Fascinating Nouns

The way we live with dogs has change significantly over the past few decades.  Our pets are a part of the family, and as such, we want to give them every advantage possible, including a great education.  Dr. Brian Hare has been studying dog cognition for years, and his recent project involves monitoring the cognitive development of puppies starting at nine weeks.  He calls it “Puppy Kinderga...

The election has come and gone here is the states, and while we don’t get political on this show, we do love movies, so I decided to have Tea Krulos back on the show to discuss his research tying popular cinematic monsters to the political party who wins the White House. Democrats are tied to Vampires while Republicans are represented by Zombies. There is one shocking aberration to this theory, bu...

As promised, Noah and I discuss the “Three Goddesses” story, one of them being the Baba Yaga, who is the prototype for our modern conception of the witch.  She has a big nose, long chin, a house on chicken lags, and for some reason there is a focus on her saggy breasts.  On, and she doesn’t ride around a broom, but it is involved.

It is Halloween again, and what is more iconic at this time of year than vampires, werewolves, and witches?  I thought it was about time we dedicate a whole episode to them, so Noah Charney is back on the show to discuss their origins.  It turns out that these creatures first appear in Slavic myths around the 4th century and the werewolf & the vampire are actually the same creature!  It wasn&#...

With a few more minutes I talk to Jeff about Gigolos, Showgirls, and the man behind The Waffle King.

Los Angeles should be known as “Celebrity City”, since this is where so many live.  If you are an everyday person, and you happen to also live in Los Angeles, there is a small chance that you could run into one of these larger-than-life personalities and get sucked into their orbit.  You see, once you reach a certain level of fame you require a LOT of people to maintain your world.  Fa...

Project Blue Book was supposed to be the U.S. Government’s official investigation into UFO’s.  The science advisor was a man named J. Allen Hynek.  He was the one responsible for the infamous “Swamp Gas” Explanation.  Well Blue Book was really a disinformation campaign, and Hynek went from professional debunker to believer.  He scientifically analyzed all the sightings, and...

Let’s be serious:  The Gong Show was a national phenomenon!  Unfortunately like a lot of things in the 70’s, once a movie was made, the fad was over.  This is true of The Gong Show Movie which was really a therapy session for creator and host Chuck Barris.  So was his book “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” which became a movie as well.  It is safe to say that Chuck used Hol...

If you didn’t grow up in the 70’s,  you have no concept of just how popular “The Gong Show” was.   This was a daytime show that destroyed the ratings, and was unlike anything on television.  It was basically a reverse talent show where the draw was a parade of terrible acts.  They had some ringers sprinkled in, but the wild stunts are what is remembered to this day.  And it...

Sir Ian Livingstone is a real knight, known as the “Knight of the Nerds”.  Never has a moniker been more apt.  Ian and his partner Steve Jackson were early fanatics of various complex strategy games.  They turned this love into a paradigm changing company called “Games Workshop”.  Thanks to an exclusive deal with Dungeons & Dragons creator Gary Gygax, Games Workshop qui...

How many people reading this have attempted to learn a new language?  I know that I have stopped and restarted Spanish lessons twice in the past 3 years.  The grammar rules are what kills it.  How about a completely unique language, that is almost indistinguishable from English, but uses the exact same rules and even some of the same words?  You are in luck!  I have the PERFECT new language for yo...

One of the lucky breaks Eastman & Laird received was that Nintendo and Konami were looking for a new kind of game and the turtles came around at the perfect time.  Not only was the NES game successful, but the sequel changed the way arcade games operated for a five year period.  Listen as we discuss the meteoric rise of both the turtles and video games.

1984 was a big year.  Ghostbusters and Terminator were released, the events of George Orwell’s novel take place, and in a Massachusetts suburb, two comic artists accidentally created one of the biggest pop culture events in human history:  the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  What started as a joke between friends has spawned numerous TV shows, movies, and video games.  Only The Simpsons rival...

You may not think so, but the formula created by The Bad News Bears is still in use today!  A rag tag group of kids, lead by an incompetent and troubled adult somehow manage to overcome their differences and beat the better funded team at whatever sport they are competing in.  It is a tale as old as time, and this movie started the trend.

Nothing says spring like the smell of freshly cut grass on a baseball diamond, and in my opinion, nothing says America quite like the baseball movie. Sure the sport gets credit as the national past time, but Hollywood is uniquely American. This week film critic Noah Gittell discusses the history of baseball movies, which starts with players being mythic, god like heroes. Unfortunately is ends with...

Since the 50’s, no woman has captured the attention of little girls everywhere quite like Barbie.  Sure she is only 11 inches tall and made of plastic, but influence is global.  This week I talk with M. G. Lord, one of the foremost experts on his iconic fashion doll.  When it comes to her history, she definitely has some interesting nuggets most people don’t know about.  We start with...

In America, one organization has seemingly been in control of every industry we have at some point and time in our history.  That group is known collectively as The Mob.  From prostitution, to running unions, to funding government officials, some form of organized crime has been in control since the Mayflower.  We are going to talk about one such industry today, an industry that is arguably our la...

The U.S. government has a pretty straight-laced reputation, but did you know that in the 60’s and 70’s, the CIA and Army Intelligence funded research into psychic phenomena?  They sure did, and it was approved because the belief was that the Soviets were also doing it.  Then the Soviets started doing it because they heard we were doing it.  It gets VERY circular, but the fact remains: ...

Before we finish, Russell lets me ask one final question about how Psychic Phenomenon works.

The U.S. government has a pretty straight-laced reputation, but did you know that in the 60’s and 70’s, the CIA and Army Intelligence funded research into psychic phenomena?  They sure did, and it was approved because the belief was that the Soviets were also doing it.  Then the Soviets started doing it because they heard we were doing it.  It gets VERY circular, but the fact remains: ...

Lemuria.  If you are familiar with this place, you probably know it as a lost continent (akin to Atlantis), that was inhabited by higher beings who not live in the hollow Earth under Mt. Shasta in California.  You may also believe that extraterrestrials seeded this continent with crystals before it sank to the bottom of the ocean.  Some believe that this “lost continent” will resurface...

Science Fiction has had a prolific run on television.  I bet some of your favorite shows have elements of Sci-Fi in them whether you know it or not. Westworld, The Mandalorian, and Stranger Things are just a few of the blockbuster shows driving you to your tv set.  If you go way back, before Lost, before the X-files, before Star Trek, and even before The Twilight Zone, there was a little syndicate...

An extraordinarily rare event is going to happen in 2024:  Two periodical cicada broods will be emerging at the same time, covering both the South and the Midwest in large, droning insects for six weeks this summer.  How rare are we talking here?  How about once every 221 years level of rare?  The last time these two broods came out at the same time, Thomas Jefferson was president.  He even wrote...

Edgar Allan Poe was the original Gloomy Gus right?  Writing horror stories alone, in a dilapidated mansion, with only the company of a red-eyed raven to keep him sane.  Most people probably believe his life was actually in black and white.  Turns out this is NOT the case!  He played flutes at parties, solved ciphers and puzzles for a magazine, was a ladies man, and even challenged a man to a duel....

Contrary to popular movies, most art crime is NOT perpetrate by some private art collector in order to enhance their collection.  Oh well there is one notable exception:  Pablo Picasso!  Check out this bonus episode and learn how Picasso got wrapped up in the Mona Lisa caper, and what he actually had stolen.