We’re only a few centuries into the era of detective work. 19th century criminologists like Eugene Vidocq invented modern forensic techniques, standardized criminal databases, and the basic approach that underpins police investigations to this day. You would think this revolutionary shift would make our lives less spooky. But what if we told you history is full of mysteries that received diligent investigations, only to turn up stranger scarier questions?On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by writers/comedians/history mystery superfans Jenny Jaffe and Carey O’Donnell to rediscover history’s strangest disappearances, murders, and more. They’ll explore all kinds of baffling tales that confounded professional investigators from the past through today. And stick around for some plain ol' fun new theories on these old cases.Footnotes: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/10-creepy-unsolved-mysteries-from-history/

The Cracked Podcast

10 Creepy Unsolved Mysteries From History

We’re fresh off ‘Green Book’ achieving its dream Oscar night (CONGRATULATIONS you made-up Hero Dad Story you!!!). But this week’s episode is about EVERY Oscars ceremony. Why? Because the Oscars dictate most of your movie-watching year: October-December = “good movies”, January-February = “failed attempts at good movies”, summertime = “movies seeking the big green Oscar better known as MONEY.” So we asked ourselves a question. We asked what might happen if the Oscars stopped dictating that schedule? And what if they stopped dictating it because the Oscars stopped happening at all, freeing up all of pop culture to function differently (and maybe function better)?On this week’s episode of The Cracked Podcast, please enjoy the oracular brilliance and Hollywood wisdom of comedians/podcasters Caitlin Gill, Dan Hopper, Amy Nicholson, and Danielle Radford, who joined Alex Schmidt for this LIVE episode from the UCB Sunset Theatre in Los Angeles. They’ll dig into the biggest possible pop culture thought experiment: what would happen if the Oscars went away.Footnotes: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/what-would-happen-if-oscars-went-away/

What Would Happen If The Oscars Went Away?

The most successful people in the world are SO EXCITED to call themselves that. Hard-charging, in-leaning, unstoppable titans of industry want everyone to know it. One of their favorite brags: never sleeping more than a few hours a night. Is that actually a cool thing? Should all of us let ourselves get talked into that lifestyle? And are a bunch of our daily habits that kind of smart-seeming bad health trap?On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt sits down with Jason Pargin (who writes for the site as David Wong). They want you to hang in there, friend. If there’s one takeaway from today’s episode (and there are so many more than just one!) it’s that you oughta receive all the healthy support you can get from others and from yourself. Other takeaways: an immense range of fascinating facts about our bodies, our culture, and the war they’re in at all times if we’re not careful.Footnotes: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/5-mainstream-health-habits-that-trick-you-into-feeling-lousy/

5 Mainstream Health Habits That Trick You Into Feeling Lousy

History is the most prolific screenwriter of all time. Thanks to the magic of Events Happening In Real Life, pop culture has graced us with everything from ‘Braveheart’ to ‘On The Basis Of Sex'. Those hit biopics about real people form a sort of Humanity Hall Of Fame. What if we told you there are an endless number of incredible real people who belong in that hall, and could make Hollywood fat stacks of cash in the process, if somebody would only put them on screen?On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by writers/podcasters/all-around hilarious people Dave Schilling and Andrew Ti. They’ll take a trip down historical memory lane, and look into the most fascinating stories of right now, to find every amazing biopic Hollywood should have already made (and still can make). Get to know the most incredible war hero and U.S. Senator nobody talks about, the first female Presidential candidate, the Forrest Gump of relationships with modern terrible men, and more epic real people with Oscar potential.Footnotes: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/7-incredible-biopics-hollywood-shouldve-made-by-now/

7 Incredible Biopics Hollywood Should've Made By Now

“The book is better than the movie.” It’s a belief as old as...well, not as old as time, because books are centuries old and movies hit their stride when ‘Star Wars’ came out. Still, lots of people think movies ruin books. Many people also think there are one or two times when the movie outdid the book, in a weird exception-to-the-rule type situation. But what if we told you a better movie happens often? And what if there are cases where it was so obvious, to everyone involved, the book’s author said so? In public and everything?On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by working writers Zack Bornstein (Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Kimmel Live, The New Yorker) and Hallie Cantor (Lady Dynamite, Arrested Development, The New Yorker) for a trip through the heads of novelists who saw their work torn apart on screen and realized it was for the best. Get excited to see Stephen King, Anne Rice, Philip K. Dick, and more great writers experience the joy of collaboration with Hollywood, in spite of the conventional wisdom we’re all told in English class.Footnotes: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/9-movies-that-improved-book-according-to-author/

9 Movies That Improved On The Book (According To The Author)

“Social atomization” is a term that sounds like science fiction. It could be the title of a 1950s B-movie where a mad scientist vaporizes a dance party. But when sociologists use that term, “social atomization” is a complementary set of shifts you might have noticed lately: more loneliness, less societal trust, and an increasing feeling that nobody’s got your back. What does it mean if that’s happening to all of us? How can that happen without anybody intending it? And can that impact everything from your personal health to your national government?On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt sits down with Jason Pargin (who writes for the site as David Wong). They’ll explore why prior generations with rampant crime (!), Richard Nixon (!!), and the music of disco (!!!) feel better off and more cohesive than we do today. We’ll also take one step back and look at the awful reasons why some people are talking about this in the first place. And if we all stick together and trust each other, we might see a few ways out of this predicament.Footnotes: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/how-loneliness-epidemic-snuck-up-us-with-jason-pargin/

How A Loneliness Epidemic Snuck Up On Us (with Jason Pargin)

We are fresh off the longest government shutdown in American history (with another around the corner, maybe!). We are also riding almost a decade of of sustained stock market growth, almost a decade of sustained job growth, and all kinds of other business-y news you heard about. And when those stories crossed your cable TV screen or Twitter feed, did you have any idea what they meant? And if so...c’mon, are you sure you’ve got all the context?On this week’s episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt sits down with Kai Ryssdal, the host of ‘Marketplace’ and the world heavyweight champion of that exact economic context you need. They’ll dig into how just one missed federal worker paycheck (let alone two!) ripples through the global economy for a long time. They’ll examine ways you can better understand what a stock market swing or jobs number actually means. Also stick around for valuable heads-ups on which chairpersons, directors, and CEOs tend to be extremely important indicators of our economic future, even though most people pay them no attention.Footnotes: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/how-to-be-less-confused-about-economy-with-kai-ryssdal[TIMELY UPDATE: on Friday afternoon the U.S. government re-opened temporarily. Details here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/us/politics/trump-shutdown-deal.html We will describe the shutdown as a present-tense thing in this episode because, as we’ll say early on, we taped this episode right before the government re-opened. Also we taped with that possibility in mind, so all our facts about the shutdown are accurate and are long-term focused.]

How To Be Less Confused About The Economy (with Kai Ryssdal)

You’ve probably heard jokes about lawyers before. Here’s a more advanced version, coming from future Chief Justice Of The U.S. Supreme Court John Roberts in April of 1983: “The generally accepted notion that the court can only hear roughly 150 cases each term gives the same sense of reassurance as the adjournment of the court in July, when we know the Constitution is safe for the summer.” We know, we know, it’s not exactly a kickass one-liner. But what if it is getting at something true about the U.S. Supreme Court’s overwhelming power? What if our whole Constitution can vanish because five out of nine Justices get a little too active? And what if Chief Justice Roberts is a perfect example of the inconsistent, insensitive, inscrutable jurists who’ve hamstrung American democracy for centuries...all without most people noticing?On this week’s episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by Ian Millhiser, author of the book ‘Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted’. They’ll re-discover the forgotten SCOTUS decisions that endorsed everything from racism to sexism to wildly villainous child labor. They’ll explore the complicated make-up of today’s Court, with a view to how its faults could destroy it. And great news: they’ll celebrate the rare past SCOTUS that got a whole lot of things right, and look at how that golden era could happen all over again.Footnotes: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/why-terrible-u.s.-supreme-court-historical-norm

Why A Terrible U.S. Supreme Court Is The Historical Norm

The name “science fiction” is a pretty good descriptor of the genre, if you want to think of it as two big buckets for a writer to fill. Bucket 1: science! Fun tech and gizmos to entertain and inspire. Bucket 2: fiction! Narrative and story and other engaging ideas that make us laugh, cry, and consider what it means to be human. It’s amazing that one genre can bring us all that. But have you ever noticed some sci-fi does an incredible job of the “fi” part -- and thanks to that brilliant “fi”, we let a lot of weird “sci” whoosh right past us?On this week’s episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by Dan Hopper (Cracked) and Moujan Zolfaghari (Mission To Zyxx) for a trip down memory lane, into the future, where everybody WISHES they had tech half as great as WiFi. They’ll examine everything from ‘Minority Report’ to ‘Blade Runner’ to all generations of ‘Star Trek’, finding gizmo after gizmo that’s lower-tech than what we have in real life, and dig into why sci-fi stories where things are supposed to be more advanced than today ignore the actual ways technology advances.Footnotes: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/12-sci-fi-movie-technologies-that-went-stupidly-backwards/

12 Sci-Fi Movie Technologies That Went Stupidly Backwards

How well do you read Latin? Because if you’re not all that good at reading Latin or other dead languages, good news: you could have still had a job as an 1800s historian. Fun example: there’s a story claiming the Roman emperor Caligula was SO CRAZY, he sent a whole army to a beach to pick up seashells for him. However, the Latin word ‘musculi’ means both “shells” and “military huts”, so he likely actually told his troops to pack up their campsite. Which is normal. That’s a completely different kind of emperor, right? And here’s a fun thing: your pop cultural understanding of the Roman Empire is approximately that far off of the truth, in a lot of fascinating ways.On this week’s episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by Siobhan Thompson (CollegeHumor, BBC America) and Patrick Wyman (Tides Of History, ‘Jeopardy!’) for a trip through the inaccurate lies you’ve been fed about the ancient Romans, and also the much more interesting true things you never knew about them. Get your head straight about everything from mighty gladiators to ancient fast food to the stunning economic benefits of living near a former Roman road.Footnotes: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/overrated-myths-and-underrated-facts-about-ancient-rome/

Overrated Myths (And Underrated Facts) About Ancient Rome

Enormous gratitude this week! New episode next week. And in the meantime, here are some of our recent favorite episodes of the show: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/happy-new-year-and-thank-you21-from-cracked-podcast/Also did you know we’re going on tour in 2019? It’s true! See us LIVE in Chicago, Illinois on Thursday April 11th and in St. Paul, Minnesota on Friday April 12th.CHICAGO TICKETS: http://bit.ly/crackedchicagoST. PAUL TICKETS: http://bit.ly/crackedstpaul

Happy New Year (And Thank You!)

“No bad ideas in a brainstorm.” That’s a common saying that implies a darker truth: as soon as an idea leaves a brainstorm’s cocoon, and gets put into practice, it can metamorphose into a living, breathing disaster. After all, who knows how your theoretical idea would actually work? How can we put any idea into practice without testing it on millions of people first? And surprise -- sudden mental left turn here -- what if we already had a way to test all kinds of ideas, see how great they really are, and then easily make your life better by implementing them?On this week’s episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by Adam Tod Brown (Unpopular Opinion) and Nick Wiger (Doughboys) for a worldwide brainstorming session. They’ll consider all kinds of real ideas, tested by real countries, that could upgrade life in America if we just had the courage to borrow them. The year’s almost over, so throw on some headphones and find out how copying the best laws from Sweden, Cuba, Taiwan and more places could be our first and best decision of 2019.Footnotes: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/12-great-ideas-america-should-steal-from-other-countries/

12 Great Ideas America Should Steal From Other Countries

You’re holding a couple hundred billion transistors right now. Yes, you. You with the smartphone in your hand. That’s possible because -- surprise -- transistors are only a few nanometers in size now. A size so small, that description means nothing to you, right? Well here’s something: what if transistors and all other things we engineer are only going to get smaller from here? And what if that entire process began a shockingly short time ago, in a specific place, and changed the entire world faster than anybody realized it was happening?On this week’s episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by author Simon Winchester. His latest book is ‘The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created The Modern World’, and he & Alex will explore exactly that. They’ll also get into why 1776 should be famous for more than the American Revolution, why Eli Whitney should be famous for being a con man, how the Hubble Space Telescope got itself contact lenses, and more shocking tales of precision changing the entire world overnight.Footnotes: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/how-few-precision-engineers-invented-your-entire-life/

How A Few Precision Engineers Invented Your Entire Life

Space: it’s the final frontier AND somehow the least popular frontier. A couple decades of successful shuttle launches passed unnoticed. A slew of orbital science experiments didn’t excite anybody. Even the Space Race wasn’t the nation-gripping drama we decided it was retroactively. Why isn’t space travel capturing more imaginations? Why aren’t people more stoked about it? And would it help if we did a rad podcast episode about the most kickass exploits in all of space history?On this week’s episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by ‘American Dad’ writer, Cracked legend, and prince of all our hearts Soren Bowie for a celebration of outer space heroics. They’ll dig into the death-defying (and sometimes, death-receiving) bravery that’s driven decades of space exploration, even though only a few of those bold explorers became famous in the aftermath. Plus, enjoy a special bonus story of how the very best of us went out into the universe in the form of a space probe.Footnotes: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/13-badass-astronaut-cosmonaut-stories-everyone-should-hear/

13 Badass Astronaut & Cosmonaut Stories Everyone Should Hear

Here’s some common sense: the more complicated a machine gets, the more ways it can break down and fall apart. That applies to everything from cars to kids’ toys to Hollywood, and that last thing (Hollywood) is this principle’s most fun application. Because what happens to your favorite movie if any step of the process goes differently? Is it even still that thing you like if it has different writing/casting/directing/editing/releasing/endless continuing list of these things?On this week’s episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by podcasting titan Matt Gourley for a deep dive into all the ways our favorite franchises could’ve come together completely differently. From James Bond to Star Wars to even bigger pop cultural touchstones than those (!), they’ll discover how close we came to not even recognizing the movies, TV shows, and other entertainments closest to our hearts.Footnotes: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/11-pop-culture-alternate-histories-that-almost-happened

11 Pop Culture Alternate Histories That Almost Happened

The Cracked Podcast is facts, jokes, and more from the Internet’s leading comedy website. Every week, host Alex Schmidt brings together comedians, authors, scientists, and Cracked staffers, to celebrate the awesome truth that being alive is more interesting than people think it is. Fill your week and your brain with hilarious, mind-blowing revelations that’ll make you the most interesting person in every room you’re in.Looking for the archives? All episodes older than 6 months can be found exclusively on Stitcher Premium, ad-free. Go to stitcher.com/premium and use promo code EARWOLF for 1 month free (and $5 off the annual plan!)

hubhopper

The Cracked Podcast

hubhopper