Podcast Episodes
Back to Search
487 - Chris Gardner & the Pursuit of Happyness
The year-end inspirational Timesuck is here! We wrap up 2025 with the incredible true story of Chris Gardner — a man who survived poverty, abuse, foster care, and homelessness (along with his toddler…
Published on 5 hours ago
Short Suck #48: The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young
In this Short Suck, we head into the brutal hills around Tennessee’s old Brushy Mountain prison to explore the Barkley Marathons— the nearly-impossible 100-mile ultramarathon. And we’ll meet Lazarus …
Published on 3 days, 5 hours ago
486 - Vigilante Justice: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (A Lot)
What happens when ordinary people decide the legal system isn’t enough — and to take justice into their own hands? From real-life “superheroes” to tragic misfires, from folk-hero avengers to catastro…
Published on 1 week ago
485 - The Family: Australia's Most Notorious Cult
In the 1960s and ’70s, yoga teacher–turned–self-proclaimed messiah Anne Hamilton-Byrne built one of Australia’s most shocking cults—an LSD-fueled blend of New Age mysticism, stolen children, and her …
Published on 2 weeks ago
Short Suck #47: The Business Plot - When Bankers Tried to Topple the White House
In this Short Suck, we dive into the almost-forgotten story of The Business Plot - when a group of powerful bankers and corporate bigwigs allegedly tried to recruit one of America’s most decorated Ma…
Published on 2 weeks, 3 days ago
484 - The King of Beaver Island
You read that title right. Are you familiar with the story of James Strang? A blatant con artist who converted to Mormonism shortly before Joseph Smith's assassination who used a forged letter and so…
Published on 3 weeks ago
483 - Addiction: Most Misunderstood Condition Ever?
In this deeply informative episode of Timesuck, we explore the history of addiction, how different cultures have tried to understand and control it, and what modern science reveals about how it rewir…
Published on 4 weeks ago
Short Suck #46: Mutiny on the Bounty!
We sail back to 1789 and find out why the real Mutiny on the Bounty was way less “noble sailors vs brutal tyrant” and way more “horny, possibly rapey young officer snaps on his short, cheese-hoarding…
Published on 1 month ago
482 - The Hunger Killer: Inside the World of the Starvation Doctor
Linda Hazzard - self-proclaimed “fasting specialist” and actual sadistic fraud - ran one of the most disturbing medical scams in American history. At her Washington State sanitarium, later nicknamed …
Published on 1 month ago
481 - Go Ask Alice: When a Fake Diary Helped Launch a Real War on Drugs
In 1971, Go Ask Alice shocked parents across America - marketed as the real diary of a teenage girl swallowed alive by drugs, addiction, and death. Terrified moms and dads bought the book by the mill…
Published on 1 month, 1 week ago