Timesuck with Dan Cummins

Would you choose to have an identical twin? Someone who looked so much like you, that even your own mother couldn’t always tell the two of you apart? 
Someone whom friends and even lovers couldn’t distinguish you from? Someone who experienced the world in a way so similar to your own, that no one else could ever possibly be able to relate to you quite like they could. Could be fun! But as you'll see... it could also be dangerous.

Transcribed - Published: 25 April 2025

Today we talk about moral panics. Specifically, the "Video Nasty" moral panic that happened in the UK in the early 1980s, and then again in the 1990s, when there was widespread fear that by kids watching horror movies with titles like Cannibal Holocaust, Flesh for Frankenstein, I Spit on Your Grave, and The Last House on the Left, they would literally be turned into rapists and killers. Was there any justification for this panic? Can hyper-violent or hyper-sexualized media in general erode the morality of children?

Transcribed - Published: 21 April 2025

Pee Wee Gaskin's diminutive size of 5'2" tall and 130 pounds soaking wet didn't stop him from brutally killing at least eleven people, and possibly up to 105. The South Carolina serial killer murdered for a lot of reasons: revenge and personal vendettas, fits of rage, but mostly to satisfy a deep-rooted urge to rape, torture, and kill young women. An urge Pee Wee called, his "bothersomeness.”

Transcribed - Published: 14 April 2025

Today we're we’re gonna tackle a bunch of questions you never knew you needed answering. Questions like: Why does the middle finger mean “fuck you”? Why do we blow out candles at birthday parties? Why do we cover our mouths when we yawn? And where does the whole making "bunny ears" with your fingers behind someone's head while they're getting their photo taken come from? The answers to these questions are often so strange, and so ancient.

Transcribed - Published: 11 April 2025

How much of what you read online has been planted there by Russian propagandists? How many times have you followed a social media account, or reposted information from an account, that's controlled by a Russian Troll Farm? How aware are you of Russia's ongoing (and shockingly successful) attempts to cripple and then topple America from within? This episode is a different, much more dystopian kind of scary.

Transcribed - Published: 7 April 2025

On the afternoon of February 13th, 2017, in the sleepy little 3000(ish) person town of Delphi, Indiana, two local junior girls and best friends, 13-year-old Abigail Joyce Williams and 14-year-old Liberty Rose Lynn German, went missing nearing an abandoned bridge near the edge of town. Their bloody bodies would be found the next day, but their killer wouldn't be caught for over five years. And then the town would be shocked for a second time, when they learned that the killer was one of their own, hiding in plain sight...

Transcribed - Published: 31 March 2025

Today we take a peek at the interesting life of author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the man who invented the world's most famous and influential literary detective, Sherlock Holmes. However, Doyle was never really that interested in the fictional creation that made him famous. He was very interested, though, in spiritualism, and took part in hundreds of seances and wrote dozens of books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles attesting to a belief he saw as indisputable fact: that the dead surround us and we can speak with them.

Transcribed - Published: 28 March 2025

Have you ever been to one of those Shen Yun traveling traditional Chinese dance performances? Have you ever seen one of their blitz marketing campaigns? What about the Epoch Times - is that where you or someone you know get their news? Did you know that both of these companies are directly connect to the Falun Gong, a strange cult that originated in China in 1992, and is now based in a massive compound less than a 100 miles north of New York City?

Transcribed - Published: 24 March 2025

Today we examine the beloved host of the long-running children's television show, Mr Rogers' Neighborhood. Was Fred McFeely Rogers truly as wholesome as he seemed? Could anyone be that good? Or was it all just an act? When the cameras turned off, did a completely different person emerge, and who was that person?

Transcribed - Published: 17 March 2025

Luis Alfredo Garavito Cubillos was a ruthless, sadistic Colombian rapist and serial killer who became known to the task force searching for him as… The Beast. This sadistic monster would be convicted of sexually torturing and murdering 142 boys. He would confess to 221 murders, and to raping another 200+ children. And after all that, he was nearly released after serving just 22 years in prison.

Transcribed - Published: 14 March 2025

On July 22nd, 2011, Norwegian alt-right gamer Anders Behring Breivik carried out the deadliest attack on Norwegian soil since WW2, when he detonated a car bomb in Oslo and then snuck onto the nearby island of Utoya and opened fire on a large group of teenagers attending a political summer camp. Why did he do this? And how was no one able to stop him?

Transcribed - Published: 10 March 2025

How much do you know about Nelson Mandela and South Africa's brutal, racially oppressive system of apartheid? Get your learn today with this historical and inspirational episode.

Transcribed - Published: 3 March 2025

Ching Shih, born as Shi Yang, was quite possibly the most powerful pirate of all time. While famous UK pirates like Blackbeard, Black Bart, Calico Jack, Sir Francis Drake, or Captain Kidd get much more name recognition, none of them ever commanded a confederation of pirates up to 80,000 men strong, with around 2,000 ships.

Transcribed - Published: 28 February 2025

On November 20th, 1993, the sexually violated and mutilated corpse of a young woman is found on Long Island, New York. The first of over ten bodies found in the coming decades of young, petite, sex workers, whose murders will later be attributed to "The Long Island Serial Killer." But no suspect will be arrested until July of 2023. Why did it take law enforcement three decades to find this guy, how did they find him, and who is he? All this and more on this week's true crime deep dive.

Transcribed - Published: 24 February 2025

Ganas is an intentional community founded in 1979 in Tompkinsville, Staten Island that is still active. Is it also a cult? What is an "intentional community" And why was one of the founding members, Jeff Gross, shot and nearly killed (allegedly) by a disgruntled, former member, in 2006?

Transcribed - Published: 17 February 2025

Happy Valentine's Day! Let's talk about love. Kind of. But not really. Not at all actually. Let's talk about how and why we humans have castrated each other and ourselves throughout human history. This one's not for the squeamish. But, I also can't remember laughing this often in any other recent episode!

Transcribed - Published: 14 February 2025

Have you heard of Hiroo Onoda? The Japanese 2nd Lieutenant was sent to the island of Lubang in The Philippines at the end of 1944. And he kept fighting for Imperial Japan for the next 28+ years, hiding out in the jungle, occasionally running raids on local villagers, shooting and killing random people he thought were enemy combatants, and refusing to believe that the war had ended back in 1945.

Transcribed - Published: 10 February 2025

On the night of May 3rd, 2007, three year-old British girl Madeleine McCann vanished from her bed in her parents villa at a Portuguese vacation resort. What follows will be what The Daily Telegraph will describe as "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history." Listen to find out why.

Transcribed - Published: 3 February 2025

Comedian, actor, author, and producer Bill Cosby... affectionately nicknamed as "America's Dad" for his portrayal of Dr. Cliff Huxtable on the hit, iconic sitcom, The Cosby Show, has now been accused by over sixty women of rape, drug-facilitated sexual assault, sexual battery, child sexual abuse, and/or sexual harassment. The assaults allegedly began in the mid-1960s, but never got much publicity until 2014. Why?

Transcribed - Published: 27 January 2025

Can you imagine being stranded for years on a remote uninhabited island with almost nothing but a few simple tools and the clothes on your back? Some people haven't had to imagine this scenario, like Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, and Fernão Lopes, who would actually live alone for a total of several decades on the remote Atlantic island of St. Helena. Could you survive like they did?

Transcribed - Published: 24 January 2025

Was aspiring investigative journalist Danny Casolaro murdered in his Sheraton hotel room in Martinsburg, West Virginia on August 10th, 1991 because he was very close to exposing a conspiracy involving CIA, DOJ, and Whitehouse players involved in numerous murderous, illegal arms deals, espionage and more as truth?

Transcribed - Published: 20 January 2025

Peter Sutcliffe, dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper in the press, attacked woman after woman with a hammer and a knife (and sometimes also a screwdriver), primarily in West Yorkshire, England, from 1969 to 1980. Murdering 13 women between 1975 and 1980, he left many other women alive but badly battered and traumatized. The search to find one of England's most heinous serial killers became the largest manhunt in British history.

Transcribed - Published: 13 January 2025

A look at how we humans have chosen to incarcerate those who break the rules and how certain rule breakers have busted out of incarceration over the years. Life rafts, helicopters, sexing up prison employees and more!

Transcribed - Published: 10 January 2025

Do you ever think about where your poo goes once you flush it down the toilet? Or about how not having access to toilets... or the sewer systems beneath them... would dramatically (and negatively) impact your life? Today, we cover the history of how we humans have dealt with our (literal) shit. Another reminder of how life in the present is so, so, SO much better than life in the past.

Transcribed - Published: 6 January 2025

Time for some year end inspiration from the incomparable Dolly Parton! A true living legend. If all you think about when you think of Dolly is big hair, bigger boobs, and some catchy songs, I hope you give this one a listen. She is so much more than that. A truly incredible, inspiring soul who has built an incredible life on a foundation of generosity, kindness, and her faith.

Transcribed - Published: 30 December 2024

On September 13th, 1848, a dynamite blast rocketed a 43-inch long, 13-pound iron bar completely through the skull of 25-year-old railway worker Phineas Gage. It landed some eighty feet away, covered in Phineas' blood and brains. And after a few minutes, Phineas got up, started talking, walked over to an oxcart, rode it to the hotel where he was staying, sat on the porch and waited to speak with a doctor. Not long after the doctor arrived, he vomited and more of his brain fell out of his head. And he just... kept... talking...

Transcribed - Published: 27 December 2024

Have you heard about the recent case of Shelby Hewitt? The 32 year-old Massachusetts Social Worker enrolled in two different Boston area public high schools as a sixteen year-old sophomore, and then later enrolled in another Boston area school as a 7th grader, spending nearly a year as a fake teen student before her real identity was uncovered. How??? And more importantly... why???

Transcribed - Published: 23 December 2024

On June 22nd, 1983, 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi disappeared after attending a music lesson in Rome. Following her disappearance, a mystery surrounding it has deepened for over four decades, involving the KGB trying to assassinate the Pope, an allegation of a satanic sex cults within the Vatican, Catholic prophecies in Portugal, anti-communist revolts in Poland, the Holy See being involved in money laundering, and Italian mob bosses being in cahoots with top Vatican officials.

Transcribed - Published: 16 December 2024

What a tale I have for you today! In 1518, a very peculiar form of madness fell over the people of the city of Strasbourg (modern day France) in the Holy Roman Empire. People started... dancing. A lot of people. As in hundreds. And out in public in full view of anyone who wanted to watch! And many of them only stopped when they died. They literally danced themselves to death. What happened and why???

Transcribed - Published: 13 December 2024

Have you ever heard of serial killer Gerald Stano? For years, he sat on death row in Florida, just a few cells down from Ted Bundy. He's also believed by most sources to have killed more girls and young women than Bundy did. So why is this monster, whose first six months of his life were so brutal he was deemed "unadoptable" by the government agency that removed him from his mother's care, almost entirely unknown in the world of true crime?

Transcribed - Published: 9 December 2024

We take a look at the recent, tragic final act of a doomsday cult in Kenya that left 448 dead and another 613 missing in March of 2023. How did cult leader Paul Mackenzie, pastor of Good News International Ministries, convince his followers to starve their own children and then themselves to death? And how did the Pentecostalism he based his messages in contribute to his insane and deadly teachings?

Transcribed - Published: 2 December 2024

Does not having a penis make you feel inferior due to a bad case of penis envy? Do you or have you ever wanted to have sex with your mother? Or your father? When most people think of Freud they think of his more extreme notions and theories, stuff like his Oedipus and Electra complexes. But he also really helped us understand our unconscious mind and how it interacts with our conscious mind. How the id, ego, and superego shape our personalities and desires. A fascinating blend of important science and insanity today as we explore the life and ideas of Sigmund Freud!

Transcribed - Published: 25 November 2024

Today I'm sharing a wild story that I'm surprised isn't much more known - that one time Germany intentionally hired known pedophiles to be the foster parents of unsuspecting little boys, thinking that these fosters parents would care more for the boys since they were more invested in them.... because they were having sex with them. Yep. This really happened. Recently. It began in the 1970s, and continued throughout the 1990s. How???

Transcribed - Published: 22 November 2024

The true story behind the incredible 2003 film, Monster, about sex worker and serial killer, Aileen Wuornos, who killed seven men over the course of one year beginning in November of 1989. Aileen's story is incredibly unique, the exceptionally rare female serial killer who murdered the men who paid her for sex, instead of the other way around.

Transcribed - Published: 18 November 2024

Happy Veteran's Day! On D-Day, June 6th, 1944, over 150,000 Allied troops stormed Nazi-defended beaches in northern France in the largest military amphibious assault operation the world had ever seen. D-Day led directly to Allied forces pushing the Nazis back into Germany and winning the war. And D-Day would have never worked without the troop and supply transport boats designed by a colorful boat builder in New Orleans named Andrew Higgins.

Transcribed - Published: 11 November 2024

Today I'm sharing the little known Servant Girl Annihilator murders. A series of crimes just as shocking as the crimes of London's Jack the Ripper murders, but occurred three years earlier, in Austin, Texas. Who kept dragging woman after woman from their beds and killing them with an ax?

Transcribed - Published: 8 November 2024

Back in the 1950s, America was very afraid of Soviet spies and communist sympathizers infiltrating the government and destroying the United States from within. And there were actual spies sharing secrets with the Soviets. But concern soon gave way to paranoia, and a political witch-hunt began, with a self-serving senator from Wisconsin leading a very misguided and ultimately anti-American and embarrassing Red Scare that destroyed the lives of many.

Transcribed - Published: 4 November 2024

In the early 1980s, Suzan and Michael Carson were very worried about witches. They thought there witches all over America, even the President, Ronald Regan, was a witch. And sometimes, in order to defend themselves from the dark magic of witches, they had to kill them. They had to! It was self-defense. This is what they and there defense attorney would actually claim, in court, when they were finally caught and charged with multiple murders.

Transcribed - Published: 28 October 2024

Today I’ll be sharing the strange and spooky story of Olivia Mabel. It's a story presented as a true story, centered around the unsettling concept of a “tulpa.” A thought form and sentient being willed into existence by, essentially, the power of one's imagination. Is that possible? And if not, aren't characters akin to tulpas created all the time by the power of vivid, immersive, fictional worldbuilding?

Transcribed - Published: 25 October 2024

In 1975, two young boys in Tuam were exploring the grounds of one of Ireland's abandoned Mother and Baby Homes when they lifted up a loose concrete slab and found several tiny human skulls hidden underneath. Over three decades later, this discovery would lead to the uncovering of another massive and shocking Catholic scandal, centered around some of the worst crimes committed against young women and their babies in modern world history.

Transcribed - Published: 21 October 2024

I highly doubt you have ever been conned by anyone to the degree Robert Hendy-Freegard conned his victims. This 21 year-old pub bartender, waiting to go on trial for planning to kidnap his ex-girlfriend, decided to start lying to some of his customers one day. And when they believed his lies, he lied some more. And he just kept lying. For years. And he convinced three people to drop out of university, give him all of their money, and follow him for up to a decade all around England, hiding from enemies that weren't real, and even lying to the police to protect a man who had convinced them he was a secret MI6 agent looking to expose hidden IRA members. And that's just the beginning of this surreal story.

Transcribed - Published: 14 October 2024

Magdalena Solís was a Mexican cult leader and the extremely rare sexually motivated female serial killer. She was recruited to help a couple of grifters keep running a cult-based scam out of a cave in the mountains of rural Mexico in 1963 by pretending to be an Aztec goddess, and then started to believe she really was that goddess, took over the cult, and so much blood and debauchery followed.

Transcribed - Published: 11 October 2024

Carl Panzram is one of the most interesting serial killers we've ever covered. He was incredibly self-aware. He knew he was bad. He didn't pretend, following his final arrest, that he hadn't done any of the horrible things he did. He only wished he could've done more horrible things.

Transcribed - Published: 7 October 2024

In an episode about the most infamous series of murders in the history of the state of South Australia, somehow the murders are the least interesting part of the story. The characters in this tale, collectively, are some of the most dysfunctional we've ever covered. No one is even remotely normal, healthy, or well-adjusted in an episode that comes across like an advertisement for why you should never, ever, ever visit the suburbs north of Adelaide.

Transcribed - Published: 30 September 2024

On the evening of October 30th, 1938, the CBS Radio Network broadcasted Orson Welles's live adaptation of the 1897 HG Wells classic, groundbreaking sci-fi novel, The War of the Worlds, all across America. And thousands and thousands of people literally thought the US was currently being invaded by killer aliens from Mars...

Transcribed - Published: 27 September 2024

Who are the Yakuza? How similar are they to the Mafia? What's up with all the tattoos they have? And why are so many of them missing one of their pinkie fingers? Digging into Japanese organized crime today. I learned a lot and hope you do, too!

Transcribed - Published: 23 September 2024

In honor of the 420 episode, I decided to smoke a nice strong joint for this one while recording. And the topic pairs perfectly with weed: a philosophical discussion on the nature of life. Why are we here and what is the point of life?

Transcribed - Published: 16 September 2024

On March 31st, 1922, on a cold, snowy, and quiet night in Germany, at a small unassuming farm roughly an hour’s drive north of Munich, six gruesome axe murders were committed after various people in the home had been hearing strange noises coming from the attic for months. Who was in the attic? Who killed the entire Gruber family?

Transcribed - Published: 13 September 2024

Do you remember when seventeen-year-old Amy Fisher shot the wife of her thirty-five-year-old lover, Joey Buttafuoco, in the face in May of 1992? At the time, I was too young to really give this story any attention, but what a wild story it is! Today, we get a little tabloid-esque, but also share the history of the cringey term "Lolita" and discuss the recent history of "age of consent" laws in this cautionary tale.

Transcribed - Published: 9 September 2024

When did we meatsacks start torturing one another? How did we do it? How have torture methods changed over the years, and what are some of the worst torture methods of all time? Where does the "music" of Yoko Ono fit into all this? Covering so much strange information today.

Transcribed - Published: 2 September 2024