Sofa King Podcast

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the life, adventures, and death of one of the UK’s greatest explorers, Ernest Shackleton. Shackleton was on a quest to be the first person to reach the south pole starting as a teen ager. He made several of the dangerous, years-long expeditions down there until he was able to command his own ship, the expedition. What happened on that voyage is one for the record and history books. For over 497 days, he and his crew were at sea, either on their ship which was frozen in ice or on life rafts. The most amazing thing is that he managed to save all 22 crew members and then went on to serve in WWI and try to go back to Pole yet again! Ernest Shackleton was born in Ireland, and though his father wanted him to follow the family footsteps and become a physician, he didn’t. At age 16, his grades were good enough that he was able to be done with school and join the merchant marines. He skyrocket in rank due to his charisma, intelligence, and endurance. Eventually, he was placed on the ship called Discovery where he and Captain Scott traveled to the lowest latitude any human had reached. Shackleton fell ill, however, and the captain sent him home on a resupply ship, although his motivations for that are very much in question. After several years, Shackleton was able to fund his own ship, the Endurance. The South Pole had already been reached by another explorer, but Shackleton decided his new quest was to cross the land mass of Antarctica. When they got there, they had a hard time establishing a base and soon found their ship frozen in an ice floe that would keep them in their grips until the following spring. By the time spring came, however, the pressures on the hull were too great, and the ship started to sink. The men had to survive on life rafts and hopping from chunk of ice to chunk of ice for almost two years. Eventually, Shackleton was able to head out in a modified life raft and mount a rescue for everyone. He returned to England a hero, and immediately volunteered to join the Army to fight in WWI. He was sent as a diplomat instead and eventually found himself training British troops for war in Russia during the Russian Civil War. This man won every award an explorer could ever win and had a dedication to discovery that nobody could ever crush. If you want some inspiration, listen, laugh, learn. Visit Our sources: https://www.biography.com/explorer/ernest-shackleton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Shackleton https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/business/leadership-lessons-from-the-shackleton-expedition.html https://www.south-pole.com/p0000097.htm https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/shackleton/1914/timeline.html https://makingscience.royalsociety.org/s/rs/people/fst00000549 https://www.chimuadventures.com/blog/2016/04/top-ten-ernest-shackleton-facts/

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we take on some ancient Norse mythology and talk about Odin, the Allfather. The myths surrounding him are amazing; his impact on Viking culture was second to none; and his rapidly growing worship today ranges from heathens to white supremacists. This is a god of war, death, poetry, magic, and wisdom. People would sacrifice humans in his honor before battle, and he was always ready to do battle in the final war, Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods! Odin was born to a god and a giantess and became the king of a race of gods called the Aesir. This group (Thor, Loki, Baldur, Heimdall, Frigga, just to name a few) went to war with other gods call the Vanir and with the giants who would one day rise and end the world. Once mature, he and his brothers forged the earth out of the bones of a giant, and he was made king of the gods. But he wasn’t a normal god king, one who was worshipped by the masses of the Norse world. They saw him as the king of gods, but spent most of their time worshiping other gods. Instead, Odin preferred the elite, and that was who worshipped him—kings, warriors, scholar/poets, and sorcerers. Odin’s will would make or break a battle. Whichever side gave the best sacrifice would get the best results in the battle. And either way, Odin won. Because his shield maidens—the Valkyrie—would ride in and take all those slain in honorable combat. Half would go to him, and they would train for all eternity fighting and dying every night only to be reborn in the morning until Ragnarok. But Odin was also the god of knowledge. He gave up his eye for magical sight, and he hung himself in a tree as a sacrifice to learn the mystical runes. This Allfather of the gods was abandoned for Christianity around the year 1000, but he has recently made a comeback with religion of Asatru. It is a heathen worship of the old Norse gods, and it is the fastest growing religion in Iceland. However, it was co-opted by white supremacist groups who see the Vikings as pure white conquerors, and the real religion is now in a spiritual conquest against the skinheads to be the true worshippers of Odin.   Visit Our Sources: https://www.ancient.eu/odin/ https://norse-mythology.org/gods-and-creatures/the-aesir-gods-and-goddesses/odin/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin https://mythopedia.com/norse-mythology/gods/odin/ https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asatru https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/11/asatru-heathenry-racism/543864/ https://icelandmag.is/article/11-things-know-about-present-day-practice-asatru-ancient-religion-vikings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_theTA2kgM https://norse-mythology.org/tales/why-odin-is-one-eyed/ https://norse-mythology.org/tales/ragnarok/

On this True Crime episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look at the infamous case of the serial killer known as the Boston Strangler. Between the years of 1962 and 1964, thirteen women were found killed and strangled in the Boston area. Most were over the age of 60, and no real suspects were being tracked by the police. Meanwhile, a man named Albert DeSalvo was on a spree of serial raping through the area, posing as a repair man or a man from a modeling agency. How do the two things tie together? Why does DNA evidence make officials think DeSalvo is the Boston Strangler, but many experts doubt he did it? Albert DeSalvo checks all the serial killer boxes. His father was a drunk who knocked every single one of his wife’s teeth out and bent all of her fingers back so far they broke. He’d sleep with hookers in their house and force his Albert to watch it. Needless to say, Albert grew up troubled. He tortured and killed animals and was first arrested for robbery and assault at the age of twelve. He was in and out of juvenile detention until he joined the army and things seemed to settle down for him. But, once he was an adult, he took on the persona of The Measuring Man and the Green Man. These were disguises and acts he’d put on to get into a woman’s house and sexually assault them. One source says he assaulted as many as 300 women this way. He did some jail time, got out, started again, and got arrested for it again. Meanwhile, the Boston Strangler started killing people. They were strangled with panties or silk stockings, and they were left on their beds to be discovered. The police had no reason to link DeSalvo to the murders, but in jail, he told another inmate all about it. This inmate, George Nassar, told his lawyer, and eventually DeSalvo confessed to all the crimes with a great degree of detail. However, there was no physical evidence, so he went to trial for the rapes and other charges. So, why do people think he was the Strangler if there is no actual evidence? What lead a member of Whitey Bulger’s Winter Hill gang to kill him in prison back in 1973? Why does an FBI profiler doubt he was the Strangler? Why do some think the Boston Strangler was Nassar, who DeSalvo first confessed to in prison? What did DNA evidence prove about the murders? Listen, laugh, learn.     Visit Our Sources: https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/albert-de-salvo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Strangler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_DeSalvo https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/12/us/dna-evidence-identified-in-boston-strangler-case.html https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/19/boston-stranger-dna-test-albert-desalvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkCYM2bzBPc https://historydaily.org/boston-strangler-facts-stories-trivia

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the interesting history and massive success of the Japanese gaming giant Nintendo (and we might just look at little red plumber who jumps on psychedelic mushrooms and hides in pipes while we’re at it). Nintendo didn’t start like you think it did. Well, if you thought it started a hundred and twenty years ago by printing playing cards on tree bark for Yakuza gambling dens, then you thought right. From there, a maintenance man named Gunpei Yokoi was discovered to have created a toy to keep himself entertained at work, and the company president happened to see it. This became a massive success called the Ultra Hand and sold millions of units. Nintendo was officially in the toy biz. Yokoi developed several hit toys, including the hugely successful Game Watch, which was the engineering and spiritual successor to the Game Boy. But everything changed when a game designer named Shigeru Miyamoto created the game Donkey Kong with its popular hero Jumpman. Ultimately, renamed Mario, he went on to the best the star of the show for Nintendo, headlining every game system, creating a (horrible) 80s TV show, and becoming the first of many icons for Nintendo. Their systems ranged in ability and success from the Famicon (aka the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES) to the SNES, N64, Wii, Game Cube, and of the course different generations of the Game Boy, all culminating in the Switch. Nintendo found success by always doing exactly what other video game companies did not do. It even survived the video game crash of 1983 that destroyed world-leader Atari. They also clung to their intellectual property and used them very wisely: Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Donkey Kong, Princess Peach, Zelda, Link, Metroid, Mario Kart, Smash Brothers, Animal Crossing, and more. They all have been substantial successes for this little upstart card company from Japan.     Visit Our Sources https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsKyquWWl-s https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Corporate/Nintendo-History/Nintendo-History-625945.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Nintendo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/48606526 https://interestingengineering.com/the-extraordinary-and-surprising-history-of-nintendo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigeru_Miyamoto

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look at the murders of a man who the FBI says is one of the most prolific serial killers in American history, the little known Doctor Michael Swango. Swango killed patients under his care by poisoning them with either legit poison or prescription drugs they may have already been taking. He also poisoned landlords, girlfriends, co-workers…pretty much anyone he could. He was eventually arrested and convicted of four deaths, but some estimates place his killing as high as 60 people. This killing spree ran all over America, down to Zimbabwe, and would have landed in Saudi Arabia if he wasn’t finally arrested. So, he had a childhood that may not have had the typical serial killer abuse boxes to be ticked off. He had a loving mother, but there was no evidence of anything crazy. He had an alcoholic Vietnam Vet for a father, but who didn’t in the 70s? He was an excellent student, graduating valedictorian of his high school and getting into a college to study music. His girlfriend dumped him and broke his heart, and it seemed to utterly change the man. He quit playing music, dropped out of school, and joined the Marines. He served for a few years and finally found his way to medical school, where he almost didn’t graduate due to lying to the school. From there, he interned in a hospital where strange deaths were reported when he was on shift. Nurses knew and reported it, but they were ignored. Eventually, the deaths got bad enough that the hospital let him go, but nobody ever pursued him legally. He worked at an ambulance company where he poisoned his co-workers with evil doughnuts. They set a trap for him with a pitcher of tea, and he couldn’t help but poison it as well, and he was arrested. He did five years after the police found a treasure trove of poisons in his house. You would think that this back story would keep him from practicing medicine. But then there was the forgery. He forged papers about his prison time, his good behavior, and his standing in the medical community and got more jobs in medicine, often under false names. And he killed more people. Eventually, the American Medical Association caught on to him, and he was fired and had a permanent mark put on his record to every teaching school in the nation. So, he moved to Zimbabwe to kill more freely. Like you do. So, how many did he kill in Zimbabwe? What happened to his longtime girlfriend? How was he finally arrested, even though he fled the country? What was his sentence? How did end up in a super max prison? Listen, laugh, learn.   Visit Our Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Swango https://www.thoughtco.com/profile-of-joseph-michael-swango-973127 https://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/swango-michael.htm https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Michael_Swango https://www.oxygen.com/license-to-kill/crime-time/michael-joseph-swango-house-horrors-murder https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1118552/

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the life, awards, career, and films (lord, how many films!) of Steven Spielberg. And buckle up folks, this episode is a record-setting two hours long! With his very first movies being Jaws, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Arc, and ET, you can see that this man was destined for greatness in Hollywood. Many of the stars and producers who met this young 20 something genius back in the 60s said the same thing. He was the youngest director to ever get a directing contract with a major studio (just 21 years old at the time), and he has won countless awards. His films have made over $10 billion dollars total, and I’d bet good money that if you sat down and made a top ten list of your favorite films, at least one of his is on your list. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to a concert pianist and a computer engineer, and though he moved around a lot, he had a love of film even at a young age. He won a merit badge in the Boy Scouts for a short film he directed (to get his still photograph badge). He started making films as a teen with an 8MM camera, and some of them even started to win local awards and make a tiny bit of money at the box office (well, a dollar, actually). After graduating high school, he moved to LA and tried to get into USC (along with film legends like George Lucas), but he was denied due to low grades. He got in to a different school, but ultimately dropped out because he was starting to get work. He started with an unpaid editing internship at Universal, and the gave him a chance to use their equipment to make a short film. He made Amblin’ (which his production company is called to this day), and it impressed studio execs enough to give him a contract directing TV episodes. In short order, this led to him impressing the likes of Rod Sterling and others. They gave him a chance at a first big budget film, a little thing about a shark. Jaws redefined what a block buster meant, and he followed it up with Close Encounters. If you look at the film list of Spielberg, it will astound you. It’s like every four or five films are what a typical director would be known for in their entire career. But then, there is another and another, and most of them are masterpieces. From Saving Private Ryan to Ready Player One, Amistad to Schindler’s List, and rounding it all out with Jurassic Park, his genius and ability to tell stories has not diminished. If you like film, then give this one a listen. If you don’t, then in the words of Conan the Barbarian: “The hell with you!”   Visit Our Sources: https://www.biography.com/filmmaker/steven-spielberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Spielberg https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000229/ https://www.forbes.com/profile/steven-spielberg/#b58d2c3228a7 https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/steven_spielberg https://time.com/43618/george-lucas-steven-spielberg-star-wars-bet/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firelight_(1964_film)

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we travel back in time and examine the largest famine in human history, The Great Chinese Famine. Known to the Chinese government as “Three Years of Difficulties,” this famine is unique since it is blamed almost entirely on human governance, not on nature. How bad did it get? Estimates are that 45 million people died in only three years. Most of this was starvation, but much of it was people being killed to keep the famine a secret. This one gets ugly. People eating bark, people eating poisonous mud, parents eating kids, kids eating parents, some villages simply killing any travelers and eating them. So what was the cause of this horrible disaster? People blame Chairman Mao’s “Great Leap Forward.” Mao wanted to propel China forward to catch up with production levels of Britain and the US, so he shifted his focus from agriculture to the manufacture of steel and goods. He even went so far as to move people off of their farms and made almost everyone mine their own minerals and smelt them in ovens they built in the backyard. Never mind they had no idea what they were doing, and made crap metal that couldn’t be used for anything. And never mind that they were no longer producing food. But that wasn’t all that caused the famine. There was a lack of accurate information coming from scared local government leaders. There was a flood of the Yellow River. There was a drought (which the Chinese say was the main factor, but virtually every scholar says this didn’t make a dent). There was a campaign to kill sparrows which led to massive swarms of insects. And there was a cover up. Everyone who talked about the famine was disappeared by secret police. People who wrote letters to government were sent to labor camps or murdered after they were tracked down. In one instance, some teenage girls asked local governors for food, and they were dragged to a lonely mountain to die of starvation. A lot of the details of the Great Chinese Famine came to us recently from a very brave journalist named Yang Jisheng who secretly wrote the book Tombstone about this famine while working for the state news service. From government cover ups to cannibalism, dead sparrows to Communist leaders eating like kings while the peasants died by the millions, this one has it all.     Visit Our Sources https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127087/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/01/china-great-famine-book-tombstone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojOmUWLDG18 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine https://www.npr.org/2012/11/10/164732497/a-grim-chronicle-of-chinas-great-famine https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/pyared/papers/famines.pdf https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/2014/9/cj34n3-2.pdf

On this episode of The Sofa King Podcast, we put on our tinfoil hats and talk about what might be the most important alien abduction case of all time, the story of Barney and Betty Hill. This story, straight outta 1961, has everything you want in an abduction story. Missing time? Check. Lights in the sky? Check. UFO? Check. Project Bluebook Investigation? Check. Human experimentation? Check. “Gray” aliens? Check. Missing memories and hypnosis? Check. And most importantly, anal probes? You betcha! So, this story is the tale of Barney and Betty Hill. They were a rare mixed race couple in the early 1960s, and after a year and a half of marriage, they drove to Niagara Falls and Montreal for a late honeymoon. On their way back, their world changed forever. They were racing home to beat a storm coming in, and at one point that night, they stopped for gas and food. While there, they saw lights in the sky. They checked with binoculars and ruled out normal aircraft. They got back on the road, and suddenly, the lights started to follow their car. What happens then gets pretty crazy. They remember seeing a disk-shaped vehicle filled with people in strange uniforms. Barney grabbed his gun, they both thought they were going to be captured, and they drove as fast as they could. The disk stayed above their car, and suddenly they heard a strange buzzing and zapping sound hit their trunk. They heard it a second time, and realized hours had passed, and they were 35 miles away from where they thought they were. Missing time in full effect. After they got home, they were having trouble sleeping, were filled with anxiety, and suffered psychological trauma. They finally got help after a psychiatrist suggested they go through hypnosis. Nobody thought they were abducted by aliens, but the experts did think something happened to them that caused them trauma. They met a hypnotist named Simon realized they had very similar memories of the event. They spoke with NICAP (a UFO group), and though they wanted to avoid publicity, a story leaked out of Boston, and they were suddenly famous. So, what memories were uncovered through hypnosis? What did the Air Force say with their Project Bluebook investigation? What did the aliens look like? What is the Star Map, and why do people think it points to Zeta Reticuli? What physical examinations did Barney and Betty Hill go through and what hurt worse than the anal probe? Listen, laugh, learn.   Visit Our Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_and_Betty_Hill https://www.history.com/news/first-alien-abduction-account-barney-betty-hill https://www.library.unh.edu/find/archives/collections/betty-and-barney-hill-papers-1961-2006 https://astronomy.com/bonus/zeta https://science.howstuffworks.com/space/aliens-ufos/hill-abduction.htm

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look at the life of the African-American drug kingpin Frank Matthews: The Black Caesar. Matthews went from stealing chickens to running a numbers game in the back of his barber shop to being the top non-Mafia drug importer in the nation, in just a couple of years. He organized small drug dealers to take on the Mob; he ran the control of cocaine and heroin to 21 states; he was the first person to tap into the South American drug cartels; he went to war with the Black Mafia. He disappeared at age 29, having already formed a drug empire that bested everyone from Al Capone to Pablo Escobar. He was born in North Carolina and raised by his aunt when his mother died. When he was only 14, he formed a gang to steal chickens from local farms and sell them locally. A farmer caught them one day, and Matthews beat him. With a brick. A year later, he was out of prison and started running numbers. Eventually, he moved to Philadelphia  and then New York and did his numbers racket out of the back of a barber shop. However, this wasn’t enough for the ambitious Frank Matthews. He wanted in on the drug trade. He tried to get friendly with some of the big Mafia families, but they all declined. So, he forged his own way. He befriended "Spanish Raymond" Márquez, who put him in touch with "El Padrino", Cuban Mafia godfather of New York. This contact allowed him to get the drugs directly from Corsica, the same supplier as the mob used. And Matthews was now an international player. He started to make so much money he would forget that he gave someone a million dollars, and he ran out of room to store his stacks of cash. He would fly to Vegas to have the casinos launder his money. He saw the potential to really move things, though, and he called a meeting in Atlanta with all big drug dealers cut out by the mob. They created a network, and the drug game changed for America thanks to Matthews. However, he got sloppy, and eventually there were federal and local warrants for his arrest. He was pinched in Vegas and extradited to New York where he silently slipped away on bail. He was never seen again. So where did Frank Matthews go? Why does one author thing this has to do with the CIA? Why did mob boss Carlo Gambino put a hit on him, and what made him retract it? Who was Major Coxson, and what did he have to do with the Black Mafia? Why was he so much more powerful than Jemeker Thompson, Crack Queen of LA? Listen, laugh, learn.   Visit Our Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Matthews_(drug_trafficker) https://themobmuseum.org/blog/did-frank-matthews-get-away-with-it/ https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/community/durham-news/dn-community/article10277654.html https://ganglandgazette.com/what-happened-to-drug-lord-frank-matthews https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/the-black-godfather-who-rose-fell-and-vanished/82420/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Coxson

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we crack wise about the greatest comedy trio to have ever been put on film—The Three Stooges. Their short films were so popular that they single handedly saved the genre from dying for years and years. They poked fun at Hitler in the 1940s, and were so good at it that they made his personal death list. Though they started as a small vaudeville act in New York, they became the biggest game in comedy for multiple studios and for several decades. The keystone of the Stooges was one family—the Horowitz brothers. Shemp, Moe, and Jerome (aka Curley) Horowitz were all high school drop outs who had a love of acting and theater and quit school to pursue it. Shemp and Moe did various small roles, worked at the theaters and movie companies, and paid their dues. Curley hung out where they did, learned the business back stage, and did his own thing as well, such as studying dance. Eventually, a childhood friend named Ted Healy created a successful vaudeville show, and he needed stooges. He would play the straight man and try to sing and talk to the audience, but three bumbling stooges would come out and interrupt him. Though, it was a rotating cast, Shemp and Moe were the best at it. They hired a violin player named Larry Fine, and the rest was history. As they became more and more popular on stage and some small film roles, Shemp quit because he hated Healy. They added Curley to the act, and they blew up. Their films became so successful, that the movie companies could force theaters to take on B movies and stinkers they made or hold back the latest Three Stooges films. When they were at their peak, however, Curley had a series of health problems and strokes (that some think came from the beatings he took on set). He had to quit, and Shemp came back from a very successful solo act. It was a wild time in Hollywood. Healey was found dead, likely beaten to death by one of Lucky Luciano’s men. Larry at one point had to get paid more for fear that someone would bomb their stage acts. And their horrible producer screwed them out of millions of dollars by permanently convincing them that their movies weren’t making any money. When Shemp suddenly died of a heart attack, they considered quitting, but their evil producer held them to the final four films they had to make. So, how did this lead to fake Shemp? What was Joe, and who was Curley Joe, and why weren’t they the same person? Why did Larry live in a hotel until middle age? What were our personal experiences watching them as we grew up? Listen, laugh, and learn.   Visit Our Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Stooges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaudeville https://www.threestooges.com/ https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/three-stooges/ https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/curly-howard-grandson-three-stooges-tells-all https://www.mentalfloss.com/view?id=three-stooges-facts-mm&src=facebook https://screencrush.com/didnt-know-about-three-stooges/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Howard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curly_Howard

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look into the horrible history of Florida’s school for juveniles called the Arthur Dozier School. It opened in 1900 and ran until 2011. It was the subject of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize winning book The Nickel Boys. The Dozier school was (in)famous for housing children who often did nothing worse than smoke a cigarette at school, be truant, or run away from home. But as punishment, they endured life in leg irons, torture, illegal restraints, beatings till they bled, rape, and even murder. Estimates are that there are a total of 98 bodies buried on the site, and one group alleges there is a cover up by the local and Florida investigation teams. So, based on a law in the late 1800s, this school found funding and opened a couple years later. It was a large 159 acre campus with several buildings. It was segregated, so half the facilities were for black inmates and half for white. It was renamed a few times, and it switched hands as far as what governmental agency ran it. It was built to house 104 boys, aged 13 to 21. But that expanded to as young as 9, and at the height of its population, there were over 500 crammed into this space. It as a place of tragedy and dark history. A fire killed several boys and staff. Almost a dozen died to the Spanish Flu. And in its first remodel, they built a structure that the boys called the White House. It was where they took you if you were going to be beaten. Or tortured. Or raped. Because apparently in the 1950s and 60s, the people who ran the place were sadistic. Hundreds of boys who call themselves the White House Boys came forward in the 2000s to report their bloody beatings (lashed hundreds of times till their underwear was interwoven in their flesh, and they passed out—at the hands of an ominous one armed man), their rape, and even dead boys they saw from time to time. The White House Boys tried to get restitution or legal justice, but the statute of limitation had run out on any abuse they suffered, so it was shot down. But there were hundreds of them, so word must have gotten out, right? It did. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement ran an investigation which said they could find no forensic proof of abuse and no witnesses who  would talk. The White House Boys think this might have been a cover up. And an article called “For Their Own Good” that came out of St. Petersburg kept it in the nation’s attention. Eventually, the Department of Justice and the and the University of South Florida each did their own investigations with rather different results. So, how many bodies did they find? What did the surviving boys recall of their tortures here? Why did nobody ever get in legal trouble? What finally got the victims a chance to legally exhume bodies of their relatives? Listen, laugh, learn.     Visit Our Sources: https://www.npr.org/2012/10/15/162941770/floridas-dozier-school-for-boys-a-true-horror-story https://www.tampabay.com/investigations/2019/08/18/they-went-to-the-dozier-school-for-boys-damaged-they-came-out-destroyed/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_School_for_Boys https://www.abandonedfl.com/arthur-g-dozier-school-for-boys/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/08/16/boys-were-beaten-abused-florida-reform-school-now-colson-whitehead-fictionalizes-that-history/

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we take a look at the very interesting life of a man named Roald Dahl. You may think you’ve never heard of him, but we promise that you have. For one, he was a world famous and beloved children’s author. He wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many other stories. What you don’t know is that he was an adventure-starved, globetrotting, WWII fighter pilot ace. He survived a crash, shot down enemy aircraft, and was eventually stationed to Washington where he met Ian Fleming and did work for the spy agency MI6. Roald Dahl was born in Wales in 1916 to Norwegian parents who were wealthy. His father died when he was young, but his mother opted to stay in the UK because that’s where the best schools were. So, he attended school there, getting kicked out of one or two and being beaten by a headmaster here and there. He was also behind the Great Mouse Plot of 1924 which involved a dead rodent and a jar of gobstoppers. He eventually got through school, and when his mom said she’d pay for him to attend Oxford and be anything he wanted, he declined. He’d rather see the world. And see the world he did. He hiked around for a while and then got a job for an oil company in the Middle east. While there, he was drafted by England to help round Germans up in the city of Dar-es-Salaam where he was stationed. After that, he joined the Royal Air Force, and soon, his country was at war. After extensive training, he was given a really bad and outdated aircraft. Once, while piloting on his own, he was given the wrong directions and crashed in the middle of the desert. He sustained major injuries and was temporarily blind, but the kept on. Eventually, he fought in several dog fights, including the Battle of Athens, but he had to quit flying because of the injuries from the crash. He was such as smooth talker, however, that he was sent to Washington DC to be a diplomat and try to get the US into the war. While there, he doubled as a spy, meeting people like Ian Fleming and doing tasks directly for MI6. During the war, his friends got him to start writing, and people loved his work. He began with short stories and a tale about his own air crash, but he soon drifted to the fantastical children’s stories he is so beloved for now. He wrote James and the Giant Peach first, and the rest was history. His books were hits. He wrote 19 in all, saw several get adapted to film, and he even wrote the scripts for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and You Only Live Twice. There isn’t much bad to say about this man. He was a war hero. A national patriot. He is beloved by children all over the world. Even Queen Elizabeth considered him one of the most influential people in British culture. Oh, but he was an anti-Semite, so there is that. Listen, laugh, learn.     Visit Our Sources: https://www.biography.com/writer/roald-dahl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl https://www.famousauthors.org/roald-dahl https://www.notablebiographies.com/Co-Da/Dahl-Roald.html#:~:text=Roald%20Dahl%20was%20born%20September,himself%20skilled%20at%20finding%20trouble. https://www.roalddahlfans.com/about-dahl/dahl-biography/ https://www.roalddahl.com/roald-dahl https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/kids-club/entertainment/books/roald-dahl-facts/

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we take a look at an infamous case of Cannibalism, the crash of Uruguayan Flight 751. In October of 1972, a plane crashed carrying 40 passengers and 5 crew. As the plane bounced off the side of the mountain, it lost its wing, then it’s tail, then it’s other wing. All the while, people fill out and littered the snowy mountain side. Much like the Donner Party, after several weeks, they were out of food and lost on a glacier. Over two horrible months, they resorted to cannibalism and had no hope of rescue. The scene: October 13th, 1972. An amateur rugby club from Uruguay headed to Santiago, Chile to play a match. They rented an air force plane to take them there, and they had extra seats, so friends and family could come along. The co-pilot was put in charge of the flight, and he got lost in the fog and reported the wrong position. He crashed. While he was trying to pull up and avoid the mountain that suddenly emerged from the fog, it was too late. Uruguayan Flight 751 tore itself apart as it struck the summit of the mountain, until finally the fuselage slid down the mountain for over 2000 feet. They stacked the dead outside of the fuselage, and they sorted out the food. There was hardly any because it wasn’t a typical passenger plane, and the galley had broken off when the tail fell away. On day eleven, the search was called off. It was just them on a mountain with no vegetation or animal life. They were all starving, and people were dying every few days. There was a blizzard. An avalanche killed more of them. They finally made the horrible decision to eat human flesh even though most thought it was a sin. Eventually, Roberto Canessa and Antonio Vizintin decided to make the trek across the deadly mountain. They were hit by another blizzard and thought they weren’t going to make it. Eventually, after days of climbing and hiking with no snow gear or food, they found civilization. How many survived? How many refused to eat flesh and died of starvation? What is a muleskinner, and how did it help them get rescued? How long can one chocolate covered peanut last a man? Why didn’t they just radio for help? What did they discover the best way was to eat human flesh? Listen, laugh, learn. Visit Our Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguayan_Air_Force_Flight_571 https://historycollection.com/how-the-uruguayan-air-force-flight-571-crash-drove-a-rugby-team-to-cannibalism/ https://www.npr.org/2019/06/09/731044367/story-of-the-1972-andes-plane-crash-in-out-of-the-silence https://historydaily.org/uruguayan-air-force-flight-571-cannibals https://america.cgtn.com/2017/12/20/survivor-roberto-canessa-relives-1972-plane-crash-in-the-andes https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/04/160403-andes-uruguay-rugby-cannibal-plane-crash-canessa-ngbooktalk/

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the creation of South Park and the many movies, awards, and plays of Trey Parker and Matt Stone. From trying to show Mohamed on TV in spite of death threats (5 times…) to going in drag on acid to the Academy Awards, these two push every boundary they can. And somehow, they manage to make a show that has become a touchstone of global popular culture. In fact, they make the show in as little as four days, usually sending it over satellite the night it is due to air. Love them or hate them, their vulgar humor somehow manages to wow critics who credit them for their intuitive ability to say exactly what needs to be said in any given moment. The creators of South Park are Trey Parker and Matt Stone. They met in college at the University of Colorado, and though Trey had already pioneered his cut out animation style on previous projects, the two of them kept using it in small pieces they rolled out on VHS. In fact, one of these, called Jesus Vs. Santa, was one of the first truly viral videos on the internet. The two of them started a production company and produced a musical about a cannibal which was eventually bought by Troma Entertainment and rebranded as Cannibal! The Musical! This was the start of their entrance into Hollywood (and the start of their love for musicals). After a couple of failed pilots they pitched at Fox, they finally landed on South Park. It took them three months to film the pilot with crude cutouts and stop motion animation. Comedy Central picked it up, and it was an overnight success. South Park made Comedy Central go from being a small time network to a major television presence. Parker and Stone had a rough couple of seasons at the start of the show, and they were signed to do more if they agreed to make a movie. They did. It almost won an Oscar. They made more shows, and they made hundreds of millions of dollars in merchandising alone. Then, one time, they decided to write a musical play. They did. It won the Tony for best play as well as 8 others. They win Emmy after Emmy and a Peabody Award (somehow) using the most crass and often offensive comedy on all of television. If you want to know more about their background, what they did before South Park, their insane process of creating episodes, or just the truth about why Chef left the show (was it Scientology?!?), give this one a listen.   Visit Our Sources: 6 Days to Air Documentary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trey_Parker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Stone https://paleymatters.org/20-years-of-south-park-a-raunchy-retrospective-d15e555160b0 https://screenrant.com/south-park-facts-trivia/ https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/65262/10-things-you-might-not-know-about-south-park

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we go back in time to World War Two and look at the outstanding story of the 761st Tank Battalion. Known as the Black Panthers (no, not those Black Panthers), they were the first ever all black tank battalion. They met with racism and even a race riot during training the states, but they won a Medal of Honor, 11 Silver Stars, and just under 300 Purple Hearts. This group was created to help get more troops in tanks, but rules at the times said that African Americans couldn’t integrate with white troops. So, the 761st was created to be led by white officers but have no white soldiers serving on the front lines with them. They trained Louisiana where the baseball legend Jackie Robinson got in trouble for refusing to get to the back of a bus while he was in the battalion. Their training went so well, and they had such high marks that General Patton wanted them as part of his fighting force. He famously gave them a very inspiring speech about the need for African American troops and how important this was for their race, but then he also famously turned around and said that blacks were too slow witted to be good in a tank. But they excelled. They helped the troops of the 101st Airborne in the Battle of the Bulge. They liberated a concentration camp. They inflicted 130,000 German casualties. The 761st had epic soldiers and tank commanders in their crew from Ruben Rivers who won the medal of honor to John Long and Roy King who helped liberate a city. And the star of the show as a man named Wayne Crecy. He won the silver star for a particular day of combat, but the group historian estimates that he killed between 300-400 Germans in their push to Berlin. So if you want to learn what earned this man the title of “the baddest man of the 761st” or just have a love of World War Two, give this one a listen.   Visit Our Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/761st_Tank_Battalion_(United_States) https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/crecy-warren-gamaliel-harding https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/warren-crecy-baddest-man.html https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-panthers-761st-tank-battalion https://www.benning.army.mil/armor/earmor/content/issues/2014/Oct_Dec/GunnersSeat.html https://www.tracesofwar.com/persons/41821/Crecy-Warren-Gamaliel-Harding.htm?c=aw http://www.blerdsonline.com/2017/02/black-captain-america-sgt-warren-gh.html