Timesuck with Dan Cummins

By Dan Cummins

Society & Culture Education Comedy

What's Timesuck with Dan Cummins about?

Each week, Dan Cummins enthusiastically deep dives into everything from cults to killers to conspiracies, absurdly and sarcastically sharing the best of what he uncovers with you. Join the Cult of the Curious!

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377 - The Murdaugh Murders:...

12.04.2023

I finally look into what all the hype about the Murdaugh family murders is about. And the hype... is justified. I provide a summary of the Murdaugh's history of power and influence in South Carolina's Low Country and how a ...

Timesuck with Dan Cummins episodes:

12.04.2023 377 - The Murdaugh Murders: Rise and Fall of a Low Country Dynasty I finally look into what all the hype about the Murdaugh family murders is about. And the hype... is justified. I provide a summary of the Murdaugh's history of power and influence in South Carolina's Low Country and how a ...
11.27.2023 376 - Debunking The World's Most Dangerous Conspiracy: The Protocols Want to know where a lot of the core ideas from the many conspiracies that revolve around the idea the a small, secretive cabal of wealthy Jews control the world and want to enslave and destroy humanity come from? Some ...
11.20.2023 375 - The Cleveland Kidnappings: Tremont's House of Horrors On the evening of May 6th, 2013, in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, three enduring mysteries were shockingly solved. Three missing Cleveland women, Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina Dejesus - all long presumed dead - were found to ...
11.13.2023 374 - The Duggar's Dark Secrets You probably are pretty familiar with the Duggar family, from TLC's hit show 19 and Counting. But do you know about the sexual abuse they hid for years? And do you know about the organization, often called a dangerous cult, ...
11.06.2023 373 - The Chicago Tylenol Murders Who decided to add cyanide to a bunch of bottles of Tylenol in the Chicago area in 1982? A couple of real shifty, odd suspects emerged in an investigation that lasted decades.
10.30.2023 372 - Gilles de Rais: Medieval Monster or Witch-Hunt Victim? Headed to 15th century to explore the life of a man who may have been the wealthiest noble in all of France at one point, and commander of France's military - Gilles de Rais. Was this contemporary of Joan of ...
10.23.2023 371 - The School of The Prophets Cult Killings The true story behind the Hulu true crime mini-series, Under the Banner of Heaven. How did the "revelations" of a group of FLDS "prophets" lead to the murder of a young Mormon wife and her baby?
10.16.2023 370 - The Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro's Communist Tranformation When Fidel Castro took over Cuba in 1959, he deposed a dictator. And then the man who promised democracy turned into a dictator himself, and turned Cuba communist. Did he also make Cuba better than it was before? Or worse?
10.09.2023 369 - Larry Hall: Serial Killer or "Wannabe"? Is Larry Hall, currently incarcerated in federal prison on a charge of kidnapping for the purposes of sexual gratification, one of America's most prolific serial killers? Or a serial confessor to murder? A, as some local police who initially interrogated ...
10.02.2023 368 - The Korean War: First Shots of the Cold War How much do you know about "The Forgotten War" as the Korean War - technically a UN Police Action - is often called? Sandwiched between WW2 and Vietnam, it's never gotten the attention it's deserved. So let's give it some!
09.25.2023 367 - The Bloody Briley Brothers Have you heard of the Briley Brothers? Three young brothers, and a teenage neighbor, went on a vicious murder, robbery, and rape spree in Richmond, Virginia in 1979. And then two of the brothers later planned a historic death row ...
09.18.2023 366 - Black Holes and the Nature of the Universe! My favorite episode in months. One that I'm hoping the most curious of the cult of the curious will truly enjoy. Today, we look at the very nature of our existence, how we came to our current theoretical understanding of ...
09.11.2023 365 - The Trailside Killer Between August of 1979, and May of 1981, convicted serial rapist David Carpenter escalated to murdering his rape victims, and he killed at least seven young women, and likely several other victims. He also killed the fiancé of one victim ...
09.04.2023 364 - The Mystery of the Great Library of Ancient Alexandria Did the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria truly set humanity's progress back 1,000 years? Or is that total speculation? What was stored in what was supposedly the greatest library of the ancient world? What happened to all that ...
08.28.2023 363 - NATLFED: Communist Cult Hiding in America Did you ever consider that a non-religious, volunteer organization dedicated to helping the poor gain food, housing, legal aid, etc... could also be part of an abusive Communist Cult? The strange, concerning story of NATLFED today.
08.21.2023 362 - Watergate: When Faith in American Politics Was Destroyed On August 9th, 1974, Richard Milhous Nixon, the 37th President of the United States of America, while serving his second term (after winning in a landslide), became the first and still only American leader to resign from office. Why? In ...
08.14.2023 361 - The UK's Jeffrey Dahmer: Dennis Nilsen Scottish serial killer Dennis Nilsen isn't known nearly as well in the United States as he is in the UK, but that isn't because his story isn't darkly fascinating. Nilsen's crimes were as... strange as they were brutal. Telling an ...
08.07.2023 360 - The Lynching of Emmett Till I never learned the story of how the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in rural Mississippi is what kicked off the Civil Rights movement in America. His tragic death inspired Rosa Parks to not give up her seat on the ...
07.31.2023 359 - William Shakespeare (Billy Shakes?) What do we known about William Shakespeare the man? And why are his works still popular today? Who was Billy Shakes? We dive into the legacy of the English language's most important author this week, learn a lot about the ...
07.24.2023 358 - The Mysterious Disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 On March 8th, 2014, 227 passengers boarded Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, taking off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at 12:41 a.m., destined to arrive in Beijing, China at 6:30 a.m. Not only did the flight never land in Beijing, it never ...
07.17.2023 357 - Whitey Bulger: How the FBI Built a Mob Boss Fascinating look into how Whitey Bulger rose to power in Boston's underworld in the 70's and 80's, with not only the FBI's protection, but also their direct help.
07.10.2023 356 - Jerry Brudos: The Shoe Fetish Slayer We got a weird one today! Wow. Jerry Brudos was a serial killer who became completely consumed with sexual fantasies revolving around women's shoes - specifically high heels - and women's undergarments. He wanted women he could control - to ...
07.03.2023 355 - Witchcraft! Today we do a deep dive on the history of witchcraft. What is witchcraft? How does it differ from organized religion? Why did burning witches ever become a thing, and do witch hunts still occur in the modern world? Why ...
06.26.2023 354 - The Redemption Experiment of Serial Killer Jack Unterweger In the Spring of 1990, when Jack Unterweger was released from prison in Austria after serving fifteen years for strangling an eighteen year-old to death with her own bra (amongst numerous other crimes), many of Austria's literary elite were convinced ...
06.19.2023 353 - The Crusades From 1095 to 1291 CE, thousands and thousands of knights, peasants, nobles, soldiers, and more left Europe for the Holy Land around Jerusalem to take land and power away from Muslims, and into Christian hands. Was the motivation for their ...
06.12.2023 352 - R. Kelly's Sex Cult Did R. Kelly truly have a sex cult? And was the R&B legend overly punished when he was sent to prison for 31 years? Or, was he not punished enough for the length and severity of his many crimes against ...
06.05.2023 351 - Pizza Bomber: The Mysterious Death of Brian Wells On August 28, 2003, a 46 year-old pizza delivery man named Brian Douglas Wells robbed a PNC Bank near his hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, with a bomb locked to his body at his neck. After the bomb detonated a few ...
05.29.2023 350 - The Hillside Stranglers Between October 1977 and February 1978, with a nickname originating from the fact that many of the victims' bodies were discovered in the hills surrounding the city, the Hillside Stranglers terrorized the Los Angeles greater metro area, raping and strangling ...
05.22.2023 349 - The 1928 Banana Massacre Did you know that American banana corporations turned almost all of Central America into US satellite states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for roughly half-a-century? It took the massacre of thousands of unarmed, exploited, and striking Columbian ...
05.15.2023 348 - The Fountain Cult We've covered a lot Los Angeles area cults from the 1960s and 70s, but as it turns out, there were cults in LA long before that. Lots and lots of cults. Today's topic, the WKFL Fountain of the World Cult, ...
05.08.2023 347 - The Lonely Hearts Killers In the late 1940s, troubled lovers Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, ran a scam using dating services commonly known as Lonely Hearts Clubs to con and kill women. Their trial became the most sensationalized of the decade.
05.01.2023 346 - The 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens On May 18, 1980, at 8:32 AM local time, a major explosive eruption took place at a volcano in southwest Washington State. After months of earthquakes and smaller eruptions, Mt. St. Helens exploded. Over 1,000 feet of mountain was gone ...
04.24.2023 345 - The Prospect Killer: Terry Blair Was Terry Blair destined to become a killer? His mother, brother, sister, and two nephews - all from the Prospect Avenue area of Kansas City - are also convicted killers. Numerous other relatives are in prison for violent crimes. Can ...
04.17.2023 344 - Bible Belt Strangler/Redhead Murders A look today into a series of unsolved murders of woman whose bodies were primarily found along I-40 in the southeastern US in the 1980s - murders sometimes collectively referred to as the Redhead murders. And a look into the ...
04.10.2023 343 - The Irish Mob Today we dig into the origins and the history of America's Irish Mob, beginning centuries ago in Ireland fighting oppressive rule, then moving to America in the mid-19th century to escape the Great Famine and anti-Irish discrimination, a rise in ...
04.03.2023 342 - The Kirtland Cult Killings and Jeffrey Lundgren: 2 of 2 The conclusion of the the craziest cult story I had never heard of. This week, things, incredibly, get even weirder and darker than last week. Mass murder. More sexual debauchery. More twisted visions. More scat play. And then it all ...
03.27.2023 341 - The Kirtland Cult Killings and Jeffrey Lundgren: 1 of 2 The craziest cult story I had never heard of. Jeffrey Lundgren was a cult leader and a mass leader before being caught, imprisoned, and executed. What a wild ride he had before it all came to an end. Twisted sexual ...
03.20.2023 340 - The Skull and Bones aka The Brotherhood of Death Is the infamous Skull and Bones Yale University secret society nothing more than a networking organization for some of the school's brightest minds? Or some New World Order recruiting station connected to the mythical Illuminati?
03.13.2023 339 - The Death Angels Why did members of a secretive group within a Nation of Islam Mosque known as Death Angels (called the Zebra Killers by law enforcement) start killing men and women of all ages in San Francisco in late 1973? A wild ...
03.06.2023 338 - Three Mile Island Nuclear Disaster In late March of 1979, Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island Unit 2 nuclear reactor DID partially meltdown. But the result of that killed no one. However, the media coverage did nearly kill America's nuclear power industry. Was that reaction justified?
02.27.2023 337 - Heist! The $600 Million Gardner Museum Robbery In 1990, two men disguised as Boston police officers entered the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and stole over $600 MILLION worth of historic art. Who were they? How did they do it? Where are they now and more!
02.20.2023 336 - The Night Witches The dramatic, action-packed tale of three regiments of Russian female aviators in WW2 - one of which who would earn the nickname of Night Witches - dropping bombs on Nazis and shooting them out of the skies of Europe in ...
02.13.2023 335 - Leopold and Loeb: The Perfect Murder Why did two young, wealthy, academically gifted Chicagoans with seemingly incredibly bright futures ahead of them, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, seemingly randomly kill Loeb's second-cousin, 14 year-old Bobby Franks, on May 21st, 1924? And why did the crime make ...
02.06.2023 334 - The Tiananmen Square Massacre and Protests Today we learn about the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. What did protestors want? Why did the Chinese government violently end the protest? And who was the guy who stood in front of that tank? We look into all ...
01.30.2023 333 - The Sullivanians: Therapy Sex Cult In the 1960s, a strange new cult emerged in Manhattan's Upper West Side out of the Sullivan Institute. A cult created not from twisting religious teachings, but from manipulating psychoanalytical theory. The end was result was the same as ever ...
01.23.2023 332 - Patrick Kearney: The Trash Bag Killer This week we investigate the life and crimes of one of the Freeway Killers. Patrick Kearney, the Trash Bag Killer, was convicted for 21 murders, confessed to 32, and is suspected of up to 43 killings of both boys and ...
01.16.2023 331 - Julius Caesar: Roman Daddy Dictator Who was Julius Caesar and what was the state of Rome when he lived there? We examine this and more in today's historical and biographical examination of one of the most memorable men of all time.
01.09.2023 330 - Amanda Knox and the Murder of Meredith Kercher What do you think you know about Amanda Knox? Do you think she was a sex-crazed party girl who got away with the murder of Meredith Kercher in Italy in 2007? That's what I thought before I dug into the ...
01.02.2023 329 - Dungeons and Dragons: Satanic Tool or Harmless Game? Dungeons and Dragons has long been associated with the occult? Is that association really fair? Where that association comes from and the history of D&D is what we're exploring today!
12.26.2022 328 - The Inspiration of Helen Keller and the 2022 Bad Magic Year End Wrap We take a look this week at the incredibly inspirational life of Helen Keller. She accomplished SO much despite completely losing her sight and ability to hear at the age of just 19 months. We also take a look back ...

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