About The Compendium
We think being curious should be fun.
The Compendium started with a fairly simple complaint.
Why does learning about something fascinating so often feel like a commitment?
You discover an incredible story on a podcast, press play, and suddenly you are eight episodes deep, three hours into episode four, and somebody is still explaining what happened in 1987.
We love a rabbit hole. We just don't think you should have to move into one.
So in 2023, we started The Compendium: An Assembly of Fascinating Things.
A place for the stories that make you stop and say, wait... what?
The extraordinary people you somehow never heard about. The moments in history that sound completely made up. The crimes, disasters, scandals, mysteries, strange coincidences and wonderfully bizarre corners of the world that are simply too interesting to disappear into a Wikipedia tab you'll promise to read later.
Who it is for
For people who never really grew out of asking “why?”
The Compendium isn't about becoming an expert.
It's about that little rush you get when you discover something brilliant and immediately want to tell somebody else.
We make the show for curious people. People with seventeen tabs open. People who interrupt conversations with, “Sorry, this is completely unrelated, but did you know...?”
People who still enjoy being surprised by the world.
Because somewhere along the way, learning became associated with homework, documentaries you're supposed to concentrate very hard on, or podcasts requiring a flowchart just to remember who everyone is.
One that makes you laugh.
One that occasionally makes you furious.
One that sends you down another rabbit hole on the way home.
And, every now and then, one that stays with you long after the episode finishes.
The promise
One story.
The whole thing.
There are already plenty of podcasts designed to keep you listening for ten episodes.
We're trying to do something slightly different.
Each week, we pick one story and give it the space it deserves, without stretching it simply because we can.
Sometimes that's a notorious crime. Sometimes it's a forgotten moment in history. Sometimes it's an extraordinary person, a strange experiment, an unbelievable survival story or something so ridiculous that neither of us can quite believe it actually happened.
There isn't really a category.
That's the point.
The only rule is that it has to be fascinating.
By the time the episode finishes, you should feel like you know the story. Not just the headline or the bit everybody remembers, but the strange details, the people caught up in it, what came before, what happened afterwards and all the bits that make you think, how have I never heard this before?
Then next week, we go somewhere completely different.
How we tell it
Curiosity without the cleverness competition.
Neither of us has much interest in pretending to be the smartest person in the room.
The Compendium isn't a lecture, and it's definitely not two people trying to out-intellectual each other.
We're two friends who genuinely enjoy discovering strange things about the world and talking about them.
Sometimes that means finding the ridiculous detail buried inside a very serious story. Sometimes it means admitting we had completely misunderstood something for years. Sometimes it means stopping halfway through because one of us has asked the question everybody listening is probably shouting at their phone.
We take the stories seriously.
We don't always take ourselves seriously.
And when the subject gets darker, we try never to forget that the people involved were actually people. Curiosity shouldn't require losing your humanity.
The name
Why “The Compendium”?
Because that's what we wanted the show to become.
A collection.
An ever-growing assembly of stories worth knowing.
Some enormous. Some ridiculous. Some heartbreaking. Some completely useless.
But all fascinating.
And maybe that's the thing we love most about making this show.
After hundreds of episodes, the world hasn't become less interesting.
It has become considerably stranger.
There is always another person we can't believe we've never heard of. Another forgotten scandal. Another mystery. Another piece of history hiding in plain sight.
Another story worth telling.
Come on in
Whether you've been listening for years or you've just found us, you're welcome here.
Pick something that sounds interesting.
Press play.
And come and be curious with us.