Time Tellers

Ever been so bored you wondered, what if I wrestled a bear — and the bear signed a waiver? In this episode of Time Tellers, Dan and Renee open a dusty legal atlas and step into America’s stranger corners: laws born of church mores, backyard feuds, and theatrical protest. We tell the origin stories, read the actual or reported wording, and decide whether each oddity is enforceable law, folklore, or...

One glittering sphere, one counted-down second, and millions pause: this episode follows the ball from rooftop to broadcast, revealing how a simple descent became a carefully engineered ritual of time, crowd, and meaning. Interwoven with the history are the hosts’ messy human stories—stage lights and post-it costumes, a blizzarded drive, a funeral song, and a knocked-over microphone—reminding list...

Follow the trail of familiar melodies from medieval Europe to American front porches: a story of banished festivities, Victorian reinvention, wartime solace, and booming radio hits. Along the way you’ll meet Puritans who banned Christmas, a songwriter who never meant to write a carol, and soldiers who found peace in a simple hymn. In this episode we weave together the human moments behind the musi...

Picture a Christmas that smells of smoke and fear instead of cinnamon and spice: villages lit by bonfires, masked figures pounding through the night, and a goat-demon whose rattling chains make children hide behind shutters. This episode peels back the cozy remaster and walks you through the original holiday — a season forged by the terror of winter and the rituals people invented to survive it. W...

In this captivating episode of Time Tellers, Dan and Renee delve into America's tumultuous history with the metric system—a tale filled with twists, turns, and unexpected drama. From the chaos of pirates intercepting metric shipments to the political maneuvers that stymied a full conversion, the duo unravels why the United States remains one of the few countries resisting the global embrace of the...

When Pearl Harbor shattered the nation, thousands of Japanese‑Americans were forced from their homes into horse stalls, fairgrounds, and hastily built camps surrounded by barbed wire. This episode follows families as they pack in hours, children say goodbye to pets, and communities try to build schools, gardens, and daily life amid fences and guard towers. Through archival headlines, the shocking...

Imagine its 3:45 a.m. in late November: a freezing parking lot, a lukewarm to-go coffee, and a line that snakes around the building. Hundreds of people wait for one sliding door to open and a chance at a discounted TV. That familiar chaos—camped-out shoppers, terrifying crowds, and fevered deals—was once tied to financial panic, presidential calendars, and annoyed police officers. In this episode...

Pull up a chair as Time Tellers serves a short, spicy history of how global dishes were translated, watered down, and gloriously reinvented on American tables—from chicken tikka masala’s Glasgow epiphany to the gyro, fries, and pad thai that became something new on this side of the world. Through lively anecdotes, immigrant voices, and kitchen confessions, this episode reveals the human stories be...

It was the start of a new decade. America, still reeling from the 1929 crash, passed a single law meant to save its farmers and manufacturers — and instead helped plunge the world into deeper economic ruin. In this episode of Time Tellers, Renee and Dan trace the rise of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act: from a farm-focused bill to a 20,000-item tariff behemoth, the political fights that carried it int...

Step into the steeple and listen: this episode peels back the gleam to reveal the Liberty Bell's real life — a noisy workbell, a flawed casting, and a slow-creeping crack that history remade into meaning. From humble laborers and Quaker ideals to abolitionists, suffragists, and touring crowds, the bell's fracture becomes a story of contested liberty and hopeful reinvention. We follow the bell from...

It’s late, you’re tired, and the glowing drive‑thru menu promises salvation: melty, greasy, perfect. In this episode we follow that first bite back through time — from Hamburg steak to county fair tinkering, from a kid named Lionel’s bold slice of cheese to the diner counters of Erie where Greek sauce rules — and uncover the messy, delicious arguments over who really invented the cheeseburger. Alo...

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It’s not just silence — it’s something older than sound. Stand on the rim of a mile-deep canyon as sunlight crawls across stone that remembers a time before life had legs, and climb into cliff rooms where hands shaped a life that still speaks. In this final episode of our series, Renee and Dan follow rivers through red rock, explore Mesa Verde’s ancient masonry, and listen to the people who’ve liv...

October 26, 1825: a packet boat slides out of Buffalo, Governor DeWitt Clinton pours Lake Erie into the Atlantic, and a ribbon of water reshapes a continent. This episode sails the Erie Canal’s dramatic voyage — from the feverish hand‑digging and deadly swamps to the politics that branded it “Clinton’s Folly” and the jubilant Wedding of the Waters that proved its power. Along the towpath we meet t...

Stand ankle-deep in a cypress swamp as mist rises and something moves in the reeds — this episode opens in the thick, humming heart of the Southeast and pulls you into a landscape that feels alive and full of secrets. We hike the Great Smoky Mountains at sunrise, paddle the Everglades’ river of grass, creep along Congaree’s cathedral of trees, and visit the isolated ruins of Fort Jefferson. Along...

Step into a vast, wind-carved landscape where geysers huff like old engines, glaciers whisper their slow retreat, and redwoods stand like stone columns holding fog in their branches. In Episode 3, hosts Renee and Dan lead you from Yellowstone’s boiling, bison-strewn plains through Glacier’s alpine drama and Olympic’s dripping rainforests to the cathedral hush of the redwoods, tracing each park’s b...

Join Renee and Dan on a brisk, intimate tour through the Northeast’s packed pockets of history and wildness: Acadia’s granite coasts and carriage roads, Saratoga’s decisive fields where a young nation proved itself, and Gettysburg’s haunted ridges where Lincoln reshaped a country in two minutes. The episode moves like a walk through layered time, from Wabanaki canoes to Gilded Age benefactors, bat...

From horse-drawn carriages on Pennsylvania Avenue to locked museum gates in modern Washington, this episode traces the unlikely history of government shutdowns — a story that begins as procedural quibbles and becomes national crisis. We follow the 1884 Anti-Deficiency Act, the 1980 opinion that introduced “shutdowns,” and the dramatic standoffs of the 1990s, 2013, 2018–2019 and today, revealing ho...

Music. A river you can't hear has been carving a poem into stone for longer than human memory — and two hosts are perched a little too close to the rim to keep from making you feel the vertigo. In this first episode of a five-part series, Dan and Renee pull you into the origin story of America’s national parks: the watercolor pitch that sold Yellowstone to Congress, the messy reality that followed...

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 What if I told you the most iconic Chinese dish in America wasn't Chinese, and the pizza you fold and chase with a soda would be turned away in Naples? In this episode we peel back the grease-streaked curtain on America’s favorite “f...

They left with hope and wagons full of dreams, chasing California’s promise—and found themselves trapped by early Sierra snow, raw hunger, and impossible choices. This episode follows families, friendships, and failures as the Donner-Reed party’s optimistic migration fractures into desperation and moral reckoning. Through firsthand diary fragments, tense moments on the salt flats, and the harrowin...

In the frosty winter of 1802, the American presidency witnessed a unique act of gratitude—a colossal 1,200-pound wheel of cheese, crafted not just with milk, but with a message of faith and liberty. Delivered by oxen over treacherous roads from the small town of Cheshire, Massachusetts, this gift embodied the hopes and convictions of a humble community standing behind President Thomas Jefferson. O...

Join Renee and Dan on a captivating journey through time as they unravel the complex and oftentimes tumultuous history of how the Southern states of the United States came to have their current shapes. This episode promises a rich tapestry woven with European ambitions, indigenous native arrangements, and the indelible marks of colonial rivalries. From the Spanish quests for gold to the disputed l...

It started with a dream of open land and a better life, but the Oregon Trail was carved in sweat, blood, and impossible choices. Over months of dust, river crossings, and fever, families packed prairie schooners with flour, coffee, and fragile hope—electing leaders, erecting rules, and learning that survival often meant sacrifice. In this episode, Time Tellers traces the trail mile by mile, weavin...

In the 1840s, New York and Philadelphia become battlegrounds where immigrant families, a fiery bishop, and nativist mobs fight over a simple question: which Bible will be read in public schools? From street threats to burned churches and militia cannon in the streets, this episode follows the dramatic flashpoints that forced a national reckoning about religion, education, and public money. Through...