x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

Heroes Behind Headlines

Heroes Behind Headlines

Heroes Behind the Headlines: a new podcast featuring an explosive new story every episode. First-hand accounts of adventures and events which have shaped our world . The real stories behind the headlines you know, told by the heroes you don’t. Hosted by NYT and international bestselling author Ralph Pezzullo.

society & culture documentary

All Episodes

86:36

War Has Infinite Victims: An Unbelievable Human...

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/10/14

An Inspiring Reprise Episode From Season One:Human trafficking is a $150 billion-a-year business that thrives in war zones and is arguably more lucrative than arms sales. Lurata Lyon joins HBH and bravely tells her unimaginable story of survival during the Balkan Wars across Eastern Europe in the 1990s.Lurata was kidnapped into human trafficking as a teenager when the war engulfed her home country of Serbia. She was destined for a life of sex-trafficking and organ-harvesting. Miraculously, sh...

en

54:09

Tragedy At Abbey Gate

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/10/07

Mikael Cook served as a U.S. Army engineer in the reserves. He was sent to Afghanistan in 2019 helping to build out infrastructure for U.S. military camps, working with local translators and other workers. He befriended his Afghan co-workers, especially an interpreter, Muhammad, and his brother Abdul.Following the Trump administration’s decision in 2020 to withdraw from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years, it fell to the Biden administration to execute the withdrawal which they did very abruptl...

en

58:34

A Modern Lynching

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/09/30

Former Florida police investigator James Byrd-Williams, Sr. recounts the story of his son's murder in 2020. 44-year-old Michael Williams was an African-American man living in the mostly White college town of Grinnell, Iowa, to be near his ex-wife and kids. Occurring just weeks after the George Floyd incident, Michael Williams’ body was found strangled and burned in a ditch outside of town. Three people were later convicted.J.B. expresses his frustration with the thoroughness of the investigat...

en

57:42

Daughter’s Love Solves Mystery Of WWII Hero With...

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/09/23

Becky Ellis was one of her father’s eight children by four wives, and the chaos of her childhood, dominated by a haunted and difficult father, marked her and all her siblings. As a child, she suffered through her father’s paranoia about Nazis attacking them; trips to the dentist without anesthesia; and other irrational behaviors.Only at age 89, when Becky was a grown wife and mother, did her father Staff Sgt. Louis K. Boswell finally share his wartime recollections as part of the legenda...

en

56:19

U.S. Navy Admiral and Seal Leader Tells His Story

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/09/16

Admiral Robert Stiles Harward, Jr. grew up in a Navy family, living overseas, and eventually joined up himself as a means to pay for college. Adm. Harward ultimately went on to an amazing career and leading the U.S. Navy Seals, and the Naval Special Warfare Group Task Force KBAR. He explains his amazingly positive view of the world and philosophy of team collaboration and information sharing, which he calls "The Gouge," with our host and in his book of the same name.Heroes Behind HeadlinesExe...

en

64:01

9 British SAS v. 400 Communist Rebels: The Epic...

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/09/09

Did you miss it? One of the most popular episodes we ever released from Season One is back for an encore listen:Russian and Chinese-backed rebels were making deadly headway in Oman during its Civil War of the early 1970s. In support of the Western-allied Sultan, the British Army secretly deployed nine operators from its most elite unit, the SAS. HBH is honored to have our guest, Pete Winner, with a special appearance by Sekonaia ‘Tak’ Takevisi, two of the nine SAS heroes who took on over 400 ...

en

69:35

A Winning Filly And Trying To Collect Over $1M From...

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/09/02

Mark Paul’s outrageous adventure,“The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told," is the hilarious story of two buddies who won't give up on their stroke of luck. While the horse is the real hero of the story—a filly who broke the odds when she won the Kentucky Derby out of sheer heart. Mark and his friend Dino determine to try, along with a third gambling buddy, to go collect their winnings of over a million dollars from a racetrack in Tijuana owned by a cartel... Heroes Behind HeadlinesE...

en

86:36

Growing Up On The Reservation With A Criminal Father

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/08/26

David Crow had a childhood like no other—with a mentally troubled mother and a criminally sociopathic father who raised his kids on a Navajo reservation, despite not actually being Native-American. David describes how his father tried to train him to be his criminal accomplice, until as an adult David broke away and ultimately built a successful life as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. David's book, “The Pale-Faced Lie,” describes the scrapes and adventures he experienced.Heroes Behind Hea...

en

64:24

Policeman Heals His PTSD Serving Departed Heroes

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/08/19

Bobbie Myers served for years as a Florida policeman, de-stressing from his first responder experiences by living at the beach and surfing. Suddenly, after dramatically saving a drowning boy, his PTSD was triggered. He sought help and found a unique way to heal himself—repairing the headstones and tending the gravesites of fallen heroes, soldiers, and others whose resting places had fallen into disrepair and whose remarkable lives had been forgotten to the mists of time. Now he devotes a port...

en

67:07

Professor Tore Olsson Makes History Cool Again

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/08/12

When he started playing video game “Red Dead Redemption 2”, (which has sold over 64 million copies) Professor Tore Olsson from the University of Tennessee was inspired to use the game's setting in the American West to inspire his students and provoke a conversation about the real history of this romanticized era. And his curriculum has been a wild success.Tore explains how even though the game isn’t perfectly historically accurate, it does raise themes and ideas that are critical to a real un...

en

51:58

Israel, October 2023: Helping People Escape During a...

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/08/09

Previous HBH guests, private security contractors Dean and Alana Stott are back—this time reporting on their work last October, after the terrorist attacks in Israel. Charged with helping Americans and others get their loved ones home, Dean describes arriving in Israel for the first time ever, and how they navigated operating on the ground in a country in crisis—solving for airline cancellations and price-gouging, and making local friends quickly to identify possible land routes out of ...

en

63:57

A WWII Story Like No Other: How the Man Who Bombed...

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/08/05

Three lives collide and transform in wartime: The Japanese fighter pilot, Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the attack on Pearl Harbor; the U.S. pilot Jake DeShazer, who bombed Tokyo in retaliation and became a Japanese POW; and Peggy Covell, an American woman who felt compelled to help the Japanese-Americans interned in the U.S., despite her missionary family having been murdered by the Japanese military.Though the two men never met Peggy, her generosity of spirit inspired both of them, and they ultim...

en

86:44

Firefight in the Laotian Jungle: A Riveting Story...

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/07/29

Lynne Black Jr., as member of RT Alabama – a recon team of the legendary MACV-SOG (“Study and Observations Group”) – fought in one of the most amazing missions of the eight-year "secret war" during the Vietnam War. As their Kingbee helicopter spiraled downward toward the target west of the dangerous A Shau valley in Laos, Lynne and his team observed an NVA flag planted atop a nearby knoll surrounded by thick jungle. From his days in the 173rd Airborne Brigade, he knew that the pre...

en

62:54

The Horrors of an African-American Mental Asylum

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/07/22

In 1911, experts believed that the psychology of different races was distinct, and so, like other states, the state of Maryland founded Crownsville, a mental asylum administered by an all-white doctor and nursing staff expressly and exclusively for African-Americans. From her book "Madness," author/Peabody-award winning journalist/on-air NBC correspondent Antonia Hylton describes how the physical building was built through the labor of actual patients; how many African-Americans over th...

en

70:28

Gold Star Son Waits 21 Years to Learn of Father’s...

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/07/15

In 1968, SSgt. Richard Fitts Sr. was a member of the legendary MACV-SOG team based in Vietnam, fighting in the ‘secret war’ in Laos, when the helicopter he was flying in crashed in the jungle in a ball of flames. Richard was declared Missing in Action while his wife and 3-year-old son back home in Massachusetts were given no other information. For the next 21 years, Richard Fiits Jr. grew up without a father; not knowing if he would ever return. It wasn’t until 1990, when his father’s re...

en

74:51

Marine Remembers the Vicious Battle of Dai Do

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/07/08

In late April 1968, John K. Cordsen was a U.S. Marine on his second tour of duty when he became engaged in one of the most fiercely fought yet little-known battles of the Vietnam War. Over three days, a single battalion of 860 U.S. Marines fought against nearly 10,000 North Vietnamese soldiers over control of a river that was a critical supply line. Casualties were high and both sides claimed victory, but U.S. forces ultimately prevailed. Part of the storied 2nd infantry, 4th Marines kno...

en

68:59

B-17 Pilot Shot Down Over Belgium!

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/07/01

Howard Snyder Jr. was a B-17 pilot bombing Nazi targets during WWII—when in February 1944 he and his ten-man crew were shot down over Nazi-held Belgium, close to the French border. His son Steve Snyder details how eight of the men, including his dad, survived the crash before scattering into the countryside. Howard survived through the bravery and largess of local Belgians, who tried to help the stranded American soldiers. Howard ultimately worked for the Resistance in Belgium until he ...

en

73:51

Leading Marines in the Fight for Ramadi

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/06/24

During the Iraq War, U.S.M.C. Infantry Major Scott A. Huesing led Echo Company, 2nd battalion, 4th Marines through some of the worst combat in Ramadi, in Al Anbar Province in Iraq. He shares his account of the harsh realities of dense urban combat, and what helped his men persevere—especially their sense of camaraderie and 'family,’ that persists decades later as his soldiers and their families continue to build their lives stateside. Scott served in the Marines for 24 years. His book "...

en

59:06

Growing Up Homeless

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/06/17

David Ambroz was one of three kids raised by a single mother with mental health issues. In his book, "A Place Called Home," he describes his Dickensian childhood surviving a flawed parent, life on the streets, and a social services system seemingly designed to deprive his family of the help they needed. When his mother grew too violent, David was initially relieved to be put in the foster system, despite being separated from his siblings. But things went from bad to worse, u...

en

62:26

The Man Behind MK Ultra--the Infamous Government Mind...

Heroes Behind Headlines ·

2024/06/10

In his book, “Poisoner-in-Chief,” (Henry Holt & Co.) former New York Times reporter and prolific author, Stephen Kinzer describes the shadowy man responsible for setting up one of the most infamous U.S. government programs. In 1953 during the “Cold War,” MK Ultra was initiated to develop techniques to brainwash people to act as our ‘programmed’ agents, in response to the paranoid misconception that Communist regimes had already succeeded in this objective, as in the film “Manchurian Candi...

en

201 results

Similar Podcasts

Voices of Life

APG Mannheim

Promo Estereo Podcast

Promo Estereo

Talking Timelines Podcast

Talkingtimelines

גיקונומי

ראם שרמן ודורון ניר

Drømmefanger

Drømmefanger