Timesuck with Dan Cummins

Off and on from 2006 to 2012, Snowden had worked as a CIA analyst, a subcontractor for the NSA, and several other positions that gave him access to classified NSA information that enabled him to see the true scope of how the US was surveilling its own citizens. Does leaking those docs to the press in 2013 make him a traitor? Or does it make him a hero who opened the eyes of the American public to...

Rare interview on the Suck today! Chris Hansen from To Catch a Predator, and his new podcast Predators I've Caught with Chris Hansen. I ask him about today's subject, Peter Nygård, the disgraced Canadian fashion mogul who currently sits in a Winnipeg jail cell after roughly five decades of sexual abuse allegations. Nygård has been called the Canadian Jeffrey Epstein for good reason - he used his w...

So many of us have thought about disappearing and starting a new life somewhere else. It's a common psychological phenomenon. When life feels too overwhelming - when you feel trapped in a situation you desperately want out of - how fun is it to fantasize about leaving it all behind? Reinvent yourself! Be you've always wanted to be - who you know you could be - if you were just given a fresh start....

In 1972, the 45 passengers and crew of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 faced extreme weather, avalanches, a variety of injuries, sickness, sun blindness, thirst, and starvation so severe, they were forced to eat the bodies of their friends and family who lay in the snow next to them for over two months in this harrowing tale of survival. Their story is so unbelievable, the first police officers tha...

In October of 2002, the DC Snipers terrorized residents of Washington DC, Virginia, and Maryland for three weeks. During that time, people lived in constant fear that they’d be killed - shot down - while in the midst of doing normally safe and benign daily activities like pumping gas, waiting for the bus, or even just walking across a parking lot to do some shopping. In total, ten people would be...

LSD is a powerful, mind-bending drug. Only a crazy person would try and tell a coherent and compelling two-hour-plus historical narrative while frying their brain on the equivalent of four hits of acid. And well... I am that crazy person. Today, to celebrate the 300th episode of Timesuck, I try and pull this story off immediately after dropping two double-hits of LSD. And things get.... weird. Als...

Brace yourself for this one. If you can't handle graphic depictions of sexual abuse directed in the most obscene and ridiculous ways towards breasts, this isn't gonna be one you're gonna enjoy. This story truly plays out like a horror film. Some type of Rob Zombie slasher flick. On acid. Robin Gecht is a man with a VERY specific sexual obsession. And that obsession, when he wasnt behind bars, comb...

Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. Such a good example of that with this week's episode. In 2018, I watched a fascinating docuseries on Netflix called Wild, Wild Country about a controversial guru building a utopian city in the Oregon desert. I thought about doing an episode about the Rajneeshees then, but I didn't want to be overly influenced by that one show. I'm glad I waited. More d...

Apologies for my weak voice today! Remnant of a second bout with Covid. Had to drink several cups of hot tea and honey, and take numerous breaks to at least sound somewhat understandable.  Today, we look into how Germany dealt with the Holocaust once it was over. And how occupying powers, including the US and the Soviet Union, dealt with it as well. Who do you punish when millions have been compli...

As early as 1933, Hitler and the Nazis - the National Socialist German Worker’s Party - began passing a series of discriminatory laws against Jews— inch by inch, chipping away at their freedoms. They took away their property. Their ability to practice certain jobs or exist in public places. They took away their ability to own pets or walk around without a badge identifying them as Jews. And they d...

Rodney Alcala - the Dating Game Killer.  Not as well known, but just as vicious as any other killer we've ever covered here. Between 1968 and 1979, Rodney brutally raped, tortured, and killed at least nine girls and women -  possibly over a hundred. His victims would literally be sexually tortured to death by the man they generally just thought wanted to take artsy pictures of them. Instead, he'd...

Vladimir Putin. Who is the former KGB officer who has led Russia since 2000? Is he a friend of a foe of the West? Was he legitimately elected to office? Legitimately re-elected? Does he have any valid reason to be in Ukraine right now? What does he really want to accomplish in Ukraine? Today we dig into the story of Russia's leader, who is maybe one of the greatest propagandists the world has ever...

After laying out so much of what we know about Epstein last week, this week we get more speculative and we examine multiple conspiracies regarding Epstein's death. Did he not, in fact, die - and he's alive and well somewhere today? Did the Clintons have him killed? Did Trump have him killed? Did someone else he may have been blackmailing or the FBI have him killed? We also look into the origins of...

We know that Jeffrey Epstein was born on January 20th, 1953 in Brooklyn, New York City. We also know he died on August 10th, 2019 (or late the evening of the 9th) in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan. But what do we know about the sixty-six years in-between? We don't know as much as Epstein as we do many of our previous biographical subjects - he was a pretty mysterious guy -...

Fascinating stuff today!  I knew almost nothing about Air America - the CIA's secret airline - before this week's research. Today, we go over the history of Air America, and also look at how Air America fit into the CIA's battle for ideological control of southeast Asia. We look at the Cold War battle that wasn't limited to just Korea and Vietnam. Significant fighting also took place in Laos and e...

Long before he brutally murdered his wife Katie - crushing her head and disemboweling her on March 18th, 1993 - Ed  was really struggling with his mental health. He'd been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia a year earlier. He'd been really sick long before that. He's been battling powerful hallucinations and delusions for over a year. He'd been tormented by visions of things like a giant rabbit...

Robert Lee Yates often described himself as a "family man." And he was a family man. He was a married father of five. Married to the mother of his children for over twenty years. He was also a decorated veteran who served in the military for over twenty years as well, most of that span in active duty service as a helicopter pilot of the army. He was, for many, the last person you would suspect to...

Death! How comfortable are you thinking about it? Talking about? What rights should be afforded to you when it's your time to "meet your maker?"  Jack Kevorkian thought you,  under certain conditions, should be able to have a physician help you peacefully release yourself from a life of unbearable, incurable pain. Do you agree? Or do you think everyone needs to soldier on, no matter what they're s...

Did you know that Jesus was half-alien? And so was Buddha? And Muhammed, Joseph Smith, Moses, Abraham, and many other proclaimed  prophets throughout history. There are 40 in total, and a failed French pop musician and wannabe race car driver, Claude Vorilhon, claims to be the final and most important one. He's "Raël," which he says means "messenger of the Elohim." And who are the Elohim, in Claud...

On December 31st, 2021, Hollywood legend and literally the most well-liked living person in America at one point, Betty White, passed away in her home in Brentwood, California. Even though she was 99 years old, it still felt like she was taken too soon. She was still so very much alive and looking forward to celebrating her 100th birthday in a little over two weeks. Most now seem to remember her f...

On the night of October 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock opened fire on a crowd attending the final night of the Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival on Las Vegas’s famous StripLas Vegas, killing 58 people and injuring more than 800, before turning a gun on himself. And then two more would die later of their injuries raising the final body count to 61. Although the shooting only lasted 10 minutes, the...

A lot to unpack today! Who are the Amish? Why do they dress and live like it's still the 17th century? How are they related to Mennonites? What interpretation of Christianity led to them to the lifestyle they live today? Are they happy? Are they a cult? Today we'll explore the Anabaptist, Protestant Reformation  origins of the Amish and how they differ from Mennonites. We'll look at their practice...

At 1:40AM on February 2nd, 1980, a group of inmates at the New Mexico State Penitentiary attacked three guards doing their nightly count. What followed was one of the deadliest prison riots in US history.  Drunk and angry inmates seized the prison, and 36 hours of Hell on Earth followed. 12 guards were taken hostage, 33 inmates were killed, and over 200 people were raped. Inmates were lit on fire,...

Attila the Hun! Does his name conjure up images of savagery in your mind? Of a bloodthirsty warrior-king who ruthlessly tortured and killed his enemies as he sacked city after city?  An especially barbaric man who stood out for violence in a time known for so much violence? OR - was he a man of his times? Was he no more or less violent than the Romans, whose historians wrote his story? And when th...

Arthur Shawcross was born on June 6th, 1945 in Kittery, Maine and he would grow up to terrorize the people of Watertown and Rochester, both in New York. Family, neighbors, schoolmates, and anyone else who met him knew he was "different" from an early age. He said odd things, he reacted unnaturally to various situations, he talked to himself, he didn't understand tone, sarcasm, irony, etc. And he w...