Don't Look Now

This week's podcast is dedicated to the search for the Yeti, not the top end drink cooler, but the Cryptid that is rumored to roam the Himalayas eating yaks and sometimes people.  The Yeti has attracted the attention of some very famous mountaineers including Sir Edmund Hillary who spent a decent chuck of the late 50's searching for the creature and claimed to have found its prints on his legendary first summiting of Mt. ...

Mary Anning was a pioneer in the field of paleontology, working in the early 19th Century, she discovered many famous dinosaurs and marine reptiles such as Ichthyosaurus. Her contributions were often overlooked due to her gender and social status, which let to her being ineligible to join the Geological Society of London or often receive no credit for her contributions.  Among other things she is considered to be the subject of the...

Today's podcast is about one of America's favorite conspiracy theories, The Roswell Incident.  In 1947, debris was recovered from a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico that was recovered by personnel from the nearby Army Air Field.  The stuff of conspiracy began when the Army announced it had picked up a "flying disc" before retracting the statement the next day. The debris was then claimed to be that of a weather ba...

The Pack Horse Library Project was part of the WPA's attempt to relieve rural poverty in Kentucky.  Since many people in Appalachian Kentucky didn't have access to books, the "book ladies" of the Pack Horse library brought books to them in remote areas via packhorses.  The librarians would haul hundreds of books into the back country via horseback, serving rural communities and promoting literacy and education i...

While there might be some debate about what is indeed the world's oldest profession, what might be the world's oldest medical profession is that of the midwife.  Women have most likely been helping other women give birth since before modern humans were a thing.  Take a listen this week and learn about the history of the midwife... from revered helper, to outcast witch, and back again over the millennia, midwives have been...

This week we discuss the invention of the graham cracker... the tasty snack that is used for making smores, pie crusts, and other fun snacks.  However, its history is not what you might expect.  The original graham cracker was invented by the reverend Sylvester Graham in the late 1800s.  He was a proponent of avoiding lustful thought by eating the blandest food possible and made a completely dull tasteless cracker using unsifted fl...

This week we look at one of the most ubiquitous things in modern dieting... calorie counting.  When did we first start paying attention to the caloric content of food and worrying about how much energy we were taking in vs. burning off?  The popularization of counting calories for weight loss and management was popularized by Lulu Hunt Peters, a doctor who had been the head of the pathology lab at Los Angeles County General Hospita...

Hello all!  This week we discuss humanitarian and urban missionary Margaret Prior and her founding of the American Female Moral Reform Society, a progressive group originally created to help the plight of poor women stuck in sex work in pre-Civil War New York City.  Prior worked tirelessly to help fellow women, believe in a hand out and a hand up. The society tackled the issues in a frank and forthright way, noting that there would...

Ever wondered why a worthless item being sold as a miracle cure is referred to as Snake Oil?  Like just about everything else in Modern America is dates back to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.  Clark Stanley sold snake oil to relieve aches and pains.  The amazing thing is that Snake Oil really can help with these issues, unfortunately Snake Oil is something the Snake Oil salesman wasn't actually selling.  His concoction...

The Shroud of Turin is a mysterious cloth kept in the city of Turin/Torino, Italy that is purported to be the burial shroud of Jesus.  The shroud contains an image of a man baring the marks of crucifixion as if he had burned an image into it while laying on one half with the other half folded over him.  The whereabouts of the are first reported in the 1300s when it was ruled a fake.  However, over the years its claim to be the true...

In the 8th Century an exorcism was performed on a 16 year old girl.  The girl began to speak in Latin, which she did not know, claiming to be a demon named Wiggo.  The demon claimed to have been roaming the countryside doing terrible things because the lack of piousness and Christian behavior of the people and their leaders allowed his presence.  Was this a case of demonic possession or a cover for the priest and chronicler to publ...

The Nazca lines have become famous over the years for their mysterious origins and purpose.  Residing in the high desert in Southern Peru, the lines were created by removing the top layer of desert rocks, exposing the different colored clay beneath.  Some of the lines appear to be an astronomical calendar, some are drawings of birds and beasts, and some seem to have no known purpose. The mystery of their purpose has led to them bec...

If you were to think of the quintessential family feud that first thought for most Americans is the Hatfields and McCoys.  Two families whose fame is solely based on hating each other.  While their feud is famous, the actual details of it are not.  Most of us only know that McCoys hate Hatfields and Hatfields hate McCoys, not why that might be the case.  The podcast this week dives into the feud, what started it, what happed during...

Today's episode is dedicated to a gem that is probably more famous for the rumors and often false history surrounding it then its own beauty... The Hope Diamond.  The Hope Diamond is now known to have been cut from a gem owned by the Royal Family of France and looted during the early days of the revolution.  A lore of the cure of the Hope Diamond made it famous and it now resides in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. wh...