The Compendium: An Assembly of Fascinating Things

In 2016, five members of the Tromp family fled their farm in a single car, leaving behind their passports, credit cards and mobile phones. Why they fled remains one of Australia's greatest modern mysteries—a mystery that not even the Tromp family can fully explain.

Over the following week, the family scattered across two states. One son, Mitchell, abandoned the journey and caught a train home. Two daughters, Riana and Ella, stole a car near the Jenolan Caves before reporting their own parents missing more than 100 miles away. Riana was later found catatonic in the back of a stranger's pickup truck. Their mother, Jacoba, turned up wandering the streets of Yass, while their father, Mark, disappeared into bushland.

Today, we retrace the family's bizarre road trip, examine the many theories—from contaminated water and cults to supernatural cave spirits—and explore the explanation psychologists keep returning to: “folie à deux”, the rare condition in which one person's delusions spread to those closest to them. It's a remarkable true story about just how fragile—and contagious—the human mind can be.

Topics Included

what happened in the Tromp family disappearance

the empty farm, the abandoned passports and the missing Peugeot

the frantic drive north and the phone thrown from the window

the Jenolan Caves and the folklore surrounding them

why the family scattered one by one across two states

Riana found catatonic in a stranger's pickup

the theories, from farm chemicals to cults to cave spirits

folie à deux and the science of shared psychosis

the Eriksson twins and other real cases of shared delusion

how the Tromps were found and what they said afterwards

Resources and Further Reading

Riana Tromp speaks about bizarre roadtrip in first interview - news.com.au

Transcript of Mitchell and Ella Tromp speaking to the media on Sunday - The Age

Folie à deux - Wikipedia

Ursula and Sabina Eriksson - Wikipedia

Tromp family - The Daily Telegraph

Host & Show Info
Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
Editor: Giordanno Bottezini
Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland
Community & Calls to Action
Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
Website: thecompendiumpodcast.com
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A man falls from a New York hotel window. The CIA calls it suicide. Decades later, the story starts to look much darker.

MKUltra is one of the most disturbing secret programmes in CIA history: a Cold War attempt to find out whether drugs, hypnosis, interrogation, sensory manipulation, and psychological pressure could break the human mind and reshape it. At the centre is Frank Olson, a biological warfare scientist who was secretly dosed with LSD at a CIA retreat and died days later after falling from Room 1018A of the Hotel Statler.

But Olson’s death is only one part of the story. This dark history moves from Nazi research and Operation Paperclip to Project Bluebird, Project Artichoke, Sidney Gottlieb’s LSD experiments, Donald Ewen Cameron’s psychic driving, Operation Midnight Climax, destroyed records, congressional hearings, and the questions that still refuse to die.

Because MKUltra was not just about mind control. It was about secrecy, power, and what governments are willing to do when “national security” becomes the magic phrase that makes human rights disappear.

Topics Include

what MKUltra was and why the CIA created it

Frank Olson’s death at the Hotel Statler

Cold War brainwashing fears and Project Bluebird

Project Artichoke and CIA interrogation experiments

Sidney Gottlieb and CIA LSD testing

Donald Ewen Cameron and psychic driving

Operation Midnight Climax

destroyed MKUltra records and surviving financial files

Rockefeller Commission and Church Committee revelations

the unresolved questions around modern influence and control

Resources and Further Reading

Project MKULTRA, Research in Behavioral Modification - U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

MKUltra - Wikipedia

Operation Paperclip - Wikipedia

Sidney Gottlieb Testimony - National Security Archive

DNI Denies CIA Raided Tulsi Gabbard’s Office - Newsweek

James E. Erdman III Testimony - Homeland security

Host & Show Info
Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
Editor: Giordanno Bottezini
Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland
Community & Calls to Action
Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
Website: thecompendiumpodcast.com
Support us: Sign up to Patreon
Suggest a Topic: Freaky Register
Share this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favourite takeaway.

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Lucy Letby was convicted as Britain’s most prolific child serial killer, but the case has never stopped raising questions.

At the Countess of Chester Hospital, a sudden rise in neonatal deaths and collapses led consultants to suspect a young nurse who seemed impossibly ordinary. The prosecution said the pattern was clear: insulin poisoning, alleged air embolisms, overfeeding, suspicious notes, Facebook searches, hospital documents under her bed, and one nurse present again and again.

But this Lucy Letby case does not end neatly at conviction. We look at the medical evidence, the shift chart, the NHS failures, the role of expert testimony, and the later claims from specialists who argue that natural causes or poor care may explain far more than the trial allowed.

This is British true crime at its most uncomfortable: if Lucy Letby is guilty, a hospital failed to stop her. If she is innocent, the failure is even harder to face.

Topics Included

lucy letby and the countess of chester hospital

the rise in neonatal deaths and unexplained collapses

the insulin evidence involving baby f and baby l

air embolism, overfeeding, and medical evidence

the shift chart used against lucy letby

hospital management and nhs safeguarding failures

the handwritten notes and hospital documents found at her home

why some experts question the conviction

the criminal cases review commission and possible appeal questions

the emotional impact on the babies’ families

Resources and Further Reading

The Nurse Who Hated Babies, 2023 – Channel 4

Lucy Letby – Wikipedia

The Thirlwall Inquiry – “The Thirlwall Inquiry

Lucy Letby International Expert Panel Press Conference - Youtube

Three bosses at Letby hospital arrested for ‘manslaughter – Press Reader

Host & Show Info
Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
Editor: Giordanno Bottezini
Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland
Community & Calls to Action
Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
Website: thecompendiumpodcast.com
Support us: Sign up to Patreon
Suggest a Topic: Freaky Register
Share this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favourite takeaway.

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A boy from a two-bedroom house in Gary, Indiana becomes the most famous human being alive. But the same childhood that built Michael Jackson may also be the thing that began to break him.

In Part 1 of this two-part story, we go back to the very start: a steelworker father with stalled musical dreams, a houseful of children, and rehearsals enforced with belts and fear.

From talent-show wins to a Motown deal, from the Jackson 5 to "I Want You Back" topping the charts, Michael's rise is explosive, and so is the pressure. We follow the road from disco and Off the Wall to the record-shattering Thriller, the moonwalk that stopped a room, the Pepsi fire that left lasting damage, the billion-dollar music catalogue, and the appearance that kept changing under the world's gaze.

By the time he buys Neverland and the first allegation surfaces, the King of Pop's story has already turned. Music history, family, fame, and the cost of all three.

Topics Included

How a boy from Gary, Indiana became the King of Pop

Joe Jackson's brutal rehearsals and the abuse allegations within the family

The real story of who discovered the Jackson 5

The Motown years and four consecutive number-one hits

Off the Wall, Thriller, and the moonwalk at Motown 25

The 1984 Pepsi commercial fire and the start of a painkiller dependency

Buying the Beatles catalogue and the billion-dollar fallout with Paul McCartney

Why Michael Jackson's appearance changed, including vitiligo and surgery

Neverland Ranch and the first allegation that changed everything

Resources and Further Reading

Michael Jackson - Encyclopaedia Britannica

The Jackson 5 - Motown Museum

Michael Jackson - Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Pepsi fire left Michael Jackson in pain - Los Angeles Times

Host & Show Info
Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
Editor: Giordanno Bottezini
Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland
Community & Calls to Action
Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
Website: thecompendiumpodcast.com
Support us: Sign up to Patreon
Suggest a Topic: Freaky Register
Share this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favourite takeaway.

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Aileen Wuornos stood on the shoulder of a Florida highway with a pistol in her bag and a partner at home demanding rent money. Within a year, seven men were dead. She said it started as self defense, that her first client raped her and she fought back. The press called her the Damsel of Death and America's first female serial killer. But was she a victim striking back after a lifetime of abuse, or a killer who got a taste for it and did the rest for money?

This is the story of Aileen Wuornos, told from a childhood of abandonment, beatings, and exploitation through to the Florida killings, her relationship with Tyria Moore, the thumbprint that gave her away, and the trial that sent her to death row. We follow the murder of Richard Mallory, the confession Moore was paid to draw out of her, and the question that has never gone away: how much of Aileen's story is true, and how much was survival, performance, or both? A hard, sad, genuinely complicated true crime story where the word victim applies to more than one side.

Topics Included

who aileen wuornos was and how she became a killer

her childhood of abuse, abandonment, and the people who raised her

the murder of richard mallory and the self defense claim

how her years of sex work on florida's highways shaped the case

her relationship with tyria moore and the immunity deal

the thumbprint and pawned camera that led to her arrest

the trial, the withheld evidence, and the death sentence

the victim or villain debate at the heart of the case

her final years on death row and her 2002 execution

Resources and Further Reading

Aileen Wuornos – Wikipedia

Monster (2003) – directed by Patty Jenkins

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003) – directed by Nick Broomfield & Joan Churchill

Monster: My True Story - by Aileen Wuornos & Christopher Berry-Dee

Host & Show Info
Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
Editor: Giordanno Bottezini
Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland
Community & Calls to Action
Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
Website: thecompendiumpodcast.com
Support us: Sign up to Patreon
Suggest a Topic: Freaky Register
Share this episode with a friend! If you enjoyed it, tag us on social media and let us know your favourite takeaway.

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