For a long time, Ong's Hat, an abandoned ghost town in New Jersey, has been the subject of many urban legends and local folk tales, but it was also the location and subject for the Internet's first ARG (Alternate Reality Game).  However, what happens when Paranormal investigators start treating the very fictional game as real? 

For several decades, the launch coaster Dononpa was Japan's most iconic rollercoaster, drawing people in from all over the world to see.  However, in 2020 something strange started happening.  Dodonpa began breaking people's bones.  

It's the end of summer, which means thousands of nerds are descending upon fairgrounds around the country dressed in their finest medieval garb.  But how did these festivals come to be?  Who founded these events?  And what does it have to do with the Red Scare?     

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheThiefArchive

In 1964 award winning animator Richard Williams set out with a simple goal:  to make an animated feature film that showed off everything the medium of animation was capable of.  However, between rights disputes, the failure of a Raggedy Ann and Andy movie, and Richard William's severe mismanagement of time and money, The Thief and the Cobbler would become one of the most infamous animated films in history due to its decades long production cycle.  

Today in this special episode of Secret Histories, Host Austin welcomes Brea Grant and Mallory O'Meara from the hit podcasts Reading Glasses and Reading Smut.  The topic for today?  Why do books release on Tuesdays?  

https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/reading-glasses/

In 1976, disgraced wallstreet investor Eugene Mullvihill opened the infamous Action Park in Vernon New Jersey.  It would turn out to be a lawless place full of drunken poorly trained teens, a deadly wave pool, and the world's first, and last, looping waterslide.  

If you're reading this, chances are, you know what a podcast is.  But, do you know how podcasting got started?  What is considered the first podcast?   Where did the name come from?  And how does Maximum Fun play into all this?  

Before a lot of our modern tech was mainstream, homes of the future walkthroughs were there to show us a glimpse into a supposedly better and brighter future.  But did these homes of the future, now several decades old, manage to predict how houses are built now?  Is there anything practical about building houses out of foam and balloons?  

In the 90's, summer family comedy Life with Mikey released in theaters...and was a terrible flop. Despite having a star studded cast like Michael J. Fox, Cyndi Lauper, and Nathan Lane, the movie was panned by movie-goers and critics alike. But why? What lead up to this disaster, and does it really deserve to be forgotten?