The Compendium: An Assembly of Fascinating Things

On the morning of 31 October 1938, a sleepless 23-year-old walked into a room full of reporters who all wanted the same answer: had Orson Welles deliberately terrified America? The night before, his Mercury Theatre on the Air had performed The War of the Worlds as a string of fake news bulletins, and by morning the newspapers claimed the country had come apart. Families fleeing their homes. Switchboards jammed. People begging for gas masks as Martians supposedly wiped out New Jersey.

But the panic might be the biggest illusion of all. Kyle takes Adam through Welles's rise from child prodigy to radio wonder, the frantic last-minute rewrite that almost nobody behind the scenes believed in, and the missing station break that let listeners think it was real. Then comes the twist: the ratings suggesting hardly anyone tuned in, the study that quietly falls apart under scrutiny, and the newspapers with every reason to make radio look dangerous.

This is the strange true story of how a broadcast everyone expected to flop became the most famous in radio history, and how a nation talked itself into believing it had been fooled.

Topics Included

what actually happened during the 1938 war of the worlds broadcast

how orson welles went from child prodigy to radio star

the last-minute rewrite the cast thought would flop

why the missing station break made listeners think it was real

the fake news bulletins and the Grovers Mill landing

the reports of gas masks, fleeing families and jammed switchboards

the ratings and the study that undercut the mass hysteria

how newspapers amplified the panic to attack radio

how the broadcast made Orson Welles more famous, not less

Resources and Further Reading

The War of the Worlds - Novel by H.G. Wells

The War of the Worlds (1938 Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast) - Internet Archive -

'War of the Worlds' guide: Script, audio and recollections - Wellesnet

The Myth of the War of the Worlds Panic - Article by Jefferson Pooley

The legend of the War of the Worlds - PBS NewsHour

Broadcast Hysteria: - by A. Brad Schwartz

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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An entire colony of 117 men, women and children vanished without leaving behind a single body. There was no blood, no sign of an attack and no ruined settlement. Their homes had been carefully dismantled and taken away. All they left behind was one word carved into a wooden post: CROATOAN.

In 1587, the colonists were stranded on Roanoke Island instead of reaching their intended home in Chesapeake Bay. Governor John White sailed back to England for supplies, leaving behind his daughter Eleanor and newborn granddaughter Virginia Dare. War, privateering and disaster kept him away for three years. By the time he returned, everyone was gone.

What did Croatoan mean and where did the settlers go? Did they move inland, reach the Indigenous communities around Chesapeake, survive through trade and assimilation, or meet a more violent end? From Sir Walter Raleigh’s collapsing colonial scheme and England’s brutal relationship with local communities to hidden map symbols, hammerscale, Jamestown accounts and the infamous Dare Stones, this is the strange history behind one of America’s most enduring unsolved mysteries and the possibility that the colonists were never truly lost at all.

Topics Included

What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke

The real meaning of the Croatoan carving

John White’s three-year delay and return

Virginia Dare and the 117 settlers

English conflict with the Roanoac and Croatoan communities

The planned move to Chesapeake Bay

Archaeological evidence at Croatoan and Salmon Creek

Jamestown accounts of surviving colonists

The Lumbee connection and assimilation theory

The Dare Stones and the hoax that followed

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
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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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In 1692, an enslaved woman named Tituba told a Salem courtroom that the Devil had come to her and bid her serve him. Her confession lit the fuse that would become known as the infamous Salem witch trials, the deadliest witch hunt in American history.

Within months, more than a third of Salem Village had been accused, imprisoned and were awaiting trial. Nineteen people were hanged. One man was pressed to death under stones for refusing to plead. And a four-year-old girl sat in custom-made shackles while her accusers watched.

But this is not really a story about witches. It is a story about mass hysteria, and how a Puritan community primed by centuries of European witch hunting, religious paranoia and moral surveillance convinced itself to kill its own neighbours on the strength of spectral evidence: testimony that someone's ghost attacked you in the night.

We trace the strange true story from Cotton Mather's witchcraft playbook to the witch cake, the Devil's book, the confessions that saved lives, and the moment the accusations reached the governor's wife and the whole thing collapsed. Plus the surprising link between Salem and our home town of Norwich.

Topics Included

what caused the Salem witch trials

Tituba's confession and why it changed everything

spectral evidence and why no alibi could save you

the witch cake ritual and the first three accused

the arrest of four-year-old Dorothy Good

Giles Corey's death by pressing and his final strategy

how the accusations reached the governor's wife and ended the trials

the 330-year fight to clear every victim's name

the Norwich connection to Bridget Bishop

Resources and Further Reading

Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions - Cotton Mather, 1689,

Salem Witch Trials Memorial, Salem, Massachusetts - Memorial site opened 1992

Salem witch trials - Encyclopaedia Britannica

The last Salem witch has been exonerated - CNN

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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On the last morning before half term, 240 children walked into Pantglas Junior School beneath a mountain of coal waste. Minutes after lessons began, Tip 7 collapsed above Aberfan, sending liquefied spoil through homes and classrooms and killing 116 children and 28 adults.

But the Aberfan disaster did not begin with the slide, and it did not end when the rescue stopped. The warning signs had been there: natural springs beneath the tip, earlier slips on the mountainside and concerns that failed to produce action. The tribunal later placed responsibility on the National Coal Board and concluded that the disaster could and should have been prevented.

Told through the experiences of survivors including Phil Thomas, Karen Thomas, Jeff Edwards and Gerald Tarr, this is a story of rescue, grief, institutional failure and the lives shaped by what happened on 21 October 1966. It also follows the fight to remove the remaining tips, the controversy surrounding the disaster fund and the long silence that made healing even harder.

Topics Included

The final morning at Pantglas Junior School

Why water beneath Tip 7 triggered the collapse

The warnings and earlier slides on Mynydd Merthyr

The children and teachers trapped inside the school

The rescue effort and its system of whistles and silence

The tribunal's findings against the National Coal Board

The compensation and disaster-fund controversies

The lasting trauma carried by survivors and families

Resources

The Aberfan Tribunal — Glamorgan Archives

Aberfan Disaster 1966 — National Library of Wales digital archive

The Aberfan Disaster, 1966 — British Geological Survey case study

Aberfan Disaster: Lessons Learned — Institution of Civil Engineers explainer

Aberfan: No End of a Lesson — History & Policy research paper

Aberfan Disaster Debate, 26 October 1967 — UK Parliament Hansard

Death of a Black Mountain: How the Aberfan Disaster Unfolded — HistoryExtra survivor history

The Psychological Effects of the Aberfan Disaster — 33-year follow-up study

Guidance to the Disused Tips Authority for Wales — Welsh Government consultation

This Year Marks the 60th Anniversary of the Aberfan Disaster — Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council

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 trillion-dollar company. Two women who worked inside it, years apart. And the exact same warnings, ignored twice.

 

This episode traces Frances Haugen, the Facebook product manager who walked out with a phone full of leaked documents and wiped six billion dollars off the company's share price in a single day, and Sarah Wynn-Williams, Facebook's former global policy chief, whose tell-all memoir Careless People landed her in emergency arbitration and a gag order so strict she's legally barred from discussing her own book.

We cover the Instagram research on teenage girls, the Myanmar crisis both women separately flagged, China, Cross-Check, the Capitol riot, and the 2026 courtroom reckoning that's cost Meta over seventeen billion dollars so far.

One whistleblower built a legal shield before she ever spoke. The other found out, too late, exactly how exposed she'd left herself. Coincidence, or exactly the pattern you'd expect from a company this size?

 

Topics Included

Frances Haugen's path from Google and Pinterest to Facebook's Civic Integrity team

The leaked internal research on Instagram's effect on teenage girls' body image

Cross-Check (XCheck) and the rules that didn't apply to Facebook's most powerful users

The Capitol riot, the Facebook Files, and Facebook's rebrand to Meta

Meta's 2026 courtroom reckoning: Section 230, the New Mexico and Los Angeles verdicts, and the $17.1 billion settlement

Sarah Wynn-Williams' six years as Facebook's global policy chief, and the Myanmar and China allegations in her book

The arbitration order and gag order that followed her memoir, Careless People

Arturo Bejar's testimony, and what happened to Meta's stock price after the settlement

Resources and Further Reading

Frances Haugen — Wikipedia

Frances Haugen's Written Testimony – the Senate Commerce Committee

Sarah Wynn-Williams — Wikipedia

Ex-Meta executive: — CNN

Sarah Wynn-Williams accuses Meta of colluding with China — TechCrunch

What the Wall Street Journal Got Wrong — Meta's official response

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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