Today's True Weird Stuff - Flat Earth City
Wilbur Glenn Voliva was a self-proclaimed prophet, flat-earth crusader, and autocratic ruler of Zion, Illinois. This fiery preacher took over John Alexander Dowie’s religious utopia in the early 1900s, ruling with an iron fist, Volivabanning everything from whistling to reading newspapers on Sundays. But his most infamous crusade was against science itself: Voliva loudly declared that the Earth was flat, even offering thousands of dollars to anyone who could prove it was round.
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The Littlest Survivor
Today's True Weird Stuff - The Littlest Survivor
In 1846, the Donner Party set out westward seeking new land and opportunity, but their journey turned into a nightmare when they became trapped by snow in the unforgiving Sierra Nevada. Starvation, freezing temperatures, and impossible choices claimed the lives of many members of the Donner Party. Eliza Donner Houghton, the youngest survivor and among the last to be rescued, witnessed the loss of both parents and bore witness to fear, desperation, and horrors no child should endure.
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A Demon Named Bob
Today's True Weird Stuff - A Demon Named Bob
In 1878, a quiet town in Nova Scotia became the stage for one of the most chilling hauntings in North American history. After a near-death experience, a young woman named Esther Cox began to suffer strange attacks — unseen forces that scratched messages into walls, set fires, and hurled objects through the air. Was she the victim of a violent haunting, or the center of a psychological storm misunderstood by her time?
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Liar, Liar, Plants on Fire
Today's True Weird Stuff - Liar, Liar, Plants on Fire
In 1966, Cleve Backster, an interrogation specialist for the CIA, claimed to have discovered something shocking: plants seemed to respond to human thoughts and emotions. He came to this conclusion by hooking up plants to a polygraph machine to measure their response. His controversial experiments with polygraphs suggested that living things might share a hidden form of communication, and sparked a wave of fascination and skepticism that still lingers today.
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The Terrordome
Today/s True Weird Stuff - The Terrordome
Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia became notorious for unethical medical experiments conducted on inmates from the 1950s through the 1970s. Prisoners, many of them poor and Black, were lured into participating with small payments; doctors also lied to prisoners about the risks. Under dermatologist Albert Kligman, inmates were exposed to chemicals, viruses, asbestos, and other toxic chemicals that caused lifelong physical and psychological damage. The horrors of this institution are why Holmesburg Prison was given the nickname, "The Terrordome."
True Weird Stuff is the award-winning podcast hosted by Sheri Lynch. Surprising, odd, bizarre - and sometimes insane. Always true. Let us tell you a story…
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