i am not making this up podcast – Tracy S. Morris

 All Carlos Hurd wanted was to take a vacation.  But when he boarded the Carpathia for Italy with his wife, Katherine, the reporter and his wife were put on the path to the most Titanic scoop in Carlos’s life.

In the 18th century, the English took conspicuous consumption to a whole new level when they hired actual old men to live in their gardens as ornamental hermits.

Lots of kids talk about running away to join the circus or become pirates. But few actually do it. However in 1716, one boy did. His name as John King, and he was around ten years old.

Let's talk a little about Edwin Booth. People don’t remember the other two Booth brothers. John Wilkes Booth casts a long shadow. And when they do, it’s because Edwin once rescued Robert Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s son, from being crushed by a train. There’s a certain neatness in the symmetry of that. One brother saves a son, while the other murders a father. But there was a time when Edwin’s name outshone his more infamous brother. There was a time when, by the right word or the right action, Edwin might have put his brother on a different path.

Until you saw the musical Hamilton, You probably got the impression that the founding fathers all got along and always knew exactly what they were doing. That's because people like to tell stories.

If you don’t have a lot of patience to listen to the audio, it says that starting next week, I’ll be producing the I Am Not Making This Up podcast twice a month instead of only once.  From now on, look for it on the first and third Monday of every month.  

Like Michael Bay with a beard. Imagine if that massive solar flare that scientists worry about actually hits Earth and wipes out all electronics.  What if in 2,000 years time, the only record we have of WWII (or that WWII even happened) is the massively lucrative yet historically inaccurate film Pearl Harbor, directed by Michael Bay? Believe it or not, something like this already happened to humanity once.  That’s because one of the few records we have of some pretty major events that happened in classical antiquity come to us from a historian named Herodotus. Some people call Herodotus the father of history, because he’s the first person who tried to investigate and record history the way it actually happened, rather than as a really good “no !@#$, there Achilles was” story.  But others call Herodotus “the father of slanders,” because he didn’t let a lack of facts stop him from writing his historical accounts.  Not when he could make stuff up.

If you think politics now is strange, we have nothing on the ancient Catholic Church. At one point, a sitting pope put a former pope on trial. It went a little like the Monty Python dead parrot sketch.

If one of your party guests has a reputation for eating anything, perhaps you shouldn't pass him a prized family heirloom. Especially if it's the mummified heart of a famous King.

Next time someone mentions the plight of the Olympic athlete, remember that it's not that bad. They could be forced to run a marathon through a cloud of dust while wearing cutoff shorts, having cramps & being chased by dogs while their trainers try to poison them.

Herbert Cope and his fishing partner Dudge Collins knew they had a big catch in their fishing trap.  Maybe some kind of Muskie or Catfish.  But when they hauled it in, they never expected a 5 foot long shark. They were after all, in Illinois.  Research links: Sharks In Illinois The Strangest Shark Story Ever

My short story, The Hobos, The Devil and James Dean’s Car is featured over at the pulp magazine Crimson Streets. You can read it here. In honor of the publication, I’m podcasting an abridged version of the article that inspired the story.  If you’d like to read the longer article, you can do so here. Or if you only have 5 minutes to spare, you can listen now.   Edited with BlogPad Pro

During the Industrial Revolution, nearly everything could kill you. You could catch the flu from your big, drafty manor house, catch illness from your unpasteurized milk, or poison yourself wearing an arsenic green silk dress..