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Humans are resilient. In our toughest moments, we will fight, we will struggle, and we will triumph...often against the odds. In this immersive series from Wondery, host-adventurers Mike Corey and Cassie De Pecol will share thrilling stories of survival. From the daring rescue of a soccer team trapped in an underwater cave in Thailand, to a woman taken hostage by Somali pirates, these stories made headlines around the world. AGAINST THE ODDS will make you feel as though you’re living these e ...
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Against The Odds
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Alaska Bear Attack | Into The Wilds with Caroline Van Hemert | 3
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Bear. Running. Toward me. Writer and wildlife biologist Caroline Van Hemert encountered only one dangerous bear on her four-thousand-mile trip from Washington to Alaska. She survived to write about it in The Sun is A Compass: My 4,000-Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds. Caroline joins host Mike Corey to talk about her own experiences with bears, a…
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Against The Odds
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Alaska Bear Attack | Three Long Hours | 2
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After Bart Pieciul is mauled by a bear in the Alaska wilderness, his friends have to use all of their outdoor knowledge to keep him alive. The three men are stranded in the mountains for hours, waiting for a Coast Guard helicopter to airlift Bart to the nearest hospital. As the temperature drops, they’re desperate to prevent their friend from succu…
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Against The Odds
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Wondery Presents This Is Actually Happening: Point Blank
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This Is Actually Happening, is a podcast that brings you extraordinary true stories of life changing events, told by the people who lived them. Now, This Is Actually Happening presents: Point Blank, a five-part series shedding a light on the forgotten spree killings of Rancho Tehama. In November of 2017, a lone gunman devastated a small town in nor…
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Against The Odds
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Alaska Bear Attack | In Defense of Life and Property | 1
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The residents of Haines, Alaska are used to living alongside bears. The region surrounding their small town has one of the densest bear populations in the world. But as climate change curtails the bears’ natural food sources, encounters between bears and humans are becoming more common, putting the residents on edge. Everyone knows it’s only a matt…
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Against The Odds
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Himalayan Spy Mission | Back to the Mountains with Pete Takeda | 4
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When outdoor writer Pete Takeda first heard the story of a covert CIA operation in the Himalayas, he couldn’t believe it. So he decided to investigate. His curiosity led him on an adventure to the Himalayas in search of answers. Today, Pete joins host Cassie De Pecol to share how he ascended some of the planet’s most challenging peaks to research h…
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Against The Odds
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INTRODUCING: The Secret History of The Estonia
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This is a podcast we think you’ll love. The Secret History of the Estonia is an eight-part documentary series investigating the mystery behind why a passenger ferry sank in the Baltic Sea in 1994 – going down in less than an hour, killing 852 people. This was Europe’s worst peacetime shipping disaster since the Titanic, and many people remain convi…
Two years have passed since the team of Indian and American elite climbers lost a nuclear-powered spying device in the Himalayas. Now, as China continues to test its nuclear weapons, the climbing team is given one last chance to complete their mission. This time they have to bring a new spying device up a different mountain. But as they summit the …
Winter storms arrived early on the Himalayan peak Nanda Devi, forcing the team of American and Indian climbers to retreat down the mountain and abandon the nuclear-powered spying device. Now in the spring of 1966, the team has to go back up to retrieve it. But they are unprepared for what they will discover when they get there. Listen early and ad …
In 1965, with Cold War tensions escalating, the CIA and India’s Intelligence Bureau joined forces to spy on China’s budding nuclear program. Satellites and spy planes at the time were unreliable, so the agencies hatched an unusual plan: place a nuclear-powered spying device atop Nanda Devi, the tallest mountain located entirely within India. The wo…
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Uncharted: Teddy Roosevelt's Amazon Expedition | Lost Cities with Mike Heckenberger | 5
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Searching for lost cities in the Amazon sounds like something out of a Hollywood script – unless you’re University of Florida anthropologist Mike Heckenberger. He’s been visiting the Amazon for three decades, working with local tribes and uncovering a network of ancient cities in the jungle. On this episode, Mike joins host Cassie De Pecol to discu…
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Uncharted: Teddy Roosevelt's Amazon Expedition | River's End | 4
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After weeks on the River of Doubt, Theodore Roosevelt’s expedition is on the verge of collapse. But hope emerges when they find clues that Brazilian frontiersmen may be living and working in the wilderness nearby. As Roosevelt’s health deteriorates, drastic measures must be taken to fight the infection in his leg. The men must race to return the fo…
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Uncharted: Teddy Roosevelt's Amazon Expedition | A Killer In Their Midst | 3
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Challenges mount as the expedition travels farther down the river. With the end of their journey nowhere in sight, hunger and disease take their toll on the men. Colonel Rondon wonders if members of an indigenous tribe are following them … and waiting to attack. Tensions between the men simmer, until they explode in violence. In the midst of this t…
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Uncharted: Teddy Roosevelt's Amazon Expedition | River of Doubt | 2
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As Theodore Roosevelt’s expedition sets off down the River of Doubt, it doesn’t take long for the going to get rough. Their canoes are no match for the boiling rapids, forcing them to trek through an unforgiving jungle rife with insects, predators and disease. As their movement slows, their food supplies dwindle. Roosevelt’s son Kermit takes a bold…
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Uncharted: Teddy Roosevelt's Amazon Expedition | Headwaters | 1
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In 1913, former President Theodore Roosevelt embarked on a perilous expedition to explore one of the last unmapped rivers in the Amazon. Roosevelt was joined by his son Kermit, famed Brazilian explorer Candido Rondon, and a team of naturalists and porters. But as the party sets off on a 400 mile trek across the highlands to reach the headwaters, th…
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Chowchilla School Bus Kidnapping | One Survivor’s Story | 3
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On the afternoon of July 15, 1976, nine-year-old Jennifer Brown Hyde and her older brother Jeff were returning home from a summer school trip to a local pool. On their way home, masked men with guns boarded their school bus, and her life was changed in an instant. In this special interview, Jennifer joins host Mike Corey to discuss the kidnapping, …
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Chowchilla School Bus Kidnapping | Buried Alive | 2
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The kidnapped children and their bus driver are trapped underground in the back of a moving truck, and they’re running out of food and water. They decide the only way out is to dig their way to the surface. Meanwhile, the amateur criminals who hijacked the school bus are trying to deliver a five million dollar ransom demand to the California govern…
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Chowchilla School Bus Kidnapping | Vanished | 1
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In the summer of 1976, three masked gunmen hijack a school bus full of children in rural Chowchilla, California. The twenty-six kids and their bus driver are driven to a quarry and buried alive. Back in town, no one has any idea where the children went, who took them, or why. The local sheriff and the FBI launch a massive manhunt to track down the …
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Submarine Rescue: The Race to Save Squalus | The Final Dive | 3
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Swede Momsen’s diving bell finally makes contact with the sailors trapped inside the USS Squalus. But bad weather makes for a harrowing mission. And just when rescuers are about to bring the last of the crew to safety, the bell hits an unexpected snag, leaving a group of sailors and the sub’s captain trapped in even worse circumstances than before,…
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Submarine Rescue: The Race to Save Squalus | Trapped | 2
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With the USS Squalus trapped at the bottom of the ocean, the Navy mounted an all-out rescue effort to save its crew before they ran out of breathable air. They called upon Charles “Swede” Momsen, an engineer who’d been pushing the Navy for years to develop new technology to rescue sunken submarines. While top brass considered Momsen a “rebel in uni…
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Submarine Rescue: The Race to Save Squalus | Into the Deep | 1
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On the morning of May 23, 1939, a state-of-the-art U.S. Navy’s submarine, the USS Squalus, was doing a routine test dive when something went terribly wrong. The sub began flooding, and plunged 240 feet down to the bottom of the ocean, trapping the dozens of sailors aboard. The ship’s captain knew he had to act fast if he had any hope of saving his …
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Wildfire in Paradise | Evacuating Paradise with Beth Bowersox and Daniel Swain | 6
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CalFire dispatcher Beth Bowersox was on duty the morning the Camp Fire ignited. She joins Host Cassie De Pecol to share what it was like behind the scenes as a first responder, and her decision to evacuate all of her hometown of Paradise. Later, UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain discusses whether there could be another Camp Fire. If you or someon…
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Wildfire in Paradise | Paradise Lost with Lizzie Johnson | 5
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By the time it was contained in late November 2018, the Camp Fire had become the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. Journalist Lizzie Johnson spent two years reporting on the fire and its aftermath for The San Francisco Chronicle and her book, Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive An American Wildfire. Lizzie joins ho…
By mid-afternoon of November 8, 2018, the Camp Fire has largely moved through Paradise. Families separated by the fire are desperate to find each other and know who survived — and if they’ll be able to return to their homes. The town of 27,000 people has largely been destroyed, leaving residents to reckon with the aftermath of the devastation. List…
As the fire rages and traffic on the main roads out of Paradise comes to a standstill, firefighters realize evacuation is no longer a viable option. First responders race to locate places of refuge within the town, where trapped civilians and other firefighters can wait out the fire as safely as possible. Meanwhile, other residents and firefighters…
As a fast-moving wildfire closes in on their town, Paradise residents move to evacuate as quickly as possible. But not everyone knows about the seriousness of the fire. Electronic evacuation alerts from Cal Fire aren’t getting through to the whole town. And others are stubbornly committed to staying put to defend their properties. Meanwhile, hundre…
