Damn Interesting

By DamnInteresting.com

Society & Culture Arts Science & Medicine Education Literature Comedy History

What's Damn Interesting about?

The audio side of DamnInteresting.com: Legitimately intriguing true stories from history, science, and psychology. Audiobook-like narration with sound effects and music.

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Journey To The Invisible Pl...

06.13.2023

The tangled history of humanity’s search for the solar system’s uncharted planets.

Damn Interesting episodes:

06.13.2023 Journey To The Invisible Planet The tangled history of humanity’s search for the solar system’s uncharted planets.
05.21.2023 From Where The Sun Now Stands When the U.S. Army came for their land in 1877, the Nez Perce tribe complied. But tensions boiled over, and Chief Joseph led as they ran for their lives.
03.28.2023 The Ancient Order Of Bali In 1970s Bali, a sudden rice crisis prompted an unexpectedly far-reaching scientific discovery
12.13.2022 Lofty Ambitions In 1933, British WWI vet Maurice Wilson hatched an unorthodox plan to reach the still-untouched summit of Everest.
10.27.2022 The Rube's Dilemma A great pitcher’s great temptation.
05.03.2022 Devouring The Heart Of Portugal In 1924 a bankrupt businessman in Portugal launched an audacious international scheme to become one of the wealthiest men in the world.
02.28.2022 The Mount St. Helens Trespasser Robert Rogers, a man obsessed with trespassing, sets his sights on Mount St. Helens in the spring of 1980
02.07.2022 Hunting For Kobyla The true story of a runaway Nazi, a determined sleuth, and a chase around the world.
10.25.2021 The Unceasing Cessna Hacienda In 1958, one heavily modified airplane flew out of Las Vegas with a single objective: Don’t land.
08.25.2021 The Kingpin of Shanghai From the depths of poverty, Du Yuesheng rose through Shanghai’s underworld to become one of the most influential, and overlooked, figures in modern China.
06.02.2021 The Traveler And His Baggage In Nazi-occupied Paris, “Dr. Eugène” offered Jews an alternative to deportation, slavery, and death camps. But the escape network was not what it seemed.
04.27.2021 Fifteen Years Forsaken A true story of castaways on a lost and hostile scrap of land, all thanks to some meddlesome Frenchmen and terrible luck.
03.02.2021 A Blight On Soviet Science Nikolai Vavilov dedicated his life to improving Soviet agriculture and eradicating famine, but his allegiance to science would ultimately lead to his downfall.
12.28.2020 Pugilism On The Plains How a booming oil town aimed to become a western metropolis through one of the most ill-conceived boxing matches of all time.
10.08.2020 How Miss Shilling's Orifice Helped Win the War How a female engineer defied all norms to save England in the Second World War.
09.04.2020 Dupes and Duplicity The true story of the 18th century's greatest femme fatale, and the most unfortunate of her victims.
06.29.2020 Chronicles of Charnia When an ancient, unexpected imprint is discovered in a stone quarry, scientists endeavor to explain its mysterious origin.
05.05.2020 The Spy of Night and Fog The Spy of Night and Fog by Damn Interesting
03.25.2020 Radical Solutions French mathematician Évariste Galois lived a full life. When he wasn't trying to overthrow the government, he was reinventing algebra.
12.11.2019 Private Wojteks Right To Bear Arms One of Poland’s most beloved and honored World War II veterans was not Polish at all: he was a 500-pound brown bear named Wojtek.
09.10.2019 Dead Reckoning The 18th century misadventures of HMS Wager and her reluctant crew
09.02.2019 The Eponymous Mr. Ponzi The little known story of an age-old scam
04.14.2019 The Most Modern Of Modern Sports The secret runaway success of Kenneth Gandar-Dower’s racing cheetahs.
11.04.2018 A Debaculous Fiasco The most expensive, bizarre, and obscure work ever created by Dr. Seuss.
07.29.2018 Drawing The Shorter Straw Working almost single-handedly, visionary Argentine filmmaker Quirino Cristiani created full-length animated films between 1917 and 1931. He has since been all but forgotten.
05.01.2018 The Curse Of Konzo In 1981, an international group of doctors identified the devastating disease behind a perplexing outbreak of paralysis in northern Mozambique.
03.29.2018 A Jarring Revelation Amanda Theodosia Jones was a 19th-century poet, entrepreneur, and inventor who found inspiration in some unlikely places.
11.20.2017 Death By Derivatives The opening of a canal in 1848 led to the birth of modern financial derivatives, and the early demise of some of the men who traded them
07.29.2017 Ghoulish Acts & Dastardly Deeds In the 1950s, an anonymous terrorist planted a pipe bomb in a New York City public space. Then another. And another.
07.17.2017 No Country For Ye Olde Men Britain’s practice of transporting convicts to American colonies was a fearsome punishment, but not for the chronic criminal James Dalton.
06.12.2017 Fire And Dice The story of a tragic hotel fire of Rube Goldberg proportions.
04.11.2017 The Reconstruction of Ulysses S. Grant As a civilian, the beloved American Civil War general and two-term president failed at every attempt to make money. Except for one.
03.06.2017 The Greatest Baroque Composer Never Known A 300-year-old hunt for the unsung hero of Salzburg.
12.28.2016 Foreign Exchanges He made a name for himself organizing the world’s most important economic conference, only to have it tarnished by an outrageous accusation.
11.30.2016 Starving For Answers During WWII, 36 American conscientious objectors volunteered as subjects in a brutal science experiment to measure the body's response to starvation.
09.26.2016 Ten Minutes In Lituya Bay A remote bay in Alaska is home to an odd and occasionally catastrophic geology. In 1958, a handful of people experienced this firsthand.
08.06.2016 The King's Letters The 15th-century scholar who upset the Korean aristocracy by creating a native script for the Korean language, and thus wean it off Chinese characters.
06.13.2016 Mobilis In Mobili A 1930s effort to reach the Earth's northernmost point via antiquated submarine.
05.11.2016 Into The Bewilderness Charles Waterton was a pioneer of conservation. He was also extremely nutty, in ways that suggest he may have over-identified with his animal subjects.
03.13.2016 Colonels Of Truth The tumultuous true story of the life of a fast food icon.
12.14.2015 89, 263, 201, 500, 337, 480 The story of the Beale Ciphers; a set of three encrypted notes from the nineteenth century purportedly describing the location of hidden treasure. Only one has been deciphered.
11.28.2015 The Japanese Art of Self Preservation On the ancient Japanese Buddhist practice of self-mummification.
10.21.2015 Faxes From The Far Side Faxes From The Far Side by Damn Interesting
10.10.2015 The Petticoat Rebellion Of 1916 When women in a poorly administered Oregon town hacked an election in order to repair the town's problems.
09.23.2015 The First Ten Years A happy-tenth-birthday-to-us retrospective.
08.02.2015 Up In The Air As night fell over the East German town of Pössneck on the evening of 14 September 1979, most of the town's citizens were busy getting ready for bed. But not Günter Wetzel. The mason was in his attic, hunched over ...
06.14.2015 The Zero Armed Bandit "I don’t think it belongs here." Such was the assessment of Bob Vinson, the graveyard shift supervisor at Harvey's Wagon Wheel Casino in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. The "here" Vinson referred to was a nook just outside the telephone equipment room ...
04.18.2015 The American Gustation Crisis Of 1985 (This is a podcastification of an older article to observe the 30th anniversary of the events discussed herein). In April 1985, it is rumored that a collection of executives gathered at their corporate headquarters for an emergency meeting. On the ...
01.11.2015 The Derelict Under ordinary circumstances, the final evening of a cruise aboard the luxury turbo-electric ocean liner SS Morro Castle was a splendid event. Hundreds of lady and gentlemen passengers would gather in the Grand Ballroom in their finest evening attire for ...
09.02.2014 Surface Tension Low-pressure weather systems are a familiar feature of the winter climate in the northern Atlantic. While they often drive wind, rain, and other unpleasantness against Europe’s rocky western margin, this is typically on a “mostly harmless” basis. Early in the ...

Older episodes

Damn Interesting

What's Damn Interesting about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Damn Interesting episodes:

Journey To The Invisible Planet

From Where The Sun Now Stands

The Ancient Order Of Bali

Lofty Ambitions

The Rube's Dilemma

Devouring The Heart Of Portugal

The Mount St. Helens Trespasser

Hunting For Kobyla

The Unceasing Cessna Hacienda

The Kingpin of Shanghai

The Traveler And His Baggage

Fifteen Years Forsaken

A Blight On Soviet Science

Pugilism On The Plains

How Miss Shilling's Orifice Helped Win the War

Dupes and Duplicity

Chronicles of Charnia

The Spy of Night and Fog

Radical Solutions

Private Wojteks Right To Bear Arms

Dead Reckoning

The Eponymous Mr. Ponzi

The Most Modern Of Modern Sports

A Debaculous Fiasco

Drawing The Shorter Straw

The Curse Of Konzo

A Jarring Revelation

Death By Derivatives

Ghoulish Acts & Dastardly Deeds

No Country For Ye Olde Men

Fire And Dice

The Reconstruction of Ulysses S. Grant

The Greatest Baroque Composer Never Known

Foreign Exchanges

Starving For Answers

Ten Minutes In Lituya Bay

The King's Letters

Mobilis In Mobili

Into The Bewilderness

Colonels Of Truth

89, 263, 201, 500, 337, 480

The Japanese Art of Self Preservation

Faxes From The Far Side

The Petticoat Rebellion Of 1916

The First Ten Years

Up In The Air

The Zero Armed Bandit

The American Gustation Crisis Of 1985

The Derelict

Surface Tension

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