Timesuck with Dan Cummins

From the troubled life of James Huberty to the horrifying events inside a San Ysidro McDonald's on July 18th, 1984, we explore how one of America's first modern mass shootings - still the deadliest mass shooting on California soil and the deadliest one perpetuated by a lone shooter in US history at the time - forever changed America's understanding of public violence. 

Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com 

Timesuck...

In 1978, a fanatical doomsday cult disappeared into the Arkansas Ozarks believing the end of the world was arriving fast... which it did (for them), after they were arrested for the brutal murder of a three-year-old girl. More than twenty years later, six-year-old Haley Zega survived three days lost in that same wilderness, later claiming she was guided to safety by an "imaginary friend." How do these two seemingly unrelated storie...

How did a nation built on local farms and family businesses become dependent on a handful of massive corporations for most of its (now mostly processed) food? In this week's Short Suck, we investigate the surprising evolution of the American food industry over the past century, from mom-and-pop markets to mega-distributors, exploring how convenience, consolidation, and ultra-processed foods quietly transformed what ends up on all o...

A quiet Ohio suburb is shattered when a 17-year-old girl, Mackenzie Shirilla, drives nearly 100 miles per hour into a brick wall, killing her boyfriend and a close friend while somehow surviving herself. Was it a tragic accident, a medical emergency, or a carefully calculated act of murder? This week, we examine the evidence, the trial, the toxic relationship at the center of it all, and the questions that continue to divide people...

For years, Fort Hood has been plagued by an unsettling string of murders, disappearances, suspicious deaths, and allegations of institutional failure that have left grieving families searching for answers. This week, we dive into the history of one of America's largest military installations, explore the cases that brought it under national scrutiny, and examine the competing theories—from leadership failures and violent crim...

For over a decade, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Sweden have consistently ranked among the happiest nations on Earth—but why? We dig into the research behind the World Happiness Report, separate fact from political myth, and explore whether strong social safety nets, low governmental corruption, public trust, and the Nordic model of government really do create happier lives. Along the way, we also examine the decades...

In Key West, Florida during the Great Depression, an obsessed German radiology technician, Carl Tanzler, became convinced that a dying young woman named Elena de Hoyos was his supernatural soulmate. After her death, his delusion led him to commit one of the most bizarre and disturbing acts of grave robbery in American history. We explore the strange intersection of obsession, tuberculosis, embalming, mental illness, and necrophilia...

For at least sixteen months in the 1920s, Earle Nelson terrorized North America, murdering at least twenty-two women while drifting from city to city under false identities. Known as the Gorilla Man and the Dark Strangler, Nelson was a deeply disturbed sexual predator whose life was marked by childhood tragedy, mental illness, brain injury, prison sentences, and multiple escapes from psychiatric institutions. This is an especially ...

In February of 1978, five friends left a college basketball game in Northern California and seemingly vanished into thin air. Months later, four of them were found dead deep in the wilderness, miles from their abandoned car, while the fifth remained missing. Nearly fifty years later, the Yuba County Five remains one of America's strangest unsolved mysteries—a baffling case filled with unexplained decisions, bizarre clues, and...

On June 28th, 1969, New York City police expected another routine raid on a gay bar. Instead, they found a community that had finally had enough. This week, we explore the long history of anti-LGBTQ+ persecution in America, the explosive events of the Stonewall Riots, and how a few nights of resistance helped ignite the modern fight for queer liberation.

Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com 

Timesuck Discord! https...

On a December night in 1991, four teenage girls gathered at an Austin frozen yogurt shop for what should have been an ordinary evening of work, pizza, friendship, and weekend plans. Instead, they became the victims of one of the most brutal and baffling crimes in Texas history - a case that shattered Austin's sense of safety and led to further tragedy.   

Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com 

Timesuck Discord!...

Long before serial killers became podcast and true crime doc celebrities in the US, there was Joe Ball: a bootlegger, bar owner, womanizer, and suspected murderer who kept a pit full of hungry alligators behind his Texas tavern. In the late 1930s, as women connected to Ball began disappearing one after another, rumors spread that "The Alligator Man" wasn't just feeding stray animals to his reptiles—he might have been feeding ...

A young British glamour model flies to Milan for what she believes is a routine photo shoot in 2017 — and vanishes into one of the strangest kidnapping cases in modern true crime history. Drugged, stuffed into the trunk of a car, and allegedly marked for sale on a dark web sex auction by a shadowy group called “Black Death,” Chloe Ayling’s story quickly spiraled into an international media frenzy filled with...

In April of 2020, while the rest of the world fixated on the terrifying early days of the Covid pandemic, a 51-year-old denturist in rural Nova Scotia launched one of the deadliest mass shootings in North American history — murdering 22 people across 13 horrifying hours while disguised as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer. We dive deep into the shocking failures, bizarre details, and devastating human stories behind the...

For decades, hundreds of thousands of desperate people (maybe even millions) traveled to rural Brazil seeking miracles from João Teixeira de Faria — better known as “John of God” — a self-proclaimed psychic surgeon who claimed spirits healed others through his body. But behind the stories of supernatural cures, celebrity endorsements, and spiritual enlightenment lurked allegations of fraud, manipulation, and...

Before helmets, hoverboards, and helicopter parenting… there was the Big Wheel. Louis Marx and Company turned a low-slung plastic tricycle into one of the most iconic - and unexpectedly controversial - toys in American history. From glorious downhill drifts and neighborhood wipeouts to lawsuits, broken bones, and adult underground Big Wheel racing leagues, this is the wild story of the toy that taught generations of kids tha...

What began as a search for a mythical city hidden deep within the Amazon became an obsession that consumed famed British explorer Percy Fawcett. In 1925, convinced that an advanced lost civilization known only as “Z” truly existed, Fawcett led a small expedition that included his oldest son into one of the deadliest environments on Earth… and vanished forever. What happened to them? And does Z exist?

Merch and mo...

Big episode today! There were just too many interesting details out there about George Russell to cut out. Such a strange, unique, and ultimately terrible human being who is alive and in prison right now for some brutal murderers he committed in the summer of 1990 in Bellevue, Washington. Also, if you're a fan of Black Angus steakhouses, you will never think of them the same way after this week. 

Merch and more: www.badmagicpr...

Deep in the Ozarks, outside a tiny Arkansas town, a group of white nationalists believe they’ve found a legal loophole to resurrect segregation in America. They call it Return to the Land — a “traditionalist” community built around shared values, shared land… and shared race. Will they be shut down? Or will the be allowed to have, essentially, a new Sundown town? 

For Merch and everything else Ba...