Not every tale from history made the textbooks. Some were too strange. Too secret. Too… interesting. Debunking myths and digging up the truth—we don’t peddle half-baked lies, rumors, or unfounded conspiracies. And we don’t accept easy answers either.

You bring the curiosity—we’ll bring the intrigue.

Ready for a mystery? Or an adventure?
Well, here’s a preview of some of our first few episodes:

Did you know that there is a forbidden Hawaiian island owned by one family, and the residents can leave when ever they want, but they can’t bring anybody back with them? If you’re lucky enough to live there, it’s rent free, you get all of the meat to eat that you want, but there’s not really much electricity, plumbing, internet, tv or running water. Speaking of primitive conditions, how would you survive a winter in Victorian England if you were dirt poor and homeless? Well, if you could somehow get at least a penny a day, you could sleep in a penny shelter sitting up on a bench. (NO LYING ON THE BENCH) And you’d likely be sitting next to one or two other dudes also. If you had two pennies, you could sleep hanging over on a rope at a two-penny hangover…but not on the floor. If you had FOUR pennies…well, my friend, you’re in luck because you’d be able to sleep in a coffin like box on a hard floor, with bugs in it, and you’d also have 50-100 more people in that seem ill-heated room, many of them sleeping in their own coffin boxes just inches away from you. Yuck!

In another episode, we will shift gears and explore the documented prophetic dreams that predict the future. Could such a thing really happen? In 1979 David Booth dreamt ten nights in a row about a terrible air crash that would soon happen. He called Jack Barker with the FAA multiple times leading up to the cross, but though he provided specific details, and though Barker took him seriously, they couldn’t figure what exact plane Booth’s dream might be referring to. A few days later, in a scenario eerily similar to Booth’s dream, American Airlines flight 191 crashed shortly after takeoff, the worst aviation disaster in American history. How could that be possible? We will explore that incident in depth.

A few more early episodes: Did John F. Kennedy, in trying to address a crowd in Berlin, inadvertently call himself a jelly donut in German? The truth might surprise you! Speaking of surprises, what about witches burned at the stake in Salem?? Everybody knows that happened, right? Right? Related to facts everybody knows…if you are even a casual sports fan, I’ll bet you know that Jackie Robinson was the first black Major league baseball player, right? Except…actually, he wasn’t.

Well, that’s enough of a preview. I’m your host, Doctor Chase, and I’m a historian, author, storyteller and podcaster. I began podcasting in early 2005, and was one half of the first podcast in Alabama history, which is an achievement that probably won’t go on my gravestone. I have a doctoral degree in counseling, and I’m close to finishing a PhD in history. I care as much about footnotes, historiographical analyses, Turabian formatting, and memorizing dozens of dates as you do, but the thing I love about history is the STORIES. I love a good story, and I’ve stayed up many late nights listening and telling a good tale.

That said, I also love truth, and facts. We live in an age of accelerated conspiracy theories, and urban legends are as common as online political disagreements. When I was a kid, I didn’t want to grow up to be a teacher, or a historian, or a pastor, or a counselor…I was a Hardy Boys guy. A wannabe Sherlock Holmes, and even though I was a History major in college, my eyes were dead set on being an FBI agent, or some other form of detective, and I even attended Criminal Justice graduate school at the University of Alabama before my life took a different turn…but I never lost my love of a good mystery, or love of investigations, and I want to apply that passion for investigating to history. On this show, we will put on our deerstalker hat (even if Holmes didn’t wear one in the canonical books) get out our magnifying glasses, and do the actual research that’s necessary to get at the truth. I can’t promise that we will be infallible, but I do promise you will get maximal effort to put together an interesting - hopefully fascinating - podcast that prioritizes excellent research and values the truth. If we miss it, we’ll own it. It’s cliche for podcast hosts to tell people to “hit that subscribe button,” so I won’t say that, but deep down, I’ll secretly be hoping that you do.