When It Was Cool Dark

This Edgar Allen Poe themed dark drama debuted on Netflix in November starring, among other people, Mark Hamill... yes, Luke Skywalker as an evil attorney if you can believe it. Drawing from the Sackler family and the opioid crisis, this is the tale of the fall of a billionaire family who made their fortune off selling a deadly medication with no moral compass, sprinkled with a bit of the supernatural and told by the framework of Edgar Allen Poe. It doesn't sound like it should work, but it does.

Karl and Tonya from When It Was Cool takes a look back at the psychological thriller Knock at the Cabin starring former pro wrestling and MCU star Dave Batista. A mysterious foursome appear at a cabin where a family of three are staying with a strange and dark request- choose to kill a member of their family or the world will end. When they refuse, apocalyptic events begin unfolding.

Karl and Tonya from When It Was Cool return to discuss the new video game inspired horror movie Five Nights at Freddy's. While fans seem to love it and it has made a ton of money, critics have brutalized it. The truth, at least in our opinion, stands somewhere in-between! This also falls right into our pop culture wheelhouse as the animatronics in the movie (and game) are based on the old Showbiz Pizza animatronics which leads to some great fun. Is it creepy or is it fun? Let's talk Five Nights at Freddy's (There are spoilers aplenty so be warned!)

On this edition of When It Was Cool Dark Podcast, hosts Karl and Tonya discuss the latest prequel for the Stephen King Pet Semetary franchise: Bloodline. The seeds for this story were planted in the original 1989 movie/book where we learn about a young Judd, Timmy, his dog, and the origin of the pet cemetery. This movie has seen some harsh criticism and we will discuss why. So, grab some popcorn and come prepare for Halloween with us as we journey to the Pet Semetary.

When It Was Cool Dark looks back at 1939's Universal Monster movie Son of Frankenstein where the son of the original Dr. Frankenstein comes to claim his family estate and discovers The Monster has been saved by Ygor (played by Bela Lugosi of Dracula fame) and is being used as a weapon against Ygor's enemies. Karl and Tonya (from When It Was Cool website) discuss the movie and the changes in macabre films over the years and what are the modern equivalents of this type cinema.

Karl Stern discusses the mysterious Alaska Triangle where supposedly nearly 20,000 have gone missing. There are also reports of UFOs and UAPs and even its own native Bigfoot like creature, the Wendigo! Planes have vanished without a trace and even a high-level U.S. Congressman has gone missing. Is there something going on in this vast stretch of Alaskan wilderness or is this just another mystery that isn't really that mysterious? There is one very strange case in the Alaska Triangle that seems to defy explanation. Join us as we discuss the Alaska Triangle. Support us on Patreon!

If the headlines of today's newspapers sudden screamed "The United States in Possession of Alien Spacecraft!" the world would go crazy. The 24 hour news stations would leap on the story (until the next crisis came along or could be invented) but it was be... well... big news. Yet, it has already happened. Thanks to archives of Newspapers.com, podcast host Karl Stern digs into the start of the "Flying Saucer" sensation that gripped the United States (and later the world) around the time of the reported Roswell, NM UFO crash. 

For several years now you may have been periodically reading headlines like, "Harvard Professor Believes Object Traveling Through Solar System is Alien Space Craft", or recently, "Harvard Professor Discovers Remains of Alien Technology on Earth". So who is this Harvard Professor? He is Avi Loeb and he is, in fact, a Harvard Professor. But what's his deal? If a Harvard Professor has, supposedly discovered all of this why has the world turned upside down at his "discoveries"? Let's dig deeper into who is this Alien discovering Harvard professor and why does his name keep coming up in the news and... has he discovered evidence for aliens?

We need to be able to trust the gatekeepers of science. Science and scientific ideals are at the center of modern political warfare and science should be held to the course of political winds. We need science to be firm and accountable. But what happens when the very process that oversees acceptable science becomes corrupted. There is an outcry among the scientific community that this may well be happening due to a corruption of the peer review process. What is peer review and how could it be manipulated? That is the topic on this edition of When It Was Cool Dark Podcast.

When It Was Cool Dark continues to explore the greatest mysteries of the universe (and, perhaps, beyond) and this episode host Karl Stern takes a look at Satan or, The Devil. It's almost irrelevant if you believe in The Devil or not because billions of other do and those people make up large portions of the government you are under, the places you work, and the people that surround you. So, your life is influenced by The Devil whether you believe in it or not. But you might be surprised that a lot of what you think you know about the ultimate evil is not actually written in religious cannon. This week we look at misconceptions about the devil and what the texts really say.

How did life begin? The prevailing scientific consensus presents us with a primordial soup a few billion years ago which coalesced into life. But wait, the science is not as settled as you might believe. There are problems with that model and some leading scientists are challenging that model. What even is "life"? Even that definition is not as clear in 2023 as one might think. Today at When It Was Cool Dark we will look at some of the latest questions being presented to origin of life researchers. No, we aren't talking creationism either, but the straightforward science.

You can't turn on the news these days without being inundated by news about UFOs or (UAP as they are now branded). The military is seeing them, Harvard (no less) professors are seeing them, the public is seeing them- it's madness! Or it would have been in the 1950s, you would have been branded a lunatic. Now, however, the cat is out of the bag. Something is out there, the question is what? Are we alone in this vast, vast universe? Or is it something else? Today we examine the UAE-UFO phenomenon.

The newly revamped When It Was Cool Dark begins our new podcast journey looking at the mysteries of the universe. The unexplained. The unknown. And we aren't just going to take your word for it. We are going to examine these mysteries and ask ourselves what the evidence says, are we being mislead, what inputs are biased? Today we begin with the first and greatest mystery... how did we get here to begin with. This podcast isn't for everyone. Only you can decide if you WANT to KNOW or if you want to be TOLD. There is a difference. Zero politics. Zero biases.

Our 100 darkest moments in pop culture series concludes with a trio of scandals involving WWE head honcho Vince K. McMahon. Host Karl Stern takes a look at the assault of Rita Chatterton, the 1990s steroid trial, and the multiple payoffs scandal which, temporarily, removed him from power... only to come back richer. Vince McMahon is not only Teflon when it comes to scandals, he somehow escapes any karma and comes back more powerful and wealthy. A supervillain Lex Luthor would be proud of.

The band Fishbone quickly became one of the most influential and inventive bands in all of popular music during the 1980s. However, the bizarre story of band member Kendall Jones threatened to derail this eclectic group. Not only did he allegedly join a cult but another band member, determined to save him from himself, launched a plot to kidnap him. This is the strange journey of Fishbone.

Have you ever seen a show with fellas on the mic with one minute rhymes that don't come out right? Well, pioneering rapper Slick Rick had a lot of things that didn't come out right. Mostly, the U.S. government hated him and sought him out at every turn. This is the story of Slick Rick and he makes the 100 darkest moments in pop culture history because, well, his bodyguard tried to kill him so Slick Rick grabbed a gun, as rappers sometimes do, and went out and managed to shoot a couple of the wrong people. The government then spent decades trying to deport him like Tony the Tiger. Word. 

Thomas Ince was the father of the Western movie genre. During his career in the pioneer days of film making he produced around 800 movies. Thomas Ince also was the first person to build their own movie studio. So how did this influential and pioneering film maker end up on the list of 100 of the darkest moments in pop culture history? Because of legendary historical figure and media mogul William Randolph Hearst, legendary actor Charlie Chaplin and a hole that, may or may not, have been in the head of Thomas Ince. 

Continuing our 100 darkest moments in pop culture history, this week we look at the shocking and tragic death of actor Chadwick Boseman who appeared as the Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, including his own critically acclaimed Black Panther solo movie. The world was shocked when, unknown to virtually everyone, the actor died from complications of colon cancer. Today we remember Chadwick Boseman.

In 1997 one of the most bizarre moments in boxing and pop culture took place when, during the second Mike Tyson verses Evander Holyfield fight, Tyson viciously bit the ear of Holyfield not once, but twice! Tyson earned himself a disqualification and tons of negative publicity. This strange incident was a real black eye (err... ear) for boxing and stands as one of the 100 darkest moments in pop culture history.

Look, ok, Mel Gibson is a very good actor. I like numerous Mel Gibson movies. He is certainly famous: Mad Max, Lethal Weapon, Braveheart, Passion of the Christ, and on and on it goes. But there have been enough maniacally outburst to wonder what exactly is going on inside Mel Gibson’s head. Apparently, he really hates Jews (and others) and has expressed this in the most vile of terms.