Timesuck with Dan Cummins

What the Hell is going on in Northeastern Utah? If you just drove by, you might think that Skinwalker Ranch is just an innocent-seeming 512-acre parcel of land about 150 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. But this small patch of high desert ranch-land, and the Uintah Basin around it, is arguably home to more paranormal sightings over the last eighty years than any other similarly-sized geographica...

Walt Disney! How much do you know about the mind and the man that built one of the ten biggest media empires in the world? How did the production company behind some animated short films in the 1920s morph and evolve into the media behemoth Disney is today? Did Walt come from money? Did he luck into a few amazing opportunities? When did Disneyland open? Was it successful early on? Are a variety of...

Investigating the investigators today! Talking about the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit. Looking into how a small group of special agents introduced the term "serial killer" into our lexicon, and then studied infamous serial killers like Ed Kemper, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer and others to try and understand the minds of some of the sickest, most dangerous members of society, in an a...

Susan Alamo was a cult leader and televangelist who founded the Alamo Christian Foundation with her husband, Tony, in Hollywood, in the late 1960s. Then they quickly built a compound just north of LA for their growing number of followers. And then they built a HUGE compound in Arkansas a few years later. Susan thought that God spoke to her, and when she died, Tony claimed that Susan spoke to him o...

My brain is back! Today we take a sober look at the Columbine massacre, when on April 20th, 1999, two Columbine High School seniors, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, shot and killed twelve students, one teacher, and injured over twenty other students before shooting and killing themselves. Why? What possessed these two young men who were weeks away from leaving high school to do this? We answer that...

Today's episode is.... interesting. Honoring a tradition started with the 100th Drunk as F*#k episode, I altered my mind again for this 200th episode. Five minutes before recording, I ingested a hefty amount of magic mushrooms. And then I did my best to not ruin the research. I hope it's entertaining! The story of the West Mesa Bone Collector is a tragic one - not the best for a happy high. Eleven...

Today we dig into the life of a true citizen of the world, Lee Jun-fan; known professionally as Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee was a martial arts pioneer, known to some as the "father of MMA" and as the founder of Jeet Kune Do. He as also a Hong Kong and American actor who made some of the most profitable films of all time. One of the biggest pop culture icons of the 20th century, Bruce is often credited wi...

Osiris - god of the dead, resurrection into eternal life, and judge of the deceased. Ra - god of the sun, order, kings, and the sky. Babi - weird, very well-endowed baboon monster who wants to eat your guts. Talking about a lot of interesting stuff today! We head to ancient Egypt to look at the religion of the longest-lasting empire on Earth. We go over one of the more popular creation stories for...

Wow. THIS guy! Joachim Kroll is one of the most disturbing serial killers we've covered so far. And if you've listened to the Albert Fish and Toybox Killer episodes, you know that is saying A LOT. From 1955 to 1976, this German rapist, murderer, and cannibal is thought to have killed at least 14 people and probably killed more than 30 people - almost all of them young women and girls. Annnnnd, we...

The Wendigo. Tales of a perpetually starving monster roaming the woods of Eastern North America. The Wendigo originates in the lore of tribes like the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Algonquin. Its name roughly translates to "the evil spirit that devours mankind". And the Wendigo isn't the only monster we're looking into today. From the well known Skinwalkers to Thunderbirds, to the lesser known Flying Head...

Genghis Kahn. Damn. I knew the dude was a renowned conqueror. Did NOT know he conquered like no other before or since. At the height of their army, perhaps no army in the world was more feared than the Mongol horde. Mongolian archers were second to none. They planned and prepared more than their adversaries. Their tactics were more ruthless. You'll learn a lot about what the Mongols accomplished d...

Why do some kids kill? Digging into that difficult and dark question today. Is it due to how they're raised? The type of brain they're born with? Playing too many violent video games? Gonna take a rational look at the roots of some irrational murders. We look at a lot of crime statistics, psychological studies, and numerous examples of kids who've killed. Learn what red flags to look for, today, o...

Ivan the Terrible. First true Tsar of Russia. And a dude who more than lived up to his "terrible" nickname, which actually is a mistranslation. Today we learn about the formation of Russia, and how Ivan The Terrible helped transform Russia from a minor Mongol vassal state to the beginning on what would become the Russian Empire. Hope you enjoy some truly crazy history, Meatsacks! New standup speci...

Alexander Solonik, aka Alexander the Great aka Sasha the Macedonian aka The Superkiller was a legendary and mysterious Russian hitman in the 1980s and 90s who carried out contract killings primarily for the Orekhovskaya Russian Mafia group. His targets were generally the leaders of other criminal organizations, the hardest men to kill. Men other contract killers had tried and failed to kill. Today...

Haven't heard of these two? By the end of today's tale, you'll be shocked that they're not much more infamous. Lake and Ng most likely killed over 25 people in central and northern California in the early 80s. Lake was a former Marine obsessed with preparing for a nuclear apocalypse, taking nude photos of as many women as possible, having sex with as many of those women as possible, and pursuing w...

Are there other yous living in other, parallel dimensions? Are there an infinite number of other yous? Where the Hell are they? Today we talk about multiverse theory and it is a fascinating brain-buster. We glance over the history of cosmology and look at some of the minds whose intelligent, relentless questioning and study advanced our understanding of the stars and our place in them time and tim...

Get ready for one helluva tale. Today's story is so crazy. The promising beginning, insane planning, and tragic pre-life-in-prison final acts of Taylor Helzer are hard to wrap one's mind around. Taylor grew up as a devout Mormon, a no-drug, no-sex, no-profanity, law-abiding-citizen until shortly after returning home from his two-year Mormon mission at the age of 21. Then he got married, quickly gr...

The US Civil War. Fought over 150 years ago and still the bloodiest war the US has ever been involved in when it comes to the loss of American life. Well over 600,000 Americans died. A greater loss of American life than those who died in WW1 and WW2 combined. A terrible war where tens of thousands of those who did live suffered gruesome field-hospital amputations. The fighting was beyond intense -...

Robert Berdella. The Kansas City Butcher. The Collector. An insanely depraved cook and former art school student who kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered at least six men between 1984 and 1987. Bob was known to many in the KC area. He owned and ran a shop called Bob’s Bazaar Bizarre - a booth at the popular Westport Flea Market where Bob sold occult objects, primitive art from around the world,...

Let's talk about sex! What is "normal" based on data? Who’s having sex? What kinds of sex are they having? Are you having more or less sex than the average Meatsack? Are you having freakier sex? Or is it pretty vanilla? Gonna talk about kink today. What kinds of kinks are out there? Are you kinky? Why do we like kink? Why do so many get turned on by getting tied up or spanked or playing dress-up?...

What the Hell is going on right now? Why is the world in lockdown? Today I try and answer some biology basics: What is a virus? What is a coronavirus? Why is the governmental reaction to COVID-19 so much more severe than it was to SARS back in 2003, or MERS in 2012, or the H1N1 outbreak of swine flu in 2009? I also interview Amy Ward, MS, RN, CIC, someone with a masters degree in infection prevent...

John Dillinger. J Edgar Hoover named him America's public enemy #1 for a reason. Dude LOVED to rob a bank. John lived and robbed during arguably the best time to be a gangster in America's history. Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Bonnie and Clyde, Machine Gun Kelly - America was full of people not afraid to walk into a bank with a gun and demand some money. And if the cops showed up, they were...

Baba Yaga - OG witch and one of the many characters of ancient Slavic folklore. Today we explore Slavic folklore just like we explored Germanic folklore with the Brother's Grimm episode. The peoples of medieval Russia and Eastern Europe loved a good dark tale to teach their kids to be wary of strangers, listen to their parents, etc. Fear sells now and fear sold then, and Baba Yaga was scary. She w...

At the height of its power in the late 1980s, the Miami-based Nation of Yahweh cult had satellite temples around the country and a lucrative business empire of apartment complexes, hotels, stores and fleets of Greyhound buses and Rolls Royce cars, all painted stark white. Its leader, Hulon Mitchell, jr., aka Yahweh ben Yahweh, estimated the sect's holdings at $100 million. And what did this cult b...

On April 19, 1995, at 9:02 AM, a Ryder moving truck parked at a drop-off zone situated under the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building's day-care center exploded in downtown Oklahoma City. The blast killed 168 people, injured more than 500 others, and destroyed one-third of the giant government building. Until the September 11, 2001 attacks over six years later, the Oklahoma City bombing would be the...