is aware that he or she is in a dream state. Does that mean you can control these dreams? Where did this concept come from? Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com...Show More
China's one-child policy, implemented in 1979, was designed to limit population growth. In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck examine the policy's surprising origins, impact on Chin...Show More
In this Halloween episode, Josh and Chuck go way back to late 19th century London to examine the grisly details of the Jack the Ripper murders. They also discuss Ripperology, Jack the Ripper suspects ...Show More
Some people have memories of very early childhood, but how far back can you go? Is it possible to remember your own birth? Josh and Chuck are on the case in this episode of Stuff You Should Know.
There are a lot of Gothic churches in Spain, but this one is different. It doesn’t look like a Gothic cathedral. It looks organic, like it was built out of bones or sand. But there’s another thing tha...Show More
Clothes are records of the bodies we’ve lived in. Think of the old sweater that you used to have that's just not your style anymore, or the jeans that just aren’t your size anymore. We are like snakes...Show More
Lumberjacks wore plaid. Punks wore plaid mini skirts. The Beach Boys used to be called the Pendletones, and they wore plaid with their surfboards. Lots of different groups have adopted the pattern ove...Show More
Womenswear is littered with fake pockets that don’t open, or shallow pockets that can hardly hold more than a paperclip. If women's clothes have pockets at all, they are often and smaller and just fit...Show More
There are a few ways to tell if you’re looking at an authentic, high-quality aloha shirt. If the pockets match the pattern, that’s a good sign, but it’s not everything. Much of understanding an aloha ...Show More
For the most part, we tend to keep our clothes relatively clean and avoid spills and rips and tears. But denim is so hard-wearing and hard-working that it just kind of amasses more and more signs of w...Show More
A straw is a simple thing. It’s a tube, a conveyance mechanism for liquid. The defining characteristic of the straw is the emptiness inside it. This is the stuff of tragedy, and America. The inventio...Show More
Yeah, yeah. You think we think we're edgy for saying The Beatles suck. No, they really do suck. They made bad music and you should feel bad for liking it. Unless you already agree with us, in which ca...Show More
Endless Thread solves one of the internet’s most compelling unresolved mysteries. Inspired by a New York Times feature about glitter last year, Redditors have obsessed over identifying the mysterious ...Show More
This week, a telephone scammer makes a terrible mistake. He calls Alex Goldman. Further Reading If you suspect you are a victim of a tech support scammer, you see a suspicious pop-up, or get an uns...Show More
This week, Alex and Damiano take a trip. This is the conclusion of last week's episode, Long Distance. Further Reading Snigdha Poonam's story on tech support scams in the Hindustan Times If you susp...Show More
In 1993, Mildred and Trevor Horn, along with their live-in nurse Janice, were found murdered in their Montgomery County home. A Maryland police spokesperson described the homicide investigation as the...Show More
In 1999, most of America's tech hysteria centered around Y2K. But at that same time, a teenager in Canada named Mike Calce was messing around in chat rooms, meeting hackers, and learning tricks. At 15...Show More
In the go-go 80s and 90s, American Airlines offered the AAirpass, a lifetime pass for unlimited first class travel. It was an amazing deal, but AA didn’t predict just how much some travelers would use...Show More
Three years after Alex Goldman traveled to India to investigate a scammy call center, he gets a tip that makes him question everything he learned in his first trip. Long Distance Part I Long Distance ...Show More
It’s hard to imagine what the world will look like when COVID-19 has passed. So in this episode, we look back to the years after 1918, at the political, artistic, and viral aftermath of the flu pandem...Show More
Horseshoe crabs are not much to look at. But beneath their unassuming catcher’s-mitt shell, they harbor a half-billion-year-old secret: a superpower that helped them outlive the dinosaurs and survive...Show More
Staff writer Graeme Wood makes his first visit to Walt Disney World in the midst of a pandemic. You can read Graeme's piece here and support all of The Atlantic's journalism by subscribing at http://...Show More
In 1903 the US Supreme Court refused to say that Isabel González was a citizen of the United States. Then again, they said, she wasn’t a exactly an immigrant either. And they said that the US territor...Show More
This is a story about your butt. It’s a story about how you got your butt, why you have your butt, and how your butt might be one of the most important and essential things for you being you, for bein...Show More
We speak to a Gerald Shur who has given thousands of people new names, told them where they would live, and warned them they could never go back home. Today, we take a look into the founding of the Wi...Show More
John "Sonny" Franzese was once described as "largely responsible for the glamorization of the Mafia over the past century.” He'd been active in the Colombo crime family since the 1960s. And then, when...Show More
Tank Man. An indelible image burned in our brains. But what led to this extraordinary event? Chuck and Josh walk you through the days and weeks leading up to the massacre at Tiananmen Square, which is...Show More