We love stuff, but the idea of going to a store for that stuff sounds insane. Today, Farz will talk through the history of Black Friday - why do we do Thanksgiving when we do? Why do we like sales so much? Would you murder someone for a PlayStation (say no)? Happy Franksgiving & Merry Christmas! If you want to get us a present just give us 5 stars on your podcast app! It's free!

Hey Pachuco! It's 1943, and we're in Downtown Los Angeles! LA's population has just grown exponentially - partly with people from Mexico brought into the US specifically to address the labor shortage after all the Japanese Americans were taken into internment camps (not good!) - and partly because the US needs every young man to join the war and there are tens of thousands of 18-20 year old servicemen from a deeply segeragated American South in town. Tensions are high! The fashion among young Mexican men is the Zoot Suit - oversized jackets, big pants, and lots of flair. It makes them easy targets for racially targeted vigilante groups of servicemen to let off some steam. No white men were arrested; about 600 Mexican (and a handful of other non-white people) were arrested. Surprisingly, nobody died!

Let's do some highlights of MKUltra because it is a can of worms! We'll talk Sidney Gottlieb America's 'poisoner in chief' who used LSD (and other drugs) to try to reprogram minds. Spoiler - you cannot do that.

Man we love a good mutiny! This, however, is a bad one. The deadliest one in history! It's 1628, and the Dutch East India Company is up to no good... We'll talk about the syphilis-addled brain of Jeronimus Cornelisz, who staged a mutiny, killed a TON of people, and ultimately was executed for all the wildly unnecessary shenanigans. Grab a Dramamine and join us!

What would you do if you had millions and millions of dollars? Terrance Watanabe managed to gamble away the most money in history - he came from the family that invented the catalogue 'Oriental Trading'. If you were a kid in the 90s, you know what we're talking about! Learn about the dangers of gambling - including all the stuff you can do on your phone these days!

Today, we have two stories of disasters at sporting events. First, we'll talk about the 1989 Crowd Crush at the Liverpool / Nottingham Forest FA Cup game at Hillsborough Stadium in the UK. Poor planning and new leadership ended in the deaths of 97 people. Then, we will go back to 1918 to the Happy Valley Racecourse Fire where over 600 people were killed when grandstands made of bamboo fell into food stands with open flames. Finally, we'll talk about how you can stay safe in a crowd, from knowing your exits at all times to making sure you have a few centimeters in front of your chest free for breathing.

Imagine you've been unstoppable - created the most popular websites and movies in the history of well, websites and movies... what would be next? You see everyone on their phone all the time out in public, and think - that's it! Shows JUST for your phone! Sounds kind of dumb, but whatever - the only thing that could possibly go wrong would be if people were trapped in their houses and devoted to their TVs in a way that they hadn't been in ages. Right - That was Quibi - phone only shows that launched right before we were all stuck inside due to Covid! A spectacular failure from Meg Whitman & Jeffrey Katzenberg.

We're back with the epic rise and fall of Milli Vanilli! We're old enough to remember, and we still delight in their smash hits! But it's obviously also a tragic story of fame, the music industry, race, culture, and creative freedom. We'll talk about our stars Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus - how they found each other in 1980s Germany, rose to superstardom under the heel of the villain Frank Farian, and their very public fall from grace. It's a deeper story than you thought, but girl, you know it's true.

Did this case enthrall you when you were a child?? I remember the song, and being sure she did it from the TV movie... but after researching, I'm just not as convinced!

Voltaire kind of said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." And that's pretty much Freedom of Speech in the US. You CAN say stuff, you aren't immune to consequences, but the basic right does exist. Today we'll talk about the founding of the ACLU, and the time that they supported the right to have a bad opinion.

It's Victorian London - and if you aren't rich, things are awful. (That's actually a pattern of all of humanity and of all time if you take a second to reflect on the greed.) Imagine, though, that it's specifically the kind of awful where you are on the streets selling yourself for money in order to buy crappy booze and sleep in an even crappier rooming house if you can. Taylor read a lot of books for this - and although she doesn't believe that DNA evidence will ever find Jack the Ripper - she does believe that he probably snuck up on his victims while they were sleeping in alleyways, which I don't know changes it a bit.

In our last true crime recap, we revisit episode 1 on Lori Vally & Chad Daybell - as well as some other career criminals and old-timey criminals! Ep 1 - Part 2: Mommy Dearest - Lori Vallow & Chad Daybell Ep 3 - Part 2: Trouble in Celebration - The Todt Family Murders Ep 8 - Part 1: Terror in the Capital - The DC Snipers Ep 18 - Part 1: BFFs Gone Wrong - Bernie Tiede Ep 20 - Part 1: Call the Keystone Cops - It's Fatty Arbuckle Ep 21 - Part 2: The Least Great Showman - Grady Stiles Ep 57: A Most Dangerous Game - Alexander Pichushkin - The Chess Board Killer Ep 81 - Responsible journalism? The Stephen Glass story Ep 91 - Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night: Going Postal Ep 104 - Big Trouble in Little Skidmore, Missouri

Farz & Taylor met in 2013 when they started working at a startup in Downtown Los Angeles. We understand that some people like DTLA, but Taylor personally lived in New York City for 13 years before this and has never set foot in a worse place than the area around Pershing Square. We say that because the Cecil Hotel is just a block away from where we worked, and as soon as we got into the neighborhood, Elisa Lam's body was found in a water tower. That's not the only thing to happen there, from the Night Stalker coming 'home' after a night of stalking & murdering, to ghosts in the lobby, and secret hotels within a hotel - this has it all!

In 1996, Australian weirdo Martin Bryant killed 35 people in the deadliest shooting in Australian history. He's the worst, annoying and rude, he killed his landlords and tourists, going on a spree that shocked the nation. Australia followed up with a mass gun buyback program that has made Australia safer from gun violence, but it still has all those bugs.

More murders! More mystery! Some murders become folklore — names that live on as legends, cautionary tales, and chilling history lessons. From Jack the Ripper’s foggy London streets to the haunted halls of New Orleans, these are the killers who became myths. Ep 107 - Australia's Gun Horror: The Port Arthur Massacre Ep 111 - Michigan's own 1970s Serial Killer - John Norman Collins Ep 120 - South American Nightmares: Luis Garavito & Pedro Lopez Ep 123 - Trip down memory lane: What happened to the Cecil Hotel? Ep 129 - Mother of Sparrows: The Vengeance of Saint Olga of Kiev Ep 139 - Paradise Lost: Murder in the Galapagos Ep 148 - A Very Famous Series of Murders in Whitechapel: Jack the Ripper Ep 154: Off With Their Heads! - Medieval Executioner Ep 171: Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? - John Wilkes Booth Ep 173: Revenge of the Monarch - Jamal Khashoggi Ep 176: Who's to say Virgin Blood doesn't stop aging? - Elizabeth Bathory Ep 183: Devil in The Big Easy - Delphine LaLaurie Ep 190: Suicidal pilots: Germanwings Flight 9525 Ep 197: Gotta Have High Hopes - The DeFeo Family

This is our most popular episode ever. We can only assume that you people are kind of gross and Google this trio often. Here's the story of young men who murdered over 20 people, tortured animals, and filmed it all. Buckle up for this depraved tale from Eastern Europe.

Imagine you live on a farm in Germany. It's winter. Your maid quits because she hears footsteps in the attic, you find a newspaper from a faraway town in the yard, and there are footsteps in the snow coming towards your house, but NOT leaving??? You would, of course, be right to be scared. Let's revisit the story of the Gruber family (and their NEW maid who was only on the job ONE day) and how their bodies were found in the barn. Someone had killed them, stayed and taken care of the animals for a while, and fled. Who do you think did it?? We put this on YouTube once and mentioned it was Taylor's Favorite Murder, and someone commented 'Who cares what your favorite murder is!?' and we were like, who are you? Have you not been on the internet yet? First day?

Let's revisit one of the most famous murders of the 20th century - and a highlight from our tenth episode! So, OJ Simpson absolutely killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. It's a tragedy that there was no justice and his poor poor kids. Anyway! Does anyone even read these descriptions?? This is the first of several murder rereleases!

Oh boy do we have a lot of Murder episodes!! We started off mostly doing true crime before we pivoted to history and some true crime and other fun things! This is part 1 of three of our Murder episodes! Re-releases on the way! Ep 4 - Part 1: Tragedy in Manchester - the murder of Kelly Anne Bates Ep 5 - Part 2: You can just leave your family, calm down! - The Murdaugh Family Murders Ep 6 - Part 1: Officer Black Widower - The Story of Drew Peterson Ep 7 - Part 2: Never get in a stranger's van - The Toolbox Killers Ep 9 - Part 2: Do as I say - The murders of Yaser Said Ep 10 - Part 1: "If he did it" - OJ & Nicole Simpson Ep 13 - Part 2: Honestly, what an a-hole - Chris Watts Ep 14 - Part 1: Demons probably aren't real, but this dude is: Pazuzu Algarad Ep 15 - Part 2: You do not know any criminal masterminds - Tiffany Cole and (I can't believe I have to say this) Michael Jackson Ep 16 - Part 1: The Saddest Thing That Happened - Andrea Yates Ep 17 - Part 2: Blondes Don't Have More Fun - Scott Peterson Ep 19 - Part 2: You're the worst - Ken McElroy Ep 21 - Part 1: Taylor's Favorite Murder - Hinterkaifeck Ep 22 - Part 1: The wild life of Gypsy Rose Blanchard Ep 23 - Part 2: Horror at Home - The Cheshire Murders Ep 24 - Part 1: Impossible that she did it, Impossible that she DIDN'T do it - Lizzie Borden Ep 24 - Part 2: A Couple of Real A-holes - The Moors Murders Ep 25 - Part 2: Fake it Till You Make It - Andrew Cunanan & Gianni Versace. Ep 29: The true story of Wolf Creek: The story of Ivan Milat Ep 28: Real life Chucky dolls: The story of James Bulger Ep 30: I'M JACK RUBY YOU KNOW ME! - The story of Jack Ruby - Lee Harvey Oswald's killer Ep 32: Black Widow Chronicles: The Dark Saga of Betty Lou Beets Ep 34: Love, Lust, and Murder in the Gilded Age: The Riveting Tale of Evelyn Nesbit, Henry K. Thaw, and Stanford White Ep 35: The most doomed to fail relationship in history: Bonnie & Clyde Ep 40: The Indian Jeffrey Dahmer: The tale of Surinder Koli Ep 44: Unimaginable Cruelty - The Chilling Tale of Nurse Lucy Letby Ep 49: Consensual homicide: The true story of cannibal Armin Meiwes Ep 56: A Man in the Attic: The Villisca Axe Murders Ep 60: 3 Guys, 1 Hammer - The Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs Ep 64: Lonely Hearts Club - The terrible relationship of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck Ep 88 - Yachting in Hell: Skylar 'Scumbag' Deleon Ep 100 - Murder in a Locked Room: William H. Wallace Ep 103 - The Final Bow: Tragedy and Treachery of Daniel Wozniak

Speaking of religious history - here's a re-release of our episode on Friar Diego De Landa & the Mayans. There are many Maya people still living in Central / Meso America. They have a rich culture, but they did have tons of written history burned away by Spanish Friars - because Jesus would want you to do that? It's heartbreaking, and Taylor will always be mad about that. If you are tempted for a moment to say 'but it stopped human sacrifices' I'll stop you there & ask you to please see our episode 145 about Witch Hunts. #bless