BADLANDS
Badlands is a true crime podcast that explores the real life stories of the famous at their most infamous. Badlands is voiced by Jake Brennan, host of the award-winning podcast DISGRACELAND. In Badlands, each episode digs into the crimes and scandals of our most beloved cultural figures. How did Marilyn Monroe really die? What caused Heath Ledger to end up on the bad side of revenge-seeking paparazzi? How did Winona Ryder help solve a kidnapping case in her adoptive hometown? New scripted episodes of Badlands are released every Wednesday while bonus episodes are released every Friday. Badlands is not a journalistic podcast. It is an entertainment podcast inspired by true events. Certain dialogue and scenes are sometimes fictionalized for dramatic purposes as they are in most scripted entertainment based on true events. Sources and credits for each episode are available at disgracelandpod.com/badlands. Badlands is available wherever you get your podcasts.
Episodes
June 7, 2023 • 37 mins
In 1989, shortly after winning his first Grammy Award, at just 20 years old, Will Smith was arrested and charged with assault after a brawl at a popular Philadelphia radio station left one man nearly blind. It nearly ended his career just as things were getting started. But Will Smith overcame this challenge, and so many others, to become one of the most successful actors in Hollywood. That is, until decades later, at the 2022 Acad...
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June 2, 2023 • 38 mins
Jake just finished watching the series finale of Succession and he's ready to dive into why it was so great. But first, we're talking Carrie Fisher and her relationship with Paul Simon. Jake also has a lot of Carrie Fisher related questions for you all like, was Princess Leia her best role? Why doesn't Jake love Star Wars? What is he missing? And what Paul Simon album should he listen to?
Leave your message for Jake at 617-906-663...
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Carrie Fisher once dropped acid in the desert with Paul Simon. She did ayahuasca in the Amazon jungle, where she was attacked by a giant snake that may or may not have been real. She did so much cocaine that legendary partyman John Belushi told her to ease up. Her mood swings were such a dramatic part of her personality that she gave them their own names. And her personality was so galvanizing that it became an avatar for real-life...
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May 26, 2023 • 39 mins
Jake has exhausted all of your sci fi movie recs and is ready to report on a mediocre U.F.O. documentary he watched, but first, we're talking the Bling Ring and other celebrity scammers, and correcting this week's Badlands episode which said that James Dean is from Illinois, not Indiana. Sorry Hoosiers!
Leave your message for Jake at 617-906-6638 or on socials @disgracelandpod and come join the Wrap Party.
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May 24, 2023 • 36 mins
In the early 2010s, a group of burglars ransacked Hollywood homes like the city was their personal shopping mall. No celebrity was safe from their sticky fingers: Not Lindsay Lohan, not Orlando Bloom, and especially not Paris Hilton, who perhaps lost the most luxury loot of anyone. The thieves pocketed over $3 million dollars' worth of custom couture, cocaine, and cold card cash before they were caught. And when “The Bling Ring” fi...
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This week on the Wrap Party, Jake is raving about Signs, the M. Night Shymalan sci-fi masterpiece that plenty of Disgos recommended. But first, we're talking about the "James Dean Death Car" and other Hollywood curses, your favorite SNL sketches and cast members, and more. The Badlands episode on Paris Hilton and the Bling Ring is out next Wednesday and the Disgraceland episode on Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska" is out now, wherever...
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May 17, 2023 • 36 mins
James Dean died in a high-speed car crash at the age of 24, but his legend lives on. Fan clubs held monthly memorial services and wrote movie studios begging for relics of their patron saint. Professional illusionists swore they could resurrect his body. Rumors that Dean survived the deadly crash were spurred on, and in some cases planted, by a film studio with a financial stake in keeping his memory alive. The car that killed him ...
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May 16, 2023 • 37 mins
Unprovoked killing sprees. Nightclub gunfights. Mafia assassinations. True crime stories and modern folklore make up the backbone of many of the characters from Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, one of the Boss’s greatest albums. Which ones are real, and which ones are myth? This is the story of those stories: the story of the making of Nebraska.
This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including graphic d...
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It's baseball season and Jake is consuming all of the '80s and '90s baseball content that he can. We're talking about Paul McCartney, Chris Farley, and Adam Sandler hanging out backstage on Saturday Night Live, we're talking about Sean Penn's "The Indian Runner", and we're still talking about your top five sci-fi movies. Leave a message for Jake at 617-907-6638 or on socials @disgracelandpod and come join the Wrap Party.
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Everything about Chris Farley was larger than life. His comedy, his laughs, the risks he took in front of a live studio audience – they were all bigger than anyone else's. So were his appetites. Not just for performance, but for life. He plowed through a plate glass window, 15 stories above downtown Chicago. He was kicked out of college for burning down a girl's house. He disappeared with two Playboy models in Los Angeles and woke ...
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May 9, 2023 • 5 mins
Mafia assassinations, drag racing, extortion, eternal life, and doing time at Rikers Island and San Quentin. Find out which music legends are featured in Season 12 of Disgraceland. New episodes drop every Tuesday starting May 16th, with bonus After Party episodes dropping every Thursday. Rocka rolla.
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The first ever Badlands bonus episode is finally here and we're talking about the craziest comedian and musician connections, why so many great comedians die so young, and John Mulaney's new standup special, "Baby J". Leave a message for Jake to reply to at 617-907-6638 or on socials @disgracelandpod so we can get the Badlands movie conversation started!
This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterh...
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May 3, 2023 • 35 mins
Richard Pryor was one of the funniest people who ever lived. He elevated stand-up comedy to an art form. But the real life that informed his stand-up – a life of pool halls, brothels, stabbings, shootings, and lots and lots of cocaine – was a source of constant pain. A pain that he managed with a freebase habit so out of control it nearly killed him before he was even 40 years old.
This episode contains themes that may be disturbin...
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April 26, 2023 • 1 min
Thieves, guns, dropping acid in the desert, cozying up to the Church of Satan, living life on the lam – and living fast, dying young, and leaving behind a haunted car. It's all happening in a brand new season of Badlands.
Badlands Season 7: Hollywoodland launches May 3, 2023, with new episodes on Richard Pryor, Chris Farley, James Dean, Paris Hilton and the Bling Ring, Carrie Fisher, Will Smith, Anna Nicole Smith, Mel Gibson, Marlo...
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April 19, 2023 • 42 mins
Sharon Tate’s entanglement with Charles Manson and her husband, filmmaker Roman Polanski, as well as her involvement in some of the long-rumored hedonistic events at her home on Cielo Drive put her at the center of a counter-narrative that explosively disrupts the supposed motive for the Manson family murders. Was Sharon Tate blissfully ignorant of the darkness that had been bubbling beneath Hollywood’s shiny veneer for years? Or i...
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April 19, 2023 • 44 mins
Sharon Tate was a sophisticated beauty who literally stopped traffic when she walked down the street. She began her movie career when America was becoming sexually liberated, and despite the ease with which she was made a sex symbol, she aspired to be respected as a serious actress. Decades later, however, she is perhaps best-remembered as one of the victims found brutally murdered at her Cielo Drive home, the one she shared with h...
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April 12, 2023 • 44 mins
Four different actors from the 1980s horror franchise Poltergeist died within a 6-year span. Dominique Dunne was murdered. Julian Beck succumbed to stomach cancer. Will Sampson suffered from a degenerative disease. And Heather O’Rourke’s death at the age of 12, was deemed “distinctly unusual.” Was it an eerie coincidence...or something more sinister?
To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.co...
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April 5, 2023 • 36 mins
The conspiracy theories surrounding Marilyn Monroe’s death in 1962 continue to entertain the imaginations of those obsessed with celebrity and scandal. The stories, many of them fantastical and one of them true, feature cameos by the likes of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and Rat Pack members Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford. Somewhere in the pile of countless rumors, innuendos, and crack...
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Marilyn Monroe is one of the greatest Hollywood stars of all time. She rose from orphan to icon by creating an on screen character America could not peel their eyes away from. And she did it all while battling anxiety, depression and addiction. Along the way she bedded, married, and otherwise conquered America’s most impressive men — Joe DiMaggio, Arthur Miller, Frank Sinatra and President John F. Kennedy to name a few. And her rel...
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March 8, 2023 • 39 mins
Jake and showrunner Zeth Lundy take the upcoming Oscars as a chance to check in, with their takes on the best movies of the year, what should and will win at the awards, what makes for a great film in 2023 and more.
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