Timesuck with Dan Cummins

Nikola Tesla. The prototypical "mad scientist". He slept only a few hours a night and devoted his life to science like none-other. A rags-to-riches-to-rags visionary who was a giant in the field of scientific invention, he created the first alternating current (AC) motor and was a pioneer in the field of wireless information transmission. He helped build the world’s first large-scale hydroelectric...

For centuries, Japan was ruled by a military dictatorship, the Shogunate, and the samurais were the enforcers of this rule. The samurai was soldier, police officer, judge, jury, and executioner. He was the warrior that would rather die than bring dishonor to himself, his family, or his daimyo. His days and ways were highly ritualized. Molded by Buddhist, Confucian, and Shintoist philosophy, his sw...

The Children of God cult aka The Family aka The Family International is still around today which is very disturbing considering their twisted origins and disgusting, sexually exploitive doctrinal past. Founded by David "Huge Perv" Berg in 1968 in Huntington Beach, California, they now operate to an unknown degree internationally, basing their existence in a highly sexualized interpretation of Bibl...

On January 22nd, 1987, forty-seven year-old R. Budd Dwyer, Republican State Treasurer of Pennsylvania, held a press conference in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to address his recent conviction on eleven counts of conspiracy, mail fraud, perjury, and interstate transportation in the aid of racketeering. The married father of two faced up to fifty-five years in prison and a $300,000 fine. He was schedule...

Immigration! Man - what a big, complicated topic. What is the Unite State's history with immigration? How much have policies changed over the years? How does illegal immigration actually affect the economy? How does illegal immigration actually affect crime rates? Would building a wall even be effective? Who should we let in? Who should we keep out? I do my best to present as much information as p...

Dean Arnold Corll. The Candyman Killer. A Texas momma’s boy who first made friends with local kids by handing out candy from his family’s Houston candy store like the absolute creep he was. A man who then groomed a teen boy to be his murder, rape, and torture accomplice and then convinced a second teen boy to also help them; a second boy who would eventually shoot Dean dead. Before getting shot, D...

Well, you asked for it. We got a bunch of emails to do something special for the 100th Monday episode of TImesuck and the main request was to do Timesuck's version of Drunk History. So, the good folks from fantastic restaurant 10/six in Couer d'Alene brought over crawfish etouffee, beignets, whiskey, beer, and mixed up some hurricanes... and I got blackout drunk. I don't start out drunk - it was a...

What actually goes on at Area 51? There are two competing narratives. One involves a series of classified Cold War projects involving covert aerial surveillance aircraft and nuclear weapons testing, and then there is the conspiracy-laden, primarily extraterrestrial-based and fascinating UFO lore. So which is it? Or, is it both? We dig into the "official" narrative based primarily on leaked CIA doc...

Werewolves! Awhoooooooo! Shape-shifting creatures of the night with unusual speed, otherworldly strength, lightning fast reflexes, and incredibly heightened senses. Monsters who can be a gentle, thoughtful human being one moment and a feral, wild bloodthirsty beast the next. Sometimes a dark creature associated with vampires and witches, and sometimes and innocent victim of a terrible curse doomed...

John Wilkes Booth wasn't some community theater bit player. He wasn't a bartender who did summer theater. He was one of the most famous actors of the day and a member of THE most famous acting family of the 19th century. And he killed the President. He killed the President after putting together several failed plans to kidnap the President. He was a heartthrob dubbed by some theater critics as "th...

Spartacus was a Thracian gladiator who escaped his gladiatorial school in Capua with about 70 other gladiators and slaves and then led a slave rebellion against the armies of Rome in the 1st century BCE , commanding a fighting force that grew to an army of 90,000–120,000 strong. We explore his fight and the interesting history of Roman gladiatorial combat in today's Suck. Men (and women!) facing o...

Billed now as the Pennhurst Haunted Asylum, Pennhurst was never an asylum. It wasn't a home for the mentally ill when it first opened its doors in 1908. It was a home for epileptics and the intellectually disabled, then called "idiotic" and "feeble-minded". And then it became a home for basically everyone society either didn't want to take care of or didn't know how to take care of. And it soon be...

WARNING/DISCLAIMER: This is the most disturbing episode of Timesuck thus far. To the point I considered not releasing it. Maybe it just hit me unusually hard for some reason but the crime scene details are very sexually explicit and haunting. If descriptions of sexual torture trigger you in any way, sit this one out! David Parker Ray, the Toy Box Killer, kidnapped, sexually tortured, and possibly...

Pancho Villa! Pancho Villa was a revolutionary fighter who despised the wealthy landowners who had subjugated the impoverished farming class, comprised of mostly indigenous people, since long before he was born. He stole from the rich and gave to the poor. He also stole from the rich to fuel the various wars he fought in, all of which had the same goal - to topple Mexico’s existing power structure...

The story of the Donner Party is one of the most disturbing tales of western migration during the time of Manifest Destiny, the common 19th-century belief that the United States was destined to expand across the entire continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Well, the destiny of many of the members of the Donner Party was to spread their actual bones around a frozen Sierra Nevada mountai...

Today we’re talking about the Aztecs! The Aztecs built a vast empire, one that outpaced, out-staged, and out-populated the likes of Paris at the time. They were a powerhouse warrior based society with an interesting obsession with human sacrifice. When did they show up? When did they build their empire? And what happened when the Spaniard Hernan Cortes showed up with 400 soldiers? An amazing city...

The Knights Templar fought their last stand in the Holy Land (their last proper stand) in Acre in 1291 and shit was epic. They went down, but, they didn't go down easy. And then, less than two decades later, a corrupt French King forced a weak Pope into ending the long reign of the Knights Templar. And by 1312, according to historians, the Order of the Knights of the Temple had been completely dis...

The Knights Templar was founded in 1119 CE on the principles of chastity, obedience and poverty - but they soon, ironically became immensely wealthy and obedient to almost no one but themselves and the Pope. The Templars financed wars, built castles, ran cities, raised armies, and so much more. From meager beginnings they became as mighty an outfit as existed during the later Middle Ages. They wer...

The Ma Barker gang robbed bank, after bank, after drugstore, after hardware store, clothing store, Chevy dealership, jewelry store, and still more banks in the early 1930s. They committed more robberies and took more lives than the much more famous Dillinger Gang. The Dillinger Gang was active for less than one year. The Barker-Karpis gang was active from 1931 to 1935. FDR called them out on natio...

On Tuesday, April 24th, 2018, Joseph James DeAngelo, 72, was taken into custody by local police and FBI agents when he stepped outside his Citrus Heights home, a quiet suburb of Sacramento. The man believed to be the East Area Rapist, also known as the Golden State Killer, the Visalia Ransacker, and the Original Night Stalker had finally been captured, forty-four years after his crime spree began....

Edgar Allan Poe did more than write The Raven and look creepy. He also basically invented the modern detective story. He was America's first "master of suspense" according to Stephen King and many other modern authors. He changed the way American authors wrote scary stories. He changed the way authors in general approached their craft, both creatively and business-wise. And yet he died penniless a...

Joan of Arc was BURNED ALIVE on May 30th, 1431 CE, something no one ever aspires to have written on their obituary. She fought to end the Hundred Years' War between England and France on behalf of Charles VII, the King of France she would help crown. How did a rural farmer's daughter with no military training end up in charge of thousands of French soldiers? Why did Charles even allow a seventeen...

An alarming number of Japanese citizens have taken a dark pilgrimage to the Aokigahara forest, more commonly known as Japan’s suicide forest, to end their lives, most commonly by hanging themselves from some of the forest's tree branches. Why? Why here? Why is a small patch of serene forest the second most popular suicide destination in the world, thought to trail only the Golden Gate Bridge in Sa...

Cold Open: The Men in Black. The men who inspired the movies, not Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. Who or what are they? Aliens? Extra top secret government officials specializing in suppressing UFO-related information? Modern folklore? Absolute and utter whackadoodle, crystal-powered horse shit? All of this and more explored on a Suck that veers a little less dark than recent episodes and maybe a...

From August seventh to September tenth, 1888, a crazed killer who came to be known as "Jack the Ripper” terrorized the Whitechapel district of London's impoverished East End. This extremely violent sadist brutally killed at least five prostitutes, mutilating their bodies in a highly unusual manner. And today we Suck into the details of his crimes, who he could’ve been, who his victims were, and ho...