Dan Cummins Podcasts

I had a lot of fun on this one taking a nostalgic look at US culture in 1989 and 1993. Also found the story of Lyle and Erik Menendez incredibly interesting. Why did two brothers viciously murder their parents with shotguns in the summer of 1989? Erik was about to enroll in UCLA. Lyle was attending Princeton. Their parents spoiled them with money f…

Levi Boone Helm. The Kentucky Cannibal. Born in 1828 in Kentucky, and hanged in Montana Territory in 1864, this guy was mayhem on legs. He spent nearly his entire adult life fighting, robbing, killing, and running from the law. He killed at least 18 men in various shootouts and other violent encounters. He ended up stuck way out in the woods on num…

Aum Shinrikyo was a Japanese doomsday cult led by psychotic madman Shoko Asahara, a man who claimed to be Jesus who was nicknamed the Japanese Charles Manson. He was actually a much more dangerous cult leader than Manson was. He pulled tens of thousands into his dark insanity, instead of just a handful. He had thousands of followers willing to help…

Who put the rock-a-bye-baby up in the tree branch, and why? Seems irresponsible. When it was raining and pouring, why didn't the old man get out of bed after bumping his head? Did he die? What is Ring Around the Rosie really about? The bubonic plague? Why are we singing to small children about cutting the tails off of three blind mice? Who wrote al…

Happy Halloween! This episode feels appropriately dark enough for Halloween week. French serial killer Marcel Petiot was an evil genius. A master manipulator. And the greatest scam artist we've covered here so far. He likely lied his way into a medical degree. He ended up working at a psychiatric hospital when he was supposed to be a patient. He co…

The Oregon Trail was 2,100 plus mile journey from Independence, Missouri all the way to Oregon City, Oregon. And along this trail and its offshoots, between 1841 and 1869, somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 travelers headed West, motivated by the philosophy of Manifest Destiny and the hope for economic prosperity. The Homestead Act and the Monro…

Oh boy. This is an especially weird one. Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. In the summer of 1965, John C. Lilly, a medic and neuroscientist, and his assistant Margaret Howe, a young lady who just happened to live nearby, would set up a partially-flooded house on St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, where Margaret would spend nearly t…

Today we head to The Rock, America's Devil Island - Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. So much prison-related info and history to go over today! I'll share the history of Alcatraz Island - how it was discovered by a Spanish explorer, then went from a lighthouse and US military fort, to a US military prison, to the end of the line for the most unruly pr…

William Bonin is a little known serial killer who died via lethal injection in 1996 in San Quentin, after sitting on California's death row for over a decade. Surprising that he isn't more well known considering how shocking his crimes were. He was only active as a serial killer for a year, from May of 1979 to June of 1980, but he would be convicte…

I'm guessing you know of the Jehovah's Witnesses. You've heard of them. Maybe you've noticed their "Kingdom Halls." Maybe they've knocked on your door. But - do you really know anything about them? Before this week, I didn't. Now that I do, I will NEVER look at them the same way again. The Jehovah's may not live on a compound, but, in my opinion th…

Lonnie David Franklin Jr. was but one of the numerous prolific serial killers preying on sex workers in South Central Los Angeles in the 1980s. And then after possibly going to "sleep" during the 1990s, he started killing again in the first decade of the 2000's. The Grim Sleeper preyed almost exclusively on black, female, crack-addicted sex workers…

Robin Williams knew how to make people feel deeply. He could give you a belly laugh - or a cathartic cry. He knew how to entertain you in a way that only he could. He seemingly had so much energy it's like he vibrated around instead of walking like the rest of us. His mind seemed to move so FAST. And then his brilliant mind betrayed him. Or, rather…

Let's get royal, Meatsacks! Born a minor aristocrat, Diana Spencer grew up to become one of the most famous people of all time. For years, she was the most photographed person in all of England if not the entire world. The tabloids adored her. Why? She appeared to be the real-life version of possibly the most popular fantasy ever - the fabled princ…

Oh boy. Did you know that some people think that Avril Lavigne, Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Eminem, some guy named Donald Marshall, and many other celebrities have been cloned? There are conspiracies revolving around underground cloning centers created and run by illuminati global elites who sometimes kill celebrities who don't follow orders and then …

Mark Twitchell really wanted to become a serial killer. In 2008, after discovering the Showtime series, Dexter, it had become his latest obsession. The aspiring filmmaker felt like he related to Dexter Morgan, the methodical serial killer so good at continually covering his tracks. Mark thought he was just as clever as Dexter, and would be able to …

A very recent Christian militant cult, the Aggressive Christianity Mission Training Corps was founded in the late 1970s by married couple Lila and Jim Green. Lila would later change her name to Deborah, after the biblical prophetess of the God of the Israelites and the only female judge mentioned in the Bible. And she ruled her cult with an iron fi…

Lot to unpack in this one! Today we are blending history, aliens, and conspiracy. We'll be talking about the Ancient Sumerians - quite possibly the world's first civilization. Who were they and what "firsts" did they contribute to human civilization? Why did their culture flourish so long ago? We'll go over one of the oldest, if not the oldest writ…

Remember Jodi Arias? Remember why her trial back in 2013 captivated so many and made so many headlines? I'd forgotten. But I sure remember now. Most people have either dated someone like Jodi, or known someone who has, or... been that person. The girl who just doesn't seem to understand the difference between someone just wanting to hook up with he…

This guy. Killing mainly in 1929 when he was 46, the final year of his freedom, Peter Kürten would be charged with nine brutal murders and seven attempted murders in 1930, and then executed 1931. Over the course of his depraved life, he'd be sent to prison over and over, for theft, breaking and entering, fraud, army desertion, arson, rape, and then…

So much WTF!?! coming at you today. Wow. Dwight York is a maniac. And a terrible writer. And only a good disco/r&b vocalist if you compare him to other cult leaders who also have dabbled in music. But somehow this two-bit con man strung together around two hundred pamphlets full of his very confusing and constantly changing theology, or "factology"…

Operation Greenup was a covert OSS operation carried out by a special group of men many have called the “real life Inglorious Basterds,” a reference to the 2009 Quentin Tarantino film in which a group of US Jewish soldiers plot to assassinate high-up Nazi leaders. Two Jewish refugees living in Brooklyn - Frederick Mayer and Hans Wynberg, and Franz …

My God. This story is so over-the-top, it's hard to accept as true. But sadly, it did happen. For roughly two decades, Fred and Rose West were the patriarch and matriarch of torture, sadism, incest, and death at their horrific British home at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester, England. Both Fred and Rose were raised in preposterously incestuous home…

Hope you have as fun listening to this one as I had making it! I had no idea prior to digging into this topic, that Lovecraft was so influential on modern horror. Like Stranger Things? Heavily influenced by Lovecraft. Like Stephen King's It? The cosmic monster who presents as Pennywise is a creature who could have come directly from the Cthulhu myt…

Big episode for a big, complex topic today. PT Barnum has been called the The Greatest Showman on Earth. And he certainly was the most famous promoter of the 19th century. He brought entertainment to millions, and millions loved him for it. He also stirred up a fair amount of controversy and many in the modern day have not looked back kindly on him…

The Great Pyramid of Giza. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Colossus of Rhodes. The Lighthouse of Alexandria. The Temple of Artemis. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. These are just SOME of the wonders we go over today. Get ready to want to explore the world. We are so surrounded by so many impressive man-made monuments.…