The Facts Verse Podcast

Richard Nixon had already won the presidency. Why did he still want to blackmail Lyndon B. Johnson? Journalist John A. Jenkins explains Nixon’s fixation on the 1968 election and the Vietnam bombing halt, and how the Pentagon Papers intensified his war with the press. Drawing on archival research and White House recordings, Jenkins explores the gap between Nixon’s public achievements and the parano...

Get Michael Seth Starr's Bob Newhart biography, Bob Newhart: The Life and Laughter of an American Treasure: https://link.amazon/B0377giB9 Before The Bob Newhart Show became a sitcom classic, Bob Newhart had another show with the same name, and it lasted only one season. Biographer Michael Seth Starr explains why the 1961 variety series struggled despite winning a Peabody Award, and why sketches we...

Get Mark Shaw's newest book, Girl Around the World: https://link.amazon/B0ipu4OOY Get the new book from Amelia Earhart's family, Oceans to Cross: https://link.amazon/B0fqXOKf0 What does Amelia Earhart’s own family believe happened to her? Her grandnephew Bram Kleppner lays out the explanation he considers most likely, why he doubts the odds of the island search, and the surprising reason his broth...

Former FBI agent Geoff Kelly believes the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist was a Boston mob operation, with stolen Rembrandts intended as bargaining chips. After 22 years on the case, he explains the informants and leads behind that conclusion, the deaths of suspected robbers, and why identifying who he believes committed the crime has not brought the 13 stolen works home. The paintings...

Eric Barrett watched Jimi Hendrix borrow a right-handed guitar in a nightclub, turn it upside down and play without looking. In this Facts Verse podcast interview, Hendrix’s former roadie recalls the moment that would “blow your mind” and the quiet, private man behind the stage legend. Drawing on his memoir Experienced: On the Road with Jimi Hendrix and Beyond, Barrett shares memories of Hendrix d...

Jefferson Morley says the familiar lone-gunman account leaves out how closely the CIA tracked Lee Harvey Oswald before President John F. Kennedy was killed. In this Facts Verse interview, the investigative journalist discusses newly released JFK records, reports he says reached James Angleton before the assassination, and why he believes investigators never received the full picture of CIA activit...

Get Lucy & Desi: The Love Letters on Amazon: https://amzn.to/47gQHnk Lucie Arnaz says a senior CBS executive asked, "Do we own that show?" when she brought up I Love Lucy's 75th anniversary. In this Facts Verse interview, she explains what happened next. After Lucille Ball died, her daughter Lucie Arnaz found a ribbon-tied bundle of letters between Lucy and Desi Arnaz. She kept them for more t...

Get Kathy's book, "Surviving Cissy", here: https://amzn.to/4y1aDGB Kathy Garver wanted to wear miniskirts on Family Affair. The producers had a different idea: classic clothes that would keep the show from looking dated. In this Facts Verse interview, the actress who played Cissy recalls that wardrobe decision and explains how the show's sets, stories, and cast helped it endure. Garver joins Tim B...

Get Dreama's book, "Gilligan's Dreams", here: https://amzn.to/4gSBsW5 Bob Denver asked Dreama to tell their story honestly if she wrote about their life together. But when she wrote Gilligan’s Dreams, she nearly left out his drinking because she worried about changing the way fans saw the man who played Gilligan. In this Facts Verse podcast interview, Dreama explains why she kept it in, what Bob w...

More than 30 years after Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, Shawn Toovey explains where he believes Brian Cooper's life would have taken him—and why he still hopes to return to Colorado Springs in a revival. Drawing on Brian's Boston Globe internship and early work at the Gazette, Toovey imagines him coming home to run the newspaper while keeping his love of adventure alive. Toovey also opens up about gro...

Kris Millegan's book, Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, is available here: https://amzn.to/3UBECGg Visit trineday.com to explore more of Kris' work and other great books. Kris Millegan says his father, a CIA East Asia branch chief who had also served in the OSS and G-2, waited a decade after leaving the agency before telling him the Vietnam War was about drugs and that officials were “playing out a...

Get Steve Rosen's new book, The Original Punk: Jeff Beck Stories here: https://amzn.to/45E8Ivh Jeff Beck was on the original Woodstock poster, but the Jeff Beck Group fell apart just before one of rock’s defining events. Veteran rock journalist Steve Rosen explains why Beck repeatedly walked away from the kind of success that could have made him as big as Led Zeppelin—and why Rosen still considers...

The crew sent to recover Titanic's dead faced a task so overwhelming that one man summed it up: "The first ten are bodies. After that, it's just work." Historian and writer Victoria Brown reveals what happened after the sinking, including how hundreds of victims were recovered, identified, buried, and sometimes committed back to the sea. Drawing on research from her book The Death Ship: Recovering...

To support Christopher Martini and the release of "Everybody's Angel: The Stuart Margolin Story", visit the Indiegogo campaign here: https://www.indiegogo.com/en/projects/christopher-martini/everybodys-angel Stuart Margolin’s stepson, filmmaker Christopher Martini, reveals that footage survives from Pure Escape, an unfinished film Margolin directed in Canada with James Garner and Billy Dee William...

Get Dr. David Rasnick's book, The Outsider, here: https://amzn.to/4fOyq5U Biochemist David Rasnick revisits a century-old debate over what drives cancer. He traces the chromosome-imbalance theory to early researchers David Hansemann and Theodor Boveri, explains aneuploidy in plain language, and argues that modern cancer research focused too heavily on individual gene mutations while overlooking th...

Get Dr. Juliette Engel's book, Sparky, here: https://amzn.to/4fpmHtb Dr. Juliette Engel discusses the personal account in her memoir, Sparky, saying she was placed in MK-Ultra as a child and escaped in 1966. She describes the recovered memories, family connections she believes tied her to the program, and why she decided to speak publicly. In the interview, Engel also recounts becoming a physician...

Richard Syrett joins Tim Blane to examine why some of rock's most famous deaths still leave hard questions behind. The main focus is Kurt Cobain, including the disputed drug-level timeline, the shotgun mechanics, the clean weapon, the final note, and the renewed push from independent researchers who want the case reopened. Syrett also digs into Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix, connecting both stories...

Get the book "Deep Cover, Shallow Graves" by Tosh Plumlee & Ralph Pezzullo here: https://amzn.to/4eE9cp6 Robert “Tosh” Plumlee and Ralph Pezzullo, co-authors of Deep Cover Shallow Graves, walk through Plumlee’s alleged life inside Cold War covert operations, from running guns into Castro’s Cuba to training in “illusionary warfare” and flying secret missions tied to CIA-linked front companies....

Get Steve Rosen's Eddie Van Halen biography, Tonechaser, on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4v0WXtz Journalist Steve Rosen spent nearly a decade as one of Eddie Van Halen's closest confidants, and the stories he tells here reveal a side of the guitar god almost no one saw. Eddie personally sanctioned Rosen to write his authorized biography, handing over phone numbers and telling him to carry a microphone...

Imogen's book, The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe, is available to purchase on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4dqnTvi Award-winning journalist and bestselling author Imogen Edwards-Jones joins the Facts Verse podcast to reveal the shocking discoveries she made while co-writing The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe with James Patterson. In this conversation, Imogen uncovers the hidden contents of Marilyn's secret...

Get Gary King's book, The Happiness Experiment, on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4eul26Q Learn more at https://thehappinessexperiment.com/ Gary King has endured 36 major life traumas including childhood abuse, a home invasion that left him with brain damage, accidentally killing a four-year-old child, and the suicide of his son off the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. After a lifetime of complex PTSD, he claims...

Brad Meltzer's book, The JFK Conspiracy, is available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/48jnARn Three years before Lee Harvey Oswald, a postal worker named Richard Pavlik packed his car with seven sticks of dynamite and followed JFK to Florida. All he had to do was flip a switch. In this interview, bestselling author Brad Meltzer reveals the forgotten assassination attempt that was about to go national n...

In one of the most shocking revelations in Hollywood history, Rosalind Cruz sits down to expose the truth about her own sister: the woman the world knew as Sacheen Littlefeather was not Native American. The iconic 1973 moment when she rejected Marlon Brando's Oscar on behalf of Native Americans was built on a fabricated identity that fooled Brando, the Academy, and the entire world for decades. Cr...

Twitch Upon a Star, the definitive Elizabeth Montgomery biography from Herbie J Pilato, is available on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4bS4Vx6Learn more at herbiejpilato.comABC didn't cancel Bewitched — Elizabeth Montgomery walked away. In this conversation, author and classic TV historian Herbie J Pilato shares never-before-heard stories from his personal interviews with Elizabeth Montgomery, revealing...

Find Mark Shaw's latest book, Abuse of Power, and many of his others on Amazon: https://amzn.to/46H5o3k In this episode, Mark Shaw, a former criminal defense attorney and investigative reporter, discusses his latest book, 'Abuse of Power,' which connects the assassinations of JFK and RFK with the death of journalist Dorothy Kilgallen and the mysterious death of Marilyn Monroe. Shaw explores the fl...