Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music.
Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast will feature three stories that all demonstrate how one seemingly small action can have massive ripple effects in the future.
The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.
The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.
The first story you'll hear is called Skills, and it's about an aspiring teacher who was forced to make an emotional decision.
The second story you'll hear is called Crash and it's about a college student who does not realize the significance of some photos he took.
And the third and final story you'll hear is called Wires Crossed and it's about a timeline-altering event that forever changes the course of American history.
But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So if that's of interest to you, please transfer all of the follow buttons Bitcoin to your untraceable offshore account.
Okay, let's get into our first story called Skills.
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In 1971, a 19-year-old Irishman named William began studying physics and computer science at a university in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
While he was certainly smart enough to complete the four-year degree, after one year of being in the school, he decided to drop out because he felt like this was not the path he wanted to be on.
So he moved back home to a town about 30 minutes north of Belfast, where he got a job as a forklift driver and truck driver for the Guinness Beer Factory.
And while he loved this job, he still felt like this was not the path for him.
He needed to do something more with his life.
And so he decided he would pursue what two of his siblings had gone on to do, which was to become a school teacher.
He had always admired his school teachers growing up, and he idolized his two siblings that had become teachers, and so it felt like the right fit.
And so William applied to a four-year teaching college in Newcastle in England, and after he was accepted, he flew to England, he got set up, and then he began his studies.
The first year was great. He loved what he was doing.
He did feel like this is the right fit and he was getting good grades.
Everything was going exactly to plan. But then year two happened and everything went off the rails.
A requirement to graduate from this four-year teaching college was all the aspiring teachers starting in their second year had to go teach real students real lessons.
They basically had to go to high schools and elementary schools and fill in for the real teacher and give a real lesson.
And they were scored on their ability to do that.
But all the aspiring teachers knew that when you gave these real lessons to real students, what really ended up happening was the students did not take the aspiring teachers seriously.
They viewed them as kind of like substitute teachers, and so they didn't respect them, and they didn't listen to them.
And so typically these real teaching sessions just turned into the aspiring teachers desperately trying to calm down their pupils long enough to get them to listen to their lesson plan for just one second.
But normally it didn't work out and before long the day was over and nothing was really accomplished.
So in William's second year, when it was his turn to go over to a high school and administer his lesson plan, he went over there knowing what he was up against.
He did not really expect it to go well, but he decided he would go in there with a positive attitude and he would try to do his best.
But as soon as he walked into his classroom, he immediately could tell he was going to be overwhelmed.
Everybody's standing up and talking amongst themselves.
And they turn around and they see William walking in.
And they have this moment of realization that their real teacher is not going to be teaching them that day.
It's going to be this substitute, William.
And they all kind of gleefully began laughing and joking.
And they just turned their backs on William and kept talking amongst themselves.
And so William goes inside. He puts his stuff on the desk.
And he attempts to get the class to listen to him by surprise. saying, hey, everyone, come on, sit down.
Time to listen up. I'm your new teacher for the day.
But the kids just were not listening. And so finally, William, who was a really big guy, he was six foot four.
He was in great shape. He kind of postured himself and then yelled at the class, sit down right now.
And at this, the class did turn around and looked at William and kind of sized him up and most of them decided, okay, it's time to sit down.
And so 99% of the class goes quiet and sits down except for one kid.
It was this 15 year old boy who was at the back of the room and he was standing up defiant with his arms crossed, staring at William with a smirk on his face.
And all around him, all his cronies were sitting down, looking up at him, laughing and kind of looking up at William and laughing at him, knowing that a confrontation was about to ensue.
And so William is staring at this kid, trying to get him to just sit without saying anything.
And this kid is just mean mugging him with his arms crossed and nothing's happening.
And so William walks right up to him and kind of leans over his shoulder and says, you need to go out in the hallway right now.
I will meet you out there. And then William turned around and started walking back towards the front of the room, expecting this to have worked, that this 15-year-old kid would have just followed right along and he'd walk right out to the hallway and that would be that.
But when he turned back around again, the 15-year-old kid had not moved.
He was still standing in the back of the classroom, arms crossed, staring up at William, basically saying, make me.
And at this, William lost his mind. He was so mad and so frustrated at how unbelievably disrespectful this kid was being, and really the whole class was being to him, that he just kind of lost it.
And he ran up to this kid in the back of the room and he gets right up in his face.
And remember, William is six foot four. He's a big guy.
And he gets right in the kid's face and he's like, get out in the hall right now.
And this kid doesn't flinch. Instead, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a knife and he holds it right up against William.
And William, without any hesitation, just winds up and blasts this kid across the side of the head, sending him flying over a kid sitting at a desk.
He goes flying over this kid and crumples into the corner.
And then when he stands up, he drops the knife and puts his hands up and he's like, okay, okay, I'll go out in the hall.
And William's like, go, go out in the hall right now.
And so the kid ran out of the classroom.
He goes out into the hall and the whole class is totally silent.
No one even wants to look up at William.
They're all kind of just looking down at their desk, trying to be as quiet as possible.
And William walks back to the front of the class and proceeds to teach the rest of the lesson.
As soon as the high school learned that this aspiring teacher, William, had basically knocked out one of their students, even though it seemed like it might've been a little bit deserved, they immediately told the teacher's college and the teacher's college immediately expelled William.
And so now William is suddenly jobless and he's kind of lost again in the world.
He doesn't know what he wants to do now because he really had committed to being a teacher.
And so he goes back to his home in Northern Ireland and he begins thinking about, you know, what is he going to do next?
And he keeps having this thought that he should pursue this thing that he's always been interested in, but he had never taken seriously because it felt so risky.
But now that basically everything in his life had fallen apart, he had nothing to lose.
So he decided, what the heck, I will do the thing that I've always wanted to do.
And that was stage acting. And so he went and auditioned with a local theater company in Belfast.
He was accepted into the theater troupe.
And then four years later, he was discovered performing on stage by a Hollywood filmmaker.
And they cast him in a movie. And the rest, as they say, is history.
William Neeson, better known as Liam Neeson, would go on to star in dozens of huge movies and TV shows.
And he's probably best known for his epic role in the movie Taken, where he is this CIA operative with a particular set of skills.
And in this movie, he punches a lot of people in the face, just like when he was a teacher.
Our next story is called Crash. Cranbrook, which is a small snowy town in British Columbia, Canada, used to be a place no one had heard of.
Then Isaiah Otieno changed that. In 2006, an 18-year-old smiling young man named Isaiah Otieno stepped off of a plane in Cranbrook and began making his way toward the baggage claim.
As he walked, everyone in the airport stopped and stared up at him.
Isaiah was 6 foot 9 inches tall and he was from Kenya, making him easily one of the most unique people in all of Cranbrook.
Isaiah, who was the son of a Kenyan politician, had worked really hard to earn his slot at the local university, called the College of the Rockies.
His plan was to use that degree to get a great job so he could help support his family back in Nairobi.
Not long after the first semester of Isaiah's freshman year had started, he was not only flourishing academically, but also socially.
His big smile and his charm and his incredibly good manners had earned him many friends as well as the nickname, the Gentle Giant.
But the person Isaiah most closely bonded with while he was in Cranbrook was another student named Isaac Hockley.
Isaac, in addition to being a student at the College of the Rockies, was also a passionate photographer and actually worked part-time for the local newspaper as a freelance photographer.
Isaac and Isaiah had briefly met in late 2006 at their campus's billiard halls when they were both playing pool, but that interaction had not made them friends.
What had cemented their friendship and made them very, very close was one night in early 2007, Isaiah had gotten a job as a bouncer at a local bar because he's 6'9", and so he was the bouncer, and Isaac had come to that bar not to see Isaiah, just to go to the bar,
And so Isaiah's at the front, he's checking people in, and then he hears this commotion in the bar behind him, and he turns and he sees Isaac is getting attacked by this huge guy that's way stronger than him, who looked like he was the aggressor in the fight.
And so without any hesitation, Isaiah turns and just starts galloping into the bar.
He's leaping over, chairs, he's leaping over tables, and he jumps into the fray, and he fought off Isaac's attacker.
And so after the dust settled, Isaac was so thankful for Isaiah, even though Isaiah kind of downplayed it and acted like it was no big deal.
But either way, the experience totally bonded these two very different people, and after that, they became totally inseparable.
Over the next couple of semesters, the pair would often go off on long rides outside of Cranbrook into the mountains and the forests, and they would just chat.
Isaiah would talk about what it was like to live in Kenya and how he was really here to try to be successful like his father, and Isaac would talk to Isaiah about his passion for photography and what it was like growing up in Canada around Cranbrook.
On one very memorable drive, the pair were driving at night along this kind of winding road that went through a forest, when all of a sudden, a moose leapt onto the road and blocked their way.
And so Isaac, at the last second, had to swerve to avoid the moose.
But ultimately, they did not get into an accident, and it was just a close call.
So Isaac was totally fine. He had kind of recovered within seconds of getting past the moose.
But Isaiah, who was in the passenger seat, was totally shaken up by it.
And when Isaac started talking to Isaiah about why he was so shaken up, because after all, they are fine, they did not get into an accident, Isaiah would admit that he wasn't shaken up because they almost got into an accident.
He was shaken up because he saw a moose.
He didn't know moose existed, and so seeing this enormous creature suddenly in the middle of the road right in front of them just had totally spooked him.
And so after this, Isaac loved to bring this story up as a way of kind of making fun of Isaiah for his fear of moose, but it was totally in a loving way, and Isaiah would always laugh right along with him.
But despite how well everything was going in both Isaiah and Isaac's lives to that point, everything would come crashing down in 2008.
On May 13th, 2008, so two years after Isaiah showed up in Canada, Isaac got a phone call from his employer, the local newspaper, who told him he needed to head into town to take some pictures of a crash that had just happened.
A helicopter had been flying over Cranbrook conducting a power line survey when they had lost power and crashed.
And all three people, the pilot and the two people in back who were actually doing the survey, they all died on impact.
Isaac, like everybody else who heard about this, was totally shocked.
One, because it was totally tragic and horrible, but two, because nothing ever happened in Cranbrook.
So to have something so big like this happen right downtown was just unheard of.
And so Isaac hopped in his car and he began making his way towards the crash site.
And it didn't take long before he saw this massive ring of people right at the intersection between 10th and 14th Street.
They were all on the sidewalk and up on buildings and everyone's just looking in towards this massive mound of jagged metal that was on fire and all this black smoke was coming off of it.
And there's ambulances nearby and police and the fire department was there and they're trying to put out the flames, but they can't do it.
And so Isaac parks his car and he rushes over to this ring of people and he works his way towards the front.
He pulls out his camera and he began taking pictures, first of the wreckage and the fire, and then also of the police as they put tarps over the bodies.
Little did Isaac know these pictures he was taking were about to take on a whole new significance for him.
Earlier that day, just before 1 p.m., Isaiah wrapped up his final class of the day, and after he was done, he remembered he had some letters in his backpack that he had been meaning to mail to his family back in Kenya.
And so he decided on his way home, he would make a detour to the post office, and he would mail those letters.
And so he left the building where this final class was, and he stepped out into the bright sunshine of that May day.
He put his headphones on, and then he began to walk.
At about 1.05 p.m., he arrived at the post office, and he went inside just long enough to put his letters in the mail slot, and then he headed back outside.
One minute later, at 1.06 p.m., as he was crossing 10th Street, the helicopter above lost power and crashed directly on top of Isaiah.
Within seconds, he and the three people on board the helicopter would all be dead.
It's believed because Isaiah was listening to music on his headphones, he didn't even hear the helicopter as it was crashing down.
He was just walking and then he was dead.
It was a total freak accident. It wasn't until later that day that Isaac would realize the pictures he had taken of this scene included pictures of his friend.
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Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. For the first time, my show, Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted for a special episode.
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Listen now on the Medical Mysteries or Redacted feeds, or search A Redacted Medical Mystery wherever you get your podcasts.
The next and final story of today's episode is called Wires Crossed.
At around 5.30 p.m. on the evening of August 12, 1944, a young American military pilot named Joe walked out of his quarters on his base in England where he was stationed.
As soon as he was outside, he lit a cigarette to calm his nerves, and as he smoked the cigarette, he began walking towards the huge hangar on the other side of the base where his plane was waiting for him.
Joe had been preparing for this night for weeks.
He and his co-pilot, a 35-year-old lieutenant who was nicknamed Bud, were about to step off on a top secret military mission called Operation Aphrodite.
And this mission was not only top secret, but it was so unbelievably dangerous that basically anybody who knew about it considered it a suicide mission.
But Joe tried not to think about that as he walked towards the hangar.
Instead, he tried to think about the reason he was here in the first place, the reason he had joined the military, and that was to defeat the Nazis.
And what he and his co-pilot were about to do, Operation Aphrodite, was going to play a huge role in defeating the Nazis.
So this was about five years into World War II, and at this point, the Nazis were actually losing.
However, it was making them more dangerous, not less, because they were becoming very, very desperate.
And so they were launching all these outrageous attacks, basically because they had nothing to lose.
And one horrible thing the Nazis were doing at this time were dropping these things called vengeance weapons.
Hitler called them vengeance weapons. They were basically these huge bombs that the Nazis would drop arbitrarily across the United Kingdom on major population centers.
And by this point in the war, these vengeance weapons had killed over 5,000 civilians.
And at this exact moment, like this night, as Joe was walking towards the hangar, the Nazis had a stash of vengeance weapons aimed directly at London.
That was going to be their next target. And so the mission that Joe and his co-pilot Bud were going on, Operation Aphrodite, was going to be to go out and destroy those vengeance weapons to save London.
And as nervous as Joe was about this mission, and he was really nervous, he was also very excited.
He actually had volunteered for this mission when many other pilots had done everything they could to stay away from this mission.
And on top of that, Joe actually had flown enough missions by this point in the war that he didn't need to fly anymore.
He could just go home. But instead, he volunteered for this mission.
And a reason why Joe might have decided to do that has a lot to do with the family he was raised in.
So Joe came from a family that was very successful and accomplished, and his father really pushed Joe and his younger brother to be the very best at whatever they were doing and to be very competitive with each other.
And so while Joe and his younger brother did love each other, they also had a pretty intense rivalry.
And for a while, Joe's father obviously favored Joe.
I mean, Joe was the favorite child and, you know, his father would always say, Joe's going to be the president someday.
He's so talented. But after the attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II, both Joe and his younger brother joined the military.
And pretty early on in the war, Joe's younger brother got an award for heroism.
He had basically saved his platoon of men, and he won all these awards, and he was all over the news.
And pretty quickly after that, Joe felt like he fell out of favor with his dad.
That his dad kind of looked at the younger brother as being the favorite child now.
And so Joe really started to feel insecure and wanted to prove himself really to his dad.
And so when Operation Aphrodite came up, Joe volunteered for it really because he wanted to be a hero.
He wanted to show his dad that he too could do something huge and change the course of history.
And he would change the course of history, but not in the way he expected.
And so Joe continued to smoke a cigarette and hustled across the base towards the hangar.
And as he did, he found himself kind of speeding up.
Like he just wanted to get over there and get started.
Joe's commanders had given him a special code he would call out over the radio if this mission was successful.
It was spade flush. That's what he'd say over the radio.
And so as Joe hustled towards the hangar, he imagined how incredible it was going to be to yell out spade flush over the radio.
I mean, it was only like 30 minutes away from that moment.
This was a short mission. And so finally Joe reached the hangar and he looked up to the sky one more time to make sure the weather looked solid because actually they had tried to launch Operation Aphrodite a couple of days earlier, but it had been canceled because of fog.
But Joe looked around and the weather looked good.
And so he knew it was going to be a go. So he flipped a cigarette butt and stepped into the hangar.
Inside this hangar was this massive, big open space.
And in the center of the hangar on the floor was this huge plane called a B-24 Liberator.
This was, of course, Joe's plane for the night.
And so Joe immediately began walking towards the plane to check it out.
Now, this particular type of plane was the type of plane Joe had been flying for the past three years.
I mean, he'd flown many combat missions in this type of aircraft, so he was very familiar with it.
But this particular B-24 was unlike any of the other B-24s Joe had ever flown.
In fact, this aircraft was so unique, it was unlike any aircraft that any pilot in the American military had ever flown.
I mean, this was really a one-of-one. And so as Joe walked around the outside of this plane, he began to notice some of these unique modifications that the mechanics had made to this aircraft.
The most noticeable modification was actually the cockpit.
Now, normally the cockpit had all these windows basically all around it so the pilot could look in any direction and see what was going on.
But obviously they needed to be protected from the elements. this B-24 had all the glass removed except for one pane of glass basically right in front of where Joe would be staring, just like a single windshield.
And so it's almost like it was a convertible aircraft where it was all open air in the cockpit.
And the reason for this change is because Joe and his co-pilot, during the course of this top secret mission, Operation Aphrodite, they would have to jump out and parachute to the ground.
And so by having this all open, it would allow them to do that much easier.
And then another big modification to the B-24 is the guns that were normally located on the outside of the aircraft were gone, and they were replaced by broomsticks painted black to look like guns at a distance.
But the visible changes to this particular B-24 were nothing compared to the massive changes that were hidden inside this aircraft.
Because the top secret part of Operation Aphrodite was really this particular plane.
The plane was not really a plane. It was more like a huge flying bomb.
The military's mechanics basically hollowed out the entirety of this plane, removed everything inside of it that was not absolutely vital, and they replaced it with explosives.
Ten tons of explosives. Like, this is an unbelievable amount of explosives.
A few minutes later, at around 5.55 p.m., Joe and his co-pilot Bud, who by this point had come into the hangar, finished doing their exterior inspection of the aircraft, and then they climbed into the cockpit, with Joe taking a seat in the pilot's seat and Bud sitting in the co-pilot's seat.
And even though the evening was cool, both men were visibly sweating.
Once the pilots got the go-ahead to begin the mission, Joe fired the first engine and then turned to look at the ground crew all around them.
And he noticed all of them looked really, really serious.
I mean, they obviously knew how intensely dangerous this mission really was.
And the fact was, you know, the pilots might not make it home.
And so they're looking up at these guys like, I'm sorry you have to do this.
But Joe, you know, he looked out at these people and he sensed that was going on.
And so he made a big show to wave and smile at them, to show confidence, like he knew what he was going to do.
He's going to be fine. But in reality, Joe really was terrified.
By 5.59 p.m., Joe had all four propellers spinning on the aircraft, and so he released the brake and began taxiing out to the runway.
And as they bumped along, Joe and Bud became really aware of just how heavy this aircraft was from all the explosives.
I mean, every bump, this plane is lurching up and down and really creaking and making lots of noises.
I mean, this was sketchy. Finally, Joe went full speed ahead and he and Joe went tearing down the runway and at some point the plane did get lift and it took off into the air.
And then just up ahead of him were six other planes that had just taken off moments before who were going to escort Joe and Bud to their target area.
Once Joe got the plane to its cruising altitude, he and Bud kind of relaxed for a second and began preparing themselves for what was going to happen next.
They had about 15 minutes of just kind of casual flying before the real work of this mission began.
The vengeance weapons that Joe and Bud were going out to destroy as part of Operation Aphrodite were located about 120 miles south, just outside of this little town in the very northern tip of France.
But destroying these weapons would not be as simple as just Joe and Bud flying over top and releasing all their explosives and flying back home.
Because the Nazis had buried these vengeance weapons deep inside the hills in this town in northern France.
And so regular bombs wouldn't touch these vengeance weapons.
They had to do it a different way. And the way they were going to do it was Joe and Bud were going to fly their plane directly into the hills.
And the way they would do this is they would fly their plane as close to the target area as possible, at which point one of the other pilots that were in the escort planes would take remote control of the B-24 flying bomb.
And then once they had remote control, Joe and Bud, who no longer needed to do anything, They would jump out and parachute to the ground, and then the pilot who was remotely flying this now vacant B-24 flying bomb, they would just set it on autopilot to crash into the hills.
At around 6.15 p.m., just as the English Channel came into view, Joe toggled a switch on his control panel.
And then after he did, he and Bud kind of held their breath for a second to see what would happen.
And then a couple of seconds later, the plane kind of shuddered for a second and then leveled out.
And then a call came over the radio from one of the pilots who were in the escort planes telling Joe and Bud that they had just successfully taken remote control of the B-24.
So at this point, Joe and Bud are no longer flying the aircraft.
They're just sitting inside of this flying bomb.
Now, there were only two things left for Joe and Bud to do before they could bail out to safety.
They would need to arm the plane, so basically arm the explosives and make them ready to detonate.
And then after that was done, they would need to call out over the radio, Spade Flush, the code Joe was given, which would signal to everybody else that the plane was ready and Joe and Bud were jumping out.
And so once Joe and Bud nodded to each other and kind of acknowledged that, OK, we're going to do the last bit of this mission, Joe turned around in his seat and he looked at this control panel that was right behind him.
And on this panel was the arming switch.
And so once Joe flipped this, he and Bud would have a very short window of time to safely escape the aircraft.
And so it was kind of like, you know, flip it, make the radio call and get the heck out of there.
But Joe and Bud had trained for this moment over and over and over again, so they were ready.
And so eventually, Joe flipped the switch, grabbed his radio, and called out Spade Flush.
What Joe and Bud could not have known when the mechanics were making all these modifications to this B-24 was that one of the mechanics accidentally crossed some wires in putting in all these explosives.
And so just seconds after Joe had armed the explosives, they detonated.
They were not supposed to, but they did.
And so Joe and Bud were killed basically a fraction of a second after calling out Spade Flush.
But it would turn out the catastrophic failure of Operation Aphrodite had no impact on World War II.
In fact, Operation Aphrodite should never have happened in the first place.
It was totally unnecessary. What Joe and Bud and the rest of the American military didn't know at the time was five weeks earlier, the British Royal Air Force dropped a whole bunch of ground penetrating bombs all across those hills in Northern France, and they destroyed all of the vengeance weapons.
So when Joe and Bud took off on this doomed mission, there was no threat to London, none.
But that is not the big reveal in this story because Operation Aphrodite changed the course of American history in a really specific and really enormous way.
Because Joe, whose full name was Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., was a member of the very famous Kennedy family, a big-time political family in America.
And at the time, the Kennedys were all saying, Joseph is going to be the next president of the United States.
And everybody believed it. He was going to be the guy.
But then, of course, Operation Aphrodite changed all of that because Joseph was killed.
And so the war would end about a year later.
And when it did, Joseph's younger brother, John F. Kennedy, who won that award for heroism and got a Purple Heart early on in the war, and he kind of became a war hero, which prompted Joe to volunteer for Operation Aphrodite.
Yeah, John would begin his unbelievable political rise.
And by 1960, John F. Kennedy, JFK, would become the 35th president of the United States, even though he wasn't supposed to.
He was the second choice. It should have been Joe.
Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.
If you enjoyed today's stories and you're looking for more bone-chilling content, be sure to check out all of our studios' podcasts, not just this one, but also Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Bedtime Stories, Wartime Stories, and Run Full.
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So that's going to do it. I really appreciate your support.
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Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. I'm excited to tell you about something special.
For the first time... My show, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted, Declassified Mysteries with Luke LaManna, to tell a story so complex it required our combined storytelling styles.
This special episode is called A Redacted Medical Mystery.
In it, unexplained symptoms after a routine surgery quickly unravel into something much darker, leading straight to classified government operations hidden for decades.
To listen and uncover the truth alongside us, head to either the Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries or Redacted show pages right now. or search for A Redacted Medical Mystery in the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you're fascinated by unexplained medical stories, well, stick around on Medical Mysteries.
Every week, we dive deep into cases that will leave you questioning everything you know about the human body.
And if government conspiracies are more your style, Redacted is your go-to for stories that unravel secrets never meant to see the light of day.
Remember, you can listen to both shows early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus.
