The Great Comic Book Scare

September 11, 2001. On a clear and sunny day, Captain Richard Thornton is piloting his ferry boat back and forth between New Jersey and New York City. But when he hears an airplane flying too low to the ground, he knows something is wrong. After the World Trade Center’s North Tow ...  Show more

September 12, 1922. Twenty-four-year-old Mollie Maggia has a toothache. In less than a year, this otherwise healthy young woman will be dead. Others like her will soon follow. They’d all shared what seemed to be a dream job: applying glow-in-the-dark paint to clock faces. The pai ...  Show more

Will, Mango and Gabe are stuck inside this week, and decide to hop on the phone to chat comics... specifically, some of the worst comic creations in all of history. Want to know what killed Captain Tootsie? Or why Arm-Fall-Off-Boy was rejected from super hero glory twice? Plus ...

Before there were superheroes, a Swiss teacher drew entertaining doodles for friends. As he developed his sketches into stories told with multiple captioned images, he inadvertently invented the first sequential art comics in the Western world.

“Children nowadays, they make maps. And say, this is the street where the store is that we're going to rob, and this is where we're going to hide, and this is how we get away.” In the 1950s, U.S. senators were worrying about “the fifth horseman of doom.” And they started an unusu ...  Show more

This week Scott is joined by NYU social psychologist and author Dr. Jonathan Haidt. Scott and Jonathan discuss the "great rewiring of childhood" and how it is negatively affecting the mental health of teenagers. They also discuss why a return to play based childhoods are better f ...  Show more