Time Tellers

Imagine strolling through turn-of-the-century New York and being told flirting could land you a $25 fine or ten days behind bars — a 1902 statute that was rarely enforced but never repealed. We trace the dusty fine print and ask: how does a law like this survive the ages?

Along the way we bust a sweet urban legend about Sunday ice cream cones in pockets, and uncover a more practical quirk: if you want to perform with a puppet...

Start with a whisper: can a dentist moonlight as a professional dancer in New Mexico? That rumor — born of an old misreading of statutes — sends our narrator on a curious fact-finding trip through the state’s legal folklore.

Along the way we chase the real stories behind three stubborn laws: the surprising licensing rules that follow anyone who runs bingo night, the actively enforced anti-idling ordinances around ...

Picture this: you pull up to a New Jersey station and reach for the pump—only to remember it’s been illegal for drivers to pump their own gas since 1949. What started as a safety rule has hardened into a tradition upheld by jobs, enforcement, and an almost mythic status in the state’s identity.

Then there are the laws that sound like they belong in a comic book: committing a crime while wearing a bulletproof vest...

On a moonlit New Hampshire beach you stoop to pick up a piece of seaweed—an innocent shrug of curiosity that, by a colonial quirk, makes you a criminal. That odd law, born when seaweed was black-market fertilizer, sits beside other small-town statutes that feel lifted from a period drama: bans on hunting in cemeteries, and an explicit prohibition on checking into a hotel under a false name.

We move from the hush of graveyards...

Drive west with us as Route 66 sheds its Midwestern coat and dons mesas, neon, lava fields, petrified forests, and Mojave heat. From the glow of the Blue Swallow Motel and the countdown of the Jackrabbit signs to Meteor Crater’s lunar hole and Elmer’s Bottle Tree Ranch, this episode stitches together roadside wonders, ghost towns, and the people who kept the neon alive.

Along the way we meet traders, preservationists, ...

In a dusty Nevada town a legend lingers: a man with a mustache kissed a woman in Eureka, and the rumor goes that the town passed an ordinance to stop such smooches. The image is absurd and intimate — a single kiss sprouting a community rule — and the story follows the way folklore can outlive official records.

As the episode peels back layers, it contrasts this charming bit of folk law with laws that are anything but wh...

It is early morning in Chicago: buses hiss, coffee shops unlock, and a sign at Adams and Michigan invites us to “Begin Historic Route 66.” We cut west through traffic, suburbs and farmland, meeting enormous fiberglass spacemen, neon towers, and the ordinary people whose lives the highway carried. Each stop—from the Gemini Giant to the bend in the Chain of Rocks Bridge, from Miramec Caverns to the Rainbow Bridge an...

When a mundane law book becomes a gallery of absurdities, you follow. In this episode we stroll through Nebraska’s statute pages and uncover laws that belong in a sketch comedy—whale fishing bans in a landlocked state, a relic of eugenics draped over marriage, and a traffic rule that asks drivers to keep pace like it’s a social sport.

Each oddity has a backstory: the copy‑and‑paste templates that travel from coast...

Step into a realm where the modern symphony of connectivity fades away, and the profound silence of the cosmos takes center stage. In this episode of Time Tellers, we venture into the heart of the National Radio Quiet Zone, a place where silence isn't just golden—it's enforced. Journey with us as we explore 13,000 square miles of tranquility, nestled in the hills of West Virginia and Virginia, where every whisper could hold t...

Step into a roadside conversation that reads like a tall tale: Montana still treats placing livestock on train tracks to derail a train as a felony — five years in prison and up to $50,000 in fines — a relic of 1800s sabotage fears that somehow survived into modern ordinances. The narrator's shock and dark humor guide you through the statute’s odd specificity and the imagined absurdity behind it.

From towns that b...

At midnight behind the courthouse, two comedians confess they brought rope, a dolly, and an arsenal of bad jokes to tackle one big question: should monuments to problematic figures stay on their pedestals or come down? The episode opens like a heist—only instead of bank vaults there are bronze men in capes and the tools are satire and stubbornness.

They walk you through the uneasy history carved into public squares: who erec...

What do you do if your neighbor's bull keeps rampaging through town? In Missouri, castrate it. Legally. In this episode we open on a neighborly nightmare—a loose, dangerous bull, a three‑day reign of chaos, and an old statute that lets three neighbors agree to castrate a bull, boar, or ram over one year old after notifying the owner. It sounds like folklore, but the law is real, very old, and still on the books.

Then we swerv...

Imagine walking into a diner and ordering a 64-ounce soda — legally yours, thanks to a Mississippi law born out of a feud over New York’s soda limits. This episode peels back the oddball statutes that let you guzzle a bucket of cola, ban certain obscene bumper stickers, and once criminalized public swearing near the vulnerable.

We tell the stories behind each statute: the politician or cultural clash that put it on the...

Follow the thunderous footsteps of Big Boy 4014 as a 1.2 million-pound steam giant becomes a moving time capsule—linking the dreams of 1862, the urgency of 1941, and the celebrations of 2026. We ride the whistle from Cheyenne to Philadelphia, feeling the boiler’s heartbeat, the human hands that made it run, and the towns that stop to watch history pass.

Through short, vivid scenes—rooftop vigils, steam-filled cros...

Ever imagined running after a greased pig at the county fair? In Minnesota, that slapstick dream collides with the law — greased pig contests and turkey scrambles can actually be misdemeanors under animal-cruelty statutes. This episode opens with a laugh, then sharpens into a real legal bite as we trace why protecting animals turns fairground stunts into crimes.

We pivot to local legend: a quirky tale that Minnesotans can&rsq...

Step into a world where romantic betrayal could land you on a true crime episode — not because you were murdered, but because Michigan still treats adultery like a felony. We follow the curious edges of the state code: a rarely enforced law that could mean up to four years behind bars, a ban on being intoxicated in a train station that applies to Amtrak (sorry, Polar Express), and a blasphemy statute declared unconstitutional...

Step into a short, surprising tour of Massachusetts law where patriotism, profanity and old-school honor collide. Picture a crowd at Fenway — someone queues up a remix of the Star-Spangled Banner and suddenly the mood shifts from celebration to caution: the state still carries a $100 penalty for dancing to or remixing the anthem. That’s the opening scene.

Turn the page and you’re courtside at a youth baseball game...

December 19, 1972: Apollo 17 splashes down, three astronauts recovered, and for the first time in human history, no one has returned from another world for more than fifty years. In this episode we tell that final descent as a story of triumph and unraveling—how a Cold War victory, exploding budgets, a nation at war with itself, and the strange absence of what came next combined to pull the curtain down on the greatest techno...

Imagine being hauled into court for reading tarot, or chased down the bay for stealing oysters — these are not punchlines but real laws with real stories. From a Maryland misdemeanor that treats fortune telling like fraud to Rockville’s almost-forgotten ban on public swearing, this episode walks the boundary between the absurd and the enforceable.

We stitch together on-the-street vignettes, 19th-century oyster wars with...