What It Was Like
Episodes
Whales Are Sinking Boats and No One Knows Why
13 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Since 2020, orcas have been attacking sailing boats off the coasts of Spain and Portugal. Experts initially thought the behaviour was a passing fad, b...
The Millionaires Who Went Mad in Their Jungle Fortress
07 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When American millionaire John Bender moved to Costa Rica with his wife Ann, they set out to build a dream life in the jungle. Instead, their relation...
Ted Bundy Tried to Kill Me
28 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In 1967, 14-year-old Connie Geldreich met a young man at a lake who called himself Ted. What began as a strange encounter escalated into something far...
How I Ended Up Running a Happy Endings Parlour for Women
20 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Alice was in her late 30s when she reinvented her life. She left her marriage and started prioritising herself for the first time ever. That jour...
Sunk by Killer Whales, Adrift for 38 Days
14 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Douglas Robertson was a teenager when his family set out to sail the world on a yacht. Seventeen months into the voyage, orcas sank the boat in the Pa...
I Made a Fortune Helping People Cheat Their Tax
06 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Rick Hogg was a Melbourne accountant who specialised in minimising tax by fabricating expenses. In 2018, it all imploded and Rick got five years in pr...
I Made $2M a Year as a Corporate Spy
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Kerbeck was a broke actor when he stumbled into corporate espionage. His job was to trick low-level employees into divulging company secrets, w...
I Bought a Haunted Witches' Prison (Classic)
23 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Vanessa Mitchell thought she was buying the home of her dreams. Sure, it was a medieval prison for English peasants accused of witchcraft, but it was ...
I Was Raised in a Cult Believing I'd be Dead by 12
17 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Flor Edwards grew up in the Children of God, an authoritarian sect that taught its followers that the world would end in 1993. In this episode, she re...
I Was Held Captive in This House for 11 Years
08 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Lily Rose Lee was 21 when she accepted a ride from her friend’s father. She was 32 when she finally escaped his house, along with two other wom...
A Journey to Find Russia's Forgotten Space Ships (Classic)
01 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Greg Abandoned is an urbex YouTuber who visits the world’s most wild and forgotten places. A few years ago, he trekked into the Kazakh desert to exp...
A Federal Judge Banned My Christmas Lights
24 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2015, Jeremy Morris bought a house in Idaho to host the Christmas display of his dreams. Within weeks he was locked in a bitter feud with his neigh...
The Journal Found Beside a Dead Man in Alaska
20 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In February 1982, the body of a wildlife photographer named Carl McCunn was found in northern Alaska. A miscommunication had left him stranded and McC...
Saying Goodbye to My Multiple Personalities
12 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes Vivian Conan saw herself in the mirror. Other times she saw others with their own distinct personalities and backstories. At 43, she was dia...
I Was Kidnapped By My Stalker and Locked in a Bunker
05 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2022, Samantha Stites was abducted by Christopher Thomas, a man who’d been stalking her for 13 years and had secretly built a soundproof bunker t...
The Man Using Maths to Find Serial Killers
28 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thomas Hargrove was an investigative reporter when he had an idea: use open-source FBI data to spot patterns in unsolved murders. That idea became an ...
The Hunt For A Killer Who Vanished
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2001, Detective Hugh Lockerby found a woman and two children murdered inside a burning home in Scottsdale, Arizona. The missing husband, Robert Wil...
What Happened at Skeleton Lake?
15 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
High in the Himalayas lies Roopkund Lake: a frozen pond surrounded by the remains of around 700 people. Were they victims of an ancient disaster, a lo...
I Lived as a Hermit in the Australian Bush for 10 Years
07 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At 35, Gregory Smith walked into the rainforest of northern NSW, addicted, lost, and ready to disappear. He spent the next decade living as a hermit. ...
I Caught 'The Dating Game' Killer
31 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
You might’ve seen 'The Dating Game Killer' on Netflix but this is the real story. In 1979, a 12-year-old girl vanished from Huntington Beach and Det...
Catching My Sister's Killer (Classic)
24 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week we're re-running a favourite episode. In 1985, a 17-year-old girl named Shari Smith was abducted from her driveway and the family's pho...
I Cooked and Ate My Own Foot
17 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we’re speaking with a man who lost his foot in a motorcycle accident and then served it to 10 friends for brunch. It’s a conversation about...
I Was Nearly Killed by the 'Killdozer'
11 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2004, a man named Marvin Heemeyer turned a bulldozer into a homemade tank and tore through Granby, Colorado, targeting people he believed had wrong...
I Had an Affair With an AI Girlfriend
04 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Chris Smith started experimenting with ChatGPT in 2024 and quickly became hooked. Soon he’d customised the chatbot into a flirty persona he named “...
I Dated a Billionaire Weapons Dealer
26 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Jill Dodd was a 21-year-old model when she started dating one of the world's richest men. Adnan Khashoggi made billions selling arms to Saudi Arabia a...
Lighting Bushfires Made Me Feel Less Alone
21 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the late 1980s, Steve was a teenage firefighter in a small Australian coastal town. Lonely and looking for connection, he discovered that if he lit...
A Nearly Impossible Story of Survival on 9/11
11 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On September 11, 2001, Stanley Praimnath was on the top floor of the South Tower when he saw the second plane heading straight for his office. Against...
I Discovered Brad Pitt
05 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
With Brad Pitt back in the spotlight thanks to F1, we’re revisiting a classic episode from 2022. Casting director Lauren Lloyd recalls meeting a you...
How it Felt Running a $700 Million Bank Fraud
29 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2003, a Wall Street trader named John Rusnak was convicted of bank fraud and sentenced to more than seven years in prison. In this episode, John ex...
What We Found Hidden in our Walls
23 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A family moves into a new home in rural Pennsylvania and starts renovating. Only there's something in the walls that doesn't make sense. What they unc...
Three Deaths at a Spiritual Retreat
16 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2009, motivational speaker James Arthur Ray hosted a multi-day retreat in Arizona. On the final day, three participants died. In this episode,...
The Meat Industry Veteran Who'd Seen Enough
10 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, David Magna worked as a safety supervisor in Canadian slaughterhouses. But then a crisis of conscience turned him from an industry inside...
I Called the Police on My Serial Killer Dad
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As a child, April Balascio noticed that people would often vanish. One time it was a labourer working for her dad, another time it was a young couple ...
I Accidentally Turned ‘The Macarena’ Into a Global Phenomenon
25 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1995, Carlos de Yarza spent 90 minutes remixing a catchy Spanish song without giving it much thought. That version became 'The Macarena' the world ...
One Night, 852 People Lost in the Ocean
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1994, a luxurious ferry called the MS Estonia sank in the Baltic Sea, drowning most of its passengers. Landscape architect Paul Barney was one of t...
I Solved the 'Doomsday Mum' Murders
13 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2019, two children vanished in Idaho, sparking an investigation that became one of America’s biggest true crime stories. At the centre were Chad ...
What I’ve Learned Stopping Suicides on the Golden Gate Bridge
03 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Kevin Briggs joined the San Francisco Highway Patrol, he didn’t expect a key part of his job would be talking people down from the Golden Gate ...
I Imported Rave Culture (and Ecstasy) to America
27 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1991, Shaun Attwood arrived from the UK to find American rave culture in its infancy. Spotting an opportunity, he began importing potent Dutch ecst...
What Happens When Religious Leaders Take Magic Mushrooms?
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A new study gave psilocybin to religious leaders, just to see whether their faith would be affirmed or rattled. In this episode we hear...
He Cut Off My Arms and Left Me to Die
13 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mary McGriff was 15 when she hitched a ride with a man named Lawrence Singleton. The next day, she lay at the bottom of a cliff, her arms severed with...
The Lovers That Burned Down 77 Houses
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we're re-running a classic. When abandoned farm houses started catching fire in rural Virginia, police weren't sure what to think. It took ...
I Got Eaten By a Hippopotamus
30 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 90s, Paul Templer ran a business guiding clients down the Zambezi River near Victoria Falls. One afternoon, he was attacked by a hippo an...
I Led the Manhunt for a Killer Who Lived Like a Hermit
23 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2005, Malcolm Naden murdered two women and vanished into the Australian bush. For seven years he evaded police, until former detective Ricky Hennes...
How Cocaine Killed the Car in 'Back to the Future'
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
John DeLorean was a star auto designer in the 1960s, but his own car company—the DeLorean Motor Company—never took off. When a cocaine deal offere...
My School Was Kidnapped at Gunpoint
09 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1976, 20-year-old Rob Hunter was a month into his first teaching job at a remote Australian school when an armed gunman abducted him and his nine s...
I Had Sex With 100 Men in One Day
02 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Last year, 23-year-old British porn star Lily Phillips announced plans to break the world record for the most sexual partners in a day—starting with...
Everyone Said 'Dirty Dancing' Would Flop. I Made It Anyway
25 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the mid-80s, producer Linda Gottlieb heard a friend’s story about “dirty dancing” at summer camp and urged her to write a script. Despite rej...
I Got Pregnant to a Man Who Doesn't Exist
18 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2024, Cass Taulaki fell pregnant to the man of her dreams—a 32-year-old engineer in the Australian Defence Force. Or so she thought. In reality, ...
I Lived in a Haunted Apartment That Didn't Like to Be Alone
10 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 2000s, musician Nathan Munn moved into a tiny, ornate apartment in Montreal. At first, he and his flatmates brushed off its strange energ...
How a Sinking Ship Refloated our Marriage
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2012, a cruise liner named the Costa Concordia sank off the coast of Italy, killing 32 people. But Australian couple Rob and Tracy Elcombe survived...
I Visited an Uncontacted Tribe in the Amazon
27 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Awá, an Indigenous group in Brazil's Amazon, had no contact with the outside world until recently. In 2010, BBC journalist Justin Rowlatt visited...
I Slept With New York's Elite to Rob Them
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2009, Kari Ferrell was outed by the media for writing bad checks and robbing trust fund babies across Manhattan. Dubbed the 'Hipster Grifter,' Kari...
SCAMMERLAND: How a Fake Job Offer Landed Me in Slavery
15 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This is the first episode of our new What It Was Like series, SCAMMERLAND. It's based on an episode we did last year, looking at how on...
Wellness and Lies: My Friendship With Belle Gibson
07 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2015, wellness influencer Belle Gibson was outed for pretending to have cancer. Now she's back in the headlines thanks to a new show on Netflix. In...
I Watched Tornado Chasing Go from Subculture to Saturation
27 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tornado chasing was a niche hobby when Tim Marshall started in the 1970s. But over time, he watched it grow in popularity and then explode into the ma...
Discovering My Grandfather's Secret Nazi Past
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Julie Lindahl always knew there was something different about her family. Her German grandparents had fled to Brazil after the war, but she didn't kno...
Getting Stuck in a Washing Machine Changed My Life
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2014, Laurence Hearn was drinking too much and struggling to make ends meet. Then he accidentally got stuck in a washing machine. What followed was...
Why Did My Schoolmate Murder His Family?
07 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1989, Melissa Fyfe was a high school student in Tasmania when her classmate killed his parents and younger brother. Shocked, the community buried t...
The Great Australian Coffee Shop Joke War
30 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2019, a man named Fraser Harvey nominated himself 'Customer of the Week' at a Melbourne coffee shop. A woman named Harriett Noall retalia...
We Hunted Down a Mystery Killer in the Outback
23 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It was June 1987 and an unknown person had murdered five campers in Australia's remote northwest. In this episode, we speak with Bob Brown, the former...
I'm the Lowest-Ranked Tennis Player to Ever Win a Grand Slam
17 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Edmondson was ranked 212th when he was invited to compete at the 1976 Australian Open. He was a 21-year-old with sideburns, juggling odd jobs to ...
Inside the Life of the Pizza Bomber
09 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2003, a pizza deliveryman robbed a Pennsylvania bank with a bomb locked to his neck—a heist that ended in tragedy when the bomb exploded. The mas...
I Dated a Celebrity as a Non-Famous Person
02 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Myah Morgenstern isn't famous. But when she met actor Tony Revolori, (Spiderman, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Scream), she was ushered into a whole ...
The Woolworths Christmas Bombers (Rerun)
27 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the lead up to Christmas of 1980, three Woolworths stores were bombed around New South Wales. It's a crazy story involving Australia's largest supe...
My Husband's Client Stalked Us for Years
20 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sandra Miller wasn't overly concerned when her therapist partner's client admitted to eavesdropping outside their window. Until this client started ca...
How I Got Revenge for My Parking Fines
12 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Julian Morgans, host of What it Was Like, gets parking fines all the time. In his own words "I could wallpaper my house with them." But instead o...
What I Learned After 27 Years Investigating Violence Against Women
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Narelle Fraser spent much of her career in Victoria's Rape and Homicide squads, placing her at the coalface of the epidemic of violence against women....