Sofa King Podcast

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we take a look at an infamous case of Cannibalism, the crash of Uruguayan Flight 751. In October of 1972, a plane crashed carrying 40 passengers and 5 crew. As the plane bounced off the side of the mountain, it lost its wing, then it’s tail, then it’s other wing. All the while, people fill out and littered the snowy mountain side. Much like the Donner Party, after several weeks, they were out of food and lost on a glacier. Over two horrible months, they resorted to cannibalism and had no hope of rescue. The scene: October 13th, 1972. An amateur rugby club from Uruguay headed to Santiago, Chile to play a match. They rented an air force plane to take them there, and they had extra seats, so friends and family could come along. The co-pilot was put in charge of the flight, and he got lost in the fog and reported the wrong position. He crashed. While he was trying to pull up and avoid the mountain that suddenly emerged from the fog, it was too late. Uruguayan Flight 751

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the creation of South Park and the many movies, awards, and plays of Trey Parker and Matt Stone. From trying to show Mohamed on TV in spite of death threats (5 times…) to going in drag on acid to the Academy Awards, these two push every boundary they can. And somehow, they manage to make a show that has become a touchstone of global popular culture. In fact, they make the show in as little as four days, usually sending it over satellite the night it is due to air. Love them or hate them, their vulgar humor somehow manages to wow critics who credit them for their intuitive ability to say exactly what needs to be said in any given moment. The creators of South Park are Trey Parker and Matt Stone. They met in college at the University of Colorado, and though Trey had already pioneered his cut out animation style on previous projects, the two of them kept using it in small pieces they rolled out on VHS. In fact, one of these, called Jesus Vs. S

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we go back in time to World War Two and look at the outstanding story of the 761st Tank Battalion. Known as the Black Panthers (no, not those Black Panthers), they were the first ever all black tank battalion. They met with racism and even a race riot during training the states, but they won a Medal of Honor, 11 Silver Stars, and just under 300 Purple Hearts. This group was created to help get more troops in tanks, but rules at the times said that African Americans couldn’t integrate with white troops. So, the 761st was created to be led by white officers but have no white soldiers serving on the front lines with them. They trained Louisiana where the baseball legend Jackie Robinson got in trouble for refusing to get to the back of a bus while he was in the battalion. Their training went so well, and they had such high marks that General Patton wanted them as part of his fighting force. He famously gave them a very inspiring speech about the need for Af

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we discuss the comedy, drama, acting, drugs, life, and death of the one and only Robin Williams. He was said to be funny since childhood, and as he grew, so did his personality and laughs. He blew up with the once-in-a-lifetime hit Mork and Mindy in the late 1970s, and he moved on to a series of massive hit films. From Popeye to Dead Poet’s Society and Goodwill Hunting to Aladdin, his scope and range won him three Oscar nominations and endless awards. And don’t forget the standup. His insane half improved comedy routines were stuff of legend, and according to one story, they are the reason David Letterman got out of the stand-up business. He was born to an upper class family in Chicago, and his family moved around a lot. After an early retirement, they settled in Tiburon, California (where he still owned property when he died). He went to a couple of colleges to study acting, and eventually found himself at the world famous Juilliard School. After a few years, he was

On this episode  of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk some true crime and look at the life, murders, and death of Dean Corll. Called the Candyman or the Pied Piper, Corll had a reputation in Houston for giving candy to teenage boys from his family candy shop. He was loved by his community, and he didn’t seem to have anything in his background that was typical to trigger a serial killer. A divorce and some suppressed homosexuality were in his background, but none of the madness that usually forces one to kill. However, he became one of the most prolific killers, racking up at least 28 deaths in his time. Oh, and he had two teenage accomplices. Corll was raised by middle class parents and moved around a bit since his father was in the military. His folks divorced, remarried, divorced again. His mom eventually took the advice of a traveling pecan salesman (like you do) and started a candy company in her garage. A teenaged Corll worked there after school, and it eventually became big enough to move to

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look at one of the greatest maritime disasters in history, the wreck of the Batavia. I know what you’re thinking. It’s like the Titanic but back in time. No, not at all. This one involved mutiny, hanging a young girl off the side of the boat, a shipwreck, murder, sex slaves, more murder, and a war between the survivors on small islands in the East Indies. The Batavia was the newly build flagship of the Dutch East Indies Company (not to be confused with their rival the British East India Company). It set sail on its maiden voyage with a fleet loaded with silver and gold. Their job was to make it around the world on a very dangerous 8 month voyage to buy spices in Java. It was said that only one in four sailors would make it back from such a trip, but all would be sharing in a split of the riches if they did. This particular trip started off poorly. The skipper of the ship was named Ariaen Jacobsz. He had to take his order from the fleet commander Francisco Pelsaer

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the devastation, death, deceit, and clean up surrounding the Haiti Earthquake from 2010. On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti, and the results were epic. Estimates are that 250,000 lives were lost and 1.5 million people were displaced. 80% of schools, 60% of government buildings, the majority of roads, the bulk of medical facilities all collapsed. In all, roughly a quarter of a million homes were destroyed. International aid gathered billions to help Haiti recover, but corrupt government and even more corrupt charities kept anything meaningful from happening to help this island that is still suffering ten years later. Before the quake hit, Haiti was one of the poorest countries in the world, with 70% of the population living under the poverty line. Most Haitians lived on about $1.25 a day, and they relied on small time agriculture which is constantly damaged due to tropical storms. To make things worse, the government has no sense of a plan f

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we study the king of the grotesque, everyone’s favorite Antichrist, Marilyn Manson. He was born as Brian Hugh Warner, and he had a love of music early in life. Once he started his band in college, he decided to name every member after one serial killer and one famous super model. And it worked. His grotesque imagery and crazy stage antics and unique, distorted sound made him rise up the charts in just a matter of year. Now, he’s still producing music, acting, has become an accomplished water color artist, and even met Anton LaVey who inducted him as minister in the Church of Satan. Brian Warner was born to two fairly religious parents. He attended Christian schools, and while they taught him everything he was not supposed to do, he took it the other way and used the ideas of sin and the demonic as what he WOULD do. After hearing The Doors for the first time, he knew he wanted to pursue music. Once in college, he started a couple of bands. First was Maril

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we explore one of the strangest missing persons cases in America: the disappearance of Maura Murray. On the evening of February 9, 2004, she had a minor car crash, and by the time the police got there, she was missing. But her behavior leading to this moment is what makes it strange. She had packed up her entire dorm room, lied to her bosses that there was a death in the family (so she could get a week off), and she had a car full of clothes, directions to rentals to stay in, and even a lot of cash from an ATM. Her entire family had no idea she had done any of this. What makes this a weird one is that she was a great student. She went to West Point and then transferred to the University of Massachusetts. She was a good student, a local track star, and otherwise a girl in her early twenties doing things right. Murray had a run in on the wrong side of the law when she stole the credit card number someone and used it at restaurants, but was otherwise an upstanding citiz

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about little known serial killer who did his thing during the reign of the Third Reich in Berlin. His name was Paul Ogorzow, and he was a Nazi serial killer. He started with sexual assault and rape, but like most serial killers he grew in desire and comfortability with his crimes. Eventually, he graduated to murder, and he had the perfect environment to do so. He committed his crimes during war-time black outs intended to keep bombing raids from finding targets. He also did it on a rail line that saw as many as 29 accidental deaths per month due to the dangers of the blackout. There isn’t a whole lot known about his childhood. He was born to a single mother who was a farm worker during World War One. He was eventually adopted by a farmer named Ogorzow and moved near Berlin. As a young man, he joined the Nazi Party and eventually became a member of the its paramilitary branch called the SA. For some reason, he never went off to war, but he was ins

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we travel back in time and look at the short life of the doomed ship, The RMS Titanic. The Titanic famously sank on April 15, 1912 and had a massive cultural impact, just like the Challenger or 9/11 did in more recent times. Of the 2240 people on board, only 706 survived, in spite of having three hours from the time of the iceberg collision to the total sinking of the vessel. The chaos and poor management during the crisis lead to a great many deaths, and the entire event lead to both Oscar winning films and tons of pretty cool conspiracy theories. The Titanic was built by the White Star Line, which was in a trade battle with the Cunard line. These two companies were the main passenger lines across the Atlantic, so building bigger, nice, and faster was sort of a corporate cold war at the time. The Cunard line had been winning for years, so the three Olympic class vessels built by White Star were supposed to win this war. The Titanic, obviously, was the first of these

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the life, career, addiction, and rap battles of the one and only Eminem. Call him Marshal Mathers or Slim Shady, but he’s one of the biggest selling musical artists of all time and still has the bestselling rap album of all time. He was born poor to a father who ditched him and a mother who he claimed was abusive and strung on out on pills. This critical figure in the hip hop game went from the streets of 8 Mile to the top of the charts in spite of being a white drug addict and underage father. If he can do it, so can you (if, you know, you’re one of the best rappers to ever live…). Though Detroit is his spiritual home, Marshal Mathers was born in Missouri. He had a rough childhood with an absentee father and a mother who couldn’t land steady work. They traveled a lot trying to stay with family or get a job and ultimately landed in Detroit when he was very young. Marshal hated school, repeated the 9th grade 3 times before dropping out. The

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look at the infamous flight of NASA’s Apollo 13. Made famous for a new generation by the film of the same name, this was one of the most important moments in all of space flight. A critical error on the way to the moon led to the three astronauts cramped into a small lunar lander built for 2 passengers the whole way home. They were low on power, venting oxygen, couldn’t scrub the CO2 from the air, were starving (their food was frozen and dried), and one of them was sick with an infection. How did they survive? This was the 13th Apollo mission, and many said that is the number of bad luck. Well, maybe. The Apollo missions were created by John F Kenedy as a race to the moon to help win the Cold War, and after Apollo 11 landed on the moon (or didn’t, depending on your beliefs), there were still a bunch of Saturn V rockets left over. NASA used them for more missions to the moon, and Apollo 13 was to be the third mission that would land humans on the lunar surface. The

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we travel back in time and look at the life, loves, war, revolution, presidency and death of George Washington. Born to a middle class family, he rose in wealth and power, until by age 20, he was the wealthiest land owner in Virginia. His story is incredible. He joined the British to stop the French from spreading onto their land. His first fight there basically started a world war because he didn’t know what he was doing. This man was a passionate farmer and whiskey distiller, but he kept getting the call to serve his nation, as a warrior, a spymaster, a politician, and ultimately president. The Washington family had been in American for three generations before George was born. His parents were of an upper middle class and bought some land, which eventually became his famous home at Mt. Vernon. His father increased his fortune, died, left it all to George’s older brother Lawrence. Then Lawrence built up more fortune, died of tuberculosis, and left it a

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we look at the crazy case of a Cleveland man named John Demjanjuk, and the decades long court battle to prove he was the evil Ivan the Terrible. Ivan the Terrible was a guard at the gas chambers in the Treblenka concentration camp. He was notorious for stabbing the prisoners with a saber, cutting their ears off on their way to a work shift, rape, killing babies, and nailing people’s ears to the walls of the death chamber. If John Demjanjuk was truly Ivan the terrible, he deserved to pay for his crimes. But the battle in various international courts were a roller coaster of evidence. Was he Ivan the Terrible? What is known about Demjanjuk is that he was born in the Soviet Union in 1920 He survived the Holodomor famine, worked on a state-owned farm, and was finally drafted into the Soviet Army in 1940. While there, he fought in the horrible Battle of Kerch Peninsula where Soviet Casualties were above 570,000 in five months. He was captured and taken as a prisoner of wa

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we celebrate our 500th episode! If you’re looking for a regular episode, this ain’t it! This is a star-studded (well, us three anyway) extravaganza. We walk down memory lane of the past 500 episodes. We share stories, drink whiskey and answer questions from our lovely SKult. What questions, you may be wondering? You guys have separated yourselves from all of the other conspiracy/true crime podcasts (at least in my opinion), what do you think you guys did to get away from others and make your own signature show and culture? What is the most memorable episode you have recorded? What was the worst podcast to research because it was overly sensitive topic or just not a lot out there about the subject? What would happen if Brad actually studied for a topic? I want to start by saying I love the show so there is no shade being thrown here but I wanna know Why is there such a lack of deep research done on a lot of the main individuals lives, specifical

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we get all pandemic on you and talk about Polio. Famous for causing paralysis and death through the first half the century (most notably in the US and UK), this disease goes back to ancient Egypt. Two doctors created different vaccines for the disease in the 1950s and 60s and largely set the path toward the vaccine schedule that is used in modern medicine. However, with that came complications such as the Cutter Incident where the vaccine itself paralyzed kids. And what about the rumors of the vaccine causing cancer or even the new polio like disease spreading in America? Polio is a horrible disease caused by three different viruses. It spreads most notably through the brown highway, aka, the fecal-oral route. The virus does its thing in the intestines, so your poop is filled with Polio if you are infected, and if that somehow makes it into someone’s mouth, well there it is. Though it sounds gross, in areas with natural rivers as water sources, this woul

On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we hit you with a crazy recipe—take one part cryptid and one part UFO encounter, bake in the Kentucky summer, and you get the Hopkinsville Goblins. The case of the Hopkinsville Goblins is one of the most important in all of UFOlogy because it establishes the details that a great many UFO cases follow for years after. It is, in fact, the genesis of the term “little green men,” even though the Goblins weren’t thought to be green. So, what exactly happened in Hopkinsville that is still studied to this day? Back in August of 1955, two families were staying in a small, homemade house in the woods of Kentucky. There were a total of 11 of them (5 adults, 4 children, and 2 carnies) at the house when things went sideways. One member of the house went outside to draw some water from the pump and saw what he called a flying saucer that showed every color in the rainbow. He told everyone this, and they dismissed it as a shooting star. (A highway patrol officer repor