March 25, 2018

EP. 231 — 15 Historical Badasses You’ve Never Heard Of (Part 3)

Everyone has dreams of greatness. Some hope to be important leaders. Others hope to break barriers and change peoples’ lives. Still others want to be war heroes with superhuman Rambo-like invincibility. Well the cool thing about history is that it’s full of those leaders, pioneers, and supersoldiers — all you gotta do is look closely. And the even cooler thing about it is that history is so chock full of badasses, one great American was a “leader/pioneer/supersoldier” rolled into one, and lived in our lifetime.

On this week’s LIVE episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by comedians Emily Heller (Conan, Late Night with Seth Meyers), Greg Edwards (The Improv, Wisecrack) and Zack Bornstein (SNL, The New Yorker) for a sequel to one of our all-time favorite Cracked Podcast episodes. You’ll discover over a dozen incredible humans from across a thousand years of human civilization. You’ll come across women & trans people who HIS-tory should’ve celebrated sooner. And for the first time ever in our “little-known badasses” series, you’ll hear the tale of one hero who’s a panelist’s ancestor.

Footnotes: https://goo.gl/WJsnTY

Recent Episodes

January 26, 2020

Freedom sucks…and that is why we have to defend it. Because our democracy involves doing a lot of stuff that takes energy, takes time, and lacks that Michael Bay Quality that only a surprise missile launch can provide. So on this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt and special guest Jason Pargin (who writes for Cracked as David Wong) are exploring the ways being afraid of everything (an easy action) can stop us from being free. Discover the decades-long tradition of some Americans wanting to give up everything in exchange for not needing to think, the centuries-long tradition of people inciting fake panics, and the reasonable ways you can help change things for the better.

Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/why-fear-based-democracies-arenE28099t-free-with-jason-pargin/

January 19, 2020

How’s your local shopping mall doing? Have you checked on it lately? Swing by sometime, because its department store might’ve turned into a call center or a hospital or a go-kart track. On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by the one and only Kai Ryssdal (Marketplace, Make Me Smart) for a look at surprising, strange, and shocking stories from all over the U.S. economy. Discover an international pig flu, a 26-word statement that built the modern Internet, and more amazing ways cash is ruling everything around you. By the way, if you’re an American listener, you spent the past few years funding an astonishingly huge bailout. Surprise! Listen for details!

Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/5-parts-u.s.-economy-that-are-stranger-than-you-think

January 12, 2020

Movies, TV, gaming: three things that are theoretically a waste of time. Oh sure, they deliver value in the art sense, and comfort in the goofing-off sense. But what if they’re more valuable than that? What if consuming shows and playing video games (accidentally) turns people into real-life heroes? On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by comedians/writers Caitlin Gill and Alex Watt for a look at the surprising number of times that exact thing happened. They’ll explore stories of regular people who saved a life thanks to skills gained randomly from cartoons, sitcoms, ‘World Of Warcraft’, and more silly entertainment.

Footnotes: https://www.cracked.com/podcast/9-times-pop-culture-accidentally-taught-people-to-save-lives/