Press Kit

Who we are

A weekly documentary podcast hosted by Kyle Risi and Adam Cox

The Compendium: An Assembly of Fascinating Things launched in 2023 and has since built a catalogue of over 150 episodes, accumulating more than 700,000 total downloads and a top 1% global ranking on Listen Notes. It is distributed on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Patreon, and is signed to the LA-based Bleav podcast network.

What we do

One real story, told properly, start to finish, every week

The premise began when Kyle noticed that Adam knew surprisingly little about the wild and fascinating stories Kyle had been captivated by since childhood. Hanging on every word as Kyle recounted them, the two partners in crime and in life decided to bring those stories to the world, and so The Compendium: An Assembly of Fascinating Things was born.

Each episode takes a single story, from true crime, dark history, or the lives of extraordinary people, and delivers it in full in one sitting. No multi-part cliffhangers, no padding. Kyle leads the research and narrative; Adam brings the questions, the reactions, and the occasional attempt at the storytelling himself, roughly one in every four episodes, when he's feeling brave enough to take the wheel.

Together they cover cases, events, and figures from across the world, with documentary-standard research and enough wit to make it genuinely enjoyable rather than just informative.

What makes us different

Genuinely mixed genre in a world of single-lane podcasts

Most true crime shows stay in true crime. Most history shows stay in history. The Compendium moves freely between both, and into the lives of remarkable people that don't fit either category neatly. The aim, as always, is to make you sound interesting at any social gathering.

Kyle and Adam describe The Compendium as the 1970s variety show answer to the modern podcast. Think Sonny and Cher, but with more serial killers and considerably better research. The throughline is always the story itself: if it's worth knowing and can be told well, it belongs in the feed. That breadth is what keeps a 200-episode back catalogue feeling fresh rather than repetitive, and what keeps listeners coming back across genres they wouldn't otherwise seek out.