What It Was Like
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What It Was Like
Conversations with people who have lived through extreme events. Some stories are dark and twisted, others are light and funny. In all cases, we get an intimate portrait of 'what it was like' to be there.Find us on TikTok: @whatitwaslikepodcastFind us on Youtube: @whatitwaslikepodcastFollow us...
Nedávne epizódy
45 epizód
I Was Nearly Killed by the 'Killdozer'
In 2004, a man named Marvin Heemeyer turned a bulldozer into a homemade tank and tore through Granby, Colorado, targeting people he believed had wrong...
I Had an Affair With an AI Girlfriend
Chris Smith started experimenting with ChatGPT in 2024 and quickly became hooked. Soon he’d customised the chatbot into a flirty persona he named “Sol...
I Dated a Billionaire Weapons Dealer
Jill Dodd was a 21-year-old model when she started dating one of the world's richest men. Adnan Khashoggi made billions selling arms to Saudi Arabia a...
Lighting Bushfires Made Me Feel Less Alone
In the late 1980s, Steve was a teenage firefighter in a small Australian coastal town. Lonely and looking for connection, he discovered that if he lit...
A Nearly Impossible Story of Survival on 9/11
On September 11, 2001, Stanley Praimnath was on the top floor of the South Tower when he saw the second plane heading straight for his office. Against...
I Discovered Brad Pitt
With Brad Pitt back in the spotlight thanks to F1, we’re revisiting a classic episode from 2022. Casting director Lauren Lloyd recalls meeting a young...
How it Felt Running a $700 Million Bank Fraud
In 2003, a Wall Street trader named John Rusnak was convicted of bank fraud and sentenced to more than seven years in prison. In this episode, John ex...
What We Found Hidden in our Walls
A family moves into a new home in rural Pennsylvania and starts renovating. Only there's something in the walls that doesn't make sense. What they unc...
Three Deaths at a Spiritual Retreat
In 2009, motivational speaker James Arthur Ray hosted a multi-day retreat in Arizona. On the final day, three participants died. In this episode, the ...
The Meat Industry Veteran Who'd Seen Enough
For decades, David Magna worked as a safety supervisor in Canadian slaughterhouses. But then a crisis of conscience turned him from an industry inside...
I Called the Police on My Serial Killer Dad
As a child, April Balascio noticed that people would often vanish. One time it was a labourer working for her dad, another time it was a young couple...
I Accidentally Turned ‘The Macarena’ Into a Global Phenomenon
In 1995, Carlos de Yarza spent 90 minutes remixing a catchy Spanish song without giving it much thought. That version became 'The Macarena' the world...
One Night, 852 People Lost in the Ocean
In 1994, a luxurious ferry called the MS Estonia sank in the Baltic Sea, drowning most of its passengers. Landscape architect Paul Barney was one of t...
I Solved the 'Doomsday Mum' Murders
In 2019, two children vanished in Idaho, sparking an investigation that became one of America’s biggest true crime stories. At the centre were Chad an...
What I’ve Learned Stopping Suicides on the Golden Gate Bridge
When Kevin Briggs joined the San Francisco Highway Patrol, he didn’t expect a key part of his job would be talking people down from the Golden Gate Br...
I Imported Rave Culture (and Ecstasy) to America
In 1991, Shaun Attwood arrived from the UK to find American rave culture in its infancy. Spotting an opportunity, he began importing potent Dutch ecst...
What Happens When Religious Leaders Take Magic Mushrooms?
A new study gave psilocybin to religious leaders, just to see whether their faith would be affirmed or rattled. In this episode we hear from one parti...
He Cut Off My Arms and Left Me to Die
Mary McGriff was 15 when she hitched a ride with a man named Lawrence Singleton. The next day, she lay at the bottom of a cliff, her arms severed with...
The Lovers That Burned Down 77 Houses
This week, we're re-running a classic. When abandoned farm houses started catching fire in rural Virginia, police weren't sure what to think. It took...
I Got Eaten By a Hippopotamus
In the early 90s, Paul Templer ran a business guiding clients down the Zambezi River near Victoria Falls. One afternoon, he was attacked by a hippo an...
I Led the Manhunt for a Killer Who Lived Like a Hermit
In 2005, Malcolm Naden murdered two women and vanished into the Australian bush. For seven years he evaded police, until former detective Ricky Hennes...
How Cocaine Killed the Car in 'Back to the Future'
John DeLorean was a star auto designer in the 1960s, but his own car company—the DeLorean Motor Company—never took off. When a cocaine deal offered a...
My School Was Kidnapped at Gunpoint
In 1976, 20-year-old Rob Hunter was a month into his first teaching job at a remote Australian school when an armed gunman abducted him and his nine s...
I Had Sex With 100 Men in One Day
Last year, 23-year-old British porn star Lily Phillips announced plans to break the world record for the most sexual partners in a day—starting with a...
Everyone Said 'Dirty Dancing' Would Flop. I Made It Anyway
In the mid-80s, producer Linda Gottlieb heard a friend’s story about “dirty dancing” at summer camp and urged her to write a script. Despite rejection...
I Got Pregnant to a Man Who Doesn't Exist
In 2024, Cass Taulaki fell pregnant to the man of her dreams—a 32-year-old engineer in the Australian Defence Force. Or so she thought. In reality, he...
I Lived in a Haunted Apartment That Didn't Like to Be Alone
In the early 2000s, musician Nathan Munn moved into a tiny, ornate apartment in Montreal. At first, he and his flatmates brushed off its strange energ...
How a Sinking Ship Refloated our Marriage
In 2012, a cruise liner named the Costa Concordia sank off the coast of Italy, killing 32 people. But Australian couple Rob and Tracy Elcombe survived...
I Visited an Uncontacted Tribe in the Amazon
The Awá, an Indigenous group in Brazil's Amazon, had no contact with the outside world until recently. In 2010, BBC journalist Justin Rowlatt visited...
I Slept With New York's Elite to Rob Them
In 2009, Kari Ferrell was outed by the media for writing bad checks and robbing trust fund babies across Manhattan. Dubbed the 'Hipster Grifter,' Kari...
SCAMMERLAND: How a Fake Job Offer Landed Me in Slavery
This is the first episode of our new What It Was Like series, SCAMMERLAND. It's based on an episode we did last year, looking at how online scams are...
Wellness and Lies: My Friendship With Belle Gibson
In 2015, wellness influencer Belle Gibson was outed for pretending to have cancer. Now she's back in the headlines thanks to a new show on Netflix. In...
I Watched Tornado Chasing Go from Subculture to Saturation
Tornado chasing was a niche hobby when Tim Marshall started in the 1970s. But over time, he watched it grow in popularity and then explode into the ma...
Discovering My Grandfather's Secret Nazi Past
Julie Lindahl always knew there was something different about her family. Her German grandparents had fled to Brazil after the war, but she didn't kno...
Getting Stuck in a Washing Machine Changed My Life
In 2014, Laurence Hearn was drinking too much and struggling to make ends meet. Then he accidentally got stuck in a washing machine. What followed was...
Why Did My Schoolmate Murder His Family?
In 1989, Melissa Fyfe was a high school student in Tasmania when her classmate killed his parents and younger brother. Shocked, the community buried t...
The Great Australian Coffee Shop Joke War
In 2019, a man named Fraser Harvey nominated himself 'Customer of the Week' at a Melbourne coffee shop. A woman named Harriett Noall retaliated and a...
We Hunted Down a Mystery Killer in the Outback
It was June 1987 and an unknown person had murdered five campers in Australia's remote northwest. In this episode, we speak with Bob Brown, the former...
I'm the Lowest-Ranked Tennis Player to Ever Win a Grand Slam
Mark Edmondson was ranked 212th when he was invited to compete at the 1976 Australian Open. He was a 21-year-old with sideburns, juggling odd jobs to...
Inside the Life of the Pizza Bomber
In 2003, a pizza deliveryman robbed a Pennsylvania bank with a bomb locked to his neck—a heist that ended in tragedy when the bomb exploded. The maste...