Fascinating People Fascinating Places

This episode contains adult content and is not suitable for young listeners. In this episode, I speak with Kiki Smith — not her real name. But she is a stay at home mom and a married woman who makes a quite lucrative living posting as KS Wifey on websites including Only Fans, many vids and even her own domain: kswifey.com. What led her into this industry? How does it affect her relationship with h...

Author Michael Ruskin’s powerful new book “The Vow: A Love Story and The Holocaust,” tells the heart-breaking yet inspirational story of his own family’s experiences during the Holocaust. His Parents David and Dora Ruskin lived in Lithuania at the outbreak of World War II. Initially, the area fell under Soviet control as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. However, Hitler soon broke that agre...

Coming on 11 August, I speak with Professor Kristin Sorenson of Bentley University and an expert on Chile about the American involvement in over throwing a democratically elected government in Chile and replacing it with a fascist dictatorship that killed, tortured and tormented tens of thousands.

During World War II, a new medium gave people on the homefront the kind of insight into the frontlines they had lacked during World War I: Radio. This relatively new technology enabled political figures such as Winston Churchill to warn of the dangers on Nazism even before the war. But radiowaves are not confined by national boundaries and the British were not the only ones to see the usefulness o...

In 1981, American journalist David Ost attended an extraordinary meeting in the Polish city of Bydgoszcz. Just decades earlier, it had been a majority German city, in the German empire and had a German name: Bromberg. Two world wars, the Holocaust, mass movement of people and two border realignments had seen it end up behind the proverbial iron curtain in 1945. The meeting was organized by a group...

Featuring Ellen Evert Hopman, Lucya Starza and Dr. Giovanni Caputo In more ancient parts of the world our ancestors developed methods for (as they believed) viewing the past, the future and contacting beings or entities be they living or deceased from other realms. This was serious business. The way a priest interpreted a reflection could be the difference of life and death if you were a potential...

Scientists tell us that as we die our senses cease to function. The last sense to die is touch. Perhaps this attachment to physicality explains our preoccupation with the 3D world. Any police wanted list or database Ny site profile tends to begin with physical traits such as our height, weight, observable age, hair and eye color. But what if our physical form was a dispensable vessel distinct from...

Around the time Tom Cruise was introducing the general public to a Hollywood version of the high-octane life of a Top Gun pilot, Mike Manazir was the real thing. In his new book Lead To Win he provides practical advice for leaders in any field drawn from his distinguished career in the military and his post-naval career as a Vice President at Boeing. In this episode, Mike recounts his experiences...

On 3 January 1896, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany sent a congratulatory telegram to Paul Kruger President of the Transvaal Republic. The Dutch settlers or “Boers” had just successfully fended off an attack by 600 British irregulars under the command of Leander Starr Jameson. The telegram caused alarm in Britain as Germany flexed its muscles on the world stage. More immediately it empowered Kruger an...

The 1956 Hollywood version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, popularized King Mongkut of Siam, who from a Western perspective was a hitherto obscure figure. In the musical, an English teacher played by Deborah Kerr, drags the monarch of a seemingly insulated and somewhat backward country into the modern world. As is so often the case. The Hollywood version of history was far f...

In July 1952, some 3 million people gathered in the heart of the Argentine capital Buenos Aires. They had come to pay their last respects to Eva Peron the President’s wife. Overcome by emotion, the frenzied crowd poured forward leading to a crush in which 8 people were killed and thousands injured. Despite the huge crowds, Eva Peron or Evita as she was known was a divisive figure and her death was...

By June 1944, the winds of war had changed. The German High Command was bracing for an invasion of mainland Europe by a liberating multi-national force. Kansas native, Dwight D Eisenhower was the Supreme Allied Commander of Operation Neptune (D-Day). The successful operation was a turning point in the war, and in Eisenhower’s life. Less than a decade later he made the switch from civilian to milit...

On 8 August 1974, US President Richard Nixon announced his intention to resign from office. This signaled the end of a scandal-plagued period in office. The release of the so-called “smoking gun” audio recording had implicated Nixon in attempts to cover-up his surrogate’s illegal break-in at the DNC national headquarters two years earlier. But why did Nixon do what he did? What was the role, if an...

Boko Haram (Arabic: جماعة أهل السنة للدعوة والجهاد) is a Nigerian-based Islamic militant group founded by Mohammed Yusuf in 2002. The group seeks to impose its strict version of Islam across a swathe of Africa. Primarily active in the border area around Lake Chad, its violent insurgency has led to millions being displaced and the deaths of over 300,000 children. More recently, the failure of centr...

Kenneth Dukofsky is an exorcist. Raised in the Jewish faith, his experiences with the seemingly supernatural led him to adopt a scientific approach to the supernatural. He also became ordained in the Universal Life Church though he no longer participates in what he refers to as “man-made religions.” In this episode, I talk to Kenneth about his work as an exorcist. I also speak with Father Vincent...

Friday 13th …. A few years ago, the Barna Group – a market research firm specializing in religious beliefs conducted a survey in which it emerged that more Americans believe Satan is real than believe in God. On a superficial level, the results seem counterintuitive. In a nominally Christian society, God and Satan seem to go hand in hand. But it’s important to remember that the Satan figure of the...

In 1945, the Allied powers prepared to hold the Nazi leaders accountable for the crimes committed during world war II. Richard Sonnenfeldt sat down with a man whose name was as synonymous with Nazism as Hitler or Himmler. The subject of the interview, Göring, denied any culpability for the holocaust or the war. Sonnenfeldt dismissed him as a hand wringing witness who was trying to whitewash his pa...

Of the many Fascinating Places around the world, only the most extraordinary make the Unesco World Heritage site list. Gary Arndt — blogger, businessman, and podcaster — has visited over 400 of these sites since 2007 while visiting every continent and over 200 countries or territories whilst establishing himself as a well-renowned travel writer. But what happens when Covid shuts down the travel in...

Precisely 200 years ago, Prince Pedro declared independence for the Portuguese colony of Brazil. The first country in the world to officially acknowledge the vast nation’s independence was a tiny African Kingdom that had developed relations with the South American country over the prior 70 years. Dahomey, a Kingdom that once existed in what today we call Benin, made its mark in the history books o...

In North West Africa, the vast wilderness of the Sahara runs into the tropical rainforests of Benin and Burkina Faso. And it is in this region, that some of Africa’s greatest empires flourished. Among them was the Songhai Empire, as well as the earlier Mali Empire, whose rulers included Mansa Musa –  who flushed with gold – was reportedly the wealthiest man in history. By the early 19th century, t...

Mauritania, one of Africas largest yet least talked about countries holds a dark secret: slavery. While slavery in various forms continues to exist around the world, in Mauritania its on a massive scale having been woven into the very fabric of society.

Mauritania, one of Africa’s largest yet least talked about countries holds a dark secret: slavery. While slavery in various forms continues to exist around the world, in Mauritania its on a massive scale having been woven into the very fabric of society. In fact, the loathsome practice was only criminalized 15 years ago. But whereas the emancipation proclamation and subsequent events in the US eve...

In May 1930, a young English woman from Yorkshire arrived in Sydney, Australia she received a welcome fit for a Queen. Amy Johnson had become the first female pilot to fly from the United Kingdom to Australia. It was a remarkable feat for the 26 year old

On 6 May 1937, four camera crews were on hand as the German Zeppelin airship the Hindenburg burst into flames. Separately, radio journalist Herbert Morrison was on the scene and his commentary of the event is forever associated with the tragedy. In this e

Having been lost to history for 3,000 years, Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun became a household name in 1922 when British Archaeologist Howard Carter excavated his tomb. But who was the man behind the iconic golden mask? What treasures were found in his tomb? and what is the truth behind the curse of Tutankhamun? Music by Pixabay — Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/daniel-mainwaring5/message