Antemortem

A short goodbye and thank you.

LZ-129 Hindenburg was the pride and joy of the Zeppelin company. The rigid airship took its final voyage in May 1937. Big and buoyant, its failure singlehandedly ruined commercial travel via dirigible.

This episode is torture.

When a big windy tunnel comes down from the sky

In July 2005, four terrorists attacked London at rush hour. We look at who they were and how it happened. A cameo from the Mother of Satan.

Goodbye, Galen. Hello, cyberknife!

In this episode, John Hunter saves a few legs and Civil War surgeons remove quite a few. Luckily for the soldiers, chloroform is in use.

When it came to cutting people open during the medieval period and renaissance, the barber surgeon reigned supreme. The bandages were drunk, the c-sections were deadly, and da Vinci was slicing bodies open left and right.

We’re on episode 100 and it's time for Antemortem to have surgery! Part one of this series covers surgical practices of the ancient world. The doctors and "doctors" in this episode will be trepanning, castrating, and gently shoving someone's exposed intestines back inside their body.

In 2010, the oil rig Deepwater Horizon experienced catastrophic failure. After the deadly blast, there came an oil spill of monstrous proportions.

If you like unsolvable murders with heaps of contradictory evidence and an inscrutable ransom note, you've come to the right episode. JonBenét Ramsey was killed in 1996 but even a decade-late confession has brought us no closer to knowing who's responsible. Listen to see if you can figure out whether the pineapple is important.

The year was 1912. The ocean was below freezing. The lifeboats were inadequate. The punctures of an iceberg took down the world's largest ship in under three hours. Based on the 1997 blockbuster, Titanic.

Meet Israel Keyes: loner, carpenter, killer. Keyes murdered at least eight victims and committed a variety of other crimes. He wouldn't want us talking about him.

Chicago in 1871 was a rapidly growing city full of wooden buildings. Two things it lacked were an adequately equipped fire department and precipitation. After three dry months, a barn on the city’s south side went up in flames. The tenacious fire crossed rivers and overwhelmed the city.

When faced with a difficult financial situation, John List chose the worst possible option.

For a few days in August, 1831, Nat Turner led a rebellion that shocked and terrified the enslavers of Southampton County, Virginia and hastened abolition.

Episode 2 on tuberculosis explores some of the pre-antibiotic methods for dealing with the disease. You should probably try sitting outside and drinking milk before considering surgical options. Neither will cure you but you might be inspired to write a poem before you expire.