Disturbing History

In 2013, Time branded millennials “The Me Me Me Generation.” The accusations were familiar: lazy, entitled, and obsessed with themselves. Yet teenage drinking, smoking, pregnancy, and fighting were all declining, while...

What if our universe contains entire dimensions of space that we cannot see, touch, or detect? What if those hidden dimensions exist all around us, occupying the very rooms we live in? And could they explain some of...

The 2000s began with America preparing for a disaster that never happened: Y2K. But while the country worried about computer failures, a far more dangerous threat was already taking shape. What followed was a decade of...

What if the terrifying premise behind A Nightmare on Elm Street wasn't entirely fiction? What if people really were going to sleep, experiencing horrifying nightmares, and dying before they could wake up?In the fall of...

On the night of August 21, 1986, a small crater lake in the highlands of northwest Cameroon released something close to a quarter of a cubic mile of carbon dioxide in a matter of minutes. The gas was heavier than air...

On August 20, 1949, the Washington Post put a story on its front page under the headline "Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil's Grip." It said a 14-year-old from the Maryland suburbs had been freed of...

In September 2024 a documentary filmmaker named Ky Dickens released the first episode of a podcast called The Telepathy Tapes. By the first week of January 2025 it had passed Joe Rogan on Spotify's U.S. chart. Its claim...

This episode asks a simple question: if someone really discovered a cure for cancer, would the medical industry suppress it? Brian begins with a clear disclaimer that he is not a doctor and is making no medical claims...

On July 16, 1990, Time magazine put a group of young adults on its cover beneath the word “twentysomething” and asked whether they were laid back, late blooming, or simply lost. The story said they struggled to make...

Listener discretion is advised. This episode contains descriptions of real-life violence and death, including the shooting deaths of a fourteen-year-old boy, his mother, and a federal law enforcement officer. It also...

The 1980s began with 52 Americans still being held hostage in Tehran and ended with crowds tearing open the Berlin Wall. Between those two moments came one of the most turbulent, contradictory decades in modern American...

On the night of May 18, 1910, people across the world waited for Halley’s Comet to kill them.Hotels in New York opened their rooftops. Miners in Pennsylvania refused to go underground. A religious sect outside Atlanta...

This episode discusses sexual violence against children and teenagers, torture, and murder and is not suitable for younger audiences. Listener discretion is strongly advised. On the night of June 11, 1980, plainclothes...

The 1970s opened in conflict.On April 30, 1970, President Richard Nixon announced the expansion of U.S. military operations into Cambodia. Days later, four students were killed by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State...

Everybody knows the line: “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.” It became shorthand for an entire generation, even though the man who said it was a 24-year-old Berkeley graduate student who would turn thirty just months...