Citation Needed

Citation Needed

The podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now.

Episodes

December 3, 2025 42 mins

Ian Robert Maxwell (born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch; 10 June 1923 – 5 November 1991) was a Czechoslovak-born British media proprietor and politician.[1][2]

Of Jewish descent, he escaped the Nazi occupation of his native Czechoslovakia and joined the Czechoslovak Army in exile during World War II. He was decorated after active service in the British Army. In subsequent years he worked in publishing, building up Pergamon Press to...

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On August 28, 2003, pizza delivery man Brian Douglas Wells robbed a PNC Bank near his hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, United States. Upon being apprehended by police, Wells died when an explosive collar locked to his neck detonated. The FBI investigation into his death uncovered a complex plot described as "one of the most complicated and bizarre crimes in the annals of the FBI".[1]

 

https://www.wired.com/story/collar-bomb/

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November 19, 2025 37 mins

Koro is a culture-bound delusional disorder in which individuals have an overpowering belief that their sex organs are retracting and will disappear, despite the lack of any true longstanding changes to the genitals.[1][2] Koro is also known as shrinking penis, and was listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

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November 12, 2025 31 mins

Balloonfest '86 was a fundraising event in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, held on September 27, 1986, in which the local chapter of United Way set a world record by releasing almost 1.5 million balloons.[2] The event was intended to be a harmless publicity stunt. However, the released balloons drifted back over the city and Lake Erie and landed in the surrounding area, causing problems for traffic and a nearby airport. In conseque...

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November 5, 2025 41 mins
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October 29, 2025 31 mins

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel_claims_and_urban_legends

 

Multiple accounts of people who allegedly travelled through time have been reported by the press or circulated online. These reports have turned out to be either hoaxes or else based on incorrect assumptions, incomplete information, or interpretation of fiction as fact. Many are now recognized as urban legends.

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October 22, 2025 58 mins

https://azdailysun.com/news/state-and-regional/qanon-shaman-files-40-trillion-lawsuit-against-trump-with-plan-to-revolutionize-america/article_5f4ad841-60ef-4060-9ff3-7f33d7ee4f0d.html

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October 15, 2025 40 mins

https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/biking/real-life-superhero-who-beats-cops-bike-thieves/

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October 8, 2025 37 mins

A broadcast signal intrusion is the hijacking of broadcast signals of radio, television stations, cable television broadcast feeds or satellite signals without permission or licence. Hijacking incidents have involved local TV and radio stations as well as cable and national networks.

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October 1, 2025 33 mins

George Edward "Rube" Waddell (October 13, 1876 – April 1, 1914) was an American pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB). A left-hander, he played for 13 years, with the Louisville Colonels, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Chicago Orphans in the National League, as well as the Philadelphia Athletics and St. Louis Browns in the American League. Born in Bradford, Pennsylvania, and raised in Prospect, Pennsylvania, Wad...

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September 24, 2025 40 mins

The 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire,[1] officially known as the 2,500-year celebration of the Empire of Iran (Persian: جشن‌های ۲۵۰۰ ساله شاهنشاهی ایران, romanizedJašn-hây-e 2500 sale' šâhanšâhi Irân), was hosted by the Pahlavi dynasty in the Imperial State of Iran in October 1971. Concentrated at Persepolis, it consisted of an elaborate set of grand festivities that sought to honour the legacy of the Achaemenid Empir...

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September 17, 2025 47 mins

Over 21 days of talking with ChatGPT, an otherwise perfectly sane man became convinced that he was a real-life superhero. We analyzed the conversation.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/technology/ai-chatbots-delusions-chatgpt.html

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September 10, 2025 31 mins

Mummia, mumia, or originally mummy referred to several different preparations in the history of medicine, from "mineral pitch" to "powdered human mummies". It originated from Arabic mūmiyā "a type of resinous bitumen found in Western Asia and used curatively" in traditional Islamic medicine, which was translated as pissasphaltus (from "pitch" and "asphalt") in ancient Greek medicine. In medieval European medicine, mūmiyā "bitumen...

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September 3, 2025 39 mins

Vasa (previously Wasa) (Swedish pronunciation: [²vɑːsa] 

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August 27, 2025 39 mins

The Exxon Valdez oil spill was a major environmental disaster that occurred in Alaska's Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989. The spill occurred when Exxon Valdez, an oil supertanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company, bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, 6 mi (9.7 km) west of Tatitlek, Alaska at 12:04 a.m. The tanker spilled more than 10 million US gallons (240,000 bbl) (or 37,000 tonnes)[1] o...

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https://www.outsideonline.com/adventure-travel/essays/jungle-wedding/

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August 13, 2025 33 mins

Olestra (also known by its brand name Olean) is a fat substitute food additive that adds no metabolizable calories to products. It has been used in the preparation of otherwise high-fat foods, thereby lowering or eliminating their fat content.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved olestra for use in the US as a replacement for fats and oils in prepackaged ready-to-eat snacks in 1996,[2] concluding that such use "meets the...

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August 6, 2025 40 mins

Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock and is much smaller than the inner pla...

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This is a teaser episode of our Patreon Bonus Episode. This is the first few minutes of that particular episode to let non-patrons sample that content.

 

You can become a patron here: http://patreon.com/citationpod

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July 30, 2025 36 mins

Defenestration (from Neo-Latin de fenestrā[1]) is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window.[2] The term was coined around the time of an incident in Prague Castle in the year 1618 which became the spark that started the Thirty Years' War. This was done in "good Bohemian style", referring to the defenestration which had occurred in Prague's New Town Hall almost 200 years earlier (July 1419), and on that occasion led...

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