Today's True Weird Stuff - Revisiting The Baroness: The Galápagos Murder Mystery Nobody Solved

The Galápagos Islands were supposed to be an escape from the world. But for a handful of European settlers, jealousy, betrayal, and suspicion turned their isolated paradise into the setting for one of history's strangest mysteries. When the self-proclaimed Baroness of this remote island suddenly vanished, everyone became a suspect.

Introducing an upcoming season of Personally, called Discount Dave (and the Fix). When David Lee Roth crashes the backstage party at a Shakespeare Festival, Becca — a hedonistic young actor, is set on a path of self-reckoning. A harrowing and hilarious blend of memoir and auto-fiction, Discount Dave (and The Fix) is the true-ish story of a fake rockstar, a real trial and what it means to stop running, face yourself and fight to heal.

Episode one of this series, "I Runneth with the Devil," is an Official Selection of the 2026 Tribeca Audio Festival.

In the aftermath of “The Event” the crew of Dolos Space Station 769, along with the station’s resident AI, have spent weeks scanning the earth’s surface for survivors, but to no avail. As the situation becomes ever more dire, disagreements emerge about the proper way to respond to the crisis before they run out of the limited resources that they need to survive in orbit.

In celebration of our premiere this week at the legendary Tribeca Film Festival, we’re excited to be dropping a special, extended preview of The Dolos Project: our pilot episode, titled “Quebec”.

Full Season to come late 2026/2027

More about The Dolos Project:

"It’s 1987. From their small space station, co-pilots David and Sarah have witnessed the nuclear annihilation of all life on earth. Now they, and their AI station companion SAI may be all that remains of humanity. But as David and Sarah attempt to search for survivors, they discover that all may not be as it appears.

This is The Dolos Project, an intimate psychological sci-fi thriller podcast that explores how we grapple with immeasurable loss, how we cling to shreds of hope when none appear to remain, and how advances in AI may not be the societal upgrade we’re being sold."

Created by Marcus Bagala and Megan Bagala

Starring Joseph Dalfonso, Kelsey Lea Jones, Nancy Kimball, Lexi Rabadi, Amy Mcdonald and Aidan Dorn-Wallenstein

Music by Marcus Bagala and Samuel Bagala

Associate Director Chad Chenail

Recording Engineer Will Melones

Recorded @ The Buddy Project

What is it like to talk to people who knew your loved ones who died? My quest to get intimate with death begins as I talk with someone who knew my parents who I never knew existed until after they died.

I met Marie Bowden very shortly after my father died. He was her mentor, but she and I had not met. Through our conversation, I learned that she is a person surrounded by death. She grew up in a home surrounded by death. She works in a profession that is about donation after death. She herself has experienced tremendous loss. And she is someone who reminds me that there is beauty in the world, despite everything we go through (and because of it).

For more from Amelia, sign up for ⁠the Cultivate Being™ Newsletter.⁠

Check out www.cultivatebeing.com and @CultivateBeing on Instagram.

Cultivate Being™ is created and hosted by Amelia Chiarenza in collaboration with audio producer, Theo Balcomb.

In the woods outside Carmel, New York, a hunter finds the bones of a twelve-year-old girl. She had been missing. The people meant to protect her had looked the other way. Police set their sights on two teenage drug dealers, who are convicted of her murder and sent to prison.

But this is just the beginning of the story. Now, buried records, ignored warnings, and a justice system that may have gotten it dangerously wrong are forced into the open, while the real killer bides his time, counting the days until he can hunt again.

Award-winning investigative journalist and longtime Rolling Stone Magazine contributor Paul Solotaroff hosts the next entry in the acclaimed Bone Valley anthology: Bone Valley Season 5 | The Devil's Quarry starting June 10.

Listeners can binge the entire season by subscribing to Lava for Good+ on Apple Podcasts.

Bone Valley Season 5: The Devil’s Quarry is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Rolling Stone Films and Signal Co. No1.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Zippers are the most common machine all around us. But it's a minor miracle how that came to be.

Pictures of early zippers and other links at articlesofinterest.substack.com