Heroes Behind Headlines
Heroes Behind the Headlines: a new podcast featuring an explosive new story every episode. First-hand accounts of adventures and events which have shaped our world . The real stories behind the headlines you know, told by the heroes you don’t. Hosted by NYT and international bestselling author Ralph Pezzullo.
Episodes
180 episodes
Chasing The Zombie Hunter
Phoenix Police Department cold case homicide detective and and former CPA Troy Hillman tells the extraordinary, detailed inside story of how an elite team of detectives—hounded by the press, a frustrated and frightened public, and their own dou...
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Season 4
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Episode 46
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48:00
The Anthrax Crisis And The Urgent Search For A Missing Iraqi Scientist
After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the death of Saddam Hussein, scientists who worked for the regime were killed or left the country. When one of them –microbiologist Thamer Abdul Rahman Imran – learned the new regime wanted to arrest hi...
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Season 4
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Episode 45
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1:08:47
Welcome to The CIA and ‘The Farm’ its Legendary Training Program: Doug Laux Reprise
We are re-airing Doug Laux's second appearance on HBH, as we fondly remember him upon his passing:Being accepted to work at the CIA is highly difficult. The interview process is long and secretive - and applicants and their references ar...
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Season 4
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Episode 44
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1:29:05
MACV-SOG Legend "Dynamite" Is Back! (Part Two of Two)
Henry (Dick) L. Thompson is back to share more adventures from his latest book SOG Code Name Dynamite 2 about his time in Vietnam as part of MACV-SOG.From 1964-1972 America engaged in a Top Secret war in Southeast Asia to suppor...
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Season 4
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Episode 43
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45:06
The CIA Mission to Eliminate the Taliban’s Most Lethal Weapon
In tribute to our friend and past HBH guest, we're re-airing the first of former CIA officer Doug Laux's two appearances during our first season:CIA Officer Doug Laux explains how he developed a network of spies to track down the man res...
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Season 4
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Episode 42
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1:13:48
MACV-SOG Legend "Dynamite" Is Back! (Part One of Two)
Henry (Dick) L. Thompson is back to share more adventures from his latest book SOG Code Name Dynamite 2 about his time in Vietnam as part of MACV-SOG.From 1964-1972 America engaged in a Top Secret war in Southeast Asia to suppor...
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Season 4
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Episode 41
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56:36
Agent Zo: Fearless Female WWII Resistance Fighter
Courageous resistance fighter Elżbieta Zawacka, aka ‘Agent Zo’, was the only woman to parachute from Britain to Nazi-German occupied Poland during the Second World War. While being hunted by the Gestapo there, who arrested her entire family, sh...
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Season 4
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Episode 40
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47:01
New Jersey Man Walks Around The World
On April 2nd, 2015, after getting a degree and paying off his loans, Tom Turcich stepped out his front door to start a quest that would last for seven years, take him to six continents, and cover twenty-eight thousand miles. At the end of it he...
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Season 4
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Episode 39
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58:47
Female Marine's Gut-Wrenching Account Of Service In Afghanistan
In 2009 Savannah Cannon joined up at nineteen, to escape her hardscrabble circumstances. She was quickly tapped as having an aptitude for math and computers. Once trained, she was promptly deployed to a dangerous desert outpost in Afghanistan, ...
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Season 4
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Episode 38
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59:38
Truman vs. MacArthur: The Media Battle Behind The Korean War
Oxford Professor in International History Steve Casey lays out the fascinating media history of the Korean War. He explains how the Truman administration promoted their case for participating in the Korean conflict to a nation fatigued fr...
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Season 4
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Episode 37
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1:20:37
Helo Pilot Roger Lockshier At The Height Of The War In Vietnam (PART TWO)
Part two of this terrific interview:One of HBH’s favorite guests is back, sharing more stories from his time on a Huey gunship helicopter as a Crew Chief and Door Gunner. As part of the 101st Airborne and a Black Angel, Roger Lockshier a...
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Season 4
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Episode 36
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53:30
Helo Pilot Roger Lockshier At The Height Of The War In Vietnam
One of HBH’s favorite guests is back, sharing more stories from his time on a Huey gunship helicopter as a Crew Chief and Door Gunner. As part of the 101st Airborne and a Black Angel, Roger Lockshier and his crew were routinely tasked with extr...
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Season 4
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Episode 35
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53:13
Medal of Honor Winner Describes Founding of Special Forces
A living national treasure, Col. Paris Davis was one of the first sixteen U.S. Marine officers–and the only African-American–recruited to help form the Special Forces division–the inspired brainchild of JFK, who himself had seen the limits of m...
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Season 4
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Episode 34
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1:21:01
Oswald’s Girlfriend & Cancer Research Prodigy in the Summer of ’63
Judyth Vary Baker was a teenage science prodigy who caught the attention of the top cancer researchers in the country, including Dr. Alton Ochsner – past president of the American Cancer Society and head of the prestigious Ochsner Clinic in New...
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Season 4
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Episode 33
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1:31:41
Journalist & Sex Trafficking Expert Explains The Epstein Scandal
Investigative journalist and author Nick Bryant broke the story of high-level sex trafficking networks operating in the U.S. with his groundbreaking book "The Franklin Scandal" about a pederast ring based in Nebraska. Nick was one of t...
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Season 4
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Episode 32
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48:56
22-Year-Old U.S. Army Nurse At The Height Of The Vietnam War
Laura Kern volunteered to join the U.S. Army's nurse corps in May 1968 at the height of the conflict in Vietnam. 22 years old, she remembers her first day in Vietnam as her most pivotal: "I just jumped off the helicopter with my bags looking fo...
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Season 4
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Episode 31
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1:17:55
Preempting Terrorism At The CIA
The ultimate insider in the world of espionage: 24-year CIA veteran Ric Prado has spent his life at the heart of the intelligence world as an Operations Officer through the end of the Cold War and the advent of the Age of Terrorism. After servi...
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Season 4
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Episode 30
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51:58
Museum Art Heists, China, and Fentanyl
Host Ralph Pezzullo is the guest this week—talking about his new book, “The Great Chinese Art Heist,” (Pegasus Crime.) Interviewed by renowned art theft expert Anthony Amore, Ralph breaks down the series of ‘pink-panther-like’ museum r...
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Season 4
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Episode 29
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53:08
CEO Invited To Iran And Imprisoned In Iran’s Notorious Evin Prison
When the Vice-President of Iran invited Nizar Zakka to speak at a September 2015 conference – as CEO of a global tech NGO working closely with the U.S. government – he never hesitated, and promptly booked a flight from D.C. ...
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Season 4
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Episode 28
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1:00:02
Staff Sgt. Michael Ollis – Making The Ultimate Sacrifice
Author Tom Sileo tells the inspiring story of the late Michael Ollis, one of thousands of young men who followed their fathers into the military. On August 28, 2013, Ollis, Staten Island native and 10th mountain soldier, was serving at Forward ...
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Season 4
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Episode 27
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1:01:59
Founding Member of Delta Force & Operation Eagle Claw
Born in Hawaii shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Wade Ishimoto grew up to help found the storied Delta Force special operations group. Wade shares the story of his amazing career in U.S. Army intelligence starting in Vietnam, to the pla...
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Season 4
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Episode 26
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1:00:37
Oswald, Monkey Viruses, and The Plot To Kill Castro
When New Orleans native Ed Haslam began his research into the curious life and shocking murder of brilliant Tulane medical professor Dr. Mary Sherman, he didn’t imagine that his inquiry would reveal a secret lab connected to some of the city’s ...
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Season 4
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Episode 25
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1:04:38
MacArthur's Bloody Butchers
Historian and author Brian Bruce vividly describes an often neglected but important aspect of the Pacific Theater in WWII: The campaign to liberate New Guinea from the Japanese and thwart their planned invasion of Australia. In his ...
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Season 4
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Episode 24
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57:26
The Last Afghan Commander
When the United States retreated from the chaos of Kabul in August of 2021, General Sami Sadat was still fighting until the end. He recounts how his troops were starved for ammunition for two years before the final pullout, while the U.S....
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Season 4
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Episode 23
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1:13:57
Marine Lieutenant Fights Chaos In The Vietnamese Jungle
Commissioned a Marine second lieutenant on November 8, 1967, G.M. Davis arrived in Vietnam less than a year later to lead a rifle platoon against the North Vietnamese Army in the northernmost province of what was then the Republic of Vietnam. I...
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Season 4
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Episode 22
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1:13:49