Just to be clear this is a bonus episode.

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we hit you with some information on the Greatest of all Time—Muhammad Ali! He was born as Cassius Marcellus Clay in 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky. This put him at the heart of racial inequality in America, and as the grandson of freed slaves, he grew up knowing the racism that was so pervasive at that time. Living in a poor neighborhood, one day he got his bicycle stolen, and he swore to the police officer that he was going to get revenge. The cop told him he needed to learn how to fight first, and a legend was born.

The cop, Joe Martin, was a boxer and trainer and started Cassius off, eventually handing him off to trainer Chuck Bodak. He trained hard and won several golden gloves and other awards and was good enough to qualify for the 1960 Olympics in Rome. There, he won the gold and came back as a national hero. He started his professional boxing career immediately after, and within a few years, he met Malcolm X and joined the Nation of Islam. Eventually, he changed his name to Muhammad Ali, and he shook up the world.

He was someone that everyone wanted to watch because of his gift of gab. His quotes, quips, insults, and one liners were famous and incredible. However, his skill at the sweet science of boxing was what kept him rising through the ranks. He fought some of the most legendary bouts of all time: his victory over Sonny Liston, the Rumble in the Jungle with George Foreman, and the Thrilla From Manilla with Joe Frazier.

However, his fortunes turned when he found himself in legal trouble when he refused to join the army after he was drafted in Vietnam. Muhammad Ali was unable to box for three years until the legal issues were settled. His fight against the US government lead to him being dragged into a secret operation code-named "Minaret.” Also, his Fight of the Century with Joe Frazier was the cover needed to blow the lid off the FBI COINTELPRO conspiracy. Eventually, the champ slowed down to Parkinson’s Disease, and he turned his eye to philanthropy and helping others. He passed away in 2016, but he remains…the greatest of all time!

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we take a look at some Cold War madness and delve into America’s plan to nuke the moon—Project A119. The year was 1957. The Soviet Union had just launched Sputnik and was winning the nascent Space Race. The American military needed a win, so their plan was simply to throw a hydrogen bomb at the moon. Like you do.

Why a nuke? Well, it would show technological and military dominance. In fact, the whole point was to make it visible to the naked eye, so the entire world could see it. So, the lead researcher, a man named Leonard Reiffel (who made his career working with Nazis from Operation Paper Clip) was tasked with creating a think tank in Chicago to figure out the ins and outs of the moon nuke from Project A119.

He hired some up and comers like a young Carl Sagan and was off and running. They explored the psychological impact on America, the Soviets, and the rest of the world. They looked at technical limitations and what type of bomb to use. They looked at what other scientific knowledge could come from it. And, thankfully, they looked at dangers like the bomb boomeranging back into the earth’s atmosphere.

Reiffel’s group wrote a total of eight different reports between their inception and when the group was put to bed in 1959, but only the first of them exists since the other seven were all destroyed in the magical 80s. They even discussed the Soviet’s own plan (which was long since confirmed) to nuke the moon as well, so Project A119 wasn’t the only game in town.

Many scientists were worried that a nuke would ruin the possibility of colonizing the moon, and eventually something like Project A119 was actually ordered. In 2009, NASA hit the moon with a high velocity rocket to get a debris cloud to spread. It was all the science with none of the nuke! So, if you want to hear about our plan to annihilate the Soviet Union, why Carl Sagan committed treason in his biography, and whether or not the moon is hollow, check this one out.

Cool Cold War Article: https://www.newsweek.com/2014/09/26/plan-nuke-moon-and-other-cold-war-plots-revealed-secret-documents-271088.html

Black Vault Document Archive: http://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/project-a119-a-study-of-lunar-research-flights/#

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we look at one of the worst government conspiracy theories and most egregious cases of abusing medical ethics in American history—the Tuskegee Experiment. In a nutshell, the Tuskegee Experiment was the time the American government identified hundreds of African Americans who had syphilis and gave them medical treatment. Oh, but by medical treatment, I mean refused to give them any real medicine, even once there was a cure, and instead just watched them all go blind, dumb, and mad and die from a horrible disease that they spread to their loved ones. And took notes.

So what led this horror show of modern medicine? Aside from racism, it was a chance to watch a disease go unchecked. So, they recruited 600 black men based on what the doctors told them was “bad blood.” That’s right, for years, the doctors told these men they had bad blood and they were being treated for it. In reality, they were rotting away from syphilis for as long as 40 years (from 1932-1972). When a cure was finally discovered, the doctors refused to give it to the men. In fact, the doctors refused to even tell the men what their diagnosis or prognosis was aside from bad blood.

They even had a nurse who would spy on the men and keep other doctors who weren’t part of the Tuskegee Experiment from treating the men. Eventually, a whistle blower who found out about this in 1966 told people up the chain about this horrible experiment, and it was immediately put to a stop. Just kidding. Nobody up the chain did anything, and the suffering of the subjects was allowed to continue for several more years. Ultimately, a writer for the New York Times got the story and blew the lid off in 1972, and the Tuskegee Experiment was shut down within the month.

So, how many people in the experiment died from syphilis? How many spread the disease to their wives and children? How was this allowed to happen? What did Bill Clinton do to try and make things right? What did the victims of the experiment eventually get as a settlement for themselves and their children? What impact did the Tuskegee Experiment have on African American trust in the medical system? What did the government do in Guatemala that was even more evil? Listen, laugh, learn.

 

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we get all supernatural and look into the dark history and strange happening of the Waverly Hills Sanitarium in Kentucky. Considered one of the most haunted and terrifying places in America, the Waverly Hills Sanitarium started as a schoolhouse but expanded during a horrible Tuberculosis epidemic in the late 1800s.

Louisville, Kentucky had one of the highest death rates in the nation due to TB, and the hospital there was always overflowing. So, a committee formed and bought this school house to transform it to a state-of-the-art medical facility for the TB infected. Of course, the state had very little to do with art, since they mostly left patients outside to breathe fresh air or did horrible things like stick balloons in their lungs and inflate them and remove ribs (and probably kill them). TB was all but a death sentence at the time, and this place didn’t do much to keep anyone alive.

In fact, the estimates (though they range wildly) could be as high as 60,000 dead in Waverly Hills Sanitarium over the years before it shut down in the 1960s. Once it did shut down, it became a geriatric sanitarium where old people went to get tortured, and the place saw more death and suffering than maybe anywhere in the south.

And this leads to the haunting. After sitting empty for decades and changing hands, it finally found owners who wanted to let people tour and do supernatural investigations? Why? Because it’s spooky as hell! There are endless bumps and apparitions there, glowing orbs, shadow people in the hallways, phantom smells and sounds, lights that come on where there is no power, and all sorts of madness.

The prime time ghosts are a girl named Mary who plays with investigators, a boy who bounces a ball on the roof, and an old screaming woman with bloody wrists. Of course, this all leads us to a discussion of hauntings in general and what the cause of them are. So, if you want to hear things go bump in the night, this one is for you. Check it out!

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we look at arguably the best stand-up comedian who ever graced a stage, the legendary Richard Pryor. He paved the way for vulgar, race-charged jokes that nobody in the mainstream was doing. Without him, we’d have no Dave Chappell, no Chris Rock, and no Eddie Murphy. Jerry Seinfeld called Richard Pryor “the Picasso of our profession,” and it was well-deserved.

His background was something out of a serial killer’s life story. His mother Gertrude was a hooker, and his father was a bouncer, boxer, pimp, and tough. A young Richard Pryor witnessed his father beat his mother almost to death on many occasions. When his mom abandoned him at five years old, he moved in with his grandmother. Oh, and his grandmother ran the brothel that Pryor’s mom worked at! From drug abuse to bathroom abortions, a young Richard Pryor saw it all, and somehow, his defense mechanism was to make jokes about it all, even late in life.

Eventually, he got away from home after dropping out of high school, joined the army, and cut a guy. Like you do. He spent two years in the brig, and when he got out, he dedicated his life to entertainment. He started as an MC and piano player and was so funny that he was soon propelled to the life of a stand-up comedian, playing black clubs on the East coast. He started to gain some success and opened for Bobby Darin in Vegas, but he took a break to develop his own style (and hang out with Huey P. Newton and the Black Panthers). When he returned, he was an insightful, envelope-pushing comic who pioneered the use of the N-Word.

After that, he was a rocket. He released album after album, won Emmy awards for writing on various TV shows, won Grammies for his albums, and made some of the highest grossing comedies of his era. His hard life style took its toll, however, as he had a heart attack and eventually tried to kill himself (by dousing himself in Bacardi 151 while high on freebased cocaine and lighting himself on fire). It didn’t work, and even his horrible suicide attempt and drug abuse became the butt of his own jokes.

Eventually, he fell ill with MS and still managed to find humor in the hard to reach places. So, what did Dean Martin have to do with his comedic transformation? What ties did he have to the mob? How much cocaine did he do? Why did they fire him from the lead role in Blazing Saddles? What did Lorne Michaels have to do in order to get him on SNL? How did he die? Why does Quincy Jones think he had sex with Marlon Brando? Listen, laugh, learn.

Eddie Murphy, Cosby, Pryor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZlQaE4GDUY

Mafia Joke: Great impression, best Italian mock I’ve ever seen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3D6Qc6uByo

Great article on him: https://www.city-journal.org/html/richard-pryor-stand-philosopher-13173.html

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we do some more True Crime, but it’s back in time True Crime as we explore the massacre at Belcher Island. Belcher Island is an incredibly remote island in Canada—so remote that white folks didn’t set foot here until as late as 1914. In the winter of 1941, though, the population of migrant hunter/fisher Inuit families faced the harshest of weather conditions and apparently went a little crazy with religious fervor.

You see, the natives on Belcher Island had only recently been visited by Christian missionaries by 1941, and in the bleak, endless freeze of Northern nights, they would huddle in their igloos and read the poorly translated Bible that was given to them. Their own culture and spiritual beliefs didn’t really gel with the apocalyptic nature of the bible, so it really got into their heads. In fact, it led one man named Charley Ouyerack to proclaim he was the second coming of Jesus and that the best hunter on the island, a man named Peter Sala, was actually God Himself.

Somehow, the cold and the starvation and a very ill-timed meteor shower that seemed to fit biblical prophecy convinced the other hunter families that Ouyerack was right. This would just be a case of a bad, weird winter, but when one girl stood up to oppose this, she was bludgeoned to death in the snow. And when a man stood up against her murder, he was stabbed in the face with a harpoon and shot twice. After that, most people just drank the Kool Aid, joined the cult, and thought Jesus and God were among them.

More families came along, and after a few weeks of convincing them, Sala’s sister woke everyone up and drove them out of their shelters with a whip, telling them Jesus was coming down from heaven. Oh, and that he wanted to greet them all in the nude right there on Belcher Island. She and the other fanatics forced them to take their clothes off in the record breaking cold of the North, and several of them (mostly, sadly, children) froze to death.

So, how did the Mounties find out about this and come to investigate? What ghetto stuff did the cops have to do to get to Belcher Island at all? How many people died? What did the judge say about the three people who seemed responsible for this madness, and what sentence did they serve? How did we finally learn about this case when the natives are so private about it all? Listen, laugh, learn.

Nice Summary: http://jmortonmusings.blogspot.com/2014/03/when-god-and-satan-battled-in-barren.html

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we do some True Crime down under and talk about the disturbing case of Katherine Knight, violent murder and overall wackadoo! We structure this episode in a way where we reveal her big crazy crime at the end of the show, so if you want to have that shock ride with us, quit reading—spoilers ahead!

Katherine Knight was born to a violently dysfunctional family in Aberdeen, New South Wales in Australia (if it really exists…). Her life was tragic and horrible. Her father would rape her mother as much as ten times a day, and young Katherine herself suffered from rape at the hands of some of her brothers and step-brothers. Her mom’s response? Just “put up with it and stop complaining.” As a result of this home life, she was violent at school and a loner. Eventually, she dropped out, getting a job at a slaughter house where she would watch pigs get their throats slit while she was on lunch break—for fun.

She got promotions quickly, doing the jobs nobody else wanted, and learning skills that would come in handy later in her life. From there, she had a series of marriages and courtships with different blokes. Most relationships were bad. You know, like the man had to flee to a different town for fear of his own life, and she stalked them there taking people hostage at knife point across the Australian countryside kind of bad.

Katherine Knight got arrested for some of this, packed off to mental institution and sometimes left in as little as a day. Eventually, after a few arrests and several turns in mental houses, she met John Price. And this was the one. After some time of abuse (she stabbed him once, like you do), he eventually got a restraining order put on her, and the day he was in court, she planned her ultimate psycho night. In short, she had sex with him in new lingerie, then when he slept, stabbed him 37 times. After that, she skinned him, beheaded him, cooked him, took a ton of sleeping pills, and went night night next to his body. After plating up the dinner she fixed from his body, she left it on the dining room table with invitation cards for each of his kids to sit down and eat.

So, how bad was Katherine Knight during her earlier relationships? What advice did her own mom give to men who were marrying her? What did she do to her own daughter that got her locked up? How did she serve John Price, and did she eat any of him? What is she like now that she’s in prison? What record breaking sentence did she get from the courts? How did she keep getting away with all of her assaults and kidnappings? Listen, laugh, learn.

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we hit you with some true crime and talk about an alleged serial killer…wait. No, we don’t. We intended to, but we kind of f@(#d up and researched a guy we already did a show on. His name is Wayne Bertram Williams, and he is thought by some to be the Atlanta Child Killer. But, we already did him back on episode 167, and we were out of time, so we just sort of wing it instead and have an episode that we consider unplugged.

What's it like to be unplugged? Well, we talk about all kinds of stuff instead: Brent’s obsession with XXX El Yucateco. Dave’s obsession with popcorn at night. Brad’s obsession with children and the punching of them. After the dirty thirty, we visit a site that gives us random topics, and talk about the following (thanks to Brad’s dice rolling skills).

Gymnastics, the Olympics, monkey cats, barbers, pipe organs, camels, and camel toes. Which of us wanted to get involved in gymnastics as a youth? Which of us loves the Olympics and why? What’s the deal with the surge in barbers lately, and what is it truly like to get a haircut at a black barber shop? Who among us has played a pipe organ, and how do they work? Why are camels such majestic creatures, and which one of us doesn’t to see camel toes? You may think it’s just an hour of dickery, and you may be right. It is us unplugged at our very best.

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we get all supernatural and talk about the phenomenon of Black Eyed Children. They could be a Web-based urban legend; they could be real deal spooky dookie. Either way, they have the potential to chupacabra you when you’re trying to sleep!

So, what exactly are Black Eyed Children and what do they do? Well, since 1996, they have been reported on the net. You can find lots of descriptions of alleged encounters (I’m looking at you Reddit!) if you dig for them. The typical encounter has the following features. Someone is asleep late at night, typically during a storm. There is a loud knock at the door. Upon looking through the peep hole, they discover two children holding hands: one is typically around 16 and the other around 6 or 8 years old. The kids ask to come inside the house in a flat but sing-songy voice, and they often say that their parents are coming. Instead of wanting to help children in a storm in the middle of the night, people are filled with mistrust and terror—and that is all before the victims notice that kid's eyes are lightless black orbs or holes ripped in their faces.

When people refuse to let them in, the Black Eyed Children either repeat themselves or get pissed off. There is often trouble with the house’s power, and dogs and cats often freak out or die over the next few days. This was first reported on a ghost hunter forum back in 1998 by a man named Brian Bethel, two years after he encountered Black Eyed Children (they were outside of his car instead of his house, but that’s a common variation).

Since then, people have looked into the phenomenon, written books, made horror movies, all that you would expect. So, much like with alien abductions, the truth may be out there, but it’s hard to find. The more this spreads on the net, the greater the change for hoaxes or people who have scared themselves into thinking they had this experience. But there are a lot of stories out there, and some even end with the home owners letting them in. It’s not a good idea.

Give us a listen to find out why. You have some men in black that show up along the way as well. So, are the Black Eyed Children a hoax, an urban legend, a real thing? Why is there no photographic evidence? What health problems do the allegedly cause to people they come near? Why do they want to see Mortal Kombat at the theater? What powers do they have? How are they connected to Men in Black? Why can’t they come in without you letting them? Listen, laugh, learn.

Interview with Bethel: https://jimharold.com/can-we-come-in-the-lore-of-the-black-eyed-children-ryan-spragues-hidden-auditorium/

Drone Footage of  one in England: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za4nOvt99YE

Vermont Case: http://weekinweird.com/2016/01/28/witness-report-i-let-the-black-eyed-children-into-my-home-and-now-im-slowly-dying/