While the United States was panicking about the secret communist conspiracy, the Soviet Union was in the middle of its…
Jack Johnson was so good at boxing that he scared an entire generation of racists. White authorities chose to make an example of him with one of America’s most infamous laws.
Our first episode about South America gives us a very different perspective on the American fight against Communism. Was promoting America’s interests in the Cold War really worth propping up a brutal dictatorship? And why did the international attempt to bring Pinochet to justice involve British Law Lords, a fake case of dementia, and a law that gave Spain carte blanche to prosecute all crimes against humanity… except for the ones that happened in Spain?
Get your flags and your bibles, we’re hunting Communists. The Red Menace could be lurking anywhere: in your unions, in your movies, maybe even in the very halls of Congress.
Take a tour around the swamp with America’s favorite rascal. Florida Man’s always making headlines for punching alligators, stealing meat, and fighting cops in the buff. But does Florida really deserve its reputation as the weirdest state in the union? And is our nation’s most beloved rapscallion the villain of our story, or is he the victim of a legal system that accidentally created a media monster?
Meet the man who used his artistic talents to resist Nazi occupation, then planned an elaborate scheme to destroy a public records building by posing as a German official. In the occupied Netherlands, a group of artists fought the law with typography and tailoring. Why did Willem Arondeus go from a little-known WII resistance fighter to a hit with Tumblr teens, and what can his story teach us about resisting fascism today?
Was Mao Zedong’s fourth wife one of history’s most brutal criminals, or was she a scapegoat for a country that needed to preserve the image of its founding father? The answer is complicated, tragic, and involves a surprising amount of high-stakes theater criticism.
China’s last emperor ended up becoming one of history’s strangest political pawns, and ended his life as an avowed communist. How did a man born into unimaginable wealth end up penning a memoir about the evils of the landlord class? And was his disavowal of his privileged upbringing genuine, or was he the victim of a justice system that perfected the art of brainwashing prisoners?
Meet Harry Allen, the sporty gentleman who scandalized Seattle by wooing ladies, biting cops, and making sure to give his side of the story to the press. Harry left an extraordinary legacy in the public record: He was a transgender man who talked directly to newspapers about his gender identity. But was he really the incorrigible hoodlum the papers made him out to be, or was he forced to the margins of society by police harassment?
This week, we explore a hapless revolutionary group’s failed attempts to start the Communist revolution with pachinko ball bombs, a one-way flight to North Korea, and random attacks on civilians. Why did a group of Japanese students end up deciding that the best way to kick-start the revolution was getting involved in a war in the middle east? And how does an idealistic young student end up believing that mass murder is morally justified?