What It Was Like

In 1991, cruise ship performers Moss and Tracy Hills found themselves on a sinking ship. As the MTS Oceanos floundered, passengers waited for the crew to take charge. Finally, Moss and Tracy stepped in, and ultimately rescued over 500 passengers. On this ep, Moss tells the story of becoming an accidental hero.

This week's subscriber episode takes us back to February 2020, where Kent Frasure found himself confined to his cabin on the Diamond Princess due to COVID. It was a preview of the pandemic to come: the slow response, the gap between regular people and authority, and the limits of money against a million year-old virus.Subscribe to WIWL PLUS+ to hear the full episode and get access to loads more exclusive content.Join our membership on Spotify here or on Apple Podcasts here.

Through the 1990s, a group of men in Australia’s southernmost state began training as ninjas. It was a kind of proto-manosphere that slowly became part cult, part domestic terrorist cell. They stole explosives, stockpiled guns, and plotted to kidnap local businessmen, until their leader was murdered in 1997. On this ep, Journalist Claire Sullivan walks us through this bizarre and forgotten saga.Pre-order Claire’s book: Criminally Bad The 100% true story of Tasmania’s most inept crime ring

How do ordinary, intelligent people end up in cults, and how do they get out? In this subscriber ep preview, we talk to Ingo Michehl, who spent six years in the Moonies before a single phrase from a friend set him free. He later did a master’s in psychology with a thesis on mind control. He tells us about his journey in and out, and we unpack the eight criteria of “ideological totalism”.Get in touch with Ingo at Balance With Ingo.Subscribe to WIWL PLUS+ to hear the full episode and get access to loads more exclusive content.Join our membership on Spotify here or on Apple Podcasts here.

Sophia Greenwood was adopted as a baby. She had no contact with her birth parents, until she met her biological dad in her 20s. They both experienced a sense of profound connection and fell into a relationship that ended in pregnancy. In this ep, Sophia talks about knowing she was in a relationship with her dad, yet unable to switch off the attraction, and why that’s more common than you'd think among adoptees.Sophia's book, Forbidden Love, is on Amazon here.This week’s episode was originally featured on our sister show Sex Confessions. Watch it on Spotify or listen on Apple PodcastsInstagram ⁠@sexconfessionspodTiktok ⁠@xconfessionspodYoutube ⁠@SexConfessionsPodHost Laura Roscioli ⁠@lauraroscioli⁠

This week’s story will likely be hard for many listeners to wrap their heads around, which is why we're unpacking the science behind it in this week’s subscriber episode.This is an excerpt from Julian’s discussion with Dianne Mathes, a Canadian therapist who specialises in the phenomenon of adoptees feeling attracted to biological family members. By her estimate, it's actually the majority of her cases, and she shares her own experience as an adoptee.Subscribe to WIWL PLUS+ to hear the full episode and get access to loads more exclusive content.Join our membership on Spotify here or on Apple Podcasts here.

At 15, Maggie Malloy was abducted at gunpoint during running practice near her home in Galion, Ohio. A few hours later, she was found with multiple gun shots to the head, but alive. This week, Maggie shares how she survived and how faith and facing her past helped her to heal.

This week we are revisiting one of our favourite stories. In 2015, Hurricane Joaquin roared over the Bahamas and sank a cargo ship called the El Faro, drowning all 33 people onboard. It was a mystery how a modern US-flagged ship could sail into a hurricane until its black box was found. In this episode, Julian examines the black box transcript to discover a crew that ignored all their own instincts.Transcript from the El Faro's black box is here.The US Coast Guard's report is here.And here is an article and a book that was hugely helpful in researching this case:“The Clock Is Ticking”: Inside the Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades by William LangewiescheInto the Raging Sea: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of El Faro by Rachel Slade

When Alice Weaver Flaherty’s twins died at birth, she developed an overwhelming compulsion to write about the experience. Soon, Alice had developed hypergraphia, a rare condition that causes sufferers to write morning and night. She explains what happened to her and what it reveals about the brain and creativity.Check out Alice’s book, The Midnight Disease