Learn how adaptable human beliefs, habits and behavior are under pressure and influence.

Send us Fan Mail Happy Thanksgiving to all of our listeners! In the Mennonite village of Loma Plata in Menno Colony, Paraguay, there is a street named after Fred Engen. In this episode, we share the story of the man whose name is on that street sign. It’s a story that is much bigger than the street or the village it’s in. Support the show Your donations help preserve and share stories like this one! Make a gift here or call 204.560.1998. Find out more by visiting the Mennonite Heritage Archi...

Learn the stories behind famous shipwrecks and the decisions and disasters that sank them.

Learn the psychology behind historical punishments and why societies chose cruelty or reform.

In August 1892, headlines in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat fueled panic with reports of a nocturnal demon stalking the waters of Creve Coeur Lake, thrashing violently and churning the shallows into an eerie boiling foam whenever young lovers approached the shore. According to legend, the creature was the cursed spirit of an 18th-century native princess who threw herself from the towering bluffs after being abandoned by the French governor's son she loved—doomed by her heartbroken chieftain father to

National Sausage Pizza day. Entertainment from 2021. 1st meals served on an airplane, 1st Female FBI Agent, Last hand cranked telephone. Todays birthdays - Jean Vander Pyl, Dottie West, Gene Watson, Daryl Hall, Joan Cusak, Luke Perry, Jane Krakowski, Cardi B. Redd Foxx died.Intro - God did good - Dianna Corcoran https://www.diannacorcoran.com/Pizza party - the Royal HeadsStay - The Kid Laroi   Justin BieberFancy like - Walker HayesBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent http://50cent.com/Here comes my baby

We now get taken from March of 1806, through the warmer months and then to the end of the year.  Quite the fast-forward! This chapter provides insight into the surprise loser of the duel, Feydor Dolokhov, through the Book’s closest examination of his psychology. We also get rare insight into his poor mother, Mary Ivánovna.        There is a note that the Duel remained matter of scandal. If Dolokhov would have won, he likely would have faced the wrath of the Czar. Since the new Count won, there is a

A Daily Dose of History (11 Oct 2026)Today's historical events: The day after a bomb explodes prematurely, the Wuchang Uprising begins against the Chinese monarchy. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson triggers the explosion of the Gamboa Dike, completing major construction on the Panama Canal. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower apologizes to Ghanaian finance minister Komla Agbeli Gbedemah after he is refused service in a Delaware restaurant. The Windscale fire results in Britain's worst nuclear

Was Alfred Packer a crazed maniac or a desperate man seeking a way to survive? Join me as I launch Civics & Coffee's annual spooky season with a look into the life of the would-be prospector known as the Colorado Cannibal. Learn how the thirst for gold drove Packer and twenty others into the treacherous Colorado mountains in the dead of winter and why his story of abandonment and panic failed to resonate with his fellow residents. Support the show

In late 19th-century St. Louis, privy cleaner Ernst Doepke built a macabre fortune as the "Prince of Body Snatchers"—getting paid by the city to bury unclaimed paupers, secretly digging them back up to sell to medical schools, and reselling their stolen coffins for extra cash. His brazen operation crossed every line when he exhumed his own dead brother, sliced off his decomposing beard as a parlor keepsake, and later dug up his own mother's grave under the cover of night. In this episode of Southern

National angel food cake day. Entertainment from 1961. Deadliest Atlantic hurricane, Susan B. Anthony silver dollar, Billiard balls that explode. Todays birthday - Earl Dixon, Helen Hays, David Lee Roth, Tanya Tucker, Eric Martin, Jodi Benson, Mario Lopez, Mya. Orson Wells died.Intro - God did good - Dianna Corcoran    https://diannacorcoran.com/Angel food cake song - Cynthia A. ToddHit the road Jack - Ray CharlesWalk on by - Leroy Van DykeBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent

In this episode, we explore the strategies and tactics used by ancient armies to overcome the defenses of fortified cities. From siege warfare to clever deception, discover the fascinating techniques that changed the course of battles throughout history.

Frederick McCoy formally described the inland taipan in 1879, and a second specimen turned up in 1882. Then Western science lost track of it for some 90 years, even though Aboriginal Australians had long known the animal. It resurfaced only in 1972, when a grazier found an unclassified snake head and herpetologists Jeanette Covacevich and Charles Tanner mounted an expedition that brought back 13 live specimens. This episode looks at what they found on the cracking clay plains of the Channel Country:

Three shells, one pea, and a crowd of people who seem to be winning. The shell game looks like a test of sharp eyes, and that is exactly why observant people lose. This episode breaks down the oldest short con on the street: a swindle built to take the cash in your pocket within minutes. The operator palms the pea as the shells slide, so it is never under the shell you tracked, then slips it beneath another on the lift. The brain predicts where a moving object should be, and the con exploits that

On March 16, 1984, in the Baton Rouge airport, Gary Plauche stepped away from a bank of payphones and shot Jeff Doucet in the head as police escorted him to face charges of kidnapping Plauche's son. News cameras recorded it. This episode uses that moment to ask what vigilantism really is and why it keeps returning. Political scientist Regina Bateson names three requirements: the act is extralegal, it involves real action, and it answers a perceived violation of a norm. Scholar Les Johnston adds that

The Irukandji is a box jellyfish with a transparent bell five to 25 millimeters wide, about the size of a sugar cube, trailing four tentacles that can reach a full meter. This episode examines how something so small and fragile carries venom capable of putting a healthy adult in intensive care. Its stinging cells fire like pressurized harpoons, and unlike most jellyfish it carries them on the bell as well as the tentacles. Research from North Queensland in 2015 suggested why: the Irukandji is not a

Forensic facial reconstruction has helped catch killers and put names to unidentified remains, yet a U.S. judge will not accept it as proof of anything. This episode explains why. The 1993 Daubert standard demands that expert methods be standardized, reliable, and backed by a known error rate, and a sculpted face can offer none of those. Hand one skull to five trained artists and you get five different faces. The reconstruction is never the evidence. It is a prompt, released to the public in the

Two men named Alfred Hinds sit on opposite sides of a single encyclopedia disambiguation page. Alfred Walton Hinds, born in 1874 and dead in 1957, was a captain in the United States Navy and the 17th naval governor of Guam, a post that made him executive, legislature, and judge of a strategic Pacific coaling station. Alfred George Hinds, born in 1917 and dead in 1991, is recorded in just two words: British criminal. For forty years, from 1917 to 1957, the two were alive at the same time, one

The real Peaky Blinders were not middle-aged crime lords running an empire after the First World War. They were a street gang of teenagers and young men in the slums of late Victorian Birmingham, grown out of the loose slogging gangs that fought police crackdowns on gambling and street sports. Their public debut came in March of 1890, when a gang led by Thomas Mucklow fractured the skull of George Eastwood with belt buckles as he sat drinking a ginger beer in a Small Heath pub. Then they wrote to

For eight years in the early 20th century, the people of the Garhwal region of India barricaded themselves indoors every night. The reason was a single male leopard, seven feet six inches long, that officially killed more than 125 people. Its first recorded victim was taken from Benji village in 1918, and its territory lay across the pilgrim road to the shrines of Kedarnath and Badrinath, which supplied a steady stream of tired travelers sleeping in the open. It did not only ambush people on trails