{"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":106,"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":"2026-06-05T14:19:19.361689+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005"},"episode":{"title":"The Monkey Trial","slug":"the-monkey-trial","published_at":"2026-03-29T17:40:03+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005/the-monkey-trial","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/disturbing-history-7341005","url":"https://www.spreaker.com/episode/the-monkey-trial--70978045","audio_url":"https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/70978045/dhmonkeyfinal.mp3","summary":"The Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 is one of the most misunderstood events in American history. Most people know the version they learned in school or saw in Inherit the Wind — a noble defense attorney humiliates a Bible-thumping prosecutor, science defeats ignorance, and progress marches forward. Almost none of that is accurate. In this episode, we go back to Dayton, Tennessee to tell the real story. It starts not with a brave teacher defying an unjust law, but with a handful of small-town businessmen hatching a publicity scheme in the back of a drugstore. George Rappleyea, a restless New York transplant managing what was left of the local mining operation, saw an opportunity when the ACLU advertised for a test case to challenge Tennessee's new Butler Act. He recruited a 24-year-old substitute teacher named John Scopes who wasn't even sure he'd taught evolution, and the most elaborately manufactured legal spectacle in American history was born. We explore who William Jennings Bryan really was — not the cartoon fool of popular memory, but a three-time presidential nominee, former Secretary of State, champion of women's suffrage, and progressive populist who fought for working people his entire career. His opposition to evolution in schools was driven in part by genuine alarm over the eugenics movement and the racial hierarchies baked into the very textbook at the center of the case. We look at Clarence Darrow's real motivations, which had far more to do with a personal vendetta against Bryan than any principled defense of academic freedom. And we examine how H.L. Mencken's savage, deliberately distorted reporting from Dayton created a narrative framework that the rest of the country adopted wholesale and never questioned.The famous examination scene on the courthouse lawn…","meta_description":"The Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 is one of the most misunderstood events in American history. Most people know the version they learned in school or saw in…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":4733,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/disturbing-history-7341005/episodes/the-monkey-trial/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-monkey-trial.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}