What It Was Like

In 1985, a 17-year-old girl named Shari Smith was abducted from her own driveway and the family's phone started to ring. It was the kidnapper, his voice electronically distorted. He called repeatedly and it fell on Shari's 21-year-old sister Dawn to answer. In this episode, Dawn Smith Jordan recalls what she learned that week about her parents, her sister and her own resilience.

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When someone in the Saudi royal family buys a private plane, they usually want someone to photograph their new toy. And that's where Nick Gleis comes in. For over 40 years he's been photographing private jets for the world's richest people. On today's ep, Nick shares some stories about his clients and talks about the time he accidentally flew into a tornado.

Check out Nick's photos of obscene luxury on his site, here.

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On April 28, 1996, a man named Martin Bryant fatally shot 35 people at the Port Arthur historical site in Tasmania. For siblings Lorraine and Mick Davies, who had grown up next-door to Bryant, the massacre was not entirely surprising. In this episode, they recount the tragedy's long build-up.

Mick Davies is also an actor and comedian. You can follow his work on Instagram.

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In 1991, Ida Sabelis and her partner had sex in an MRI tube, yielding an image that showcased the internal mechanics of copulation and gained global press coverage. Today, we delve into their experience and learnings. What's it like, exactly, to have sex inside a piece of medical equipment?

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Thanks to Hollywood, most of us have some idea of how it looked to live in the past. But historical recreation is a delicate dance. As part of our partnership with Paramount+ for the release of A Gentleman In Moscow, we're unpacking the art of time travel. The show's production designer, Víctor Molero, describes how he couldn't find a historical hotel to film in, so he built one from the ground up. And the hotel they built was a medley of fact and fiction.

A Gentleman In Moscow is Now Streaming only onParamount+

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Tim and Amanda came home to find their place had been trashed. Someone had broken in, but that's just the beginning. Join us on this very bizarre yet surprisingly funny story of a home invasion.

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Psychopaths are famous for not caring about anyone. But Julian Morgans, host of this show, tries to please everyone. It's a losing battle, so in this episode he asks a psychopath for advice. M.E. Thomas is a lawyer and diagnosed psychopath. She shares her story of losing friends and jobs due to a lack of people pleasing, and shares her tips for caring less.

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When Marie Monville married her high school sweetheart, Charlie, she believed it would be forever. But on October 2, 2006, Charlie committed one of America's worst mass shootings before taking his own life. Today, we ask Marie the big question: what were the signs? Her answers might surprise you.

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In the early 2000s, Matt Bowden spearheaded drug law reform in NZ by selling safer alternatives to meth. His "party pills" made millions, and Matt spent his money shooting steampunk video clips as his rocker alter-ego, Star Boy. On this ep, we hear how Matt set out to make positive change, but inadvertently pioneered a market of synthetic drugs.

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That's how old Steve Carter was when he stumbled upon a photo of himself on a missing person website. Raised in a Hawaiian orphanage and adopted at age four, Steve's biological roots were always a mystery. On today's episode, he tells the story of his own disappearance.

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In 1994, a cancer patient named Gloria Ramirez was wheeled into a Californian hospital, where medical staff began passing out while treating her. Our guest, Dr. Julie Gorchynski, tells us what really happened that night.

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In 1980, an Australian gold prospector named Kevin Hillier dreamed of finding gold. The dream was so vivid he sketched the nugget's shape on paper. Then, 12 days later, he and his wife Bep unearthed a record-breaking nugget with the same shape. Was this luck, a hoax or divine intervention?

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In 1999 the world was captivated by 'The Blair Witch Project,' a low-budget horror film that broke profit-to-cost records. On this week’s episode, co-director Daniel Myrick describes how it felt being at the centre of a cultural phenomenon, and what he learned about achieving dreams.

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Carl Williams is Australia's most famous drug kingpin. In the early 2000s he made untold millions trafficking party drugs while having his rivals murdered. But to his wife Roberta, he was a loving husband. In this special episode for Valentine's, Roberta Williams talks love and loss. Here's what it's really like to be a mob boss wife. 

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In July of 2000, a young man named Steven Goldsmith withdrew money from an ATM in Brisbane and vanished. Julian Morgans, host of What it Was Like, investigates the case in an effort to understand the broader phenomenon of people going missing, leading to an unsettling discovery.

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On August 9, 1996, the cast and crew of Titanic ended a big day of shooting with a seafood dinner. An hour later, around 40 people started feeling queasy, including director James Cameron. Later, it would turn out that somebody had spiked the clam chowder with a hallucinogenic drug called PCP or 'angel dust'. In this episode, assistant camera operator Jamie Barber tells us how the crew ended up in hospital, dancing in a conga line.

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Jillian Lauren was working as a New York escort when she was invited to a mysterious audition. The job? Fly to the Southeast Asian nation of Brunei and live in a harem run by Prince Jefri, who was the playboy brother of the richest sultan on Earth. Jillian took the gig, and on this episode, she walks us through her three years of hedonism, cruelty, and opulence on a scale few of us ever witness.

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In May 1999, police discovered eight bodies decaying in barrels in the vault of a disused bank in Snowtown. Three men were later jailed for the murders of 12 people, in one of the longest and most publicised trails in Australian history. And our guest had front-row seats to the whole saga.

Gordon Drage is a former-senior constable with the South Australian police. He'd been sent to Snowtown to investigate stolen property, only to accidentally stumble across the bank vault. He tells us what it was like, and how the experience affected him in the years after.

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In July of 1999 it was the 30th anniversary of Woodstock. The original organisers wanted another festival dedicated to love and peace, but this one became a disaster. The crowd rioted, setting fire to food trucks. Dozens were arrested, including our guest, Calvin Cardwell. On this episode, Calvin and his friend Chad Yantis describe their memories of the riot, and the details that the Netflix documentary, Trainwreck, missed out on.

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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 supermarket chain, two larrikin crooks, and a $1 million ransom thrown into the Sydney Harbour. We'll hear about it from two people: Former police officer Allan Duncan who was injured in one of the explosions, and Forgotten Australiapodcast host, Michael Adams.

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When abandoned farm houses started catching fire in rural Virginia, police weren't sure what to think. It took five months and almost 80 fires for a couple to be arrested and the story to emerge. In this episode, convicted arsonist Charlie Smith explains how he and his ex-partner lit fires to relax when their relationship soured.

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Lauren Lloyd had just co-founded a Hollywood talent agency when she met a pimply kid from Missouri named Brad. He was in his early 20s, but had a certain confidence that she found mesmerising. She knew instinctively he would be a movie star, and we're spending this episode unpacking what she saw and knew in that moment.

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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 also cute and within her price range. But then her possessions started vanishing and she found a mysterious pool of blood on the floor and three years later she was out, fleeing with her son. This is Vanessa's story of what happened.

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Through the 1980s the Soviet Union poured vast amounts of money into building reusable spaceships for crewed missions. This was the Buran programme, which was cancelled after the USSR collapsed. Today, many of these prototype spaceships are rusting away in Russian military hangars in Kazakhstan. We speak to a man who journeyed to find them.

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In June of 1993 Michael Jordan led the Chicago Bulls to their third championship victory. A month later, his dad was shot dead and Jordan quit the NBA. Now, for the first time, one of the two men convicted with James Jordan's murder tells his story.

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When three business partners bought an ex-P&O cruise liner, they thought they were creating the co-living space of the future. Their plan didn’t work, but they did get to briefly own a 1000-room ship. We’re asking former co-owner Grant Romundt what it was like sailing the vessel to Panama, and how he spent Christmas Day exploring locked rooms and riding water slides.

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When Lorraine Murphy met up with a pig farmer at a cafe in Vancouver, she couldn't have been less impressed. "Willy," as everyone called him, was creepy and smelled terrible. She left and didn't see him again for 12 years — when Willy was arrested as the most prolific serial killer (by body count) in Canada's history. 

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In 2008 a man named Terry Kniess guessed the exact price of the finale prize on The Price Is Right and was accused of cheating. But Terry hadn't cheated. He'd just obsessively watched the show until he spotted a vulnerability, and then exploited it. We asked Terry how he did it.

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Colleen Gwynne was a police officer in Alice Springs when one of Australia's biggest murder cases landed on her desk. A British couple named Peter Falconio and Joanne Lees had been attacked by an unknown gunman, and Joanne had survived by running off into the desert—a scene which later inspired the film Wolf Creek. Here Colleen describes how she tracked down the killer.

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Born blind, Matthew Weigman became an angry teenager with a supercharged sense of hearing. This enabled him to use his phone like a hacker uses a computer. Here Matt describes how he used his superpowers to harass celebrities like Lindsay Lohan and Eminem, until the FBI caught up with him.

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Jennifer Wynn's job is to make jurors feel sympathy for people who've committed horrible crimes. She talks to us about some of the killers she's met, and how she's come to understand their perspectives and motives after unpacking their tragic lives.

Hosted by Julian Morgans

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