Fresh Hell Podcast

Latest Episodes:

E286: Oberst Redl Jun 20, 2025

Show notes

In this week’s episode, Johanna takes us deep into the shadows of pre-WWI Austria-Hungary to tell the true story of Colonel Alfred Redl, once one of the most trusted man in the Austro-Hungarian military....and also its most infamous traitor.

From his modest beginnings in Lemberg to the very top of the empire’s intelligence apparatus, Redl’s rise was as improbable as his betrayal was devastating. But was he really blackmailed for being gay, or was he simply a man who liked money and knew how to lie? We’ll follow his double life of espionage, lavish spending, and secret lovers, right up to the moment the trap was set, and he walked straight into it.

Alfred Redl, Oberst Redl, Colonel Redl, Austro-Hungarian Empire, WWI, espionage, military intelligence, Evidenzbureau, Vienna history, Lemberg, high treason, Redl scandal, Austrian history, Franz Joseph, Kaiser Franz Joseph, Russian spies, pre-WWI Europe, Redl suicide, Redl Prague, homosexual blackmail, Maximilian Ronge, Manfried Rauchensteiner, Redl betrayal, Redl affair, early 20th century espionage, Conrad von Hötzendorf, Austrian military history, Redl Vienna, Redl Lviv, Cold War before the Cold War, Egon Erwin Kisch

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E285: MURDER - The Tylenol Murders Jun 13, 2025

Show notes

In part two of our deep dive into the 1982 Tylenol Murders, we pick up with the immediate aftermath of the cyanide-laced capsules that killed seven innocent people in the Chicago area. As the city and the whole nation started to panic, Johnson & Johnson faced a nightmare scenario.

We’ll walk you through the frantic investigation, the theories that didn’t pan out, the suspect who looked promising but turned out to be a dead end, and the man who wrote an extortion letter demanding money to “stop the killings.”

We’ll also talk about the wave of copycat crimes that followed, the laws that changed as a result, and the way this case rewrote the rules of product safety and public trust.

Tylenol murders, 1982, Chicago, Johnson & Johnson, cyanide poisoning, product tampering, potassium cyanide, over-the-counter drug safety, James Lewis, Roger Arnold, unsolved case, FBI investigation, tamper-evident packaging, Tylenol recall, true crime podcast, Fresh Hell podcast, public health scare, copycat crimes, crisis management, cold case, pharmaceutical safety, poisoning case

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E284: MURDER - The Tylenol Murders (part I) Jun 06, 2025

Show notes

In September of 1982, a 12-year-old girl in suburban Chicago took a Tylenol for a cold—and never got back up. Within days, six more people would die the same way. The connection? A bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol and a horrifying dose of potassium cyanide.

In this first part of our two-part series, Johanna and Annie walk through the events that stunned the nation: who the victims were, how investigators started piecing it together, and how Johnson & Johnson handled the situation.

It’s a case that changed how we trust what’s in our medicine cabinets…

Tylenol murders, 1982 Chicago, Mary Kellerman, Janus family, Mary McFarland, Mary Reiner, Paula Prince, potassium cyanide, poisoned Tylenol, Johnson & Johnson, product tampering, over-the-counter safety, unsolved true crime, corporate crisis response, FDA history, cyanide cases, public health scare, 1980s murders, Fresh Hell Podcast

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E283: MACABRE - Holy Spirit Activate May 30, 2025

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This week, we’re taking a peel behind the Vatican’s heaviest doors. From popes who put each other on trial...AFTER DEATH...to rumors of devilish deals and sweating tombs. We’ll also tell you about the Vatican’s key master (yes, that’s a real job), the Room of Tears (because popes cry too), and how sometimes it's important that "they hang well"!

Vatican, Vatican Museums, Pope Sylvester II, Cadaver Synod, Room of Tears, Vatican Key Master, Clavigero, Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo ceiling, papal scandal, medieval legends, ghost stories, Vatican Archive, Pope Joan, Vatican secrets, historical Catholic Church, papal power, Fresh Hell Podcast

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E282: Nellie Bly (part IV) May 16, 2025

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In the final part of our Nellie Bly series, we follow her through yet another reinvention ...as wife to industrialist Robert Seaman and, after his death, one of the first female CEOs in the U.S. We look at her lesser-known interviews with a ten-year-old Helen Keller and the terrifying Lizzie Halliday, and how she returned to journalism under William Randolph Hearst after her business collapsed under fraud and bankruptcy. She exposed corruption in the adoption system, was one of the first female war correspondents during the Great War, fought for women’s legal rights, and quietly placed abandoned children with families from a room at the Hotel McAlpin.

Nellie Bly, Nellie Bly podcast, women journalists, WWI correspondent, adoption scandal, Love o’ Mike, Fresh Hell podcast, journalism history, investigative reporting, women’s rights history, Hotel McAlpin, 1920s journalism, forgotten women in history, Nellie Bly death, orphan crisis, legal rights for women

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E281: Nellie Bly (part III) May 09, 2025

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In Part 3 of our Nellie Bly series, the whole world starts to pay attention. We’ll follow her from the publication of Ten Days in a Madhouse to her globe-circling race against the fictional Phileas Fogg. Along the way, Nellie becomes a household name, fields marriage proposals from strangers, and gets immortalized on trading cards and weird ads. But fame doesn’t make her lazy. She investigates shady servant agencies, interviews America’s most notorious female killer, and keeps writing stories no one else has the nerve to touch.

Nellie Bly, Nellie Bly podcast, Around the World in 72 Days, Ten Days in a Madhouse, female journalists, Gilded Age, investigative journalism, Lizzie Halliday, New York World, Joseph Pulitzer, Phileas Fogg, servant scams, 19th century media, women in journalism, historical women, Fresh Hell podcast

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E280: Nellie Bly (part II) May 02, 2025

Show notes

In 1887, Nellie Bly got herself committed to one of the most notorious mental institutions in the country — not because she needed help, but because she wanted the truth. In Part 2, we follow Nellie through the gates of Blackwell’s Island, where the food was inedible, the baths were freezing, and silence wasn’t just expected — it was enforced. What she found wasn’t a place for healing. It was a place where sane women were driven to madness, and no one on the outside was asking questions. Until now.

Nellie Bly, Blackwell’s Island, Ten Days in a Madhouse, women’s history, asylum abuse, Victorian era, undercover journalism, 19th century mental health, Pulitzer, Women’s Lunatic Asylum, Bellevue Hospital, feminist history, true crime adjacent, Fresh Hell Podcast, Nellie Bly investigation, mental institutions, New York history, investigative journalism,J oseph Pulitzer, women journalists

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E279: Nellie Bly (part I) Apr 25, 2025

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Before she became one of the most daring journalists in history, Nellie Bly was Elizabeth Jane Cochran — a smart, stubborn girl from Pennsylvania with very few options and even fewer rights. In this episode, we’re going back to the beginning: the poverty, the abusive stepfather, the letter that launched her career, and the fight to be taken seriously in a newsroom that didn’t want women there at all. This is the story of how Nellie broke in — and why no one ever forgot her once she did.

Nellie Bly,Pittsburgh Dispatch,feminist history,women journalists,19th century journalism,Elizabeth Cochrane,women's rights,Gilded Age,undercover reporting,Joseph Pulitzer,New York World,Blackwell's Island,Fresh Hell,podcast,true crime adjacent,history podcast,women in history, investigative journalism

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E278: MACABRE - See You Next Doomsday Apr 18, 2025

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From flood panics and flaming cities to gas masks for comet poison, humanity has always had a flair for predicting the end of the world—with spectacular inaccuracy. In this special palate cleanser episode, Annie and Johanna walk us through some of the weirdest, funniest, and most deeply unserious doomsday predictions in history.

We'll cover the Great Flood that never came in 1524, London’s fire-and-666-fueled apocalypse panic in 1666, the comet hysteria of 1910 (featuring anti-comet pills), Y2K’s spreadsheet Armageddon, and yes, that time in 2012 when everyone thought the Maya were trying to kill us with a calendar. Add in some cults, bunkers, misinterpreted prophecies, and more than a few tinfoil hats, and you've got a full tour of the world's many failed finales.

Spoiler alert: we’re still here.

apocalypse, doomsday predictions, failed prophecies, end of the world, Halley’s Comet, Y2K, Mayan calendar, 2012 panic, Stöffler flood, Great Fire of London, Fifth Monarchists, cults, comet panic, Jehovah’s Witnesses 1914, doomsday cults, doomsday prepping, comet pills, planetary alignment, funny history, weird history, mass hysteria, Fresh Hell Podcast, Annie and Johanna, historical panic, end times, apocalypse myths, failed apocalypse

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E277: MYSTERY - The Missing Children of Pirmasens Apr 11, 2025

Show notes

Between 1960 and 1967, three children disappeared without a trace from the small city of Pirmasens, in southwest Germany. Walter Broschat. Klaus-Dieter Stark. Eveline Lübbert. All of them were between 9 and 10 years old. All vanished on a Friday. And to this day, not a single clue has been found.

In this episode, we revisit one of Germany’s most haunting cold cases. We’ll examine what we know about the disappearances, the man once known as the Waldmensch, the theories that still linger, and a documentary project by Eveline’s own cousin that’s keeping the case in the public eye more than 60 years later.

This is the story of a town that never got its answers—and of three families left with nothing but silence.

Fresh Hell Podcast, True Crime Germany, Pirmasens, Walter Broschat, Klaus-Dieter Stark, Eveline Lübbert, Missing children, German cold cases, 1960s, Waldmensch, Rasterfahndung, Southwest Germany, Unsolved mysteries, Child disappearances, German true crime, Henry Hauck, Spurlos Doku, Pfalz

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