Local Universe Podcast

What do YOU have in common with a prehistoric dire wolf? You might both live in North America, you both have spare blood, and you could both get... Lyme Disease!? Part 1 of this 2-part series on Lyme Disease explores this bizarre, tenacious, and debilitating tick-borne illness that is rampant in the Northeast United States – and beyond. Join Emily, Graham, and Will as they discuss what makes a spi...

Suddenly, the birds stop singing. The temperature plummets. The afternoon sun gives way to dusk, revealing the stars, planets, and creatures that only come alive at night. Is it the apocalypse? The wrath of God?! Well, we used to think so. Now we know we’re just witnessing an astounding astrological coincidence best known as a Total Solar Eclipse! Solar eclipses are harmless astrological events th...

The Byford Dolphin oil drilling rig located in the North Sea is no stranger to tragedy; the most notable infamously referred to as the “Byford Dolphin Incident”, or the “Diving Bell Incident”. Early November 1983, six seasoned saturation divers experienced explosive decompression that killed five, leaving one diver barely alive.   This event led to intense speculation on all sides of the incident....

Ready for a new unlikely-but-totally-possible fear? In 1982, 7 unsuspecting people were killed in the Chicago metro area when they opened and used Tylenol acetaminophen capsules that had been nefariously laced with potassium cyanide. To this day, after 41 years of investigation no one has been arrested, charged, or convicted for this horrific act, no motive has been discovered, and the case has go...

In 1921, the largest armed uprising in American History (other than the Civil War, of course) that you've probably never heard of occurred in Logan County, West Virginia. Lasting five days from late August to Early September of that year, over 10,000 armed coal miners confronted some 3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers over the miner's attempts to unionize amid some of the worst working condit...

In 1985, a former chicken farmer-turned-SCUBA pioneer turned Bona Fide treasure hunter named Mel Fisher and his crew came across the motherlode after nearly 17 years of searching: the remains of a Spanish treasure fleet that sank off the coast of the Florida Keys in 1622, and of course, all the 350+ year old gold and riches that came with it, totaling over $450 million. But before we get into that...

We're back with part 2 of our miniseries on Yale University's Skull and Bones Society! This is the good stuff, the kind of learning that makes you unapproachable at parties and the life of any family gathering for better or worse. Ever wanted a questionable take on the JFK assassination or something to shout from the rooftops that sounds outlandish but has a tiny nugget of truth to it? Wel...

In this weeks episode of the Local Universe Podcast, we dive deep into the first part of another ooey gooey two part series! This time, Emily leads us down a path of power, conspiracy, and general guys-being-dudes secret society stuff-- only this secret society happens to have ties to a staggering amount of world decision makers throughout their nearly 200-year history, including Presidents, Supre...

We're back from our Winter hiatus!  Join us today, as Will regales us of the tale of John Brown (1800-1859), a (Connecticut-born), Radical Abolitionist in the antebellum United States who took it upon himself to rally an army to raid a federal outpost in Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1859, with the ultimate goal of starting a liberation movement to end slavery in the United...

In the 1920's and early 1930's, Germany was a pretty horrible place to be. Between unprecedented economic inflation, a nearly nonexistent job market, and growing civil unrest, many Germans fled elsewhere to avoid the complex and horrible conditions that eventually led to WWII. One out-of-work electrician and kayaking hobbyist named Oskar Speck, decided that his best course of action would be to fi...

Happy Halloween!  In this dark and spooky edition of the Local Universe Podcast, Emily takes us down a rabbit hole of a story about an abandoned ghost town in her own backyard- Dogtown, Massachusetts.  Initially settled as an inland redoubt from pirates and raiders in 1693, Dogtown (then known as The Commons) was a thriving community not unlike any other settlement in the Massachusetts B...

In 1910, Clipperton Island, a remote, desolate, bird-covered coral atoll somewhere in the Eastern Pacific was home to a forgotten Mexican guano mining colony of about 100 men, women, and children.  By 1917, after a series of extremely unfortunate events, tragedies, and hell-on-earth nightmare horrors in the middle of the unforgiving Ocean, fewer than 13 souls remained on the island. When the...

Again, a departure from our normal structure for the second part to our first two-part series, we have our first special guest on the Local Universe Podcast, Maxim, to discuss some of the context, the play-by-play, and the end results of the 2014 EuroMaidan protests and their effects on Ukraine afterward.  In a continuation from the previous episode, Will finishes the protest timeline and his...

A bit of a departure from the structure of our previous episodes, but an important story nonetheless-- You may recall hearing about some protests in Kiev back in 2014- about Ukrainian anti-government protestors occupying a few city centers and ultimately ousting their previous president in favor of democratic reform. But that's just about where the widespread Western news coverage ended for us her...

Pythagoras of Samos.  You might remember him when reminiscing about high school geometry, and recall, in between yawns, that thing he discovered about triangles, then yawn again, and then stop thinking about him entirely.  But there is SO MUCH MORE to this guy's story than just a^2+b^2=c^2.  As it turns out, he was also a social outcast, numbers-and-religion cult leader, (maybe) a b...

In 1897, a very ambitious Swedish engineer and amateur balloonist named S.A. Andree convinced himself and at least a few dozen others that he might be able to become the first to reach the North Pole for the glory of Sweden-- by using an untethered gas balloon, natural wind currents, and a whole lot of gumption.  What became of this ill-fated expedition was something of an urban legend/myster...

 In 1962, the small mining town of Centralia, PA accidentally ignited an underground seam of anthracite coal beneath the town--- which sounds like a pretty big deal for a mining town, but they pretty much ignored it until it was too late.  WAY too late. Now 60 years after ignition, Centralia is a ghost town with less than 10 diehard residents living directly above the still-raging mine f...