Season 4, Episode 4: Curious Podcasts
In this double interview episode, Frank unplugs his headphones to chat with hosts of podcasts that not only delve into the weird and unusual, but they keep history alive.
Frank's Thoughts
Since this is a two interview episode, I’ll give my thoughts in two sections.
1st - Darkness Radio
A long while back, in another life, I used to work overnights doing data entry. You can only write the payee line of a check so many times before you just want to check out. Thankfully, we were allowed access to either mp3 players, or web-browsers to listen to music or whatever. Trust me, I think the higher ups new that was the only way we wouldn’t go insane.
One of the things that kept me from just walking out from boredom were podcasts about the paranormal. And while I will admit that I’m 100% a skeptic, I still love a good ghost story. I love hearing about UFO sightings, and whether or not Bigfoot is under someone’s bed. I just eat it up. So I would listen to whatever I could get my hands on, in this time before iTunes’ podcasts were really popular.
I had a subscription to Coast to Coast AM, which I would listen to often, but there were hosts I liked and hosts I didn’t, and when I ran out of episodes for the hosts I liked, I would wander. I found a great one named “Audio Martini,” which was run by a skeptic. Sadly, because it was mostly done by the host, with little extra help, there weren’t a ton of episodes
.Through some research I stumbled upon a podcast called “Darkness on the Edge of Town Radio,” now known as Darkness Radio. I ate that show up and listened to as many episodes as possible. I really enjoyed the hosts’ personality and even thought about going to a paranormal convention so I could meet them, but it never worked out.
Fast forward almost a decade later and here I am with an opportunity to visit the Baltimore Ouija board convention (spoiler alert, that may or may not be a future History at Risk episode, wink wink, nudge nudge). When looking over the guests attending, I see that none other than Dave Schrader, from Darkness Radio, is attending the convention. So, it may have taken a few years, but I ended up getting to not only meet him, but sit down and chat with him about his show.
2nd - The Curioso Podcast
I needed a guest to talk about sideshow and its history (spoiler alert #2, there may or may not be an upcoming episode on sideshows…wink wink, nudge nudge). We had some b-roll filmed, but due to a complication, we had no guest.
So I did what any other researcher/host of a web-series does when they need to find an interviewee, I took to the internet. And through a series of searches, I happened upon a podcast that talked about all sorts of weird topics. And at first I was scratching my head as to why this popped up. It certainly seemed interesting, but what good is a podcast if I can’t interview the hosts. Then I saw it, they lived in the Baltimore area.
I looked through their topic list, and what was their very first show? Sideshow. What more, one of the host was a bonafide sword swallower. How great is that?
I hit play on the sideshow episode and was immediately hooked. Their take on paranormal and weird history spoke to a skeptic like me (watch the episode for more information on that). Then, I started scrolling through the show topics and I was floored. They covered quite a number of the topics we’re covering, or going to be covering in 2016. I’m not going to tell you which ones, because as you’ve already seen, I’ve spoiled two upcoming episodes already.
I reached out to Christopher Scarborough and Joseph Taylor, and they got back to me with a very enthusiastic yes. And since I loved their podcast so much, I knew I needed to feature that as an episode as well, which is what you’ll see in this episode.
And then I was honored when they invited me to come on to their show to be a guest (link below).
Seriously, take some time, listen to their podcasts…whether you’re a skeptic or a believer, you’re in for a treat.
