The plane had crashed. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper had been laid to rest. But the story of The Day the…

playlist: February 3, 1959, would become known as “The Day the Music Died”In Part Two of The Day the Music Died, we continue with…

February 3, 1959, would become known as “The Day the Music Died” But before we get to that frozen field, we need to know…

In the second part we follow Mary through her years on North Brother Island, her legal fight against the city, her release, and the…

Mary Mallon was simply an Irish immigrant making a living as a cook for some of New York’s wealthiest families. But wherever she worked,…

The Hitler Diaries are finally exposed as fake, and the fallout is spectacular! In the fourth and final part of our series, we talk…

Stern is now spending millions, historians are cautiously warning them, and Konrad Kujau is sitting at home frantically producing more and more volumes while…

Gerd Heidemann follows up on the supposed Hitler diaries and finally meets the man behind them. Money starts changing hands in ways that should…

This week, we start a story that begins with a boat, takes a detour through a small village in East Germany, and ends up…

In 1853, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria goes for one of his regular walks in Vienna. It’s something he does often enough that…

This week we’re in January of 1919, in Boston’s North End. People are still recovering from the First World War and the 1918 flu,…

When we first started Fresh Hell, people kept asking us to cover the Boston Molasses Flood. So…here we are. And because Annie researched this…

After everything he survived as a child at Spiegelgrund, Friedrich ends up back in prison in the 1970s, where he is sent for a…

In Part 3 of Friedrich Zawrel’s story, we follow him through detention, sentencing, and a harrowing journey along the Danube as the Third Reich…

In Part 2 of Friedrich Zawrel’s story, we meet the doctors of Spiegelgrund. Dr. Ernst Illing and Dr. Heinrich Gross were psychiatrists working inside…

Friedrich Zawrel grew up in Vienna during the Third Reich. As a child, he was labeled “difficult” and “unmanageable” by the authorities. That was…

Vienna, 1940. On the hills above the city stood a children’s psychiatric institution called Am Spiegelgrund. Officially it was a place for treatment, observation,…

In 1660, a respected estate steward left the English market town of Chipping Campden to collect rent and never came home. His bloodstained belongings…

In Part 3, we follow Friedrich after Küstrin. This episode looks at what Friedrich became once he held absolute power: the military strategist, the…

After being arrested and imprisoned at Küstrin, Friedrich is stripped of rank, freedom, and is forced into isolation, surveillance, and humiliation, while the fate…

Friedrich II of Prussia is remembered as “the Great.”But before he became the most famous Prussian king, he tried to run! In this first…

In 1920s Vienna, a woman calling herself Baroness Cadvé ran what appeared to be a private language school for children. Behind the polite advertisements…

On December 24th 1996, in Minneapolis, a series of escalating disturbances unfolded across the city, leading to an explosion during the city’s Christmas celebrations.…

This week, Johanna takes us back to 18th-century Austria, when terrified villagers were convinced the dead were refusing to stay buried…and the Habsburg Empire…

Cardinal de Rohan believes he’s secretly helping Marie Antoinette purchase the world’s most extravagant necklace, while Jeanne de la Motte and her accomplices quietly…