When a passerby insists on pronouncing the state one way, a single resolution from the 1880s stands between history and habit. This episode opens with that small-but-stubborn decision — a deliberate choice to honor French spelling and Quapaw heritage that turned pronunciation into law.

From there we chase the folklore: bans on blue light bulbs and teachers punished for bobbed hair. Those stories smell like the kind of municipal overreach that thrived in the early 20th century — real in places, exaggerated in the telling. The narrative follows the trail from rumor to record, separating theatrical claims from likely local ordinances.

Finally, the story lands at the most prosaic truth: Arkansas does regulate what you sell at the roadside stand. Permits, safe handling and honest labeling make for less glamorous but far more enforceable rules. Arkansas, say it right, read the sign, and wash your melons.

On March 25, 1913, a series of relentless storms and rapid snowmelt turned the rivers around Dayton into a single unstoppable force. What began as a quiet morning expecting spring rain soon became a tidal wave that swept through downtown, ripping foundations from the earth, turning Main Street into a watery highway, and trapping families on rooftops. Corporations, soldiers, nurses, and ordinary neighbors rose into action—building boats on factory floors, marching through mud to set up relief stations, and clinging to telegraph poles while the city around them burned and froze.

This episode of Timetellers traces the flood’s path from a levee breach to a city transformed, weaving first-person rescues and heartbreaking losses into a larger story of invention and resilience. You’ll meet the leaders who organized life-saving responses, the communities that took in the displaced, and the engineers whose radical flood-control projects reshaped the region for generations. Through vivid eyewitness accounts and archival detail, we reveal how disaster reframed Dayton’s geography, its social divides, and its future.

By the time the waters receded, thousands were homeless, hundreds had died, and billions of dollars of damage had been done. Yet out of the mud came an audacious program of levees, dams, and rechanneling that became a model for flood control across America. Listen to learn how a city nearly erased by water reimagined itself—and how a single catastrophe altered where people lived, who was protected, and what communities were willing to change to survive.

This podcast is a work of historical interpretation. While we strive for accuracy, some aspects of history are open to interpretation and debate. Thank you for listening.

It’s the 1920s: an Arizona rancher lets his donkey nap in a bathtub, a sudden flood turns a sleepy scene into a chaotic rescue, and a costly retrieval sparks a town ordinance banning dozing equines in tubs. The tale—part history, part folklore—traces how one small, messy problem became a cautionary legend carried far beyond its prairie roots.

Along the way, meet Mojave County’s wink-worthy fixes—laws about stolen soap and frontier-style punishments—and the very real public-health rules about feeding garbage to pigs to stop disease. This episode threads humor and hard sense into a portrait of how local headaches become lasting law. Arkansas is up next.

This final episode takes you beyond the Lower 48 into Alaska’s glacial silence, Hawaii’s living volcanoes, and the contested shores of the territories. Dan and Renee weave intimate stories of scale—ancient ice and roaring lava—alongside people who have lived these places for millennia.

These parks are living, changing landscapes where conservation collides with colonization, sacred names are reclaimed, and communities demand stewardship. Tune in to hear how land keeps time through ceremonies, eruptions, migrations, and memories—and what it asks of us when we finally listen.

Imagine owning a bar where nobody's allowed to be... drunk. In this episode we follow the absurd-sounding Alaska rule that a drunken person may not remain where alcohol is sold, and meet the staff and officers who treat the law as public-safety gospel rather than punchline.

What reads like a cartoon ordinance is actually a tool to prevent over-serving and keep people safe — selectively enforced, often laughed about online, but with real consequences on the ground. We trace how a blunt line on a page becomes a quietly practical policy in smoky bars and midnight patrols.

Then we chase folklore: the infamous “don’t drop a moose from a plane” tale gives way to the real law against harassing wildlife, and the whispered myths about hunting etiquette reveal an underlying safety culture. By the end you’ll hear why Alaska’s stranger-than-fiction rules are less about whimsy and more about keeping people — and animals — out of harm’s way.

Step into a wagon of wonder and danger: this episode unspools the American love affair with miracle cures, from 19th‑century medicine shows to the cold logic of eugenics. You'll meet charismatic hucksters, desperate families, and doctors whose theories did more harm than good.

Through vivid stories—bleeding halls, opiate‑laced tonics, targeted ads, and forced sterilizations—we trace how bad science, entertainment, and prejudice fused into policies that shaped lives for generations.

As the hosts untangle placebo effects, racial and gendered exploitation, and the social roots of mistrust, they invite you to listen with curiosity: learn how to spot red flags, why skepticism matters, and how history still echoes in today’s wellness culture.

This podcast is a work of historical interpretation. While we strive for accuracy, some aspects of history are open to interpretation and debate. Thank you for listening.

Dan, hypothetical. You, me, a boxing ring, and one very confused black bear—welcome to Alabama. In this episode we follow a thread of stories that feel equal parts courtroom drama and tall tale: a 1990s crackdown on sideshow bear wrestling born from animal-welfare concerns, barroom tranquilizers gone wrong, and bruised human egos.

From an enforceable anti-cruelty statute to a tidy traffic law outlawing blindfold driving and a church-decorum rule that reads like Southern Gothic folklore, each vignette reveals the people, the motives, and the strange logic that turned common sense into statute. Stick around—Alaska is next, and the legal oddities keep coming.

When a midnight improvisation becomes a stadium staple and a roadside stand sparks a fast‑food empire, what stories do our favorite late‑night meals tell? This episode follows tacos, burritos, nachos, fajitas, and chimichangas as they cross borders, get reinvented, and shape a new culinary language.

Through vivid anecdotes, surprising origin myths, and on‑the‑ground voices, we trace how necessity, invention, and appetite transformed regional recipes into national phenomena—turning humble street food into theatrical dining and mass‑market icons.

Bite by bite, listen for the texture of history: food as identity, survival, and celebration. Come for the sizzle and the queso; stay for the human stories behind every crunchy, cheesy, overstuffed bite.

This podcast is a work of historical interpretation. While we strive for accuracy, some aspects of history are open to interpretation and debate. Thank you for listening.