Timesuck with Dan Cummins

Issei Sagawa aka the Kobe Cannibal, made a living for most of his life off of the infamy he attained... for murdering and then eating a young Dutch woman in 1981, when Issei was thirty-two years-old. Why didn't he spend the rest of his life in prison? And why did he want to eat her in the first place?

Transcribed - Published: 13 June 2025

Do you believe that all non-vegans should die? In part for their needless murder of senseless people like.... cows? And in part because their predatory, cruel, EVIL behavior is providing a model for a future AI program to treat humans like a mindless food source once it inevitably takes over the world? If so... you'd make a good Zizian! This is a weird one.

Transcribed - Published: 9 June 2025

This week we cover the life and crimes of the most prolific serial killer in US history, Samuel Little. A monster the LAPD once dubbed "The Choke and Stroke Killer." Before he died in 2020 at the age of 80, he confessed to 93 murders. And the FBI have confirmed 62 of those murders and counting. Who was this guy? And how did he keep getting away with murders across America for over three decades?

Transcribed - Published: 2 June 2025

Did you ever watch the Staircase docu-series on Netflix? Or the 2022 HBO MAX adaptation? I watched both, and still wanted to learn more about the divisive trial over the murder of Kathleen Peterson. Did her husband Michael kill her? Or was he railroaded by a justice system that held a grudge against him? Or, did Michael kill not only Kathleen, but also a woman in Germany years earlier? And did he have anything to do with the recent death of his first wife?

Transcribed - Published: 26 May 2025

In the 1960s, Natalie Wood was one of the world's leading actress, her star shining as bright as Elizabeth Taylor's. She'd been acting since she was a small child, appearing in movies like Miracle on 34th Street. She'd starred opposite James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, and she'd been linked romantically to Warren Beatty, Michael Caine, Elvis Presley, and Dennis Hopper. And her husband, actor Robert Wagner, may have gotten with killing her off of Catalina Island in 1981, during a weekend getaway the couple shared with Christoper Walken.

Transcribed - Published: 23 May 2025

The Bone Wars, also known as the Great Dinosaur Rush, is what a period of intense fossil hunting in the late 19th century came to be called, thanks primarily to the intense and bitter rivalry between two of America's most prominent early paleontologists, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. These two men, who started out as friends, would end up destroying each other's and their own lives in their intense quest to become America's most heralded fossil hunter.

Transcribed - Published: 19 May 2025

Have you ever heard of La Luz Del Mundo? a.k.a., LLDM? a.k.a., The Church of the Living God, Pillar and Support of Truth The Light of the World? Naasón Joaquín García, the leader of this church based in Guadalajara, Mexico (that some estimates claim has up to seven million members worldwide) is currently in prison after being found guilty of three counts of the sexual abuse of minors. And he is awaiting trial on charges of producing and possessing child pornography. What do members of this church described by many as a cult believe? And how far back does the abuse go?

Transcribed - Published: 12 May 2025

Remember when a bunch of dogs saved hundreds of human’s lives in Alaska a century ago? In January of 1925, diphtheria, a deadly disease, swept through the village Nome, Alaska… killing multiple children. The town was frozen in for the winter. No roads in or out. No ships able to break through the ice in the sea around it. No planes able to fly through a winter so cold, temperatures on the ground would plummet to nearly -90 degrees Fahrenheit. The only hope to deliver life-saving anti-toxins to the area? Alaska's wildly hearty, determined, and heroic sled dogs.

Transcribed - Published: 9 May 2025

Ever heard of Gary Heidnik? Pop culture wise, he's made a much bigger impact than most murderers, but few seem to know his story. This literal genius, who was also schizophrenic, joined the army, became a nurse, made hundreds of thousands of dollars in the stock market, crushed whatever college courses he took, formed his own successful church, and dug out a pit in his basement to store women he'd kidnapped. Women he raped in an attempt to impregnate them, so that their mixed-race babies would help end racism and bring peace to the world! We gotta another wild one this week.

Transcribed - Published: 5 May 2025

You've undoubtably heard of Dr. Seuss. The author of The Cat in the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Green Eggs and Ham, Horton Hears a Who! The Lorax, and so many other classic works of children's literature. But... how much do you know about Ted Geisel? Ted is the man behind the pseudonym, and he lived a very interesting life. And he wasn't able to make a living as the author of children's book until he was in his fifties.

Transcribed - Published: 28 April 2025

Would you choose to have an identical twin? Someone who looked so much like you, that even your own mother couldn’t always tell the two of you apart? 
Someone whom friends and even lovers couldn’t distinguish you from? Someone who experienced the world in a way so similar to your own, that no one else could ever possibly be able to relate to you quite like they could. Could be fun! But as you'll see... it could also be dangerous.

Transcribed - Published: 25 April 2025

Today we talk about moral panics. Specifically, the "Video Nasty" moral panic that happened in the UK in the early 1980s, and then again in the 1990s, when there was widespread fear that by kids watching horror movies with titles like Cannibal Holocaust, Flesh for Frankenstein, I Spit on Your Grave, and The Last House on the Left, they would literally be turned into rapists and killers. Was there any justification for this panic? Can hyper-violent or hyper-sexualized media in general erode the morality of children?

Transcribed - Published: 21 April 2025

Pee Wee Gaskin's diminutive size of 5'2" tall and 130 pounds soaking wet didn't stop him from brutally killing at least eleven people, and possibly up to 105. The South Carolina serial killer murdered for a lot of reasons: revenge and personal vendettas, fits of rage, but mostly to satisfy a deep-rooted urge to rape, torture, and kill young women. An urge Pee Wee called, his "bothersomeness.”

Transcribed - Published: 14 April 2025

Today we're we’re gonna tackle a bunch of questions you never knew you needed answering. Questions like: Why does the middle finger mean “fuck you”? Why do we blow out candles at birthday parties? Why do we cover our mouths when we yawn? And where does the whole making "bunny ears" with your fingers behind someone's head while they're getting their photo taken come from? The answers to these questions are often so strange, and so ancient.

Transcribed - Published: 11 April 2025

How much of what you read online has been planted there by Russian propagandists? How many times have you followed a social media account, or reposted information from an account, that's controlled by a Russian Troll Farm? How aware are you of Russia's ongoing (and shockingly successful) attempts to cripple and then topple America from within? This episode is a different, much more dystopian kind of scary.

Transcribed - Published: 7 April 2025

On the afternoon of February 13th, 2017, in the sleepy little 3000(ish) person town of Delphi, Indiana, two local junior girls and best friends, 13-year-old Abigail Joyce Williams and 14-year-old Liberty Rose Lynn German, went missing nearing an abandoned bridge near the edge of town. Their bloody bodies would be found the next day, but their killer wouldn't be caught for over five years. And then the town would be shocked for a second time, when they learned that the killer was one of their own, hiding in plain sight...

Transcribed - Published: 31 March 2025

Today we take a peek at the interesting life of author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the man who invented the world's most famous and influential literary detective, Sherlock Holmes. However, Doyle was never really that interested in the fictional creation that made him famous. He was very interested, though, in spiritualism, and took part in hundreds of seances and wrote dozens of books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles attesting to a belief he saw as indisputable fact: that the dead surround us and we can speak with them.

Transcribed - Published: 28 March 2025

Have you ever been to one of those Shen Yun traveling traditional Chinese dance performances? Have you ever seen one of their blitz marketing campaigns? What about the Epoch Times - is that where you or someone you know get their news? Did you know that both of these companies are directly connect to the Falun Gong, a strange cult that originated in China in 1992, and is now based in a massive compound less than a 100 miles north of New York City?

Transcribed - Published: 24 March 2025

Today we examine the beloved host of the long-running children's television show, Mr Rogers' Neighborhood. Was Fred McFeely Rogers truly as wholesome as he seemed? Could anyone be that good? Or was it all just an act? When the cameras turned off, did a completely different person emerge, and who was that person?

Transcribed - Published: 17 March 2025

Luis Alfredo Garavito Cubillos was a ruthless, sadistic Colombian rapist and serial killer who became known to the task force searching for him as… The Beast. This sadistic monster would be convicted of sexually torturing and murdering 142 boys. He would confess to 221 murders, and to raping another 200+ children. And after all that, he was nearly released after serving just 22 years in prison.

Transcribed - Published: 14 March 2025

On July 22nd, 2011, Norwegian alt-right gamer Anders Behring Breivik carried out the deadliest attack on Norwegian soil since WW2, when he detonated a car bomb in Oslo and then snuck onto the nearby island of Utoya and opened fire on a large group of teenagers attending a political summer camp. Why did he do this? And how was no one able to stop him?

Transcribed - Published: 10 March 2025

How much do you know about Nelson Mandela and South Africa's brutal, racially oppressive system of apartheid? Get your learn today with this historical and inspirational episode.

Transcribed - Published: 3 March 2025

Ching Shih, born as Shi Yang, was quite possibly the most powerful pirate of all time. While famous UK pirates like Blackbeard, Black Bart, Calico Jack, Sir Francis Drake, or Captain Kidd get much more name recognition, none of them ever commanded a confederation of pirates up to 80,000 men strong, with around 2,000 ships.

Transcribed - Published: 28 February 2025

On November 20th, 1993, the sexually violated and mutilated corpse of a young woman is found on Long Island, New York. The first of over ten bodies found in the coming decades of young, petite, sex workers, whose murders will later be attributed to "The Long Island Serial Killer." But no suspect will be arrested until July of 2023. Why did it take law enforcement three decades to find this guy, how did they find him, and who is he? All this and more on this week's true crime deep dive.

Transcribed - Published: 24 February 2025

Ganas is an intentional community founded in 1979 in Tompkinsville, Staten Island that is still active. Is it also a cult? What is an "intentional community" And why was one of the founding members, Jeff Gross, shot and nearly killed (allegedly) by a disgruntled, former member, in 2006?

Transcribed - Published: 17 February 2025

Happy Valentine's Day! Let's talk about love. Kind of. But not really. Not at all actually. Let's talk about how and why we humans have castrated each other and ourselves throughout human history. This one's not for the squeamish. But, I also can't remember laughing this often in any other recent episode!

Transcribed - Published: 14 February 2025

Have you heard of Hiroo Onoda? The Japanese 2nd Lieutenant was sent to the island of Lubang in The Philippines at the end of 1944. And he kept fighting for Imperial Japan for the next 28+ years, hiding out in the jungle, occasionally running raids on local villagers, shooting and killing random people he thought were enemy combatants, and refusing to believe that the war had ended back in 1945.

Transcribed - Published: 10 February 2025

On the night of May 3rd, 2007, three year-old British girl Madeleine McCann vanished from her bed in her parents villa at a Portuguese vacation resort. What follows will be what The Daily Telegraph will describe as "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history." Listen to find out why.

Transcribed - Published: 3 February 2025

Comedian, actor, author, and producer Bill Cosby... affectionately nicknamed as "America's Dad" for his portrayal of Dr. Cliff Huxtable on the hit, iconic sitcom, The Cosby Show, has now been accused by over sixty women of rape, drug-facilitated sexual assault, sexual battery, child sexual abuse, and/or sexual harassment. The assaults allegedly began in the mid-1960s, but never got much publicity until 2014. Why?

Transcribed - Published: 27 January 2025

Can you imagine being stranded for years on a remote uninhabited island with almost nothing but a few simple tools and the clothes on your back? Some people haven't had to imagine this scenario, like Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, and Fernão Lopes, who would actually live alone for a total of several decades on the remote Atlantic island of St. Helena. Could you survive like they did?

Transcribed - Published: 24 January 2025

Was aspiring investigative journalist Danny Casolaro murdered in his Sheraton hotel room in Martinsburg, West Virginia on August 10th, 1991 because he was very close to exposing a conspiracy involving CIA, DOJ, and Whitehouse players involved in numerous murderous, illegal arms deals, espionage and more as truth?

Transcribed - Published: 20 January 2025

Peter Sutcliffe, dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper in the press, attacked woman after woman with a hammer and a knife (and sometimes also a screwdriver), primarily in West Yorkshire, England, from 1969 to 1980. Murdering 13 women between 1975 and 1980, he left many other women alive but badly battered and traumatized. The search to find one of England's most heinous serial killers became the largest manhunt in British history.

Transcribed - Published: 13 January 2025

A look at how we humans have chosen to incarcerate those who break the rules and how certain rule breakers have busted out of incarceration over the years. Life rafts, helicopters, sexing up prison employees and more!

Transcribed - Published: 10 January 2025

Do you ever think about where your poo goes once you flush it down the toilet? Or about how not having access to toilets... or the sewer systems beneath them... would dramatically (and negatively) impact your life? Today, we cover the history of how we humans have dealt with our (literal) shit. Another reminder of how life in the present is so, so, SO much better than life in the past.

Transcribed - Published: 6 January 2025

Time for some year end inspiration from the incomparable Dolly Parton! A true living legend. If all you think about when you think of Dolly is big hair, bigger boobs, and some catchy songs, I hope you give this one a listen. She is so much more than that. A truly incredible, inspiring soul who has built an incredible life on a foundation of generosity, kindness, and her faith.

Transcribed - Published: 30 December 2024

On September 13th, 1848, a dynamite blast rocketed a 43-inch long, 13-pound iron bar completely through the skull of 25-year-old railway worker Phineas Gage. It landed some eighty feet away, covered in Phineas' blood and brains. And after a few minutes, Phineas got up, started talking, walked over to an oxcart, rode it to the hotel where he was staying, sat on the porch and waited to speak with a doctor. Not long after the doctor arrived, he vomited and more of his brain fell out of his head. And he just... kept... talking...

Transcribed - Published: 27 December 2024

Have you heard about the recent case of Shelby Hewitt? The 32 year-old Massachusetts Social Worker enrolled in two different Boston area public high schools as a sixteen year-old sophomore, and then later enrolled in another Boston area school as a 7th grader, spending nearly a year as a fake teen student before her real identity was uncovered. How??? And more importantly... why???

Transcribed - Published: 23 December 2024

On June 22nd, 1983, 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi disappeared after attending a music lesson in Rome. Following her disappearance, a mystery surrounding it has deepened for over four decades, involving the KGB trying to assassinate the Pope, an allegation of a satanic sex cults within the Vatican, Catholic prophecies in Portugal, anti-communist revolts in Poland, the Holy See being involved in money laundering, and Italian mob bosses being in cahoots with top Vatican officials.

Transcribed - Published: 16 December 2024

What a tale I have for you today! In 1518, a very peculiar form of madness fell over the people of the city of Strasbourg (modern day France) in the Holy Roman Empire. People started... dancing. A lot of people. As in hundreds. And out in public in full view of anyone who wanted to watch! And many of them only stopped when they died. They literally danced themselves to death. What happened and why???

Transcribed - Published: 13 December 2024

Have you ever heard of serial killer Gerald Stano? For years, he sat on death row in Florida, just a few cells down from Ted Bundy. He's also believed by most sources to have killed more girls and young women than Bundy did. So why is this monster, whose first six months of his life were so brutal he was deemed "unadoptable" by the government agency that removed him from his mother's care, almost entirely unknown in the world of true crime?

Transcribed - Published: 9 December 2024

We take a look at the recent, tragic final act of a doomsday cult in Kenya that left 448 dead and another 613 missing in March of 2023. How did cult leader Paul Mackenzie, pastor of Good News International Ministries, convince his followers to starve their own children and then themselves to death? And how did the Pentecostalism he based his messages in contribute to his insane and deadly teachings?

Transcribed - Published: 2 December 2024

Does not having a penis make you feel inferior due to a bad case of penis envy? Do you or have you ever wanted to have sex with your mother? Or your father? When most people think of Freud they think of his more extreme notions and theories, stuff like his Oedipus and Electra complexes. But he also really helped us understand our unconscious mind and how it interacts with our conscious mind. How the id, ego, and superego shape our personalities and desires. A fascinating blend of important science and insanity today as we explore the life and ideas of Sigmund Freud!

Transcribed - Published: 25 November 2024

Today I'm sharing a wild story that I'm surprised isn't much more known - that one time Germany intentionally hired known pedophiles to be the foster parents of unsuspecting little boys, thinking that these fosters parents would care more for the boys since they were more invested in them.... because they were having sex with them. Yep. This really happened. Recently. It began in the 1970s, and continued throughout the 1990s. How???

Transcribed - Published: 22 November 2024

The true story behind the incredible 2003 film, Monster, about sex worker and serial killer, Aileen Wuornos, who killed seven men over the course of one year beginning in November of 1989. Aileen's story is incredibly unique, the exceptionally rare female serial killer who murdered the men who paid her for sex, instead of the other way around.

Transcribed - Published: 18 November 2024

Happy Veteran's Day! On D-Day, June 6th, 1944, over 150,000 Allied troops stormed Nazi-defended beaches in northern France in the largest military amphibious assault operation the world had ever seen. D-Day led directly to Allied forces pushing the Nazis back into Germany and winning the war. And D-Day would have never worked without the troop and supply transport boats designed by a colorful boat builder in New Orleans named Andrew Higgins.

Transcribed - Published: 11 November 2024

Today I'm sharing the little known Servant Girl Annihilator murders. A series of crimes just as shocking as the crimes of London's Jack the Ripper murders, but occurred three years earlier, in Austin, Texas. Who kept dragging woman after woman from their beds and killing them with an ax?

Transcribed - Published: 8 November 2024

Back in the 1950s, America was very afraid of Soviet spies and communist sympathizers infiltrating the government and destroying the United States from within. And there were actual spies sharing secrets with the Soviets. But concern soon gave way to paranoia, and a political witch-hunt began, with a self-serving senator from Wisconsin leading a very misguided and ultimately anti-American and embarrassing Red Scare that destroyed the lives of many.

Transcribed - Published: 4 November 2024

In the early 1980s, Suzan and Michael Carson were very worried about witches. They thought there witches all over America, even the President, Ronald Regan, was a witch. And sometimes, in order to defend themselves from the dark magic of witches, they had to kill them. They had to! It was self-defense. This is what they and there defense attorney would actually claim, in court, when they were finally caught and charged with multiple murders.

Transcribed - Published: 28 October 2024

Today I’ll be sharing the strange and spooky story of Olivia Mabel. It's a story presented as a true story, centered around the unsettling concept of a “tulpa.” A thought form and sentient being willed into existence by, essentially, the power of one's imagination. Is that possible? And if not, aren't characters akin to tulpas created all the time by the power of vivid, immersive, fictional worldbuilding?

Transcribed - Published: 25 October 2024

In 1975, two young boys in Tuam were exploring the grounds of one of Ireland's abandoned Mother and Baby Homes when they lifted up a loose concrete slab and found several tiny human skulls hidden underneath. Over three decades later, this discovery would lead to the uncovering of another massive and shocking Catholic scandal, centered around some of the worst crimes committed against young women and their babies in modern world history.

Transcribed - Published: 21 October 2024