The Exorcist Was Based On A Lie — And The Church Got Played

The Exorcist Was Based On A Lie — And The Church Got Played

In 1949, a thirteen-year-old boy was exorcised by the Catholic Church.  The case became the most famous possession story in American history  and inspired The Exorcist — one of the highest-grossing horror films  ever made. For 75 years, the story has been told the same way: a boy possessed,  priests battling for his soul, a miracle ending. But a 29-page diary, a forgotten interview, and decades of silence  tell a very different story. This is the real story of Ronald Hunkeler — the boy behind "Roland  Doe" — and how a grieving, isolated teenager's struggle became a  myth the Church, a novelist, and Hollywood all had reasons to believe.

Did Paganini, Robert Johnson & Mayhem Sell Their Souls? The Truth Behind the Legend

For centuries, the greatest musicians in history have been linked to the same story. A deal made in the dark. A talent no human being should possess. A price paid in full. This is the story of the Devil in Music. From Niccolò Paganini — the violinist so impossibly skilled that audiences believed he was guided by a demonic hand — to Robert Johnson, who walked to a Mississippi crossroads at midnight and came back able to play anything. To the Norwegian black metal scene and Mayhem, where the darkness stopped being a performance. And underneath all of it — two notes. Six semitones apart. A sound so unsettling the medieval church banned it. They called it Diabolus in Musica. The Devil in Music. This episode asks what actually connects these stories. The answer is stranger than the myth.

Will AI Make The Perfect Human? — The Silent Revolution of Eugenics

In 1920 American doctors measured skulls at state fairs and gave trophies to the fittest families. By 1927 the Supreme Court had ruled that forced sterilization was constitutional. Sixty thousand Americans were sterilized against their will. After Nuremberg nobody used the word eugenics anymore. They changed the job titles. The idea didn't go anywhere. In 2018 a scientist in China edited the DNA of two unborn embryos. He went to prison. Three American companies picked up where he left off. Legally. With investor money. With no federal oversight whatsoever. This is not a conspiracy theory. These companies have websites. They run subway ads. One of them bought the domain PickYourBaby.com. This episode follows the line from a county fair in Kansas in 1920 to a Silicon Valley pitch deck in 2025. The science changed. The intention didn't. Buck v. Bell has never been overturned. It is still valid precedent.

How A Mutated Gene Caused The Cold War — The Rasputin Story You've Never Heard

In 1904, a boy was born in the Winter Palace of St. Petersburg. He was the heir to the Russian throne. And his blood wouldn't clot. That single biological fact set in motion a chain of events that would end a 300-year dynasty, bring Lenin to power, and reshape the 20th century. Rasputin is barely half the story.

The Enfield Poltergeist — Science Found Something Even More Unsettling

In 1977, a police officer in North London filed a report stating she watched a chair slide four feet across a floor with no one near it. She signed it under oath. That's where this starts. This documentary examines four documented cases of poltergeist activity across three countries and five decades — and asks whether science has a better explanation than a ghost. It does. Partially. What's left over is the part that's harder to explain.