Timesuck with Dan Cummins

Latest Episodes:

Short Suck #48: The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young Dec 26, 2025

Show notes

In this Short Suck, we head into the brutal hills around Tennessee’s old Brushy Mountain prison to explore the Barkley Marathons— the nearly-impossible 100-mile ultramarathon. And we’ll meet Lazarus Lake, the cigarette-lighting, Dr Pepper-drinking madman who designed a race meant to break people, complete with secret applications, sadistic course changes, and “human sacrifices” who have almost no chance of finishing.

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486 - Vigilante Justice: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (A Lot) Dec 22, 2025

Show notes

What happens when ordinary people decide the legal system isn’t enough — and to take justice into their own hands? From real-life “superheroes” to tragic misfires, from folk-hero avengers to catastrophic citizen’s arrests, this episode explores the wild, messy, often dangerous world of vigilante justice. Sometimes inspiring, sometimes horrifying, sometimes darkly hilarious, these stories reveal just how quickly “doing the right thing” can go very wrong.

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485 - The Family: Australia's Most Notorious Cult Dec 15, 2025

Show notes

In the 1960s and ’70s, yoga teacher–turned–self-proclaimed messiah Anne Hamilton-Byrne built one of Australia’s most shocking cults—an LSD-fueled blend of New Age mysticism, stolen children, and her own delusions of divine destiny. With doctors, psychiatrists, and academics convinced she was the Second Coming of Christ, Anne created The Family, a secretive compound where kids endured years of isolation and abuse. Be VERY thankful you’re not in this CULT! CULT! CULT!
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Name: Cody Allen City: Bridgeport State: Pennsylvania DOB: 02/02/1989

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Short Suck #47: The Business Plot - When Bankers Tried to Topple the White House Dec 12, 2025

Show notes

In this Short Suck, we dive into the almost-forgotten story of The Business Plot - when a group of powerful bankers and corporate bigwigs allegedly tried to recruit one of America’s most decorated Marines, Smedley Butler, to lead a fascist coup against President Franklin D. Roosevelt. We’ll sift through testimony, shady alliances, and a very convenient death to ask: how close did the U.S. actually come to going full fascist in the 1930s?

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484 - The King of Beaver Island Dec 08, 2025

Show notes

You read that title right. Are you familiar with the story of James Strang? A blatant con artist who converted to Mormonism shortly before Joseph Smith's assassination who used a forged letter and some "discovered" brass plates to establish himself as Smith's legitimate heir, and then convinced hundreds of followers to move to Beaver Island in Lake Michigan where they crowned him king in 1850 and formed a small army that included pirates? This true story is wonderfully bonkers. Hail Nimrod!

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Want to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)

For all merch-related questions/problems: store@badmagicproductions.com (copy and paste)

Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast

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483 - Addiction: Most Misunderstood Condition Ever? Dec 01, 2025

Show notes

In this deeply informative episode of Timesuck, we explore the history of addiction, how different cultures have tried to understand and control it, and what modern science reveals about how it rewires the brain, hijacks choice, and reshapes identity. From ancient remedies and religious interpretations to modern medicine and neuroscience, we break down how desire becomes dependency — and why recovery is so much more than just willpower.

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Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v

Want to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)

For all merch-related questions/problems: store@badmagicproductions.com (copy and paste)

Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast

Wanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.

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Short Suck #46: Mutiny on the Bounty! Nov 28, 2025

Show notes

We sail back to 1789 and find out why the real Mutiny on the Bounty was way less “noble sailors vs brutal tyrant” and way more “horny, possibly rapey young officer snaps on his short, cheese-hoarding, coconut-obsessed captain.” In today's Short Suck, we dig into the petty ego clashes, disastrous decisions, and deeply messed up sexual dynamics that led to one of history’s most infamous mutinies.

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482 - The Hunger Killer: Inside the World of the Starvation Doctor Nov 24, 2025

Show notes

Linda Hazzard - self-proclaimed “fasting specialist” and actual sadistic fraud - ran one of the most disturbing medical scams in American history. At her Washington State sanitarium, later nicknamed “Starvation Heights,” she starved countless patients under the guise of curing everything from aches and pains to cancer. Her brutal regimen of near-total fasting, daily enemas, and bizarre “massage” beatings left a trail of emaciated victims...

Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com

Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v

Want to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)

For all merch-related questions/problems: store@badmagicproductions.com (copy and paste)

Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast

Wanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.

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481 - Go Ask Alice: When a Fake Diary Helped Launch a Real War on Drugs Nov 17, 2025

Show notes

In 1971, Go Ask Alice shocked parents across America - marketed as the real diary of a teenage girl swallowed alive by drugs, addiction, and death. Terrified moms and dads bought the book by the millions, used it to police their kids, and fueled a cultural panic that helped justify the War on Drugs. But there was just one problem: the entire book was a lie presented as truth...

Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com

Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v

Want to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)

For all merch-related questions/problems: store@badmagicproductions.com (copy and paste)

Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast

Wanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.

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Short Suck #45: The Great Molasses Flood Nov 14, 2025

Show notes

On January 15th, 1919, a massive molasses tank in Boston’s North End burst, unleashing a 25-foot wall of sticky destruction that toppled buildings, derailed trains, and killed 21 people while injuring scores more. Today, we follow the harrowing rescues, the landmark class-action showdown, and the reforms that changed U.S. engineering standards. A strange, darkly ironic tragedy—equal parts true-crime, industrial history... and sugary nightmare.

For Merch and everything else Bad Magic related, head to: https://www.badmagicproductions.com

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