citationpod

Ruby Ridge

The Ruby Ridge standoff was the siege of a cabin occupied by the Weaver family in Boundary County, Idaho, in August 1992. On August 21, deputies of the United States Marshals Service (USMS) came to arrest Randy Weaver under a bench warrant for his failure to appear on federal firearms charges after he was given the wrong court date.[1] The charges stemmed from Weaver's sale of a sawed-off shotgun to an undercover federal informant, who had induced him to modify the firearm below the legal barrel length.[2]

The Moon

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It orbits Earth at an average distance of 384399 km (238,854 mi; about 30 times Earth's diameter). The Moon's orbital period (lunar month) and rotation period (lunar day) are synchronized by Earth's gravitational pull at 29.5 Earth days, making the same side of the Moon always face Earth. The Moon's pull on Earth is the main driver of Earth's tides.

Security incidents involving Barack Obama

Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, was involved in multiple security incidents, including several assassination threats and plots, starting from when he became a presidential candidate in 2007. Secret Service protection for Obama began after he received a death threat in 2007, while serving as the junior United States senator from Illinois and running for president. This marked the earliest time a candidate received such protection before being nominated.[1] Security was increased early for Obama due to fears of possible assassination attempts by white supremacist or other racist groups or individuals against the first African American major party presidential nominee.[2][3][4]

The Chameleon - Frédéric Pierre Bourdin

Frédéric Pierre Bourdin[1] (born 13 June 1974)[2] is a French serial impostor the press has nicknamed "The Chameleon".[3] He began his impersonations as a child and claims to have assumed at least 500 false identities; [4] three being teenage missing people.[3][5]

Elmer McCurdy - The Worlds Worst Outlaw

Elmer J. McCurdy (January 1, 1880 – October 7, 1911) was an American outlaw who was killed in a shoot-out with police after robbing a train in Oklahoma in October 1911. Dubbed "The Bandit Who Wouldn't Give Up", his mummified body was first put on display at an Oklahoma funeral home and then became a fixture on the traveling carnival and sideshow circuit during the 1920s through the 1960s. After changing ownership several times, McCurdy's remains eventually wound up at The Pike amusement zone in Long Beach, California, where they were discovered by crew members for the television series The Six Million Dollar Man and positively identified in December 1976.

Bonnie and Clyde

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker (October 1, 1910 – May 23, 1934) and Clyde Chestnut "Champion" Barrow (March 24, 1909 – May 23, 1934) were American outlaws who traveled the Central United States with their gang during the Great Depression, committing a series of criminal acts such as bank robberies, kidnappings, and murders between 1932 and 1934. The couple were known for their bank robberies and multiple murders, although they preferred to rob small stores or rural gas stations. Their exploits captured the attention of the American press and its readership during what is occasionally referred to as the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1934. They were ambushed by police and shot dead in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. They are believed to have murdered at least nine police officers and four civilians.[1][2]

Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (Spanish: Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis (Russian: Карибский кризис, romanized: Karibskiy krizis), was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of nuclear missiles in Cuba. The crisis lasted from 16 to 28 October 1962. The confrontation is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war.[1]

The OSS (Office of Strategic Services)

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was an intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)[3] to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branches of the United States Armed Forces. Other OSS functions included the use of propaganda, subversion, and post-war planning.

Ross Douthat Opinion Pieces

2 op-eds by Ross Douthat

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/30/opinion/abortion-dobbs-supreme-court.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/opinion/religion-god.html

Audie Murphy - The Most Decorated Combat Soldier of WW2

Audie Leon Murphy (20 June 1925 – 28 May 1971)[1] was an American soldier, actor, and songwriter. He was widely celebrated as the most decorated American combat soldier of World War II,[4] and has been described as the most highly decorated enlisted soldier in U.S. history.[5][6] He received every military combat award for valor available from the United States Army, as well as French and Belgian awards for heroism. Murphy received the Medal of Honor for valor that he demonstrated at age 19 for single-handedly holding off a company of German soldiers for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France in January 1945, before leading a successful counterattack while wounded.

Patron Bonus: Excuse Us While We Kiss The Sky- Part 2

https://www.gq.com/story/urban-explorers-gq-march-2013

The Little Mermaid

"The Little Mermaid" (Danish: Den lille havfrue), sometimes translated in English as "The Little Sea Maid",[1] is a fairy tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. Originally published in 1837 as part of a collection of fairy tales for children, the story follows the journey of a young mermaid princess who is willing to give up her life in the sea as a mermaid to gain a human soul.

Patron Bonus: Excuse Us While We Kiss The Sky- Part 1

https://www.gq.com/story/urban-explorers-gq-march-2013

The Battle of Cartagena de Indias

The Battle of Cartagena de Indias (Spanish: Sitio de Cartagena de Indias, lit. 'Siege of Cartagena de Indias') took place during the 1739 to 1748 War of Jenkins' Ear between Spain and Great Britain. The result of long-standing commercial tensions, the war was primarily fought in the Caribbean; the British tried to capture key Spanish ports in the region, including Porto Bello and Chagres in Panama, Havana, and Cartagena de Indias in present-day Colombia.

Pornhub 2024 Year in Review

https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2024-year-in-review

Op-Eds by Billionaires

Three op-eds by billionaires.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-bezos-washington-post-trust/

https://about.fb.com/news/2020/02/big-tech-needs-more-regulation/

https://www.ft.com/content/a46cb128-1f74-4621-ab0b-242a76583105

Ghost Ships

A ghost ship, also known as a phantom ship, is a vessel with no living crew aboard; it may be a fictional ghostly vessel, such as the Flying Dutchman, or a physical derelict found adrift with its crew missing or dead, like the Mary Celeste.[1][2] The term is sometimes used for ships that have been decommissioned but not yet scrapped, as well as drifting boats that have been found after breaking loose of their ropes and being carried away by the wind or the waves.

My Immortal Chapters 29-34

It's my immortal, continued.

It's my immortal, continued.

Bonus Army

The Bonus Army was a group of 43,000 demonstrators – 17,000 veterans of U.S. involvement in World War I, their families, and affiliated groups – who gathered in Washington, D.C., in mid-1932 to demand early cash redemption of their service bonus certificates. Organizers called the demonstrators the Bonus Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.), to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Forces, while the media referred to them as the "Bonus Army" or "Bonus Marchers". The demonstrators were led by Walter W. Waters, a former sergeant.

Chrome Tab Clean Out

Tom cleans out his unrelated chrome tabs on interesting wikipedia articles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_ironing

https://woodcarvingillustrated.com/deep-sea-jack-o-lanterns/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_tunneling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_drop

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Thomas_Knight

Pizzagate

So we actually recorded this last week on Monday so one of the last paragraphs of the episode has outdated info in it. The Pizzagate guy was killed by police during a traffic stop after allegedly pulling out a gun and pointing it at police. This incident happened 4 days after we recorded this episode.

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/10/g-s1-42040/pizzagate-gunman-killed-police-north-carolina

"Pizzagate" is a conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 United States presidential election cycle, falsely claiming that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had discovered a pedophilia ring linked to members of the Democratic Party while searching through Anthony Weiner's emails.[1][2][3] It has been extensively discredited by a wide range of organizations, including the Washington, D.C. police.[2][3][4]

Pythagoras

Pythagoras of Samos[a] (Ancient Greek: Πυθαγόρας; c. 570 – c. 495 BC)[b], often known mononymously as Pythagoras, was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, polymath, and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, the West in general. Knowledge of his life is clouded by legend; modern scholars disagree regarding Pythagoras's education and influences, but they do agree that, around 530 BC, he travelled to Croton in southern Italy, where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle.

The Host's Fictional Bios

This episode was inspired by our tall tales episode. We each take a crack a writing another host's fictional bio.

This was supposed to be a Christmas Episode but was delayed.

The Holy Prepruce (Foreskin) and Other Relics

The Holy Prepuce, or Holy Foreskin (Latin præputium or prepucium), is one of several relics attributed to Jesus, consisting of the foreskin removed during the circumcision of Jesus. At various points in history, a number of churches in Europe have claimed to possess the Prepuce, sometimes at the same time. Various miraculous powers have been ascribed to it.

Snarky Restaurant Reviews

Two mean reviews. One from the Sydney Morning Herald on Coco Roco...and the other from the New York Times on Guy's American Kitchen & Bar.

Pong

Pong is a table tennis–themed twitch arcade sports video game, featuring simple two-dimensional graphics, manufactured by Atari and originally released on 29 November 1972. It is one of the earliest arcade video games; it was created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, but Bushnell and Atari co-founder Ted Dabney were surprised by the quality of Alcorn's work and decided to manufacture the game. Bushnell based the game's concept on an electronic ping-pong game included in the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console. In response, Magnavox later sued Atari for patent infringement.

Competitive Eating, Takeru Kobayashi, and Joey Chestnut

Competitive eating, or speed eating, is a sport in which participants compete against each other to eat large quantities of food, usually in a short time period. Contests are typically eight to ten minutes long, although some competitions can last up to thirty minutes, with the person consuming the most food being declared the winner. Competitive eating is most popular in the United States, Canada, and Japan, where organized professional eating contests often offer prizes, including cash.

Sleeping Beauty

The earliest known version of the tale is found in the French narrative Perceforest, written between 1330 and 1344.[7] Another was the Catalan poem Frayre de Joy e Sor de Paser.[8] Giambattista Basile wrote another, "Sun, Moon, and Talia" for his collection Pentamerone, published posthumously in 1634–36[9] and adapted by Charles Perrault in Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697. The version collected and printed by the Brothers Grimm was one orally transmitted from the Perrault version,[10] while including own attributes like the thorny rose hedge and the curse.[11]

Sun, Moon, and Talia (Italian: Sole, Luna, e Talia) is an Italian literary fairy tale written by Giambattista Basile and published posthumously in the last volume of his 1634-36 work, the Pentamerone. Charles Perrault retold this fairy tale in 1697 as Sleeping Beauty, as did the Brothers Grimm in 1812 as Little Briar Rose.

The Sinking of the Whaleship Essex

Essex was an American whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts, which was launched in 1799. On November 20, 1820, while at sea in the southern Pacific Ocean under the command of Captain George Pollard Jr., the ship was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale. About 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) from the coast of South America, the 20-man crew was forced to make for land in three whaleboats with what food and water they could salvage from the wreck.

After a month at sea the crew landed on the uninhabited Henderson Island. Three men elected to stay on the island, from which they were rescued in April 1821, while the remaining seventeen set off again for the coast of South America. The men suffered severe dehydration, starvation and exposure on the open ocean, and the survivors eventually resorted to cannibalism. By the time they were rescued in February 1821, three months after the sinking of Essex, only five of the seventeen were alive.

First mate Owen Chase and cabin boy Thomas Nickerson later wrote accounts of the ordeal. The tragedy attracted international attention, and inspired Herman Melville to write his 1851 novel, Moby-Dick.

Carlos Kaiser

Carlos Henrique Raposo (born 2 April 1963), commonly known as Carlos Kaiser, is a Brazilian con artist and former footballer who played as a striker.[citation needed] Although his abilities were far short of professional standard, he managed to sign for numerous teams during his decade-long career. He never actually played a regular game, the closest occurrence ending in a red card whilst warming up, and hid his limited ability with injuries, frequent team changes, and other ruses.[1]