Do Go On Topic Poll (2025 BLOCK Edition)
Answers marked with a * are required.
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BLOCK POLL (2025 editiion)
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It's coming up to that most wonderful time of the year, BLOCKtober where we cover the biggest/most suggested (and after this poll) the most voted for topics!
Pick your favourite topics from this long list to help us pick which topics we're going to do for BLOCK! You can pick as many as you like! I kept it to a relatively brief 250 options this year!
These topics have made the short list by being our most suggested topics and/or voted in by our patreon supporters...
Cheers!
Jess, Dave and Matt
Sarah Winchester's Mystery House (gun manufacturer's haunted house)
Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and the Treaty’s role in NZ today.
the British Post Office scandal (IT error leads to chaos)
Walt Disney (the man who Disney is named after)
Unethical psychological experiments (ie Harry Harlow’s Pit of Despair.)
Wu-Tang Clan (influential hip hop group)
hitchBOT (The hitchhiking ‘robot’)
Al Capone (American Gangster)
Billy the Kid (Wild West cowboy)
The life and mysterious death of Jimmy Hoffa
Cicada 3301 (internet mystery)
The Tulsa Massacre (white supremacist terrorists)
The Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic of 1962
Rosa Parks (human rights activist)
the Borgias (scandalous Renaissance family)
Area 51 (aliens?)
Pablo Escobar (Colombian Drug Lord)
1990s Console Wars between Nintendo and Sega
Pedro Rodrigues Filho (Brazillian serial killer of serial killers)
The Female Computers of NASA (brilliant black women)
Eleanor of Aquitaine (wild life of a Queen)
Hunter S Thompson (gonzo journalist/drug taker)
The Batavia Mutiny (Australia's Deadliest Shipwreck)
The Fall of the Berlin Wall (When the Berlin Wall Fell)
US President Theodore Roosevelt
Gary, Indiana (a symbol of American decline?)
The Wager (mutiny, betrayal and murder)
Jackie Chan (famous actor)
The 2008 financial crisis
The Fall of Constantinople
The Gallipoli Campaign (WW1 event)
Oktoberfest (the origin and history of famous German festival)
X-Men Movie Series (Recap in style of Fast and Furious or Mission: Impossible)
Tonya Harding and Nancy Carrigan (infamous sporting event)
The Great Wall of China
When Charles Dickens was visited by Hans Christian Anderson (HCA was an oddball who overstayed his welcome)
French Revolution/Marie Antoinette (Let Us Eat Cake? Thanks Marie!)
Empires Of The Deep (The Most Expensive Movie Never Made)
Oceangate gate (submersible disaster)
The Pong Su incident (North Korean Drug Smuggle)
Julian Assange & Wikileaks
The Gilgo Beach Killer
The origin of chiropractic care (it involves a ghost?)
The Tham Luang Cave Rescue aka Thailand Cave Rescue
Beanie Babies (marketing fluff or genuine collectables)
The Altamont Free Concert ("Woodstock of the West", an absolute disaster)
The Doomed Voyage of the Karluk (epic polar expedition)
Stede Bonnet (the Gentleman Pirate)
The Anthrax Mailing incident of 2001
The Spanish Civil War
Deep throat/ Debbie does Dallas (the "golden age of pornography")
COINTELPRO (covert and illegal FBI projects1956-1971)
The Hays Code and it's effect on Hollywood
1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre
The Irish Mob War (Bloodiest gang war in Boston history)
Raygun (Australia's Embarrassing (?) Olympic break dancer)
Los Desaparecidos (USA assisted coup to install Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who had over 3,000 of those who opposed him disappeared)
The Banana Wars (Central American conflicts in the late 1800s and early 1900s relating to USA intervention and occupation).
The Hearst Family (Powerful Media Empire)
Philip Petit (illegally crossed the World Trade Center on a circus high wire)
The Troubles ((a conflict) an understatement)
Hankering for Wankering (history of wanking)
Game of Thrones (books and TV about dragons)
The Lockerbie bombing (the ultimate detective story?)
In Cold Blood (A true story written by Truman Capote)
Swoon for womb
Vestigial organs (maybe ATB topic? Traits occurring in humans that have lost all or most of their original function through evolution)
Hamilton (the true story behind the musical)
Bear Brook Murders (Murder investigation case which led to the changes in forensic DNA use)
The Bay of Pigs Invasion
Dan Donnelly (Irish boxer who's mummified arms have a 200 year long history)
Ian Fleming (author and spy)
Brabant killers (three mysterious men kill over 150 people before disappearing)
The kidnapping of Freddy Heineken (CEO of the Heineken Company)
He Jiankui's controversial genetic editing of two babies in 2018
Napoleon (French War Lover)
Martha Stewart (the lifestyle brand to prison pipeline)
The Williams sisters - tennis megastars
Niki Lauda (F1 world champion who overcame a horrific crash)
The murder of Alexander Litvinenko (by Russian state?)
The Sinking, and rediscovery of the Bismarck (Nazi Germany’s biggest ship)
The surprisingly interesting history of ketchup
Missing 411. Strange unsolved cases of missing persons
The murder of Kitty Genovese (and the invention of 911)
The History of The Vampire (in both folklore and fiction)
Nelson Mandela (South African human right's leader and President)
The London Bridge in America (Tycoon bought the bridge and moved it brick-by-brick to the American desert)
The USS Indianapolis Disaster (WWII Ship wreck)
Polybios (the arcade game that never existed)
King Leopold (Brutal Belgium King who personally owned the Congo)
Charles Darwin (famous scientist)
Vince McMahon (Wrestling Promoter and Businessman)
Battle of cable street - 1936 London (British Union of fascists kicked out by Anti Fascists)
Pearl Harbour (attack that brought the USA into WW2)
Pixar (famous animation studio)
History of Ska music (Bee Bop Boo Bup)
Hinterkaifeck Murders (Murder, Germany, Unsolved)
Eddie Mabo (Indigenous Australian Activist)
Raise a Glass for the Arse/Ass (history of arses)
Fatty Arbuckle and the Hollywood blacklist (murder trial and aftermath)
Catherine di Medici (The Serpent Queen of France)
Indian independence from the British
The role of Native Americans as code-talkers and creators for the allies in both world wars
The Isdal Woman (Norwegian mystery)
Jesse James and the James Gang (American Outlaws)
Phar Lap (legendary NZ/Aus race horse who met a suspicious end)
Catherine the Great (Empress of Russia)
Amber Hagerman murder and the origin of the amber alert
The Voynich Manuscript (Mysterious coded manuscript from 15th century)
The Lewis and Clark Expedition (US explorers)
‘The Grizzly Man’ Timothy Treadwell (Lived in the wild with bears and paid the price)
The history of the domestication of cats
William Randolph Hearst vs Orson Welles and the making of Citizen Kane
Agent Sonya (Ursula Kuczynski, Soviet spy)
Prince Harry's departure from the royal family
King Arthur (myth or real Welsh king?)
The Great Earthquake of 1923 in Japan
World War II (Sequel to WWI)
Self-mummifying monks, the whirling dervishes (and other fascinating monk-types)
The 1996 Mount Everest disaster
WW1 Badass Klondike Joe Boyle (spy, lover, thief, manager of stanley cup hockey team)
The Mayan Civilisation
Stuart Semple v Anish Kapoor (art war over paint pigment)
Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project (story of the A-bomb)
Marie-Madeleine Fourcade aka The Heddgehog (leader of WW2 French Resistance)
Simo Häyhä “The white death” (WW2 sniper badass)
Ragnar Lothbrok (Viking king)
Rajneeshees (religious cult in Oregon in the 80s)
Mother Jones (Labour Organiser)
Gene Roddenberry and the history of Star Trek (the second-longest running Science Fiction/Genre Program in History)
DC Cinematic Universe Summary
The Cuban Missile Crisis (Tense Military standoff)
Oasis (the band and the tumultuous relationship between the Gallagher brothers)
Cyclone Tracy (a Christmas hurricane/cyclone that wiped out 80% of in Darwin)
The Princes in the Tower (Edward V mystery)
The Fall of Benito Mussolini and fascism in Italy
The Cleveland Torso Murders (13 murders in Cleveland between 1934 and 1938)
X-Files (Um there's gotta be a logical explanation Mulderr)
Netflix (from mail order DVD rentals to a streaming giant)
The Charge of the Light Brigade (legendarily terrible military move)
The "Zone of Death" - where murder is legal(ish)?
Wars of the Roses (series of civil wars in Britain)
The Salisbury Poisonings (Russian double agent poisoned?)
LGSM (a lgbt movement in London)
The Chicxulub asteroid (cause of dinosaur extinction?)
The Hatfields and McCoys (epic family feud)
The Overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai'i and Queen Liliʻuokalani
Mata Hari (WWI spy)
History of the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Hurricane Katrina (natural disaster)
Robert Smalls (freed slave/politician)
Fidel Castro (leader of the Cuban Revolution)
Oliver Cromwell (English statesman, politician and soldier)
History of the Internet (what you're on right now)
The Crusades (Series of Religious Wars)
WW2 journalist Lee Miller (one of the few female correspondents during the war)
The Irish Famine
Henrietta Lacks (her cells led to advancement in medicine)
Caesar (the emperor, not the salad)
The Iranian Revolution of 1979
The French Catacombs (6 million skeletons?)
The Chinese Cultural Revolution
Jeanne de Clisson (medieval noblewoman turned pirate)
The Max Headroom Incident (and other strange TV phenomena)
I lost my cool. I killed Don." (Murder at a US embassy)
Blockbuster Video (defunct video/dvd rental business)
Thomas Midgley Junior (Inventer of things that would kill millions inc. himself)
Greek Mythology: The 12 Labors of Heracles
The Rise and Fall of Napster and the dawn of the music streaming age
Alfred Hitchcock (Great Director, Shady C**t)
Qin Shi Huang & his massive terracotta army
Biosphere 2 (science experiment goes comically wrong)
The history of bananas (There used to be so many types of bananas and the world loved 1 type but it was prone to disease)
Gloria Ramirez (The Mysterious Death Of The 'Toxic Lady')
The American Revolution
Aleister Crowley AKA The Beast 666 (cult leader)
The Gary Demon House (haunted house)
Bluey (Australian Dog Cartoon)
Nancy Ward (Cherokee badass)
Godzilla (iconic movie monster/Kaiju)
Adolf Hitler (WW2 fuckhead)
Aimo Koivunen (WWII soldier's meth adventure)
Norwegian Black Metal (controversial music genre Black Metal and the burnings of the 1990)
Thalidomide (harmful medicine and the woman who helped stop it, Frances Oldham Kelsey)
Stephen King (Horror Writer)
Cats the movie - how did it all go so wrong?
Order of the Solar Temple (fascinating cult)
The Black Panther Party (black power political group)
History of Halloween
The Struggles of Euro Disney
Shavarsh Karapetyan (hero in multiple disasters!)
The fantastic laboratory of Dr Weigl (how a nerd helped defeat hitler)
United Airlines 232, the impossible landing
The IRA (The Irish Republican Army)
The Ghost Army (WWII operation)
Yagan the Nyoongar warrior (Indigenous Australian warrior)
The man eating Lions of Tsavo (1898 dozens maybe hundreds of people killed)
The History of the NBA (America's version of the NBL)
Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide series
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (film and TV show)
The life of Coco Chanel (fashion powerhouse turned Nazi?)
the Suffragette movement
History of Nintendo/Super Mario Bros (video game empire)
Greek Mythology: Zeus overthrowing his father Cronos and the Mount Olympus 12
Wild stories from Norse mythology
Come From Away (The true story behind the musical)
Achilles & the Trojan War
Tunnel 29 (The First Successful Tunnel Under the Berlin Wall)
Jaws and the real attacks that inspired it (Original Summer Blockbuster)
The Black Death/Bubonic Plague
The Candy Wars (and the invention of the M&M - Mars vs Hershey)
ACDC (Iconic Aussie Rock Band)
The Great Fire of London of 1666
The history of the spice trade (how spices changed the ancient world)
Max Jacobson aka "Miracle Max" and "Dr. Feelgood" (high profile drug giver)
The Yorkshire Ripper (English Serial Killer)
The "Spy in the Bag" death/murder of MI6 analyst Gareth Williams
Phineas Gage (Lobotomy survivor)
Frank Butler (Australia's first serial killer)
The North Carolina Nuclear mishap (and other nuclear near-misses)
The Guillaume Affair (Germany's greatest espionage scandal)
Leslie Nelson (Airplane!, The Naked Gun, etc)
1954 Guatemalan coup de ta
Terry Pratchett (great writer, wonderful human being)
Krakatoa eruption (loudest ever?)
The history of the Tour De France and bike racing
Henry Lee Lucas (Confessed to tens of murders he couldn't have committed)
Chumbuwumba (workers' rights anarchists/one hit wonder)
Stonehenge (prehistoric rock monument)
The First and Last Flight of Richard ‘Sky King’ Russel (Untrained Pilot Tragedy)
Jack Parsons (American rocket engineer/L Ron Hubbard Housemate)
Yuba County five (It's America's Dyatlov Pass Incident)
The Inca and Machu Picchu (icon of the Inca Empire)
Wall Street Crash of 1929
2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake Tsunami
Kony 2012 (documentary/movement)
Gen. Douglas MacArthur (wartime madman)
The Glen Coe Massacre & The Black Dinner (Inspiration for the Red Wedding)
1916 Easter rising (the foundation of modern Ireland)
History of the Popes (sexually active and otherwise)
The assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme
The jewel thief, Gerald Blanchard (from small time theft in Omaha to international heister)
Lucille Ball (comedy legend who changed TV forever)
Image Comics (disgruntled comic artists go rogue)
The Cambridge 5 (fascinating spy story)