Just The Gist

In 1971, a man in a business suit and a beige raincoat bought a one-way ticket to Seattle, ordered a bourbon and soda, and handed a flight attendant a note. It said he had a bomb. By the time the plane landed in Reno, he was gone — along with $200,000 in cash and, apparently, any trace of his existence. No body. No parachute. No fingerprints. Nothing. The FBI investigated for decades and officially closed the case in 2016 — never solving it. It remains the only unsolved plane hijacking in US history. This is Just The Gist of DB Cooper: the 1971 Northwest Orient hijacking, the $200,000 ransom, the parachute jump, and the mystery that has never been solved..We give you Just The Gist, but if you want more, there's Breakin' Nooz, JTG After Show AND Bonus eps! You can access them by joining the Gistener Club via the Just The Gist Patreon or Apple Premium Subscriptions.Watch Just The Gist episodes on Youtube @JustTheGistPodcastFollow Just The Gist on Instagram and TikTok @JustTheGistPodcastFollow Rosie in all the places at @RosieWaterlandWant to give us a SuGISTion? Tell Rosie to stop singing so much? Email us at [email protected] The Gist is a Just The Network production. Executive Producer and Host: Rosie Waterland | Senior Producer and Editor: James Joseph | Producer: Kate Leaver | Additional production support: Hayley Staveley | Acast Legends: Guy Scott-Wilson and Simon McDermott | Production Assistant: PocketDon't forget to follow and give us 5 stars, which means something apparently!Thank you, as always, for Gistening. Now go say something impressive at a dinner party..DB Cooper and Tina Mucklow: The Untold Story (Rolling Stone, 2019)DB Cooper Case Files (FBI Vault)DB Cooper Confessions and Evidence (Popular Mechanics, 2025)DB Cooper: New FBI Files and Suspects (ABC News, July 2025)The Disappearance of DB Cooper (YouTube, 2024)D.B. Cooper Wikipedia Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On March 5th, 2012, a 27-minute YouTube video dropped and within six days, 100 million people had watched it. Every celebrity shared it. Oprah. Beyonce. Everyone. The premise was simple: make a Ugandan warlord named Joseph Kony so famous that the world would have to stop him. It became the fastest viral video in history. But in less than two weeks, the whole thing completely collapsed, ending with the man behind it, Invisible Children founder Jason Russell, having a very public naked breakdown on a street in San Diego. This is Just The Gist (MINI) of KONY 2012: the viral video, Jason Russell and Invisible Children, the slacktivism scandal, the Lord's Resistance Army, and the spectacular public meltdown that ended it all..We give you Just The Gist, but if you want more, there's Breakin' Nooz, JTG After Show AND Bonus eps! You can access them by joining the Gistener Club via the Just The Gist Patreon or Apple Premium Subscriptions.Watch Just The Gist episodes on Youtube @JustTheGistPodcastFollow Just The Gist on Instagram and TikTok @JustTheGistPodcastFollow Rosie in all the places at @RosieWaterlandWant to give us a SuGISTion? Tell Rosie to stop singing so much? Email us at [email protected] The Gist is a Just The Network production. Executive Producer and Host: Rosie Waterland | Senior Producer and Editor: James Joseph | Producer: Kate Leaver | Additional production support: Hayley Staveley | Acast Legends: Guy Scott-Wilson and Simon McDermott | Production Assistant: PocketDon't forget to follow and give us 5 stars, which means something apparently!Thank you, as always, for Gistening. Now go say something impressive at a dinner party..Kony 2012 Full Video (YouTube, Invisible Children, 2012)Kony 2012, Ten Years On (The Guardian, April 2022)Why I Couldn't Stop Thinking About Kony (Narratively, 2022)'We're in Bad Times' Invisible Children super cool music video (YouTube, 2012)Kony 2012 and Interventionism (Jacobin, March 2025)Jason Russell on His Public Breakdown (Oprah.com, 2012)Kony 2012 (Wikipedia)Invisible Children Website Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Did you know King Charles was never actually supposed to be King? Charles and Diana, William and Harry -  they all would have just been random side-royals if one of their far more important relatives hadn’t quit the royal family. Less than 12 months into his reign, King Edward VIII abdicated the throne so he could marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Even though she never wanted to marry Edward, Wallis was publicly blamed for the royal crisis, which resulted in the newly named ‘Duke and Duchess of Windsor’ being exiled from England for the rest of their lives. And Edward - so used to being treated like a King - found the downgrade to ‘regular citizen’ so difficult, that he and Wallis befriended Hitler and the Nazis, hoping to find a way back onto the world stage.This is just the gist of Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII.We give you Just The Gist, but if you want more, there's Breakin' Nooz, JTG After Show AND Bonus eps! You can access them by joining the Gistener Club via the Just The Gist Patreon or Apple Premium Subscriptions.Watch Just The Gist episodes on Youtube @JustTheGistPodcastFollow Just The Gist on Instagram and TikTok @JustTheGistPodcastFollow Rosie in all the places at @RosieWaterlandWant to give us a SuGISTion? Tell Rosie to stop singing so much? Email us at [email protected] The Gist is a Just The Network production. Executive Producer and Host: Rosie Waterland | Senior Producer and Editor: James Joseph | Producer: Kate Leaver | Additional production support: Hayley Staveley | Acast Legends: Guy Scott-Wilson and Simon McDermott | Production Assistant: PocketDon't forget to follow and give us 5 stars, which means something apparently!Thank you, as always, for Gistening. Now go say something impressive at a dinner party.Traitor King — Andrew LownieKing Edward VIII Abdication Speech (1936)Edward & Wallis: The Full StoryThe Abdication Crisis DocumentaryPeople: Wallis Simpson, Convenient Scapegoat for King Edward VIII's AbdicationThe National Archives: Abdication of Edward VIIIBBC Culture: The Shocking Moment King Edward VIII Announced His Abdication Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the movie The Terminal, Tom Hanks plays a man who is forced to live in an airport for 9 months after his passport is declared invalid. Most people know that The Terminal was based on a true story, but they don't know that in real life, Mehran Karimi Nasseri wasn't stuck at the airport for 9 months. He ended up living there for 18 YEARS. He entered the international terminal of Charles de Gaulle Airport in 1988, and didn't leave until 2006, all because he didn't have a valid passport.Getting by with gifts from airline staff and travellers, 'Sir Alfred' used two benches as a bed, washed in the airport toilets and ate McDonalds for every meal. This is Just The Gist (MINI) of Mehran Karimi Nasseri; the stateless man who lived in Terminal One at Charles de Gaulle Airport for almost 20 years, the bureaucratic nightmare that put him there, and the far sadder truth about why he stayed.We give you Just The Gist, but if you want more, there's Breakin' Nooz, JTG After Show AND Bonus eps! You can access them by joining the Gistener Club via the Just The Gist Patreon or Apple Premium Subscriptions.Watch Just The Gist episodes on Youtube @JustTheGistPodcastFollow Just The Gist on Instagram and TikTok @JustTheGistPodcastFollow Rosie in all the places at @RosieWaterlandWant to give us a SuGISTion? Tell Rosie to stop singing so much? Email us at [email protected] Just The Gist is a Just The Network production. Executive Producer and Host: Rosie Waterland | Senior Producer and Editor: James Joseph | Producer: Kate Leaver | Additional production support: Hayley Staveley | Acast Legends: Guy Scott-Wilson and Simon McDermott | Production Assistant: PocketDon't forget to follow and give us 5 stars, which means something apparently!Thank you, as always, for Gistening. Now go say something impressive at a dinner party.The 15-Year Layover — Michael Paterniti, GQ (via Longform)AP News: Mehran Karimi Nasseri, 'The Terminal' man, dies in Paris airportThe Guardian: 'Terminal Man' lived in Paris airport for 18 years — I'll never forget my weeks with himAll That's Interesting: Mehran Karimi NasseriNew York Times Magazine: Waiting For SpielbergThe Guardian: The man The Terminal left behindHere To Where (2002 film, available on Vimeo) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For more than a decade, the entire McDonalds Monopoly game in the US was completely rigged. From 1989 to 2001, anybody who won a major prize in the competition had actually cheated, with help from someone on the inside. That someone was Jerome ‘Jerry’ Jacobson, Head of Security for the company in charge of making and distributing the McDonald’s Monopoly pieces. But when McDonalds found out that nobody was legitimately winning the major prizes, they still let the public spend their money trying to win in one last competition, because the FBI needed to go undercover to catch the Monopoly cheaters in a massive McSting. And when Jerry Jacobson finally revealed how he had pulled the whole thing off, it literally came down to one accidental fluke. This is Just The Gist of the McDonald’s Monopoly Fraud. We give you Just The Gist, but if you want more, there's Breakin' Nooz, JTG After Show AND Bonus eps! You can access them by joining the Gistener Club via the Just The Gist Patreon or Apple Premium Subscriptions.Watch Just The Gist episodes on Youtube @JustTheGistPodcastFollow Just The Gist on Instagram and TikTok @JustTheGistPodcastFollow Rosie in all the places at @RosieWaterlandWant to give us a SuGISTion? Tell Rosie to stop singing so much? Email us at [email protected] Just The Gist is a Just The Network production. Executive Producer and Host: Rosie Waterland | Senior Producer and Editor: James Joseph | Producer: Kate Leaver | Additional production support: Hayley Staveley | Acast Legends: Guy Scott-Wilson and Simon McDermott | Production Assistant: PocketDon't forget to follow and give us 5 stars, which means something apparently!Thank you, as always, for Gistening. Now go say something impressive at a dinner party.......McMillion$ — Official Trailer (HBO)The Daily Beast "How An Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald's Monopoly Game and Stole Millions" by Jeff MayshThe Guardian "McMillion$: the bizarre story of how one man stole $24m from McDonald's"Vanity Fair "The True Crime Story Behind McMillion$"The New York Times "McMillion$ on HBO, Explained"CNBC "How the McMillions Scammers Rigged the McDonald's Monopoly Game and Stole $24 Million"NPR "How the Ex-Cop Who Scammed McDonald's Monopoly Got Caught"Adweek "McDonald's Revives Monopoly With a Wink at Its Scandalous Past"Wikipedia: McDonald's Monopoly (the promotion) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.