Timesuck with Dan Cummins

In this Short Suck, we dive into the almost-forgotten story of The Business Plot - when a group of powerful bankers and corporate bigwigs allegedly tried to recruit one of America’s most decorated Marines, Smedley Butler, to lead a fascist coup against President Franklin D. Roosevelt. We’ll sift through testimony, shady alliances, and a very convenient death to ask: how close did the U.S. actually come to going full fascist in the ...

You read that title right. Are you familiar with the story of James Strang? A blatant con artist who converted to Mormonism shortly before Joseph Smith's assassination who used a forged letter and some "discovered" brass plates to establish himself as Smith's legitimate heir, and then convinced hundreds of followers to move to Beaver Island in Lake Michigan where they crowned him king in 1850 and formed a small army that included p...

In this deeply informative episode of Timesuck, we explore the history of addiction, how different cultures have tried to understand and control it, and what modern science reveals about how it rewires the brain, hijacks choice, and reshapes identity. From ancient remedies and religious interpretations to modern medicine and neuroscience, we break down how desire becomes dependency — and why recovery is so much more than just willp...

We sail back to 1789 and find out why the real Mutiny on the Bounty was way less “noble sailors vs brutal tyrant” and way more “horny, possibly rapey young officer snaps on his short, cheese-hoarding, coconut-obsessed captain.” In today's Short Suck, we dig into the petty ego clashes, disastrous decisions, and deeply messed up sexual dynamics that led to one of history’s most infamous mutinies.

For Merch and everything else Bad Magi...

Linda Hazzard - self-proclaimed “fasting specialist” and actual sadistic fraud - ran one of the most disturbing medical scams in American history. At her Washington State sanitarium, later nicknamed “Starvation Heights,” she starved countless patients under the guise of curing everything from aches and pains to cancer. Her brutal regimen of near-total fasting, daily enemas, and bizarre “massage” beatings left a trail of emaciated v...

In 1971, Go Ask Alice shocked parents across America - marketed as the real diary of a teenage girl swallowed alive by drugs, addiction, and death. Terrified moms and dads bought the book by the millions, used it to police their kids, and fueled a cultural panic that helped justify the War on Drugs. But there was just one problem: the entire book was a lie presented as truth...

Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com 

Timesuck Di...

On January 15th, 1919, a massive molasses tank in Boston’s North End burst, unleashing a 25-foot wall of sticky destruction that toppled buildings, derailed trains, and killed 21 people while injuring scores more. Today, we follow the harrowing rescues, the landmark class-action showdown, and the reforms that changed U.S. engineering standards. A strange, darkly ironic tragedy—equal parts true-crime, industrial history... and sugar...

Happy Veteran's Day! George S. Patton was a war-winning, poetry-writing, reincarnation-believing chaos machine. The Allies needed him. The Nazis feared him. His bosses… tolerated him. From heroic battlefield leadership to slapping hospitalized soldiers and creating international incidents with his mouth, Patton lived louder than almost anyone in uniform. This is the story of Old Blood-and-Guts: genius, troublemaker, and one of the ...

He was brash, beautiful, bold, flawed, and unapologetically himself. From Olympic gold to global fame, Muhammad Ali’s story is one of rebellion, redemption, and relentless courage. This week, we dive into the life of “The Greatest” - a man who fought not just opponents in the ring, but racism, war, and even his own failing body. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee… and rumble, young meatsack, rumble.

Merch and more: www.badmagi...

Happy Halloween, Meatsacks! The conclusion of our Halloween week fictional horror! In this conclusion to yesterday's release, Duncan Briggs just wants his life to return to what it was before he'd ever heard of AR Innovations. But we all know that's not going to happen, right? Instead, the new ride he's on keeps getting wilder.

This episode was scored by Logan Keith. We recommend listening with headphones to experience the full effe...

Hello again Meatsacks! The beginning of our last bit of Halloween week fictional horror! This one was originally released back in July. In this first of two parts,  we meet a man, Duncan Briggs, who agrees to participate in a paid scientific study to make a little cash to get his wife something nice for her birthday while he's in-between jobs. And then things get.... weird. Enjoy!

This episode was scored by Logan Keith. We recommend...

Hello Meatsacks! Time for more Halloween week horror! This one was, as you can guess, released the week before yesterday's story, from this past May. And in it, we head to the tropical jungle of Vietnam's Annamese mountains. When on a dark, rainy night in January of 1968, PsyWar Detachment Six was conducting black ops meant to terrify and break the spirits of the Viet Cong.  Enjoy!

This episode was scored by Logan Keith. We recommen...

Time for another Halloween week Nightmare Fuel! This one is from this past May. And in it, we head to Upstate New York's Woodhull Mountain, where Gabe and Hassan see a very strangely placed house on the side of the hill while out on a hike. When Gabe enters the house, he leaves behind our world, and enters a space outside of it - a dark and mysterious space dedicated mostly... to pain.  Hope you like it!

This episode was scored by L...

This isn't a mistake, meatsacks! I've been wanting to show you some of the new fictional content I've been working on for awhile now. And the week of Halloween seemed like a great time to do it. This week, I'll be sharing five of my favorite Nightmare Fuels with you here on the Timesuck feed, staring with this story I wrote back in March. It's 1989 and a pawn shop owner has found some chilling home video footage of two film student...

In the mid-1990s, the quiet backwoods of southwest Florida became the hunting grounds of a sadistic killer the media would dub “The Hog Trail Killer.” What began as a routine hog hunt quickly spiraled into one of the most gruesome investigations in Florida history - a string of bodies found in the woods, all bound, mutilated, and left to rot. This week, we look at Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., the man accused of turning Charlotte County...

From ghostly prankster to urban legend, Spring-Heeled Jack terrorized Victorian London with blue flames, metallic claws, and impossible rooftop leaps—so much so that a Ripper-era letter in 1888 claimed his name. This Short Suck traces the 1838 panic through hoaxes, aristocratic “bets,” and mass hysteria to ask what Jack revealed about a rapidly modernizing empire’s fears. Along the way, we connect the legend’s cultural footprint to...

In Victorian England, “baby farming” turned unwanted infants into a deadly business. Amelia Dyer, known as The Ogress of Reading, used it to hide an unimaginable number of murders - hundreds of them. This week, we expose the grim world of baby farming, the cruelty of Victorian morality, and how one of the most prolific killers in British history was only a small part of a much bigger problem.

Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions....

When seven backpackers vanished in the early 1990s, the vast Australian bush became the hunting ground of a sadistic killer. For years, hikers stumbled upon shallow graves in Belanglo State Forest—each revealing new horrors and the same gruesome pattern of torture and execution. The man responsible, truck driver Ivan Milat, would become known as the “Backpacker Murderer,” one of Australia’s most infamous serial killers. This week, ...

Once hailed as a luxurious spa retreat in the Ozarks, the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs would earn a far darker reputation - one of fraud, tragedy... and restless spirits. From its days as a supposed healing haven to a hospital of horrors run by a quack doctor, the Crescent has been called America’s most haunted hotel. Step inside its haunted halls, if you DARE....on this historical and paranormal October episode. 

For Merch and ...