SNAFU with Ed Helms

Mar 19 2025 30 ep. 36 mins 3.8k

SNAFU with Ed Helms Podcast artwork

Hosted by Ed Helms, SNAFU is a podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. This is Season 3: Formula 6 - how prohibition's war on alcohol went so far off the rails the government poisoned its own people.

History True Crime

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S3E2: Ready, Willing, and Mabel

Mar 19 2025 35 mins

How did alcohol come to be illegal and why, of all the agencies, was the IRS tapped to enforce it? One rising legal superstar from California becomes the highest ranking woman in government, but she finds her efforts impeded by the IRS's newly established—and rather corrupt—Prohibition Unit.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

S3E1: Satan's Last Stronghold

Mar 12 2025 41 mins

Organized crime, speakeasy gin, and jazz impresarios stole headlines in the 1920s, but behind the scenes boiled a bizarre government plot rooted in the first American culture war. In New York City, a pair of scientists sees the devastation written on the wall, and they try to put a halt to the mayhem before it's too late.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Introducing Season 3: Formula 6

Mar 05 2025 2 mins

This is the story of Prohibition you haven't heard. Sure, Prohibition was a gigantic SNAFU to begin with. But it turns out Prohibition was actually darker than any of us could have imagined. Flappers and jazz? Not the full picture.Season 3 of SNAFU follows an unlikely pair of sleuths trying to uncover what was behind a mass wave of deadly poisonings that killed thousands of people

Introducing GREATEST ESCAPES with Arturo Castro

Feb 04 2025 49 mins

While we're hard at work on season 3 of SNAFU, we’re excited to revisit a pivotal moment from Season 1 with a special bonus episode of GREATEST ESCAPES. Produced by the same folks behind SNAFU, it's a brand new podcast covering history’s wildest true escape stories of all time. Ed joins host Arturo Castro this week to dive deeper into the bonkers escape of Oleg Gordievs

Announcing the SNAFU Book!

Dec 05 2024 6 mins

Exciting news from SNAFU headquarters: our first book is coming out April 29, 2025. It's called SNAFU: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screwups. Spanning from the 1950’s to the 2000’s, Ed Helms steps in as unofficial history teacher with a loving tribute to humanity’s finest faceplants, diving into each decade’s craziest SNAFUs. From planting nukes on the moon to

Introducing Slow Burn: The Rise of Fox News

Nov 06 2024 52 mins

While the SNAFU Team is hard at work on our next season, we are excited to share the first episode of a new season from our friends at Slow Burn. On Season 10, host Josh Levin takes you back to a crucial inflection point in American history: the moment between 2000 and 2004 when Fox News first surged to power and a whole bunch of people rose up to try and stop it.See omnystudio.com

BONUS: The FBI and Indigenous Movements with Nick Estes

Sep 04 2024 51 mins

COINTELPRO was shut down in 1971, and J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972. But the agency's dirty tricks continued in the years directly following the Media Burglary. Nowhere is this more evident than in the FBI's interactions with the American Indian Movement. Scholar, historian, and podcast host Nick Estes joins SNAFU to talk about how COINTELPRO and Hoover's legacy permeated the FBI, f

BONUS: Surveillance Now & Then with Loch Johnson

Aug 28 2024 46 mins

Former Church Committee Staffer Loch Johnson helps us dig deeper into the Church Committee Hearings to cover the appalling findings we didn't get to in Episode 7 of our season. Then, he takes us straight through to present day surveillance, where we try to answer the question: Where is the right balance between citizen rights and national security? Do we even have any privacy left

S2E8: Statute of Limitations

Aug 21 2024 39 mins

The FBI tries to clean up its act, but will all those lessons learned later be… forgotten? Plus, the legacy of the Media Burglary.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

S2E7: The 'Do Not File' File

Aug 14 2024 51 mins

Journalist Carl Stern stumbles upon a single, curious codeword in the burglarized documents: COINTELPRO. As shocking revelations about the FBI come to fruition, Congress forms the Church Committee to investigate.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.