Biosphere 2 was meant to prove we could build a world from scratch. Instead, it became a fight to keep the air breathable and the story from turning toxic.

In 1991, eight people sealed themselves inside a vast Arizona terrarium designed to test whether a closed ecosystem could sustain human life and one day help us survive on Mars. What followed was not just a biosphere experiment under glass, but a slow collision between science, survival, collapsing oxygen levels, and a press narrative determined to call it a joke. This week, we dig into what really happened inside Biosphere 2, why the project began to unravel, and whether it was ever the failure people still think it was.

Topics include

• The Biosphere 2 experiment and its original Mars habitat ambitions
• Why oxygen levels dropped inside the sealed ecosystem
• The biospherians, food shortages, and life inside the dome
• How media coverage helped distort the story of Biosphere 2
• Whether Biosphere 2 failed, or was misunderstood from the start

• Biosphere 2 - Wikipedia
• Life under the bubble - Discover magazine
• The Human Experiment - by Jane Poynter

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
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Morgan Metzer survived a home invasion that ended with a far darker truth: the man who came to save her may have known exactly what happened.

On New Year's Eve in Canton, Georgia, a masked attacker entered a locked home, used intimate knowledge of the house, and left one woman bound, beaten, and terrified. The first person to find her was the ex-husband she still trusted, but the details of the night pointed somewhere far closer to home. This is a chilling story of gaslighting, coercive control, psychological abuse, and the case that later inspired Gaslit by My Husband.

Topics include

• The New Year's Eve home invasion at the centre of Morgan Metzer's story
• How gaslighting and coercive control shaped the years before the attack
• The warning signs of psychological abuse hidden inside an old relationship
• The real case behind Gaslit by My Husband

• Gaslit by My Husband: The Morgan Metzer Story - Stream on Paramount
• Georgia man who attacked - CBS News
• From hero to villain - CBS News
• Saved by Her Ex-Husband - People.com

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
• Website: thecompendiumpodcast.com
• Support us: Sign up to Patreon
• Circus Job Board: Apply to join the Circus

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Nellie Bly faked madness to enter Blackwell's Island asylum, then turned fearless reporting into a 72-day race around the world.

Before she became a legend, Elizabeth Cochran was a young reporter trying to force her way into a profession that barely made room for women. This episode follows her rise from sharp-tongued columnist to daring undercover journalist, as she exposes the cruelty inside Blackwell's Island, builds her reputation through investigative journalism, and catches the eye of Joseph Pulitzer. From Ten Days in a Mad House to a globe-spanning stunt that made her famous, it is a story about nerve, performance, ambition, and the price of becoming extraordinary.

Topics include:

• Her early career and the making of Nellie Bly
• Going undercover inside Blackwell’s Island asylum
• What her investigation revealed about care, cruelty, and institutional neglect
• Investigative journalism as performance, risk, and public spectacle
• Joseph Pulitzer, the New York World, and the machinery of sensational reporting
• Her 72-day trip around the world and the frenzy that followed

• 10 days in a madhouse - by Nellie Bly
• Nellie Bly - Wikipedia
• Woman & The American Story - nyhistory.org

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
• Website: thecompendiumpodcast.com
• Support us: Sign up to Patreon
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In 2019, eBay went full villain in one of Silicon Valley’s biggest cyberstalking scandals. Today we’re diving into the fragile ego at the top, and the lengths the CEO went to in a harassment campaign against a wholesome suburban couple in Boston.

After critical posts hit a nerve, eBay’s CEO instructed their Global Security team to take down nay sayers at any cost. Today we track the emails, fake accounts, doorstep packages, and the FBI investigation that drags the whole operation into the light.

Topics include

• EcommerceBytes, Ina and David Steiner, and the criticism eBay could not ignore
• eBay cyberstalking tactics, fake accounts, and a harassment campaign gone rogue
• Threat Matrix, private dossiers, and what Global Security thought it was doing
• How the FBI traced the stalking back to eBay executives and DOJ charges

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
• Website: TheCompendiumPodcast.com
• Support us: Sign up to Patreon
• Circus Job Board: Submit your job Descriptions

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The West Memphis Three story is a nightmare of panic, pressure, and vanished evidence, where a confession mattered more than truth.

In 1993, three eight-year-old boys vanished in West Memphis, Arkansas, then turned up murdered in Robin Hood Hills. As the Satanic Panic crept into the investigation, police chased a satanic ritual narrative and built a case around Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jesse Misskelley, fuelled by a false confession and courtroom “experts” who should never have been there. Years later, the hair evidence in a ligature knot and the Alford plea that freed them leave one brutal question hanging: if they walked out, who never got caught?

Topics include

• Satanic Panic hysteria and a wrongful conviction built on fear
• Jesse Misskelley’s false confession and the interrogation tactics behind it
• Paradise Lost and West of Memphis, and how the documentaries shifted the case
• The Alford plea, the hair evidence in the knot, and why the case stayed unresolved
• DNA testing and the long fight for full exoneration

Resources and Further Reading

• West Memphis Three - Wikipedia
• The Satanic Panic - Wikipedia
• Paradise Lost (1996) - Documentry
• West of Memphis (2012) - Peter Jackson
• Devil's Knot - Mara Leveritt

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
• Website: TheCompendiumPodcast.com
• Support us: Sign up to Patreon
• Certified Freaks: Submit your job Descriptions

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McMillions exposed how McDonald’s Monopoly was quietly hijacked, turning “random” winners into a pattern the FBI could not ignore.

It started with a tip that sounded like sour grapes, but then the FBI noticed something odd: all the winners were connected. The lead led to the realisation that the McDonald’s Monopoly game was rigged, and had been for most of its existence. And the man behind it was Uncle Jerry, Jerry Jacobson. What emerged was a secret FBI initiative dubbed Operation Final Answer, and a co-ordinated national sting.

Topics include

• Jerry Jacobson and the inside job at the heart of McDonald’s Monopoly
• How game pieces were stolen, swapped, and funnelled to “winners”
• The St Jude prize story and why it made perfect cover
• Operation Final Answer and the FBI’s plan for simultaneous arrests
• Simon Marketing and the blind spots that let it run for years

Resources and Further Reading

• McMillions (2020) - TV Mini Series
• McDonalds Monopoly Scam - Wikipedia

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
• Website: TheCompendiumPodcast.com
• Support us: Sign up to Patreon
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The Chowchilla bus kidnapping began like any school run, then veered into a buried alive ordeal no one could have imagined.

One moment a group of kids are arguing about snacks, the next they are being marched off a bus by men who clearly skipped Kidnapping 101. While the town panics, the abductors bungle their own plan and promptly disappear, leaving 27 people trapped underground with no idea what happens next. What unfolds is a mix of fear, grit, and surprisingly resourceful thinking as the captives take matters into their own hands.

Topics include

• Chowchilla
• Michael Marshall
• Ed Ray
• Buried alive schoolchildren
• Largest child kidnapping case in US history

Resources and Further Reading

• 1976 Chowchilla kidnapping - Wikipedia
• Edward Ray - The City Of Chowchilla
• They’ve Taken Our Children, 1993 - by Vern Gillum
• The ballad of the Chowchilla bus kidnapping - Vox
• Chowchilla bus kidnapping - Rare photos CBS

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
• Website: thecompendiumpodcast.com
• Support us: Sign up to Patreon
• Circus Job Board: Apply to join the Circus

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The Suffolk Strangler turned Ipswich into a locked-door city. Five women vanish from the red light district and the road home becomes a crime scene.
In December 2006, the Ipswich murders unfold at terrifying speed as five women are found dumped on rural roads outside the town. Panic turns the streets silent, while the women at the centre of the story are reduced to headlines instead of humans. Inside Operation Sumac, detectives chase CCTV footage, a Ford Mondeo, DNA evidence and forensic fibres to close in on Steve Wright.

Topics include

• Steve Wright and the Suffolk Strangler timeline
• The Ipswich serial killer panic and the city’s response
• Life and risk inside the Ipswich red light district
• How was Steve Wright caught using CCTV footage and DNA evidence
• What the case reveals about who gets protected in Ipswich

• Ipswich serial murders - Wikipedia
• Wright guilty of Suffolk murders - The Guardian
• Murder in the Red Light - Apple TV

Host & Show Info

• Hosts: Kyle Risi & Adam Cox
• Intro Music: Alice in dark Wonderland

Community & Calls to Action

• Review & follow on: Spotify & Apple Podcasts
• Instagram: @theCompendiumPodcast
• Website: TheCompendiumPodcast.com
• Support us: Sign up to Patreon
• Certified Freaks: Submit your job Descriptions

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