What Was That Like - True Stories. Real People.

It gets pretty cold in Mason City, Iowa in the winter. Just ask Gael - he lives there. Gael is 18 years old. One day last December, on a particularly freezing day, he was on his way to a class. Just a routine day, driving along, and he’s approaching a bridge that goes over a big river. Except he doesn’t make it to the bridge. Instead, he finds himself in the middle of the river, and the water is r...

There’s something that you and I do every day, all day. We make decisions. That’s something that we literally do all day. In fact, some sources say the average person makes 35,000 decisions every day. I don’t know how accurate that number is, but I’m sure it’s a lot. Most of them we don’t really even think about consciously. Which shoe to put on first, how much toothpaste to put on the toothbrush,...

Katmandu, the capital city of Nepal. April 25, 2015. A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck without warning. In the end, nearly 9,000 people lost their lives, and close to 22,000 were injured. Entire villages were destroyed, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. And not far from the epicenter was Mt Everest. There were a lot of people on the mountain that day, and 19 climbers were killed. Michael Chu...

This is an off week for the What Was That Like podcast, but I’m here to introduce you to something new for the show that I’m pretty excited about. Today you’re going to hear a bonus episode to kick off a new, ongoing series. These episodes are called Raw Audio. One of the most popular features in some of the episodes for this podcast have been the 911 calls. When you hear the voice of a person cal...

Our guest for this episode is Dave, and Dave recently found himself $113,000 richer, and he attributes that to some practice, some luck, and a pretty good talent for solving word puzzles. He won that money by being a contestant on Wheel of Fortune. We discussed: How he prepared for the game How he actually got on the show as a contestant The special instructions he was given What Pat Sajak and Van...

If this is your first time listening to this podcast, you need to know this is not a typical episode. Usually, each episode is a conversation with someone who has been through some type of extremely unusual situation, and that person comes on the show and tells what happened, first hand. Not this week. This week our country is in turmoil because a black man in Minneapolis died at the hands of the...

What’s your biggest fear? As humans, we have found that there are a lot of things we’re afraid of. Spiders, needles, flying in an airplane, thunderstorms, public speaking. Or death, that’s a big one. For some people, one of their biggest fears is having to go to prison. Of course, no one wants to go to prison. And most people don’t expect that they would ever have to spend time there. But consider...

Have you ever found yourself in some kind of weird situation or predicament, and you actually have no idea how you got there? And you’re asking yourself, “What just happened?” This is something I find really fascinating – when our brain is trying to figure out the reality of what is going on, but it just doesn’t have enough information to make sense of it. So the end result is usually confusion. B...

Today’s bonus podcast episode is being released in an “off week”, outside of the regular every-other-Friday schedule. This is being done to introduce you to the podcast called This Is Actually Happening. The host of This Is Actually Happening is Whit Missildine. He and I recently connected after realizing that our two podcasts are very similar – people telling their stories of unusual experiences,...

Today’s guest is Kimberly. Recently, Kimberly tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, also known as Coronavirus. She is a doctor. Note: No information on this website or this podcast should be construed as medical advice. The host is not a doctor. The guest for this episode is in fact a doctor, but she is in no way offering any medical advice here. If you have any questions concerning your health,...

We’ve all experienced embarrassment at some point. It’s not something anyone enjoys or wants to go through. But there’s another level of embarrassment: humiliation. I think it’s safe to say to say that very few people have experienced the level of embarrassment or humiliation that William has. Imagine being on the most popular talent show in the country – American Idol – and failing badly. The jud...

David Tyler lives here in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. David is the person who introduced me to James Bain. James was arrested at age 19 as a suspect in a horrible crime, which you’ll learn about in a few minutes. He was convicted for that crime, and sentenced to prison. He spent 35 years in prison as part of his punishment for that crime. James was released from prison on December 17, 2009. Dav...

What would you do if you were asleep with your spouse, and it was the middle of the night, and suddenly you heard loud noises like someone banging on your door? What about when you got up and before turning on any lights, you could see the figure of a man standing there on the other side of your sliding glass doors? And when you turn on the lights, and you see him, and he sees you, and he explodes...

In 2018, the Federal Trade Commission processed 1.4 million reports of fraud. The total losses for all those fraud reports came to almost a billion and a half dollars. And that’s for a single 12-month period. The FTC publishes statistics, and they have said that the most common types of fraud complaints were fake debt collections, imposter scams, and the traditional identity theft. And in the cate...

Today is February 14 and in most places around the world that means a special holiday – Valentine’s Day. If you didn’t realize that’s what today is, you might be in a bit of trouble with your special someone by the end of the day. And since I knew I would have a new episode coming out on Valentine’s Day, I wanted to find a story that is related to love and romance, but would still be unusual and i...

Today we’re going to hear from Jami. Jami had something happen to her when she was a teenager, and it clearly had a huge effect because she still thinks about it to this day. One night she came back home from a trip to the grocery store. She parked her car, and before she got out she saw a strange man standing on the sidewalk, right in front of her car. He stood there looking at her, through the w...

Today’s conversation is with Lauren. A few years ago, Lauren worked at a private zoo here in the United States. And one of her jobs was to take care of the monkeys. But these weren’t just any monkeys – these were howler monkeys. You want to guess how howler monkeys earned that name? You got it, because they howl. But it’s probably not the kind of sound you expect to hear when you think of howling....

Can you imagine having a job that required you to live on an island, and your primary purpose there was to make sure ships avoid running into the land? It’s definitely not a job for everyone, but for some people it’s perfect. Spence is one of those people. He’s a modern day lighthouse keeper. This is a bit of a different type of episode for this podcast. Sometimes when I come across opportunities...

If you’re a parent, you know that the birth of your first child is an incredible experience. For Steve and Camre, it didn’t happen at all the way they expected it to. Steve got the call at work that Camre was at the hospital and had already delivered the baby. He dropped everything and drove there frantically, and he was confused because the baby wasn’t due for another 7 weeks. He ran into the hos...

Henry is an educator in the field of marine science. And as you’ll hear when we’re talking, it’s not just his job. It’s his life work. It’s as much a passion for him as it is a career. When he goes diving in a river and kind of rummaging around the bottom, he never really knows what he’ll find. What he expects to find mostly are rocks and sand. What he HOPES to find are ancient shark teeth, or eve...

My conversation today is with Ray, who lives in St Augustine, Florida. Just a couple of years ago, Ray was on a downward spiral in terms of his health. Like a lot of people, his weight had gotten out of control. He didn’t realize how far off track he was until he visited a doctor one day. That doctor visit was his wake-up call. And he definitely woke up. I think you’re going to love this story. I...

Acaimie and her husband, Clay, have been through a pretty bizarre experience. When I heard this story, I knew I needed to talk to this young lady. She and Clay were doing a volcano hike. That in itself might seem story-worthy. But this was not actually an “active” volcano so it wasn’t spewing lava. They hiked the 2 ½ miles up to the rim, hung out for a while, took some pictures. Then Clay decided...

In an ideal world, children should be able to trust their parents. After all, it’s the grown-ups in the family who are responsible for the kids. No child should ever have to worry about safety when mom and dad are around for protection, in an ideal world. That’s the world Ross thought he was living in when he was 8 years old, with his older brother Ryan, who was 10. They were happy kids with no re...

Lexington, Kentucky. 1 pm on a Friday, Labor Day weekend. Diana, a medical flight nurse, was sitting in a Lear jet. The pilot was unconscious. The co-pilot could not move because he had a broken back. Diana’s patient had died on impact. The plane was sitting on Versailles Rd in Lexington, after it had just slid across the road on it’s belly. The landing gear was gone. The right wing had been rippe...

One summer day in Jacksonville, Florida, Karen got the surprise of her life. She was with her friend Sheryl. They were pulled over on the interstate, I-95, and Karen was holding a blanket to her face. She was bleeding, and she didn’t even know what had happened. In short time, she learned from a police officer that she had been shot. And she wasn’t the only one. Nine cars that afternoon, on that s...