Americans sing the Star-Spangled Banner as though it were written into the nation's DNA, but the United States had no official anthem until a newspaper cartoonist pointed out the oversight in 1929. This episode explores the life of Robert Ripley, creator of the Believe It or Not empire.

We trace Ripley from a teenage sports cartoonist in California to a globe-trotting media pioneer, examining how a daily comic panel helped force Congress to act and how his brand thrived on rigorous fact-checking even during the Great Depression.

• Publishing the first Believe It or Not panel in December 1918
• Crowdsourcing oddities from readers decades before the internet
• Researcher Norbert Pearlroth's decades verifying facts at the New York Public Library
• His 1929 cartoon that helped make the Star-Spangled Banner the officia ...