The Compendium: An Assembly of Fascinating Things

On the morning of 31 October 1938, a sleepless 23-year-old walked into a room full of reporters who all wanted the same answer: had Orson Welles deliberately terrified America? The night before, his Mercury Theatre on the Air had performed The War of the Worlds as a string of fake news bulletins, and by morning the newspapers claimed the country had come apart. Families fleeing their homes. Switchboards jammed. People begging for gas masks as Martians supposedly wiped out New Jersey. But the panic might be the biggest illusion of all. Kyle takes Adam through Welles's rise from child prodigy to radio wonder, the frantic last-minute rewrite that almost nobody behind the scenes believed in, and the missing station break that let listeners think it was real. Then comes the twist: the ratings suggesting hardly anyone tuned in, the study that quietly falls apart under scrutiny, and the newspapers with every reason to make radio look dangerous. This is the strange true story of how a broadcast everyone expected to flop became the most famous in radio history, and how a nation talked itself into believing it had been fooled. Topics Included what actually happened during the 1938 war of the worlds broadcast how orson welles went from child prodigy to radio star the last-minute rewrite the cast thought would flop why the missing station break made listeners think it was real the fake news bulletins and the Grovers Mill landing the reports of gas masks, fleeing families and jammed switchboards the ratings and the study that undercut the mass hysteria how newspapers amplified the panic to attack radio how the broadcast made Orson Welles more famous, not less Resources and Further Reading The War of the Worlds - Novel by H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds (1938 Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast) - Internet Archive - 'War of the Worlds' guide: Script, audio and recollections - Wellesnet The Myth of the War of the Worlds Panic - Article by Jefferson Pooley The legend of the War of the Worlds - PBS NewsHour Broadcast Hysteria: - by A. Brad Schwartz Host & Show InfoHosts: Kyle Risi & Adam CoxEditor: Giordanno Bottezini Intro Music: Alice in dark WonderlandCommunity & Calls to ActionReview & follow on: Spotify & Apple PodcastsInstagram: @theCompendiumPodcastWebsite: thecompendiumpodcast.comSupport us: Sign up to PatreonSuggest a Topic: Freaky RegisterShare this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favourite takeaway. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

An entire colony of 117 men, women and children vanished without leaving behind a single body. There was no blood, no sign of an attack and no ruined settlement. Their homes had been carefully dismantled and taken away. All they left behind was one word carved into a wooden post: CROATOAN. In 1587, the colonists were stranded on Roanoke Island instead of reaching their intended home in Chesapeake Bay. Governor John White sailed back to England for supplies, leaving behind his daughter Eleanor and newborn granddaughter Virginia Dare. War, privateering and disaster kept him away for three years. By the time he returned, everyone was gone. What did Croatoan mean and where did the settlers go? Did they move inland, reach the Indigenous communities around Chesapeake, survive through trade and assimilation, or meet a more violent end? From Sir Walter Raleigh’s collapsing colonial scheme and England’s brutal relationship with local communities to hidden map symbols, hammerscale, Jamestown accounts and the infamous Dare Stones, this is the strange history behind one of America’s most enduring unsolved mysteries and the possibility that the colonists were never truly lost at all. Topics Included What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke The real meaning of the Croatoan carving John White’s three-year delay and return Virginia Dare and the 117 settlers English conflict with the Roanoac and Croatoan communities The planned move to Chesapeake Bay Archaeological evidence at Croatoan and Salmon Creek Jamestown accounts of surviving colonists The Lumbee connection and assimilation theory The Dare Stones and the hoax that followed Host & Show InfoHosts: Kyle Risi & Adam CoxEditor: Giordanno Bottezini Intro Music: Alice in dark WonderlandCommunity & Calls to ActionReview & follow on: Spotify & Apple PodcastsInstagram: @theCompendiumPodcastWebsite: thecompendiumpodcast.comSupport us: Sign up to PatreonSuggest a Topic: Freaky RegisterShare this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favourite takeaway. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In 1692, an enslaved woman named Tituba told a Salem courtroom that the Devil had come to her and bid her serve him. Her confession lit the fuse that would become known as the infamous Salem witch trials, the deadliest witch hunt in American history. Within months, more than a third of Salem Village had been accused, imprisoned and were awaiting trial. Nineteen people were hanged. One man was pressed to death under stones for refusing to plead. And a four-year-old girl sat in custom-made shackles while her accusers watched. But this is not really a story about witches. It is a story about mass hysteria, and how a Puritan community primed by centuries of European witch hunting, religious paranoia and moral surveillance convinced itself to kill its own neighbours on the strength of spectral evidence: testimony that someone's ghost attacked you in the night. We trace the strange true story from Cotton Mather's witchcraft playbook to the witch cake, the Devil's book, the confessions that saved lives, and the moment the accusations reached the governor's wife and the whole thing collapsed. Plus the surprising link between Salem and our home town of Norwich. Topics Included what caused the Salem witch trials Tituba's confession and why it changed everything spectral evidence and why no alibi could save you the witch cake ritual and the first three accused the arrest of four-year-old Dorothy Good Giles Corey's death by pressing and his final strategy how the accusations reached the governor's wife and ended the trials the 330-year fight to clear every victim's name the Norwich connection to Bridget Bishop Resources and Further Reading Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions - Cotton Mather, 1689, Salem Witch Trials Memorial, Salem, Massachusetts - Memorial site opened 1992 Salem witch trials - Encyclopaedia Britannica The last Salem witch has been exonerated - CNN Host & Show InfoHosts: Kyle Risi & Adam CoxEditor: Giordanno Bottezini Intro Music: Alice in dark WonderlandCommunity & Calls to ActionReview & follow on: Spotify & Apple PodcastsInstagram: @theCompendiumPodcastWebsite: thecompendiumpodcast.comSupport us: Sign up to PatreonSuggest a Topic: Freaky RegisterShare this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favourite takeaway. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On the last morning before half term, 240 children walked into Pantglas Junior School beneath a mountain of coal waste. Minutes after lessons began, Tip 7 collapsed above Aberfan, sending liquefied spoil through homes and classrooms and killing 116 children and 28 adults. But the Aberfan disaster did not begin with the slide, and it did not end when the rescue stopped. The warning signs had been there: natural springs beneath the tip, earlier slips on the mountainside and concerns that failed to produce action. The tribunal later placed responsibility on the National Coal Board and concluded that the disaster could and should have been prevented. Told through the experiences of survivors including Phil Thomas, Karen Thomas, Jeff Edwards and Gerald Tarr, this is a story of rescue, grief, institutional failure and the lives shaped by what happened on 21 October 1966. It also follows the fight to remove the remaining tips, the controversy surrounding the disaster fund and the long silence that made healing even harder. Topics Included The final morning at Pantglas Junior School Why water beneath Tip 7 triggered the collapse The warnings and earlier slides on Mynydd Merthyr The children and teachers trapped inside the school The rescue effort and its system of whistles and silence The tribunal's findings against the National Coal Board The compensation and disaster-fund controversies The lasting trauma carried by survivors and families Resources The Aberfan Tribunal — Glamorgan Archives Aberfan Disaster 1966 — National Library of Wales digital archive The Aberfan Disaster, 1966 — British Geological Survey case study Aberfan Disaster: Lessons Learned — Institution of Civil Engineers explainer Aberfan: No End of a Lesson — History & Policy research paper Aberfan Disaster Debate, 26 October 1967 — UK Parliament Hansard Death of a Black Mountain: How the Aberfan Disaster Unfolded — HistoryExtra survivor history The Psychological Effects of the Aberfan Disaster — 33-year follow-up study Guidance to the Disused Tips Authority for Wales — Welsh Government consultation This Year Marks the 60th Anniversary of the Aberfan Disaster — Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council Host & Show InfoHosts: Kyle Risi & Adam CoxEditor: Giordanno Bottezini Intro Music: Alice in dark WonderlandCommunity & Calls to ActionReview & follow on: Spotify & Apple PodcastsInstagram: @theCompendiumPodcastWebsite: thecompendiumpodcast.comSupport us: Sign up to PatreonSuggest a Topic: Freaky RegisterShare this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favourite takeaway. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A trillion-dollar company. Two women who worked inside it, years apart. And the exact same warnings, ignored twice.   This episode traces Frances Haugen, the Facebook product manager who walked out with a phone full of leaked documents and wiped six billion dollars off the company's share price in a single day, and Sarah Wynn-Williams, Facebook's former global policy chief, whose tell-all memoir Careless People landed her in emergency arbitration and a gag order so strict she's legally barred from discussing her own book. We cover the Instagram research on teenage girls, the Myanmar crisis both women separately flagged, China, Cross-Check, the Capitol riot, and the 2026 courtroom reckoning that's cost Meta over seventeen billion dollars so far. One whistleblower built a legal shield before she ever spoke. The other found out, too late, exactly how exposed she'd left herself. Coincidence, or exactly the pattern you'd expect from a company this size?   Topics Included Frances Haugen's path from Google and Pinterest to Facebook's Civic Integrity team The leaked internal research on Instagram's effect on teenage girls' body image Cross-Check (XCheck) and the rules that didn't apply to Facebook's most powerful users The Capitol riot, the Facebook Files, and Facebook's rebrand to Meta Meta's 2026 courtroom reckoning: Section 230, the New Mexico and Los Angeles verdicts, and the $17.1 billion settlement Sarah Wynn-Williams' six years as Facebook's global policy chief, and the Myanmar and China allegations in her book The arbitration order and gag order that followed her memoir, Careless People Arturo Bejar's testimony, and what happened to Meta's stock price after the settlement Resources and Further Reading Frances Haugen — Wikipedia Frances Haugen's Written Testimony – the Senate Commerce Committee Sarah Wynn-Williams — Wikipedia Ex-Meta executive: — CNN Sarah Wynn-Williams accuses Meta of colluding with China — TechCrunch What the Wall Street Journal Got Wrong — Meta's official response Host & Show InfoHosts: Kyle Risi & Adam CoxEditor: Giordanno Bottezini Intro Music: Alice in dark WonderlandCommunity & Calls to ActionReview & follow on: Spotify & Apple PodcastsInstagram: @theCompendiumPodcastWebsite: thecompendiumpodcast.comSupport us: Sign up to PatreonSuggest a Topic: Freaky RegisterShare this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favourite takeaway. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.