Contacts
Info
Long before the public knew what was happening, sealed facilities, classified programs, and restricted laboratories were already testing ideas few people were meant to see. Top Secret Experiments explores the...
show more
Long before the public knew what was happening, sealed facilities, classified programs, and restricted laboratories were already testing ideas few people were meant to see. Top Secret Experiments explores the hidden projects, secret trials, and controversial research carried out behind closed doors, where ambition, national security, and human consequences often collided.
Some experiments promised breakthroughs. Others produced unanswered questions, buried records, or consequences that surfaced years later. From covert military research to classified technology and secret government programs, each story follows the decisions, risks, and discoveries that remained outside public view. When documents are sealed and witnesses stay silent, the most unsettling question is not what was tested—but what may still be hidden.
show less
Some experiments promised breakthroughs. Others produced unanswered questions, buried records, or consequences that surfaced years later. From covert military research to classified technology and secret government programs, each story follows the decisions, risks, and discoveries that remained outside public view. When documents are sealed and witnesses stay silent, the most unsettling question is not what was tested—but what may still be hidden.
Episodes & Posts
Episodes
Posts
26 OCT 2026 · The Man Who Flipped 450V: Why Ordinary People Obeyed
The basement device at Yale had thirty switches rising to 450 volts, and when tested in 1961, 65% of ordinary people delivered the highest shock - yet every participant had passed 300 volts first. What hidden detail discovered in 2012 complicates the story and raises the question: what did Milgram never make public?
In this episode, we present the original setup, procedure, and startling results of the Yale obedience study, and introduce the later re-examination of the data that challenges the simple reading of those numbers. How does that undisclosed finding change what we thought we knew about obedience?
Person: Stanley Milgram
Date: 1961
Location: Yale University basement
Event: Obedience to authority experiment with shock generator
Author: Gina Perry (re-examination in 2012)
- The shock generator had thirty switches in a horizontal row, increasing in 15-volt increments from 15V to 450V.
- Final three switches were unlabeled and marked only with "XXX" without voltage descriptions.
- Fourteen of the first forty subjects laughed nervously during the sessions; Milgram recorded this laughter as distress.
- Every participant who continued had already delivered at least 300 volts before proceeding further.
- The experiment included one real 45-volt sample shock administered to the teacher before the session began. To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.
© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
25 OCT 2026 · Researchers who enroll patients in clinical trials - only 24% would enroll themselves
Fewer than one in four rural physicians and research coordinators surveyed in 2015 said they would personally enroll in a clinical trial, despite obtaining consent from patients every week - what does that gap between practice and personal choice reveal about informed consent and the system that depends on it? Could decades of ethical failures and uneven training explain why many who obtain consent for others refuse it for themselves?
In this episode, we trace a path from a 2015 University of Montana survey to the postwar origins of modern research ethics, laying out what the study measured and why the findings matter for everyday clinical practice - can informed consent mean the same thing when those who administer it are reluctant to accept it?
Person: Ann Cook and Freeman Hoas
Date: 2015
Location: rural America; University of Montana Department of Psychology
Sample size: 80 respondents
Setting: hospital or hospital-clinic for 90% of respondents
- 24% of respondents said they would personally enroll in a clinical trial, and only with conditions.
- 34 of the 80 respondents were physicians or active researchers.
- 46 of the 80 respondents were research coordinators.
- 66% of research coordinators reported some research methods training; 53% of physicians reported the same.
- 59% of coordinators had ethics training versus 17% of physicians. To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.
© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
24 OCT 2026 · The Doctor's Touch: How Trusted Hands Hid Decades of Abuse
Trust turned to betrayal: a doctor with peer‑reviewed papers, university credentials, and access to Olympic champions abused at least 265 girls over decades while parents sat in the corner believing they were watching treatment. How did documented warnings sent as early as 1997 land on desks and lead to eighteen more years of harm before accountability arrived?
In this episode, we tell the documented timeline of Lawrence Gerard Nassar’s career, the reported abuse inside treatment rooms and at the Karolyi Ranch, and the institutional warnings that followed - asking how so many systems failed the athletes they were meant to protect.
Person: Lawrence Gerard Nassar
Date of birth: August 16, 1963
Number of victims testified: more than 265
Earliest reported abuse date in record: 1994
First documented institutional warning received: 1997
- He earned a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology from the University of Michigan in 1985 and a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine at Michigan State University in 1993.
- He completed a sports medicine fellowship and joined MSU’s College of Osteopathic Medicine as an assistant professor in 1997 with an approximate annual salary of $100,000.
- He began working as an athletic trainer for the national team in 1986 and was National Medical Coordinator for USA Gymnastics from 1996 to 2014.
- Victim testimony describes an intrapelvic pressure‑point technique involving an ungloved vaginal finger insertion without informed consent, with the earliest victim‑stated date about 1992 and the earliest recorded date 1994.
- He practiced at the Karolyi Ranch in Huntsville, Texas, despite not holding a Texas medical license, which is a third‑degree felony. To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.
© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
23 OCT 2026 · First Patient: How a Trauma Trial Betrayed Meaghan Buisson
She was an elite athlete who once broke the solo marathon world record on inline skates, and she became the very first patient at a clinical trial for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy-only to be harmed inside it. How did a trial designed to treat trauma allow a therapist with a lapsed license to cross boundaries that Canadian law classifies as sexual abuse?
In this episode, we tell the story of Meaghan Buisson and what happened during her enrollment in a MAPS-sponsored MDMA-assisted psychotherapy trial, including the protocol, the therapists involved, the timeline of her participation, and the events that followed-did the trial protect its first patient?
Person: Meaghan Buisson
Organization: MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies)
Therapists: Richard Yensen and Donna Dryer
Enrollment date: December 2014
Final formal enrollment end: June 2016
- She skated to a solo marathon world record and received a speeding ticket for inline skating in 2006.
- She won forty-seven Canadian national championships, set sixteen Canadian records, and earned eleven international medals.
- She enrolled as the first patient at her trial site in December 2014 and began sessions under the trial protocol.
- Richard Yensen’s psychology license had lapsed in 2009, five years before Buisson became his patient.
- A sexual relationship between Buisson and Yensen began between October 2015 and early 2016 while she was still an active trial participant. To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.
© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
22 OCT 2026 · They Read the Reports - Let Two Thousand Bleed Quietly
They kept vials of clotting factor concentrates in home refrigerators like insulin, but internal ministry files show officials read warnings about contaminated blood and chose not to act. Around two thousand of Japan's roughly 4,500 haemophiliacs contracted HIV in the 1980s-so who decided to keep the heat‑treated, safer product off the market, and why?
In this episode, we lay out the sequence recorded in ministry and corporate documents: the arrival of a heat‑treated product from Baxter Travenol, a one‑week reversal of a committee recommendation to ban untreated imports, and the ties between regulators and industry that shaped the decision. What did the internal reports say, who read them, and how did those choices translate into infections?
Person: Green Cross Corporation executives and Ministry bureaucrats
Topic: HIV infections among haemophiliacs linked to blood products
Date: 1979-1986 (first known infection 1979; key events 1981-1983)
Location: Japan
Event: Withdrawal of committee recommendation within one week to ban untreated imports
- Approximately 2,000 of Japan's ~4,500 haemophiliacs contracted HIV during the 1980s.
- Baxter Travenol notified Japan's Ministry in 1983 that it had an FDA‑licensed heat‑treated clotting factor.
- The ministry committee recommended banning untreated imports and emergency licensing of the heat‑treated product, then formally withdrew that recommendation within one week.
- At least nine former Ministry bureaucrats took executive roles in Japan's blood products companies (amakudari pattern).
- Japan imported tens of millions of units of clotting factor concentrate and millions of litres of plasma in the late 1970s-early 1980s. To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.
© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
21 OCT 2026 · - it should not have been wrong. 88 children died
The number carved on a drum promised "Ninety-eight percent USP-grade glycerine"-a pharmaceutical guarantee measured to decimal points-but the barrel actually contained 54% glycerine and a large proportion of diethylene glycol, a colorless, odorless poison that killed 88 Haitian children within days; how did a written laboratory warning fail to stop those deaths, and was this an accident or part of a decades-long mechanism that repeated around the world?
In this episode, we lay out the chain of documents, decisions, and shipments that led from a Chinese supplier to a Dutch trader to a Haitian manufacturer to sick children, and follow parallel signs that the same lethal substitution surfaced later in other countries; could a single withheld warning explain eighty-eight deaths in Haiti and more elsewhere?
Person: Dr. Michael Bennish
Event: Haiti pediatric syrup poisoning
Country: Haiti
Date: 1996
Substance: 54% glycerine and substantial diethylene glycol
- 109 children swallowed the contaminated syrups Afébril and Valodon.
- 88 children died, a case fatality rate of over 80%.
- Laboratory analysis showed the drum contained 54% glycerine, not 98% as labeled.
- A laboratory had warned Vos BV the batch was impure before shipment, but Vos BV did not pass the warning to Pharval.
- Vos BV later settled a Dutch environmental case in 2001 for 500,000 guilders with no homicide prosecution. To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.
© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
20 OCT 2026 · The Messiah, the Sedative, and the Missing Good Friday Truth
A man bolted out of Marsh Chapel during a Good Friday service convinced he'd been chosen to announce the Messiah - then he was physically restrained and injected with a sedative, and that incident was omitted from the published study for twenty-five years. The Good Friday Truth claimed psilocybin reliably produced mystical states, but the full story inside that chapel on April 20, 1962, complicates that claim - what exactly was hidden, and why?
In this episode, we recount what the session covered, who was involved, and the gap between the published account and what witnesses later reported, asking how an experiment about religious experience could erase a moment like the restraint and injection.
Person: Walter N. Pahnke
Event: Good Friday Truth
Date: April 20, 1962
Location: Marsh Chapel
Topic: Psilocybin and religious experience
- Twenty graduate divinity students were randomized into two groups of ten for the experiment.
- One group received psilocybin; the other received niacin as an active placebo.
- Huston Smith, who received psilocybin, later called it "the most powerful cosmic homecoming I have ever experienced."
- Paul Lee, who received niacin, kept a detailed journal titled "The Mushroom" noting heightened awareness and mundane sinus drainage.
- The omission: an incident where a man was restrained and injected with a sedative was left out of the published study for twenty-five years. To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.
© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
19 OCT 2026 · He Cut His Hand to Keep the Radio Playing in Warzone
A man with no legs and then no right hand straps a vintage radio to his war machine and keeps it playing soft oldies amid constant electrical storms and shattered colony wreckage-why would anyone choose amputation to pilot a weapon, and why does the music never stop? This episode digs into the surprising human choices at the center of a thirteen-year manga saga and the single unresolved decision that shaped its endpoint.
In this episode, we trace the story's arc from its March 2012 debut through its September 2025 finale, explain the ruined setting where two units cannot leave, and follow the moments that forced the creator to change how he held a pen-how did voluntary amputation become the hinge of a long-running narrative?
Author: Yasuo Ohtagaki
Date: March 2012-September 2025
Location: Thunderbolt Sector, Side Four debris field
Series: Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt
Copies in circulation: more than six million
- The manga launched in March of 2012 and ran until September of 2025, a span of over thirteen years.
- The series produced twenty-seven volumes and sold more than six million copies.
- The Thunderbolt Sector is a debris field of Side Four where continuous electrical storms prevent either side from leaving.
- Daryl Lorenz lost both legs to mortar fire before the story and later lost his left hand in combat with Io Fleming.
- Daryl voluntarily requested amputation of his right hand to better interface with the Psycho Zaku, while keeping a vintage radio playing oldies in his cockpit. To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.
© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
18 OCT 2026 · When Medicine Targets the Powerless: The Five Cases That Refuse Consent
A dozen children died in a meningitis epidemic while eleven of their parents were never asked for consent - a single missing signature that ties five documented cases across more than a century and four African regions. How did experiments move from colonial labs to farms, military hospitals, and global institutions while the people tested had the least power to refuse?
In this episode, we lay out the documentary record across five cases that share one structural condition: lack of voluntary consent. We follow primary sources, expert panels, lawsuits, peer-reviewed research, and a bestselling book to trace the mechanisms that allowed these violations - and ask what remains when names are gone but procedures persist.
Date: 1996
Location: Kano, Nigeria
Person: Eugen Fischer
Event: Depo-Provera trials on farms in Rhodesia
Period: 1900s-1970s
- Eleven children died during a meningitis clinical trial in Kano while the number of parents never asked for consent was highlighted as decisive.
- Eugen Fischer conducted sterilization experiments on Herero women in German South-West Africa and later joined the Nazi Party.
- Hans Harmsen, a colleague of Fischer, founded the German branch of the International Planned Parenthood Federation after being associated with compulsory sterilization policies.
- Depo-Provera was administered to Black women on white-run Rhodesian farms in the 1970s while still in clinical testing and was banned in Zimbabwe in 1981.
- The South African Defence Force operated a secret program beginning in 1971 that ran for eighteen years inside a military hospital. To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.
© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
17 OCT 2026 · The Jars in Building Two: Unclaimed Organs and Willowbrook's Hidden Experiments
Dozens of sealed jars containing what appeared to be human organs were found on shelves alongside crystals of picric acid - explosive on contact - when the bomb squad entered Building Two, yet no one ever explained whose organs they were. Who decided to keep those jars, and why did retired detective Paul Ragonese say the incident was largely covered up by local officials?
In this episode, we lay out the events described in the transcript: the discovery in 1991, the decades of overcrowding and hepatitis outbreaks at Willowbrook State School, the human experimentation by researchers Saul Krugman and Robert W. McCollum, and the public revelations sparked by an undercover reporter. What connects the unclaimed jars in Building Two to the larger story of institutional neglect and ethically fraught research?
Person: Paul Ragonese
Date: 1991
Location: Building Two, Willowbrook State School, Staten Island
Topic: hepatitis experiments and institutional conditions
Researchers: Saul Krugman; Robert W. McCollum
- Dozens of sealed jars containing apparent human organs were on shelves in Building Two when the bomb squad entered in 1991.
- Crystals of picric acid, described as explosive on contact and unstable with age, sat beside the jars in Building Two.
- From 1956, Krugman and McCollum conducted hepatitis transmission studies at Willowbrook that included feeding live hepatitis virus from fecal samples to 60 healthy children, all of whom became ill.
- By 1965, Willowbrook housed 6,000 residents in a facility designed for 4,000, making it the largest state-run institution for people with intellectual disabilities in the United States.
- In October 1947, New York State opened Willowbrook State School under the Department of Mental Hygiene on land converted from Halloran General Hospital after World War II. To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.
© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
Long before the public knew what was happening, sealed facilities, classified programs, and restricted laboratories were already testing ideas few people were meant to see. Top Secret Experiments explores the...
show more
Long before the public knew what was happening, sealed facilities, classified programs, and restricted laboratories were already testing ideas few people were meant to see. Top Secret Experiments explores the hidden projects, secret trials, and controversial research carried out behind closed doors, where ambition, national security, and human consequences often collided.
Some experiments promised breakthroughs. Others produced unanswered questions, buried records, or consequences that surfaced years later. From covert military research to classified technology and secret government programs, each story follows the decisions, risks, and discoveries that remained outside public view. When documents are sealed and witnesses stay silent, the most unsettling question is not what was tested—but what may still be hidden.
show less
Some experiments promised breakthroughs. Others produced unanswered questions, buried records, or consequences that surfaced years later. From covert military research to classified technology and secret government programs, each story follows the decisions, risks, and discoveries that remained outside public view. When documents are sealed and witnesses stay silent, the most unsettling question is not what was tested—but what may still be hidden.
Information
| Author | OBOMEDIA ENTERTAINMENT |
| Organization | OBOMEDIA ENTERTAINMENT |
| Categories | Medicine , True Crime , Life Sciences |
| Website | - |
| creators@obomedia.com |
Copyright 2026 - Spreaker Inc. an iHeartMedia Company
