Jack O’Brien

What’s poppin, con-gregation? Jack O’Brien joins the show to discuss an actor who hoodwinked millions from movie investors.

What’s poppin, con-gregation? Jack O’Brien joins the show to discuss an actor who hoodwinked millions from movie investors.  Plus, MAGA supporters get conned by the Trump campaign. Stay schemin!

Research by Sharilyn Vera. 

SOURCES

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-06/hollywood-actor-zach-avery-ponzi-scheme-arrest

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4878976/

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/07/business/zach-avery-actor-alleged-ponzi-scheme/index.html

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/04/trumps-campaign-scammed-donors-auto-checked-box.html

Hosts of The Daily Zeitgeist podcast, Miles Gray and Jack O’Brien join Andrew to discuss the Astros player who was suspended for 5 games for a racist slant-eye gesture, majority of White Americans feeling that they are discriminated against, and much more. As always, leave us a message about anything you think is racist at (323)389-RACE.

Last year we covered in a podcast how truth is stranger and often scarier than fiction, especially when it comes to the history genre. Case in point: the story of Henry Rathbone. You’re probably thinking, who’s Henry Rathbone? That’s kind of the point. Henry Rathbone and his wife Clara were sitting next to Abraham Lincoln the night of the assassination, and despite the decades of conspiracy theories and ghost stories surrounding the Lincoln family, the craziest and bloodiest story of the night belongs to Mr. Rathbone.

See, in the years following Lincoln’s assassination, Rathbone’s mental state declined as he blamed himself for not being able to prevent the president’s death. Soon after that, he started to believe his walls were talking to him. Then he went full Shining and murdered his wife, tried to murder his children and stabbed himself 5 times in the chest. He spent the rest of his life in an insane asylum. This is an absolutely bonkers story edited from the margins of history, yet we choose not remember it because it doesn’t read like a textbook.

This sort of historical amnesia also applies to how we look at the horror genre. There are countless unsolved murders, disappearances and mass hysterias that we don’t know how to classify just because their details are too strange to swallow, the leads go nowhere and eventually we give up.

So in honor of Halloween, Jack O’Brien and Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) share 12 creepy and macabre unsolved mysteries that are just too weird to fit into our cookie-cutter version of the horror genres.

Cracked Editor-in-Chief Jack O’Brien joins Adam for a repeat Wolf Den appearance. On his first time guesting (episode #32 in 2011) Jack met Jeff Ullrich for the first time, and didn’t even have a podcast yet. Now he hosts the Cracked Podcast, a successful Earwolf show.  Jack explains how he became Cracked’s Editor-in-Chief and then the host of that podcast. He also reveals the user-focused strategy behind Cracked’s addictive and shareable articles and how that style gets translated to popular video and podcasts. They wrap up by discussing the similarities between podcast ads and branded content, and why honesty is an important factor for both.

Cracked Editor-in-Chief and fellow podcaster Jack O’Brien makes his way to the County! Jack talks to the guys about how his love of podcasts lead to him starting the Cracked podcast here on Earwolf, his theory about Florida, and why the Real Housewives has more value than playing Candy Crush. Daniel Van Kirk brings us crazy stories today which include a Florida teenager who was caught masturbating with a stuffed animal in a Walmart, a Chili’s cook in Florida was fired after posting pictures of himself shirtless in the kitchen, and a funeral home in Michigan that lets you pay your final respects via a drive thru. Later, we hear from our good buddy Steven Seagal who happens to be at the happiest place on Earth.

Make sure to stream The Sklar Brothers’ one hour special “What Are We Talking About” right this very minute on Netflix, don’t forget to buy the Sklars’ album available on iTunes today, and check out when the Sklars are coming to your city at www.supersklars.com!