Shenanigans Again
In 2003, Oprah Winfrey used her daytime television platform to warn millions of people that teenage girls were attending parties wearing wild shades of lipstick and performing oral sex on boys. The boy with the most colors of lipstick smudges would win the accolades...
Phenom-nom-nom Redux
You say potato, I say a dangerous tuber that people will only eat in the face of actual starvation. You say tomato, I say a poison apple from the mysterious new world that’s killing the aristocracy. We can hardly imagine a salad without tomatoes or trip to the...
The Great Escapes
In 1935, on Long Island, NY, an employee of Frank Buck's Jungle Camp Animal Park left a plank of wood across the moat surrounding an enclosure of rhesus monkeys. The plank escaped the notice of the worker, but not that of a monkey named Capone. In an arguable moment...
Fizz Fizz, with Fantastic History of Food
When president Teddy Roosevelt signed the Pure Food and Drug Act into law in 1906, manufactures of foods, beverages, and drugs had to scramble to remove ingredients the government just banned and update their labeling. The law hampered sales of things like Coca-Cola,...
Sisters Doing It For Themselves
In a small, rarely talked about African kingdom, surrounding the king, is an elite and highly trained corp of bodyguards. Armed with staved and spears, they command respect everywhere they go. And they’re all women. This isn’t Wakanda and the Dora Milaje. ...
How Does Your Garden Grow
On a once neglected plot on their recently inherited estate, the Duchess of Northumberland undertook to make a special garden. Inspired by a trip to the Medici estates in Italy, the Duchess wanted to make a garden that was both beautiful and educational. The...
Hidden Histories – Rosewood, Tulsa, Chicago (with The Conspirators podcast)
This is going to be heavy, but they are stories that need to be told and more importantly, they are stories that need to be heard. Halfway between Tampa and Tallahassee, 100 yards off state route 24 and 10 miles from the next town, stands a handsome pale yellow house...
Bitty Beasty Buddies
BOOK "We predict complete societal collapse only within a year or so, linked to catastrophic failure of the food supply chain," a researcher writes. "Annihilation of most humans and nonmicroscopic life on the planet would follow a prolonged period of...
All By Myself, with Pontifacts podcast
After a string of failed jobs and one failed marriage, 62 year old Robery Harrill decided he wanted to get away from it all. Like, really away. He hitchhiked 260mi/418km to Fort Fisher state recreation area in North Carolina, where he would become known as...
To Plant A Seed
In the early 1920s, horticulture teacher Art Combe and some students from the White River Agency School on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation decided to explore an abandoned sandstone cave. Deep in the cave, safely nestled on a natural rock ledge, Combe found a tiny...
Against All Odds: Lone Survivor
More a warning about tone than content. All of the stories today are heavy, but they all have happy endings, more or less. In 1921, Alaska native Ada Blackjack was hired as cook and seamstress for an expedition to claim the isolated and uninhabited Wrangel...
Best Care Anywhere
Livestream for the Cure She was born into the Army and devoted her life to saving the lives of others, no matter how difficult the conditions. She ran a tight ship, by the book, but not without compassion. The war gave her a husband and took him away. ...