An Assembly of Fascinating Things

An entire colony of 117 men, women and children vanished without leaving behind a single body. There was no blood, no sign of an attack and no ruined settlement. Their homes had been carefully dismantled and taken away. All they left behind was one w...

In 1692, an enslaved woman named Tituba told a Salem courtroom that the Devil had come to her and bid her serve him. Her confession lit the fuse that would become known as the infamous Salem witch trials, the deadliest witch hunt in American history.

A rain-soaked coal tip collapsed above Aberfan and erased part of a school within minutes. Through the people trapped beneath the wreckage and the families waiting outside, this account reveals how a preventable disaster kept shaping the village long...

Two women worked inside Facebook years apart, and both tried to warn the world about the exact same harms. One of these women became a household name, the other got a gag order. This episode tells both stories side by side, and asks whether Meta's $1...

In 1980, a young straight-porn director called Chris Covino walked into a New York City fetish club and met a man who introduced himself as J.R. Lewis. Over the course of that conversation, Lewis agreed to fund something Covino had always fantasised ...

Before Ted Kaczynski was a name on the news, the Unabomber was an anonymous figure who could vanish for years and return with a more lethal device. Part One follows the hunt from the first 1978 package bomb to the manifesto that finally made his anon...

Ted Kaczynski stayed hidden for 17 years, but the manifesto he believed would justify his crimes ultimately revealed him. Part Two follows the man behind the Unabomber from Harvard and the Montana wilderness to his arrest, legal battle and guilty ple...

Aileen Wuornos admitted killing seven men, but spent years changing the explanation for why she did it. Behind the woman portrayed in Monster lies a complicated story of trauma, murder, contradictory confessions and a first killing that remains centr...

In 1892, two people were hacked to death in a respectable Massachusetts home, and the only real suspect walked free after a trial that still divides opinion. Kyle and Adam dig into the evidence, the myths, the rhyme that got the numbers wrong, and th...

An aspiring comedian enters a sweepstakes challenge and unknowingly becomes one of Japan’s biggest television stars. Nasubi’s 15-month ordeal reveals how an unlocked door, an unseen audience and a desperate hope for fame can turn entertainment into e...