In the final part of our Nellie Bly series, we follow her through yet another reinvention ...as wife to industrialist Robert Seaman and, after his death, one of the first female CEOs in the U.S. We look at her lesser-known interviews with a ten-year-old Helen Keller and the terrifying Lizzie Halliday, and how she returned... Continue Reading →

In Part 3 of our Nellie Bly series, the whole world starts to pay attention. We’ll follow her from the publication of Ten Days in a Madhouse to her globe-circling race against the fictional Phileas Fogg. Along the way, Nellie becomes a household name, fields marriage proposals from strangers, and gets immortalized on trading cards and weird... Continue Reading →

In 1887, Nellie Bly got herself committed to one of the most notorious mental institutions in the country — not because she needed help, but because she wanted the truth. In Part 2, we follow Nellie through the gates of Blackwell’s Island, where the food was inedible, the baths were freezing, and silence wasn’t just... Continue Reading →

Before she became one of the most daring journalists in history, Nellie Bly was Elizabeth Jane Cochran — a smart, stubborn girl from Pennsylvania with very few options and even fewer rights. In this episode, we’re going back to the beginning: the poverty, the abusive stepfather, the letter that launched her career, and the fight... Continue Reading →

From flood panics and flaming cities to gas masks for comet poison, humanity has always had a flair for predicting the end of the world—with spectacular inaccuracy. In this special palate cleanser episode, Annie and Johanna walk us through some of the weirdest, funniest, and most deeply unserious doomsday predictions in history. We'll cover the... Continue Reading →

In this episode, we look at the brief and heartbreaking life of Dorothy Stratten—Playmate of the Month in August 1979, aspiring actress, and the victim of one of Hollywood’s most disturbing murder cases. We trace Dorothy’s rise from a Dairy Queen in Vancouver to the pages of Playboy, her toxic relationship with Paul Snider, her affair... Continue Reading →

In this fifth and final part of the Lizzie Halliday story, Lizzie escapes the electric chair—but not justice. She continues to lash out, nearly killing the sheriff’s wife, and ultimately stabbing a beloved young nurse more than 200 times in what would become the first recorded line-of-duty death of a female law enforcement officer in... Continue Reading →

After the discovery of two women’s bodies buried in the manure pile of the Halliday barn, the search for Paul Halliday continues. But as authorities dig deeper—literally and figuratively—they uncover even more horrors. Lizzie Halliday remains in custody, shifting between moments of eerie calm and violent outbursts, but she isn’t done hiding evidence just yet.... Continue Reading →

Lizzie Halliday has left a trail of destruction behind her...arson, theft, fraud, and at least one suspicious death! But in this episode, her crimes take a truly horrifying turn. After a year in a mental institution, Lizzie is released back into the care of her much older husband, Paul Halliday. His family and neighbors are... Continue Reading →

Lizzie Halliday is back, and somehow, she’s only getting started. In this episode, we pick up where we left off—with Lizzie abandoning another husband, scamming her way into new homes, and setting literal fires along the way. She takes her insurance fraud scheme to new levels, makes a scene at her father’s grave, and leaves... Continue Reading →