Three dilettantes open a cabinet of curiosities to learn about the fascinating, beautiful, and disturbing.

Tracy Powell Tracy Powell

E17: This Is The Story of Three Girls - The Brontës Part 3

Part three of our series brings us to the end of the story of the Brontë family. Branwell spirals out of control, while Charlotte, Emily, and Anne secretly work on their poems and novels. Will our three heroines finally publish their works, become famous and rich, and live happily ever after?

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Tracy Powell Tracy Powell

E15: This Is The Story of Three Girls - The Brontës Part 1

This episode traces the lives of Patrick and Maria Brontë, mother and father to authors Charlotte, Emily, and Anne (and to Maria Jr., Elizabeth, and Branwell). How did this young family of 8 end up in Haworth Parsonge, on the wild Yorkshire Moors?

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Tracy Powell Tracy Powell

E14: Spygate

Tracy takes Jen and Dave into her own sports fandom and the byzantine world of Formula 1. In 2007, a disgruntled Ferrari employee is alleged to have circulated a dossier of top secret technical information to rival McLaren. It then gets strange.

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Tracy Powell Tracy Powell

E13: The Time Everything on the Earth Died

Dave takes The Wonderkamer in a new direction and tackles stories of paleontology. Two hundred fifty-one million years ago, the world was an extremely different place as strange creatures walked out of the swamps onto dry land for the first time. These critters were our ancestors and they ruled the Earth far before the dinosaurs. This is the story of their time on Earth - and their great doom.

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Tracy Powell Tracy Powell

E12: Thomas Browne: Renaissance Mythbuster

Seventeenth-century author Sir Thomas Browne was a true Renaissance man: a doctor, a scholar, a scientist, and… a mythbuster! In this episode, Jen will delve into Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Browne’s 1646 compendium debunking hundreds of ancient legends, myths, and old wives’ tales.

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Tracy Powell Tracy Powell

E10: Citroën Expeditions - Part 1

Tracy reveals her passion for automotive history as we learn about the Citroën expeditions. In this first part, French automaker André Citroën commissions La Croisière Noire, the first expedition cross the entirety of Africa by car.

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Tracy Powell Tracy Powell

E9: VTubers Part 3: The Culture Wars

In the final part of the VTubers series, Dave steps away from the exploitation of talent by their employers, and instead examines pressures from the fans and media. When VTuber companies or talents try to stay apolitical, they may find themselves stepping into politics anyways. Here we explore the lewdtuber agency VAllure, the controversies of Pipkin Pippa, and the highway robbery of ninety-dollar coffee.

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Tracy Powell Tracy Powell

E8: VTubers Part 2: The Fall of Vshojo

Part 2 of our series of VTubers explores the rise and fall of the American "talent first" agency Vshojo. And how one of the most promising businesses in the scene resorted to robbing a charity to stay afloat.

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Tracy Powell Tracy Powell

E7: Vtubers Part 1: The Black Corpos

Dave begins his descent into madness as he explores the enormous world of vtubers, the multi-billion dollar industry of video game streamers who use animated avatars. In part one, he explores the black corpos, the unethical corporations employing vtubers and their many scandals.

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Tracy Powell Tracy Powell

E6: The Kurt Cobain Tragical History Tour, Pt. 2

Jen explores the life of rock start Kurt Cobain by taking a psychogeographical journey into the heart of Washington State. Part 2 continues on to Olympia, WA and (after a detour to Los Angeles) ends where we began, in Seattle.

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Tracy Powell Tracy Powell

E3: The Many Failures of Sir Humphrey Gilbert

Although Walter Raleigh is famous for founding the first permanent settlement in North America, history has largely forgotten his half-brother who was a genius, a fool, a bloodthirsty psychopath, and perhaps the worst explorer in Canadian history.

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Tracy Powell Tracy Powell

E2: The Punished Dilettante

Jen tries her best to gross out Dave and Tracy with bizarre tales of the preservation of human body parts for “educational” (?) purposes. Please note that you might not want to be eating while you listen to this one.

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Tracy Powell Tracy Powell

E1: The Mad Trapper of Rat River

In 1931 several RCMP officer responded to a complaint in the Northwest Territories. A man probably called Albert Johnson had been hanging another man’s traps. What followed is the greatest manhunt in Canadian history.

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