Show Notes
Before helmets, hoverboards, and helicopter parenting… there was the Big Wheel. Louis Marx and Company turned a low-slung plastic tricycle into one of the most iconic - and unexpectedly controversial - toys in American history. From glorious downhill drifts and neighborhood wipeouts to lawsuits, broken bones, and adult underground Big Wheel racing leagues, this is the wild story of the toy that taught generations of kids that danger and fun were sometimes the exact same thing.
More from Timesuck with Dan Cummins
Lou Pearlman helped launch two of the biggest boy bands of the 1990s, the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, while secretly building a massive empire of lies, exploitation, and financial fraud. This story is crazy. From his bizarre obsession with blimps to his outrageous spending, allegations of sexual misconduct, and a Ponzi scheme that literally stole hundreds of millions of dollars, discover how one of pop music’s most influential kingmakers became one of world's biggest con men.
As the Atlanta Child Murders continue, investigators finally begin uncovering physical evidence that could lead them to the person responsible—and a mysterious splash beneath a bridge puts a young Atlanta man named directly in their sights. But will he ultimately prove to be the monster who had been hunting Atlanta’s children, or will his arrest leave some of the case’s biggest questions unanswered?
Just last week, on September 30th, 2026, Tennessee tried to execute convicted murderer Christa Pike—twice—and somehow, she survived. This Short Suck, before deciding whether Pike deserves sympathy for what happened inside that execution chamber, we’re going back to 1995 to examine the extraordinarily brutal murder of nineteen-year-old Colleen Slemmer that put her there.
Between 1979 and 1981, thirty Black children, teenagers, and young adults all disappeared from the streets of Atlanta, triggering one of the largest and most terrifying serial murder investigations in American history. Sadly, nearly everyone who had went missing would be found, but not found alive. In this first of two episodes, we explore the killings that shocked not just the city of Atlanta, but the nation.
Anthony Bourdain went from a heroin-addicted line cook bouncing between chaotic New York kitchens to a bestselling author and beloved world traveler who changed the way millions of people thought about food, culture, and the people who connect the two. Today, we explore the wild, restless life of a man who seemed hungry for everything—adventure, knowledge, danger, love, connection, and whatever might be waiting around the next corner—and the complicated final years that ended with his shocking death.