Épisodes

  • Script #25…The Last Ride On Hillcrest Ave

    Script #25…The Last Ride On Hillcrest Ave
    Jan 26 2026
    Some stories end with applause.
    This one ends with silence.

    The Last Ride on Hillcrest Avenue is a cinematic Dead Air episode about freedom, restlessness, and the thin line between motion and loss. It begins in a small Southern town, where music drifts through open windows late at night and the road offers escape when stillness feels unbearable.

    At its center is a sound that changed everything — not through volume or speed, but through restraint, patience, and feeling. A sound born from family loss, brotherhood, and a relentless need to keep moving.

    This is not a story about fame.
    It’s a story about what happens when music and motion collide…and how a single afternoon can leave an absence that echoes for decades.

    Listen closely.
    Some notes don’t resolve. They just disappear.

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    Written by Jonny Hartwell
    Voiced by Jonny Hartwell
    Music Credit: Reel World Audio.
    A iHeart Radio Production

    DISCLAIMER: This podcast contains discussions of sensitive topics...Listener discretion is strongly advised. While the stories you’ll hear are rooted in real events, not every detail is strictly historical—some moments are dramatized with creative license to bring the narrative to life. Please keep this in mind as you listen.

    Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast
    Written, hosted, and produced by Jonny Hartwell.
    A production of iHeartRadio Pittsburgh.

    Thanks for listening—and for keeping the light on.
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    25 min
  • Script #24 Remembering the Ones Who Didn’t Leave

    Script #24 Remembering the Ones Who Didn’t Leave
    Jan 19 2026
    On December 3rd, 1979, thousands of fans gathered outside Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati for what was supposed to be the night of their lives. For some, it was.

    For others, it became a tragedy.

    In this episode of Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast, a grandson’s love of music unlocks a story his grandfather has carried in silence for decades — a story of friendship, anticipation, survival, and loss surrounding the night that would become known as The Cincinnati Concert Disaster.

    Eleven people died before the first note was ever heard.
    Dozens more were injured.
    And the band — The Who — never knew what was happening until after the show was over. This is not a story about blame.

    It’s a story about the scars left behind — on families, on fans, and on the music itself. A meditation on memory, survivor’s guilt, and how joy can turn in an instant, The Shirt That Still Breathes explores the darker side of music… and the silence that follows when a song never truly ends.

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    Written by Jonny Hartwell
    Voiced by Jonny Hartwell
    Music Credit: Reel World Audio.
    A iHeart Radio Production

    DISCLAIMER: This podcast contains discussions of sensitive topics...Listener discretion is strongly advised. While the stories you’ll hear are rooted in real events, not every detail is strictly historical—some moments are dramatized with creative license to bring the narrative to life. Please keep this in mind as you listen.

    Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast
    Written, hosted, and produced by Jonny Hartwell.
    A production of iHeartRadio Pittsburgh.

    Thanks for listening—and for keeping the light on.
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    17 min
  • Script #23 The Sign of the Crab PART 2

    Script #23 The Sign of the Crab PART 2
    Jan 12 2026
    For nearly a decade, the murder of Mia Zapata haunted Seattle — a crime without a suspect, a voice silenced without answers. In Part Two of The Sign of the Crab, the waiting ends.

    As DNA science finally catches up to a frozen piece of evidence, a name emerges from the system — a stranger no one saw coming. This episode follows the match, the interrogation, the manhunt, and the trial that brought justice to the frontwoman of The Gits.

    Drawing from court records and investigative reporting featured on Forensic Files, Part Two is a reckoning — with violence, with time, and with the quiet power of truth finally spoken out loud.

    Justice took years.
    Science took seconds.
    And the story, at last, gets its ending.

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    Written by Jonny Hartwell
    Voiced by Jonny Hartwell
    Music Credit: Reel World Audio.
    A iHeart Radio Production

    DISCLAIMER: This podcast contains discussions of sensitive topics...Listener discretion is strongly advised. While the stories you’ll hear are rooted in real events, not every detail is strictly historical—some moments are dramatized with creative license to bring the narrative to life. Please keep this in mind as you listen.

    Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast
    Written, hosted, and produced by Jonny Hartwell.
    A production of iHeartRadio Pittsburgh.

    Thanks for listening—and for keeping the light on.
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    13 min
  • Script #23 The Sign of the Crab PART 1

    Script #23 The Sign of the Crab PART 1
    Jan 5 2026
    In early-’90s Seattle, a band was rising out of the rain-soaked clubs and basement stages — raw, fearless, and powered by a voice that could stop a room cold. That voice belonged to Mia Zapata, frontwoman of The Gits — a group on the brink of breaking through.

    Part One of The Sign of the Crab traces Mia’s life, the band’s ascent, and the city that shaped them — before following a single summer night that ends in unimaginable violence. As the investigation stalls, suspicion turns inward, years pass without answers, and one chilling detail emerges: a song Mia recorded just weeks before her death — a dark warning that now feels eerily prophetic.

    Based in part on investigative reporting featured on Forensic Files, Part One ends where hope nearly runs out… and where science quietly waits to catch up.

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    Written by Jonny Hartwell
    Voiced by Jonny Hartwell
    Music Credit: Reel World Audio.
    A iHeart Radio Production

    DISCLAIMER: This podcast contains discussions of sensitive topics...Listener discretion is strongly advised. While the stories you’ll hear are rooted in real events, not every detail is strictly historical—some moments are dramatized with creative license to bring the narrative to life. Please keep this in mind as you listen.

    Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast
    Written, hosted, and produced by Jonny Hartwell.
    A production of iHeartRadio Pittsburgh.

    Thanks for listening—and for keeping the light on.
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    20 min
  • Script #22.5 The Band That Wouldn’t Break (Mini-Episode)

    Script #22.5 The Band That Wouldn’t Break (Mini-Episode)
    Dec 29 2025
    They had everything—momentum, fame, the future—until fate started taking pieces away.

    A founding member gone.
    A drummer nearly killed.
    A bandmate lost to addiction.

    Another fighting cancer decades later. This Dead Air mini-episode tells the true story of how this band faced disaster after disaster at the height of their career—and refused to quit.

    It’s not a story about hits or hair metal.

    It’s about loyalty, survival, and the brutal moments when a band must decide whether to move on… or move forward together. Some bands break. This one wouldn’t.

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    Written by Jonny Hartwell
    Voiced by Jonny Hartwell
    Music Credit: Reel World Audio.
    A iHeart Radio Production

    DISCLAIMER: This podcast contains discussions of sensitive topics...Listener discretion is strongly advised. While the stories you’ll hear are rooted in real events, not every detail is strictly historical—some moments are dramatized with creative license to bring the narrative to life. Please keep this in mind as you listen.

    Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast
    Written, hosted, and produced by Jonny Hartwell.
    A production of iHeartRadio Pittsburgh.

    Thanks for listening—and for keeping the light on.
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    8 min
  • Script #22 The Dark Side of Dancing in the Moonlight

    Script #22 The Dark Side of Dancing in the Moonlight
    Dec 22 2025
    “Dancing in the Moonlight” is one of the most joyful, carefree songs ever recorded — a soundtrack to weddings, summer nights, and open windows.
    But its origin is anything but light. In this episode of Jonny’s Dead Air, we uncover the true, harrowing story behind the song — born not from celebration, but from survival. A violent night on a Caribbean island. A brutal attack. A love forever changed. And a songwriter who responded not with vengeance, but with imagination. This is the story of how unimaginable darkness gave rise to a song that has brought joy to millions — and why knowing the truth behind it changes the way you hear it forever.

    Listener discretion advised.

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    Written by Jonny Hartwell
    Voiced by Jonny Hartwell
    Music Credit: Reel World Audio.
    A iHeart Radio Production

    DISCLAIMER: This podcast contains discussions of sensitive topics...Listener discretion is strongly advised. While the stories you’ll hear are rooted in real events, not every detail is strictly historical—some moments are dramatized with creative license to bring the narrative to life. Please keep this in mind as you listen.

    Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast
    Written, hosted, and produced by Jonny Hartwell.
    A production of iHeartRadio Pittsburgh.

    Thanks for listening—and for keeping the light on.
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    22 min
  • Script #21 July 18th The Day Bobby Spoke

    Script #21 July 18th The Day Bobby Spoke
    Dec 12 2025
    On a sweltering summer night, a skeptical medium agrees to one final séance for an elderly man who has been searching for answers since 1966.

    What begins as routine theater quickly turns unsettling when a name appears on the board—and a voice from the past refuses to stay silent. What follows is the story of a brilliant young rock & roll talent, his meteoric rise in the 1960s, and the strange, disputed circumstances surrounding his death.

    From homemade echo chambers and chart success to shadowy industry figures, mob rumors, and unanswered questions, this episode traces both the life and the mystery left behind.

    Was it an accident?
    Suicide?
    Or something far darker?

    This is Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast—where music history meets the silence between the notes.

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    Written by Jonny Hartwell
    Voiced by Jonny Hartwell
    Music Credit: Reel World Audio.
    A iHeart Radio Production

    DISCLAIMER: This podcast contains discussions of sensitive topics...Listener discretion is strongly advised. While the stories you’ll hear are rooted in real events, not every detail is strictly historical—some moments are dramatized with creative license to bring the narrative to life. Please keep this in mind as you listen.

    Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast
    Written, hosted, and produced by Jonny Hartwell.
    A production of iHeartRadio Pittsburgh.

    Thanks for listening—and for keeping the light on.
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    19 min
  • Script #20 The Darkness That Followed Her

    Script #20 The Darkness That Followed Her
    Dec 8 2025
    This episode examines a real case involving psychological decline and missed warning signs. It is not intended to sensationalize violence or mental illness. If you recognize similar patterns in yourself or someone you care about, professional help is available and can make a life-saving difference.

    In the United States, the official, nationwide mental-health crisis hotline is: 988

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    A rising young artist.
    A devoted online following.
    A quiet, smiling performer whose kindness felt limitless.

    And somewhere in the glow of her growing fame… a shadow began to form. In this haunting episode, Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast opens the pages of a forgotten journal — the unraveling thoughts of an isolated mind who mistook admiration for destiny. Through diary entries, news reports, and chilling narration, we explore the dangerous line between fandom and fixation, and the silent fractures in our mental health system that allowed an obsession to grow unchecked. This isn’t a story about how a life ended.

    It’s a story about how a society failed to see the darkness gathering around someone who gave everything she had to the world. A cautionary tale of obsession, delusion, and the devastating cost of ignoring red flags until it's too late.

    Written by Jonny Hartwell
    Voiced by Jonny Hartwell
    Music Credit: Reel World Audio.
    A iHeart Radio Production

    DISCLAIMER: This podcast contains discussions of sensitive topics...Listener discretion is strongly advised. While the stories you’ll hear are rooted in real events, not every detail is strictly historical—some moments are dramatized with creative license to bring the narrative to life. Please keep this in mind as you listen.

    Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast
    Written, hosted, and produced by Jonny Hartwell.
    A production of iHeartRadio Pittsburgh.

    Thanks for listening—and for keeping the light on.
    Afficher plus Afficher moins
    20 min