Sofa King Podcast

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the ultimate icon from the 1980’s, Mr. T. He was born Laurence Tero Tureaud and was the child of a preacher who abandoned him and his 11 siblings in housing projects in Chicago. But Mr. T went from welfare to army to bouncer to super star, all based on his bad attitude and his love for children. He definitely pitied some fools and inspired an entire generation to drink their milk and stay in school. Raised by a single mother, young Laurence was a superior athlete and set records in football and wrestling. He got into college on a football scholarship but was expelled for unknown reasons. He eventually joined the army and became the top cadet out of 6000. He became an MP and eventually mustered out to civilian life where he tried pro football but had to back out due to an injury. From there, he went back to the streets of Chicago as a bouncer. In just a few years, he got in over 200 fights at bars. Here, he saw a Mandingo warrior in a magazine and took their mohawk hair style. He also started to take the gold chains off of people who he had to kick out of bars, challenging them to come back and take them. They never did. And in the ultimate feat of bad attitude, he change his name from Laurence to Mr. T. This was because he wanted the respect his father and ancestors never did; he wanted everyone to call him mister. And they did. He gained fame as a bouncer and parlayed that into a career as a celebrity body guard watching professional boxers, singer, even Steve McQueen and Michael Jackson. Eventually, he landed a gig on some tough man contests on TV, and this got him discovered. He knocked a man out in 54 seconds on live TV, and Sylvester Stallone saw it and wanted him for Rocky III. Mr. T became Clubber Lane, and the line "I pity the fool" was born. From here, Mr. T’s star went super nova. He launched The A-Team which was a massive hit and starred in several other films and TV shows. He even started a children’s cartoon and launched a breakfast cereal. In spite of him being a terrifying man with a famous scowl and world class smack talk, he somehow became a champion of children. He released an album and a very strange video that told them to stay in school, take their vitamins, and say no to strangers. Eventually, he walked out of the lime light due to T-Cell Lymphoma, but once it was in  remission, he started taking smaller film and TV rolls again. He's got a few reality shows under his belt and a strange but amazing on-air friendship with Conan O'Brien. Now, he’s still a star, still has a bad attitude, and still pities the fool. Mr. T meets Gary Coleman: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x578pg8    

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we take on some true crime and conspiracy theories and look at the mass shooting of Las Vegas. On October 1, 2017, a gunman named Stephen Paddock allegedly opened fire on a crowd of 22,000 people. He killed dozens and wounded hundreds in what was the worst mass shooting in American history. He was able to wreak such destruction because he was on the 32nd story of the Mandalay Bay and had a perfect vantage point over an open-air concert 500 yards away. Well, at least that’s the official version. So, officially, Stephen Paddock was a retired real estate guy who had become a high stakes gambler in Vegas. He specialized in video poker and was known in the casinos and got comped rooms. After a year of spending over a million and a half dollars at the casinos, he started staking out concerts he could shoot. From Lollapalooza to a smaller open air festival, he scoped out venues and made plans that he never went through with. By September of 2017, however, this nut job was crazy enough to do it. He sent his girlfriend to the Philippines and wired her $150,000 dollars and spent several days taking a small arsenal into a pair of hotel suites. On the day of the shooting, a security guard was alerted to a door being left open and went to investigate near Paddock’s room. Paddock was drilling a metal bracket on his hotel door, so nobody could kick it in, and he opened fire through the door, hitting the security guard and firing on a repair man. From there, he broke his windows with a hammer and opened fire. The devastation was horrible. People were dying in droves and couldn’t even figure out where to take cover since they couldn’t find a gunman anywhere. It even took the cops several minutes to realize he was firing form the tower. But from here, problems come in. For one, his brother seemed to have said both positive and negative things about him. Second, the casino seemed to have covered up the shooting and called a private police hotline, not 911. This delayed responses. Then, there was the odd misfire of a cop moments after they barged into Paddock’s hotel room. YouTube videos seem to have audio that indicates there may have been more than one series of gunshots. And, the most extreme case of all, a CIA agent and an ex member of the White House both claimed Paddock was working with Islamic groups to help topple the Trump White House. At the end of the day, the FBI says they could find no motive for the shooting. Some witnesses claim the guy was a conspiracy theorist based on conversation. Others claim there was a second shooter. Whatever the truth, this maniac killed a lot of innocent people, and Vegas will never be the same. Interview with the security guard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7gj1FoRIfE Detailed timeline: https://www.businessinsider.com/timeline-shows-exactly-how-the-las-vegas-massacre-unfolded-2018-9#1013-pm-police-outside-realise-where-the-shots-are-coming-from-7 Politico Conspiracy: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/11/16/conspiracy-theory-las-vegas-shooting-dangerous-222576

On this 400th episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the largest invasion effort in all of human warfare, the "Day of Days," D-Day. On June 6th, 1944, the allied armies made a bold move to finally break Hitler’s Europe and establish a foothold on the continent as part of Operation Overlord. D-Day (also called Operation Neptune) took two years of planning, and what went into the effort is absolutely amazing. The scale of this battle, the lives lost, the missions flown, all of it boggles the modern mind since it is a type of warfare that no longer exists. Before the allies could invade, they had to do a lot of spy work to fool the Nazis into thinking that the invasion was coming somewhere else (the beaches of Pas de Calais) later in the summer (July instead of June). They did this with the help of a Spanish spy name Garbo as well as an inflatable fake American Army, and some James Bond type MI5 spy work getting rid of all the spies in London. The Brits came through again with their work code breaking at Bletchley Park with Alan Turing. Once this happened, the allies trained and also convinced the Germans they were training for totally different things. Eventually, the day arrived. There was a bout of weather so bad that Field Marshal Rommel left for Germany since nobody could attack in such a storm. But attack we did. General Eisenhower said we were a go, the next day a force of 3,000 troop transports, 2,500 small ships, and 500 major naval vessels headed across the British Channel. Roughly 160,00 troops from several nations made to Normandy beach that day, but it was far from easy. Several beaches were attacked, each with its own code name. Utah and Omaha were American, and Juno, Gold, and Sword were Canadian. Omaha was the worst, and 2000 died within hours. The invasion was ultimately a success, but a hard won success. The bombers missed a lot of their targets, making the beaches more robust than anyone thought. The storms sank a lot of US tanks before they could get to shore. The 101st Airborne was scattered all over the place, and even sea sickness hindered a lot of troops. This was the greatest day of the Greatest Generation, one reflected in song and film and TV shows. The men who died on that beach were truly heroes in a world where such things are lacking. Please take the time to watch these short videos as survivors tell their accounts of this monstrous day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP_Xdc6Oj90 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilbf0Q56pf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCv5qCyO8uM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1HaaPRG3jk    

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we go back to Viking days and look at the life of one of their most important conquerors, Ivar the Boneless. Ivar was made popular by his fictional portrayal in the TV show Vikings, but he was a real guy back in the 9th century. His claim to fame? Conquering all of England with a Great Heathen Army. Oh, and spoiler alert: even though we don’t talk about the TV show directly very much (though Brad throws out a major spoiler about a death in the show), the history we discuss will ruin things about the show. So, be warned. Ivar the Boneless is an interesting figure from history, not just because he conquered all of England, but because finding the facts through the fiction is difficult. Much of what we know about him today came from Sagas, Viking epic poems whose job was entertainment more than accuracy. Sifting through the tall tales for the truth can prove difficult. Even the truth behind his name is a mystery. Some legends say he was deformed and had gristle for bones. Others say it was a curse as predicted by his mother the witch, Aslaug. Some even think he suffered from gigantism or earned the name because he had no sexual appetite. Regardless of why he's called that, what we know for sure is that he was a tactical genius. His small band of Vikings fought in battle after battle, and they won against all odds in foreign territory. His father, Ragnar Lothbrook was killed by a king in England, and many thing that Ivar’s entire war in England was simply a revenge battle. Others think he was too tempered and tactical for such a purely emotional response, but either way, the way he killed the king who supposedly murdered Ragnar was especially brutal. So, how close is the TV show to the supposed reality? What are the differences between the sagas and the facts we know? How did he a kill another British king in such an awful way that the man became a religious martyr? How long did it take Ivar the Boneless to conquer all of England, and why did he want land when all other Vikings before him only wanted loot? What happened when he finally conquered everything all the way to Scotland? How did he finally die, and why do archaeologists think he was disemboweled in spite of the historical accounts? Listen, laugh, learn.  

In this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we travel back in time and look at the life and legend of the ultimate symbol of the Old West: Wild Bill Hickok. Born James Butler Hickok, he took the name William from his brother when he joined the army (well, one of the three times he joined an army…). He was the son of a strong abolitionist against slavery, and historians think his childhood home was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Wild Bill was allegedly a prodigy with a pistol. Even as a child, everyone in town marveled at his marksmanship. When he was 18 years old, he got in fight with a guy who he thought he killed (but didn’t) and headed West to escape punishment. What he found out West was fame and a life that grew to be quite legendary. First, he took jobs. Lots and lots of jobs. So many jobs. He started as a member of a militia called the Jayhawks, where he became friends with Buffalo Bill Cody. From there, he became a homesteader, a rider on the pony express, a constable, a stagecoach driver, an actor, an entertainer, a sheriff, a marshal, a vagrant, and a gambler. Though probably not accurate, he was said to have killed 100 men. Oh, and the idea of a cowboy in the town square having a duel with pistols at noon? Wild Bill was the first to do that with a man named Davis Tutt. Wild Bill shot him through the heart at 75 yards. Hickok became famous when a shootout he was involved in made it into national papers and magazines; although he may not have killed anyone, the nation was told he killed 10 men by himself. He was a spy in the Civil War, a scout for General Custer, and he even put on a Buffalo Show in Niagara Falls before Buffalo Bill was doing such a thing. As his health and his eyesight faded, he quit being a law man and gun slinger and turned to gambling. His fame was fading, and so was his fortune, but he met Calamity Jane and his good friend Charlie Utter and settled down in the lawless town of Deadwood. There, he met his fate at the hands of a coward who shot him the back of the head because Wild Bill beat him at cards(and bought him breakfast). This was the origin of Aces and Eights being called the Dead Man’s Hand, as it still is today. So, how wild was Wild Bill? Why did he move to a new town and new job just about every year of his adult life? How many people did he gun down in his first month as a sheriff? What was the outcome when he got in a fight with a bear? Listen, laugh, learn.

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we step away from our usual show pattern and give you a good old fashioned bonus episode. If you want a regular episode, skip this one and go one episode ahead or back. There, you’ll hear us research and topic and spit facts at you as well as horrible off topic jokes and conversational cul-de-sacs. On this one, however, we give you a bonus episode. No research. No plan, just the fellas shooting it over some whiskey. What do we talk about? * The multi-podcast mini-meet-up in LA last weekend and the madness that ensued there. * Us eating treats mailed to us from South Africa by friend of the show Nicole Smit-Bosch. * A lot of theorizing about what it would take to make Brent into a professional man-whore and how much money he could make if he took the plunge. And I mean, we talk about this a LOT. * Drinking tea and why Dave hates it.(Except for Japanese Mikawaya Shoten Gyokuro Matsu Premium Konacha Green Tea,  and Lupicia's Paradise Green) * Dreams about poo and jobs in which we were asked to clean up someone else’s (to various degrees of success). Oh, and if you love this Bonus Episode or our regular episodes, do us two favors. First, go and support us on Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/sofakingpodcast Second, go and get some El Yucateco Hot Sauce and show the love!

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we do a little True Crime and talk about Australia’s Snowtown Murders. They are also called the Bodies in Barrels Murders for reasons that will become obvious. These killings all took place in the 1990s, and unlike your typical serial killer, this was a group of serial killers. The number was 3, 4, or 5 depending on who you consider a killer (and if you subtract the one that the rest of them killed…). So, why did this group of people start to murder folks? Well, they said in interviews after their arrest that they hated homosexuals and pedophiles, but in truth, they were mostly just out to get their kicks, torture folks, and cash in on their welfare checks. The leader of this group was named John Bunting. His partners in crime were Robert Wagner, Jamie Vlassakis, and Mark Hadon. Bunting was the one who ticked all the serial killer boxes, and it seemed he found some roommates who were easy to manipulate, so they all did it together. The team killed people they knew, which is sort of a serial killer no-no. People who lived nearby, ex-lovers, current wives, relatives, they were all on the table. Ironically, since they killed homosexuals, they also killed Robert Wagner’s homosexual lover but never targeted Wagner himself. Figure that one out. The typical mode of killing in the Snowtown Murders was bludgeoning to death or strangulation, but only after torture. They shocked testicles, crushed toes with pliers, and even stuck a metal sparkler up a man’s penis hole. Twice. They descended to worse and worse killings until they were eventually even trying to eat parts of the victims’ flesh. Somehow, they killed all these people they knew and kept getting away with it, until they finally killed Mark Hadon’s wife, Elizabeth Hadon. When she died, her brother started asking questions that lead the police to the trail and ended the Snowtown Murders. Where did the trail end up? An abandoned bank that Hadon rented in Snowtown. What did their trail yield? Barrels full of chopped up bodies. Why did one of the killers get away with no murder charges? What sentence did their ring leader get in the Snowtown Murders? Who was the killer in their group that they killed, and why did they kill him? How many people did they murder? Listen, laugh, learn. Youtube Video (Australian Jack Black) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeHL0bQVIfU An article about what one of the killer’s children saw: https://www.mamamia.com.au/robert-wagner-snowtown/  

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we look at the first recorded incident of the CIA overthrowing a foreign government during peace time. I was called Operation Ajax (aka Operation Boot for the British side of the coup), and it helped to eliminate the rightfully elected government of Iran in the 1950s. It is said to be the single biggest factor in the ongoing instability of the Middle East, and it all points to two things—big oil and the cold war against the USSR. The background here was that a British oil magnate William D’Arcy held the full rights to the massive oil reserves and refinery that he discovered and built in Iran. For decades, he treated the local workers like slaves, kept all the profits he promised to share, and refused to train local workers to drill for their own oil as promised. This group eventually became BP, and when politics got unstable after World War One, they tightened their grip and staged a pre-coup there to put their own man, Reza Shah Pahlavi, in control of the country. A couple decades later, the financially poor Iranians were fed up with British control over their most precious resource. A man named Mohammad Mosaddegh became the prime minster and nationalized all of Iran’s oil, taking it out of British hands. There was a lot of sabre rattling and a huge embargo, but Iran held fast. However, a communist group was slowly gaining power under Mosaddegh’s rule, and the 1950s CIA said no to this, lest the Soviets would gain one of the richest oil areas in the world. So, they did their thing and flipped the government. A man named Kermit Roosevelt Jr. (yes, the president’s grandson) was sent by the CIA to fix this and head up Operation Ajax. He was guerilla style spy from WWII using SOE style tactics. He took Iran by storm. He manipulated the national media, got the Shah to make formal royal decrees on his behalf, propped a new general in position to take the country, and then paid lots of thugs to run rampant in the street, killing, looting, and destroying. How did he pull it all off? What effect did the street mobs have on the national attitude? Why did Mosaddegh finally surrender? What happened when the CIA told Roosevelt the abort Operation Ajax? What did the CIA learn from this coup that they could use later on? Listen, laugh, learn. Great Article: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/operation-ajax Official Documents: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/  

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about one of the most famous cases of domestic terrorism in the USA: the 1996 Olympic Bombing.  The date was July 27, and the concert in the Centennial Olympic Park was going full speed. Then, just before midnight, a call came in to police saying a bomb was going to detonate in the concert in a half hour. Eighteen minutes later, the triple pipe bomb exploded. One person was killed, and over 100 were wounded. However, the damage was not as bad as it could have been in the Olympic Bombing. A security guard named Richard Jewell found the bomb, called several law enforcement agencies, and got people evacuated. They say without his swift action, many more deaths would have happened that night. He was repaid for his heroism by being the primary suspect in the FBI investigation! Meanwhile, the real bomber, Eric Rudolph got away and planed several more bombings. He blew up two abortion clinics and a lesbian bar, killing one more and injuring others. Why did he do all this? Well for one, he was a wackadoo. He was part of a "Christian Identity" movement that reinterprets the Bible in line with their white power teaching. Second, he wrote rambling letters blaming abortion, the US Government, and the homosexual agenda for ruining the world. Solution? Blow up an Olympic after party? Good call. The really interesting part of this was that after he was identified as the architect of all four bombings, he evaded law enforcement for years by living the rough Appalachian Mountains on his own in full survival mode. The FBI kept pressure on him with regular patrols because they figured it would keep it on the run and unable to bomb again. They were right. When Rudolph was busted doing a dumpster dive for food, he confessed to several caches of dynamite (250 pounds!) near where the FBI was headquartered. If you’re into true crime, survivalism, White Power lunatics, and the madness that was the 1990s, this one is for you! Oh, and did I mention that his gay brother cut off his own hand with a radial saw to prove a point to the FBI? FBI Statement on The Bomber: https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/eric-rudolph  

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we travel back in time to World War Two and study a pretty cool artifact of the Great Britain: the Special Operations Executive. Known as the “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” and the “Baker Street Irregulars,” the SOE was an "officially unofficial" group of spies and soldiers who had two mandates against the Nazis. Mandate one was to wage guerrilla warfare inside of all occupied territories and help form internal resistance. Mandate two was to spread anti German propaganda and get the locals to hate their Nazi overlords. According to Winston Churchill himself, the SOE needed to go forth and “set Europe Ablaze!” They did all of this quite well. The SOE was formed in July of 1940, when the Minister of Economic Warfare merged three different intelligence branches into one. Once formalized, they started to recruit and train people who other groups didn’t want. They took convicts, homosexuals, people with bad conduct records in the armed forces, Communists, and people who were Anti-British. On top of that, they took women. Lots of women. They didn’t just let the women serve as nurses or something so mundane; they had women doing the most important jobs from combat missions to key intelligence broadcasts behind enemy lines. So what kind of shenanigans did the SEO get up to? How about Operation Anthropoid, where they assassinated the man responsible for the final solution against the Jewish people? Or Operation Harling, where they crippled Nazi supply lines through all of Greece and North Africa with just a handful of agents? They were instrumental on securing victory on D-Day by crippling an entire Panzer division. They destroyed the heavy water facility in the Netherlands, preventing the Nazis from ever developing the Bomb. They even crippled the largest, most dangerous ship in the entire war, the Tripitz. How did they do all this? With crazy gadgets made just for them, improvised weaponry, and no fear of death or capture. They even carried suicide pills. Whether you prefer your Matt Damon to be John Bourne or Saving Private Ryan, this one has it for you… Article on SOE Women: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/05/21/special-agents-the-women-of-soe/ Article about some of their missions: https://allthatsinteresting.com/special-operations-executive-missions

This episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast is a bonus episode. If you want our regular stuff, you know, where we research and talk about important things that you all voted for, skip ahead or go back an episode. In this one, we talk about whatever pops into our heads. To be honest, I'm really tired and can't really remember what we talked about. I remember it was awesome. It was awesome and funny. You know who else is awesome and funny? Norm McDonald. So, here are some of his jokes: --And the reason I don't like it is 'cause in the old days, they'd go, 'Hey, that old man died.' Now, they go, 'Hey, he lost his battle.' That's no way to end your life, you know? What a loser that guy was. Last thing he did was lose. --He has the disease of alcoholism. And he came to me... and he told me, and I'm the kind of guy that likes to look at the bright side of things. So I told him, I said, 'Richie, it's true that you have a disease and everything, but I think you got the best one.' --They say that if you're afraid of homosexuals, it means that deep down inside you're actually a homosexual yourself. That worries me because I'm afraid of dogs. Go support us on Patreon and get cool stuff in the mail from us. Or don't. Just listen and laugh a little bit.

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we hit the land down under and talk about the joint US/Australia secret base known as Pine Gap. It is considered the Area 51 of Australia. It is involved in everything from Cold War spying to modern big data mining and UFO sightings. Edward Snowden said it was the backbone of American information gathering for most of the planet, and it seems he was right about that one. From Europe to Asia and Russia to Africa and all of the Pacific, this base listens and snoops on everything from satellites to cell phones. Pine Gap started as a way for the US to track Soviet ballistic tests in the 1960s. Construction started on this innocuous base in 1966 and completed in the early 70s. It lies about 11 miles outside of the city of Alice Springs, a large population center. The staff is comprised of half Americans (many are CIA) and half Australians. As technology and the global threats changed, so too did the charge and charter for Pine Gap. Eventually, it went from Soviet missiles to spy satellites, and now it is a major global drone hub for the US as well a monitoring station for project Echelon. Many Australians opposed this base because it has been the spearhead of many drone strikes that have killed civilians. Others worry that it is allowing the Aussie and Yankee government to spy on the population of Australia. There were even famous “Peace Pilgrims” who snuck past perimeter fences to protest with song. Like you do. But the strangest things is, as always, the UFOS. Reports of strange sightings in the 70s and 80s gave Pine Gap a strange mystique. What went down? Well, on two separate occasions, some hunters and then some police officers reported a massive camouflaged hanger  door opening near Pine Gap and strange disks and “bathtub” like craft silently floating out and hovering above Pine Gap before streaking off at unthinkable speeds. Multiple witnesses (including some who may have worked at the facility) reported strange craft that were shining beams of light onto the grounds and then getting beams of light reflected off of their hulls, until they started to spin at rapid speeds and zipped off into the night sky. There is even a tale that involves witnesses in an aircraft being approached by kind of lame Australian Men in Black. So, whether you are interested in more terrestrial spying or ET flying, this episode is for you.

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we travel back in time and look at the Spanish Flu of 1918. This 15 month pandemic was the worst in history. It killed more people than the Black Plague and AIDS. It killed more people than every war in the 20th century combined—in just over a year! Estimates say that a third of the world’s population caught this bug, and it killed upwards of 100 Million people worldwide, all in the back drop of World War One. The Spanish Flu earned its name not because it started in Spain (it simply affected the King of Spain who was neutral during WWI). In fact, most experts today think it started in a pig farm in Kansas and jumped from pig to bird to human and spread to the nearby Army base and out from there. The Flu was not the typical influenza we think of today. Indeed, within two hours, it would give someone pneumonia. A few hours later, it would make them turn blue due to lack of oxygen. A few hours after that, they’d drown in their own fluids and die. It affected healthy males ages 20-40 the most, which is the opposite of how a typical flu operates. So, how did the flu get so deadly? Mutation. It’s what happens when it jumps through various species. How did it spread in the perfect storm, globally? First, WWI. Trench warfare, ships full of soldiers locked in with each other, and the stresses of being a soldier exacerbated it. But that wasn’t all. The biggest problem came from President Woodrow Wilson. He created the Committee on Public Information and Sedition Act, which combined to make it a crime with a 20 year sentence to say anything that would undermine the morale and effectiveness of the US during war time. This made newspapers lie and say the flu was safe. Public health directors, newspaper editors, and even doctors were forced to tell people everything was fine, and their city had a typical flu. Of course these lies led to a radical spread of the Spanish Flu through America and then the rest of the world. It got so bad that railroads shut down. Families wouldn’t even visit or help each other because they were so afraid of dying just a few hours after symptoms started. Children through the nation starved to death because their parents were dead, and everyone was scared to come help and risk infection. San Francisco created a shoot on sight policy for anyone not wearing a mask in public. The Spanish Flu was about as bad as a pandemic could get. The final take away from all of our research is that every health official in the world thinks this can and will happen again, and it might even be worse next time. Give this one a listen if you want to sleep uneasily at night! Smithsonian’s Excellent Article: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-year-180965222/

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we take a look at some true crime by delving not into a serial killer but a serial kidnapper. Her name was Georgia Tann. She ran an adoption racket in the 1920s through 1940s. She kidnapped, stole, abducted, and faked the death of over 5000 children while she ran the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. She took from the poor and gave to the rich, for a hefty price tag. She sold kids for $5000 a pop, to people like the governor of New York and the actress Joan Crawford. She even sold the baby Rick Flair of professional wresting fame to his adoptive parents. So how did Georgia Tan pull all of this off? First, she insulated herself with powerful, evil people who were in it for a buck. She used the political powerhouse E.H. “Boss” Crump who ran Memphis. She also used the juvenile court judge Camille Kelley. Between the two of them, cops were made to look the other way, suing parents were silenced by a corrupt version of the law, and Georgia Tann was never put on any investigator’s radar. Her methods were pretty sick. Sometimes, she’d take the newborn of a single mother to a hospital under the guise of being a social worker who can get free medical attention. The baby would be reported dead days later and be sold to some other family. She had doctors and nurses who would claim the baby died in the night to new mothers and fathers, and off the baby went. She’d even straight up kidnap older kids from the street and tell them their parents died and move them to her orphanage until they could be sold. She molested some of the girls under her care. Hundreds of children died from lack of health care and even malnutrition. Others were sold as slave labor to large farms, and some were little girls sold to suspected pedophiles. Eventually, Georgia Tann died of cancer (that I hope was very painful) before anyone could bring her to justice. Her legacy is one of misery, death, and destroyed families. But how did the classic TV show Unsolved Mysteries help some families? How did she meet her lesbian lover? Even though she passed the bar exam, what kept her from becoming a lawyer? What did her newspaper ads say that she used to sell the babies? What was the one positive social change that this monster accidentally brought about? Listen, laugh, learn.

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we look at the ongoing water crisis of what is perhaps the most troubled city in America, Flint, Michigan. Flint has a productive history as the headquarters of GM. It was once called Vehicle City and was part of the boom in automobiles that made Detroit and the surrounding area known as The Motor City. Quite simply, Flint was part of Henry Ford's legacy. It was a city of high wages and sound living…until GM moved its plant. The once prosperous city fell on hard times and roughly half of the 200,000 people living there ended up bailing in order to find work. The years that followed were filled with decay, unemployment, and crime, and just when things were at their worst, they got, well, even worse! The Governor of Michigan gave a special group powers that superseded the government of Flint, and they ended up trying to do everything they could to save money and make the city solvent again. One thing they did was switch where they got the city’s water from. Instead of a plant in Detroit, they used an old and inadequate water treatment facility inside of Flint and used water from the notoriously toxic Flint River. Citizens were upset at this decision, but then when the water started flowing, things were worse than they thought. The water through the city was brown and filled with everything from lead to E.coli to Legionnaire’s Disease! The problem is, the water facility didn’t anti  corrosion chemicals. This means the PH level of the water was pulling lead and rust from the pipes of the 100 year old city, and poisoning the water. Lead levels in children doubled, all sorts of novel diseases and ailments showed up. This is all bad enough, but the way it was treated by the Flint managing government was horrible. They lied to the populace and told them the water was fine (all the while paying for bottled water for city employees). The water was so bad that GM even had to lay new pipe to get back to the Detroit water because their machinery was getting ruined by the Flint River water. So, is the water clean all these years later? How much would it have cost the city to add anti corrosive chemicals and avert this problem? Where does Nestle come in to play? What’s up with the Army’s live ammo tests in the abandoned parts of the city? Listen, laugh, learn.