Heroes Behind Headlines

Heroes Behind Headlines
  • 4.9 (150)
  • DOCUMENTARY
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

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.

  1. 19H AGO

    Growing Up Homeless To Navy SEAL To Cancer Survivor: Part Two

    Part two of Dash's awesome interview:  Former Navy SEAL Dash Dong Wong’s journey from growing up as a street urchin in Hawaii to becoming a Navy special operations operator is a powerful testament to resilience and inner strength. Says Dash, “I grew up in paradise, but was raised in hell.” Through all the trauma he faced as a kid, including battling in a child fight club at ten years old, he learned to find hope and beauty in even the worst situations. Though he never knew his real father, he was adopted by a friend of his mother, a delivery man named Andrew Wong. Dash has faced numerous challenges throughout his life – including his career in the military, being diagnosed with cancer, and reconnecting with his adoptive father after a 37-year separation. Prepare to be inspired and learning the importance of faith and resilience in overcoming trauma and finding meaning in life’s challenges.     Heroes Behind Headlines Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

    50 min

  2. DEC 8

    Growing Up Homeless To Navy SEAL To Cancer Survivor

    Former Navy SEAL Dash Dong Wong’s journey from growing up as a street urchin in Hawaii to becoming a Navy special operations operator is a powerful testament to resilience and inner strength. Says Dash, “I grew up in paradise, but was raised in hell.” Through all the trauma he faced as a kid, including battling in a child fight club at ten years old, he learned to find hope and beauty in even the worst situations. Though he never knew his real father, he was adopted by a friend of his mother, a delivery man named Andrew Wong. Dash has faced numerous challenges throughout his life – including his career in the military, being diagnosed with cancer, and reconnecting with his adoptive father after a 37-year separation. Prepare to be inspired and learning the importance of faith and resilience in overcoming trauma and finding meaning in life’s challenges.     Heroes Behind Headlines Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

    1h 7m

  3. DEC 1

    The Most Audacious Art Thief Ever!

    Art theft expert, security expert and author of “The Rembrandt Heist: The Story of a Criminal Genius, a Stolen Masterpiece, and an Enigmatic Friendship,” Anthony Amore introduces us to Boston native, Miles Connor Jr., a combination rock star, samurai sword collector, and brilliant art thief. Connor's fascinating motives for stealing art were tied up with his policeman father’s passion for collecting, and also for avenging what he felt was a grave insult to his father by a local museum, the Forbes House. His first theft was to break into that museum as a teenager and steal dozens of artifacts.  One of his remarkable heists was stealing from the famed Woolworth collection housed in Maine. In one of his more brazen acts, Miles also stole and then helped in repatriating a Rembrandt in order to lessen his sentence for that art theft.  Amore's book explores Connors most audacious theft and of the most unusual art crimes in history -- the 1975 theft of Rembrandt's Portrait of Elsbeth van Rijn from the Boston Museum. His reason for stealing the painting was even bolder and more surprising. Today in his eighties, Connor lives on a sprawling property with about a dozen horses in Blackstone, Massachusetts. Heroes Behind Headlines Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

    43 min

  4. NOV 24

    The Women Who Secretly Built the Atomic Bomb

    At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee was home to 75,000 residents, who consumed more energy than New York City. Most of the world didn’t know that the town even existed. And most of the people who lived there, who were largely young women from small towns across the America, didn’t know the true nature of the work they were doing day after day in the hulking factories that had been hastily built in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains. That is until the end of the war when Oak Ridge’s important secret was revealed, namely that Oak Ridge had served as the production site of the Manhattan Project, and the huge factories there produced highly enriched uranium and plutonium as fuel for the world’s first nuclear weapons.  Oak Ridge’s important historical mission and the lives of the mostly women who worked there are brought to life in Denise Kiernan’s excellent book, The Girls of Atomic City, which is an important addition to our country’s history.  Heroes Behind Headlines Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

    1h 1m

  5. NOV 17

    Female Cuban Spy Nabbed By The FBI

    Retired FBI agent Pete Lapp helped capture Ana Montez, a Puerto Rican-born American and UVA alumna who was a senior analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency overseeing the Cuban account. For 17 years, she was also a spy for Cuba and was an avowed communist. Ironically, as many of four of Anna’s close family members worked for the FBI and despite Anna’s more extreme political views, assumed she was a loyal American.  From his book “Queen of Cuba,” Pete relates how Ana was identified as a potential national security risk, secretly investigated, and ultimately apprehended after years of committing espionage. He describes how she transmitted information and also shares his view of her psychology: Withdrawn, lonely, at odds with her father, and driven by her political convictions and personal disagreement with U.S. foreign policy (including its policy towards Nicaragua) rather than financial gain, by which so many other spies have been enticed. Recruited while in college in 1983 during the Reagan administration by Cuban agent Marta Velasquez, (who was also a Puerto Richan-American) Ana’s steadfast career rise at the Department of Defense gave her increased access over time to information of value to Castro’s Cuba, stopping short of putting agents in personal peril. Cuban intelligence has been chronically underestimated over decades and makes Ana’s case a warning example of an organized program to infiltrate critical branches of the U.S. government, along with the recent apprehension of former U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia, Manuel Rocha, whose been identified as a Cuban spy. Heroes Behind Headlines Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

    1h 3m

  6. NOV 10

    Govt. JFK Assassination Expert Proves Conspiracy! – Part Two

    Part Two of this fascinating interview:  Douglas Horne is the preeminent JFK assassination expert and a former investigator with the official government JFK Assassination Records Review Board. He’s also the author of the five-volume book set titled: Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated. Recently he was one of the JFK Assassination experts who was called to testify before  the House Oversight Task force on Declassification of Federal Secrets chaired by Congressman Anna Paulina Luna. Among his findings are shocking revelations about efforts by the government to alter the wounds to JFK’s head and body before the official autopsy, and changes that were made to the Zapruder film. For anyone seeking the truth about the Kennedy assassination and coverup, there isn’t a person who has done more investigation or delved deeper into that existing evidence than Douglas Horne.  Heroes Behind Headlines Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

    57 min

  7. NOV 3

    Govt. JFK Assassination Expert Proves Conspiracy! – Part One

    Douglas Horne is the preeminent JFK assassination expert and a former investigator with the official government JFK Assassination Records Review Board. He’s also the author of the five-volume book set titled: Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated. Recently he was one of the JFK Assassination experts who was called to testify before  the House Oversight Task force on Declassification of Federal Secrets chaired by Congressman Anna Paulina Luna. Among his findings are shocking revelations about efforts by the government to alter the wounds to JFK’s head and body before the official autopsy, and changes that were made to the Zapruder film. For anyone seeking the truth about the Kennedy assassination and coverup, there isn’t a person who has done more investigation or delved deeper into that existing evidence than Douglas Horne.  Heroes Behind Headlines Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

    1h 1m

  8. OCT 27

    Youngest WW2 Officer Fights Hitler, Saves Horses And More!

    World War II hero Phil Larimore remains the youngest candidate to ever graduate from Army Officer Training School, which he did at the age of seventeen, on the eve of America’s involvement in World War II. Landing on the Anzio beachhead in February 1944, Phil – the youngest commissioned US officer in World War II – was put in charge of an Ammunition Pioneer Platoon of the 3rd Infantry Division. Their job: to deliver ammunition to the frontline foxholes—a dangerous assignment involving regular forays into No Man’s Land. As Phil fought his way up the Italian boot, into Southern France and across the Rhine River into Germany, he experienced some of the most intense combat ever. But it was what happened in the final stages of the war, when Phil was sent on a secret mission into Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to find the farm where Hitler was hiding his world-famous Lipizzaner stallions that makes his story incredibly special and is  the ultimate expression of Phil Larimore’s life-long love of horses.  Like so many veterans of that “greatest generation,” Phil didn’t talk much about his war experiences until much later in life, and when he did his stories seemed outrageous to his family and his sons. After his death, his son and our guest Dr. Walt Larimore discovered his father’s papers in the attic—and learned that his father’s stories were all true.  In this episode, Dr. Larimore describes his father’s remarkable service to his country, including meeting Eisenhower, losing his leg, fighting to stay in the army, and being awarded  the Distinguished Service Cross, two silver stars, two bronze stars, three Purple Hearts, the Medal of France, the Crois du Garde with a palm, and more. All of this and more is described in Dr. Walt Larimore’s remarkable book At First Light. Heroes Behind Headlines Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

    1h 21m
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4.9
out of 5
150 Ratings

About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Heroes Behind Headlines
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2025
  • Episodes
    188
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Heroes Behind Headlines
  • Show Website
    Heroes Behind Headlines

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