{"podcast":{"title":"Disturbing History","slug":"disturbing-history-7341005","podcast_index_feed_id":7341005,"rss_url":"https://www.spreaker.com/show/6628223/episodes/feed","website_url":"https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/disturbing-history--6628223","image_url":"https://d3wo5wojvuv7l.cloudfront.net/t_rss_itunes_square_1400/images.spreaker.com/original/f42011dc1c8c8130e84fb37f20a9046e.jpg","author":"Paranormal World Productions LLC","episode_count":145,"summary":"Disturbing History is a dark history podcast uncovering the strange, sinister, and little-known stories the past tried to bury. Each week, we explore unsolved mysteries, secret societies, forgotten crimes, eerie folklore, lost civilizations, historical conspiracies, and disturbing events that never made it into your high school textbook .Hosted by author, investigator, and storyteller Brian King-Sharp, Disturbing History dives deep into: Unsolved historical mysteries Secret societies and hidden power structures Dark folklore and urban legends Lost colonies and vanished civilizations True crime cases buried by time Historical conspiracies and cover-ups Paranormal events rooted in real history Through immersive storytelling and investigative research, we uncover the shadowy corners of the past — the uncomfortable truths, forgotten tragedies, and disturbing secrets that shaped our world.If you’re fascinated by dark history, obsessed with unexplained events, or drawn to stories that blur the line between fact and legend, this podcast is for you. Because the past isn’t always dead. Sometimes it’s just been buried. Follow Disturbing History and turn on automatic downloads for weekly dee…","last_synced_at":"2026-09-07T04:18:26.325177+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005"},"episode":{"title":"The Merchants Of Death","slug":"the-merchants-of-death","published_at":"2026-09-04T17:15:02+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005/the-merchants-of-death","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005","url":"https://www.spreaker.com/episode/the-merchants-of-death--74902877","audio_url":"https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/74902877/dh_mic_final.mp3","summary":"On the evening of January 17, 1961, with just three days left in his presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered a 16-minute farewell address containing one warning that would outlive nearly everything else he said in public office: America must guard against the “unwarranted influence” of the military-industrial complex. This episode of Disturbing History examines what Eisenhower was really describing, because he was not predicting the future. He had spent eight years inside the system himself.Brian King-Sharp traces the rise of that system from the 1934 Nye Committee hearings, which investigated major American arms manufacturers, through the enormous industrial mobilization of World War II. The episode examines wartime cost-plus contracts, corporate executives embedded inside government, falsified inspections involving defective aircraft engines and substandard steel, and a 1944 proposal by General Electric president Charles E. Wilson to make the wartime partnership between industry and the military permanent.The Cold War did exactly that. From Operation Paperclip and the recruitment of roughly 1,600 German scientists, to secret human radiation experiments involving plutonium injections, radioactive iron given to pregnant women, and radioactive oatmeal fed to children at the Fernald State School, the episode follows what happened when national security programs operated behind layers of classification and limited oversight. The story then moves through Castle Bravo, the 15-megaton nuclear test that produced roughly 2.5 times its predicted yield, radioactive fallout across the Marshall Islands, nuclear testing in Nevada, and government efforts to minimize or conceal the consequences. From there, the episode opens up the machinery itself: defense contractors, congressio…","meta_description":"On the evening of January 17, 1961, with just three days left in his presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered a 16-minute farewell address containing on…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":4793,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/disturbing-history-7341005/episodes/the-merchants-of-death/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005/the-merchants-of-death.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}