Stuff You Should Know

Robert Maxwell was a lot of things, publisher, mogul, spy, politician, crook. But was he murdered when he fell from his yacht?

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Did Nero play his fiddle while Rome burned during the Great Fire of 64 CE? Absolutely not. Find out how we know when Chuck and Josh bust a two thousand year-old myth. 

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You've probably seen the movie, but what else do you know about this legendary crime couple? Listen in to find out.

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As the operation expands it also begins to unravel. Word starts to leak out of the illegal stuff the Reagan administration was up to, Congress and the press investigate and people start to point fingers. Spoiler alert – they all got off scot free. Find out how it all wraps up in part 2 of this classic story.

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When Ronald Reagan was president, America got involved in some deeply shady stuff, not the least of which was the Iran-Contra scandal – a convoluted operation that managed to combine an illegal covert war in Nicaragua with secretly selling arms to Iran. Learn all about it with Josh and Chuck in this classic episode.

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Although it was built atop some musical styles that came before, reggae is mostly its own thing. It evolved as local music in the Trenchtown neighborhood in Kingston, Jamaica but after Bob Marley and the Wailers came along, it became a global phenomenon.

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Once upon a time there were these things called phone books. Inside you could find the phone number and address of just about everyone in your town. Can you imagine?

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To call beans and rice a staple is to undersell the importance of beans and rice. Today we break down the ubiquity of this beloved food combo.

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No food is more all-American than peanut butter – 80 percent of homes in the country have a jar of it in the pantry right now. And while the rest of the world might find peanut butter peculiar, maybe even gross, the rest of the world is wrong. Enjoy a smooth ride through one of our top condiments in this classic episode.

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Operation Doppelganger was a Russian propaganda project discovered in 2022, a minor part of the enormous, ongoing disinformation and chaos-sewing campaign Russia spreads across the world through social media. And some of your views may have come from it.

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Get yer info on one of Australia’s great true crime cases he-re!  

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Judy Blume is more than an author. She's a legend in teen literature for her frank and honest portrayals of adolescence. Today we pay tribute to her.

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Climate change is having sweeping effects on our climate and this is changing the world, not just for humans and other animals, but plants too. Will the Earth’s flora manage to find safe refuge in time? Josh and Chuck run down the odds in this classic episode.

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We all know Switzerland is neutral. But why? Listen in and you might learn something.

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Josh implored Chuck to try sardines. Did he? Listen in to find out. 

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By the 1990s, cigarette makers had been hooking and killing off their customers for about a century. And they’d gotten good at both as well as covering up their harms. In 1994 they were still denying cigarettes were addictive. Then, the 50 Attorneys General of the US rode into town to take them on.

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In this classic episode, Chuck and Josh dive into the funky, cool world of the classic TV show, Sooooooooul Train.

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Would you believe that Detroit’s crack epidemic in the mid-80s was overseen by one 16 year-old white kid who supplied all the coke? No? Well, that’s not quite true, so okay. The actual story is even more nutso than that.

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Today we salute the great Don LaFontaine, aka The Voice of God in movie and TV trailers. 

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