Evel Knievel, the world-famous daredevil, is planning his greatest ever stunt. In 1974, he wants to leap over Snake River Canyon in Idaho. The chasm is almost a third of a mile wide, much bigger than any jump he’s done before. To make it work, he’ll need a custom-made rocket-powered “Skycycle,” TV camera crews and […]
In a small black box, in a cupboard just out of reach of my desk, I keep one of my few treasured possessions: a set of Oblique Strategies cards, signed by their co-creator, the artist and musician Brian Eno. The cards, each carrying a brief instruction, are a prompt for creative people. Some are practical: […]
In 1942, eight men are sent from Nazi Germany to infiltrate America. Their mission: to sabotage critical infrastructure. Their problem: they’re idiots. Operation Pastorius soon devolves into one of the most baffling failures of World War II. This episode was available oroginally released for members of the Cautionary Club – along with a monthly bonus episode, […]
This is a special crossover episode with Business History. John DeLorean was a visionary who wanted to create a futuristic new sports car – a stainless steel marvel with distinctive gull-wing doors. The British Government agreed to finance the project, provided DeLorean built his factory in a troubled part of Northern Ireland. Production stumbled, sales […]
In 2012, the creator of the xkcd cartoon Randall Munroe unveiled Up Goer Five — a detailed diagram of the Saturn V rocket, annotated using only the most common 1,000 (sorry, “ten hundred”) words in the dictionary. It was a viral hit, as was the follow-up book, Thing Explainer (2015), and it produced an intriguing […]
Born into a poor, abusive household in 1838, Victoria Woodhull doesn’t have much hope of a comfortable life. But she’s smart, charismatic and has an uncanny ability to read people, managing to forge a path to Wall Street and the publishing world. When Woodhull decides to run for president, she understands that capturing people’s attention will […]
Talented and beautiful, Molly O’Day is a rising star in 1920s Hollywood. But when Molly’s teenage body starts to change and she can no longer fit into the dress she wore when she was 16, the studio wants nothing to do with her. As the scripts dry up and the money runs out, Molly faces […]
Four hundred years ago, in a Stockholm shipyard, work began on Vasa, the pride of the Swedish navy. King Gustavus Adolphus was at war, and gave orders to his shipwrights to build something impressive. In accordance with the king’s instructions, Vasa was ambitiously designed, heavily armed and lavishly decorated. Construction and rigging took two years, […]
Mary Bateman lived in York in the late 18th Century, an age that prized rational thought. Many people still longed to believe in the old ways and Bateman used this to her advantage, selling spells and enchantments to the desperate. Maddy Pelling, co-host of the After Dark podcast and author of Hoax: Truth and Lies […]
The Herald of Free Enterprise is a new class of ferry that allows cars to drive directly into the ship. The doors protecting the ship must be closed before every departure, or the ship sails with a gaping hole at one end. One black night in 1987, on the freezing waters off Zebrugge, Belgium, a […]