RandO Facts for Taft O. Derby
A collection of audio episodes where Dr. Mel Brown (Mom) tells Taft weird, true stories about things that don't make it into textbooks. Each episode picks a theme—strange jobs, wars over stupid reasons, animals that broke science—and unpacks 4-5 stories that sound fake but aren't.
Started because of that two-hour car ride back from Logan where we went from discriminant AI to Michelin stars to the Korean War with no map between them. This is that conversation, extended. Some episodes will drop daily. Some weekly. Some whenever there's a good theme worth chasing.
No fluff. No listicles. Just: here's what happened, here's why it matters, here's what it says about how people work.
The audio is AI-narrated after the intro. The intro is Mom. The rest is built so you can listen at 1.5x if you want, or save them for later, or ignore them entirely. They'll be here when you want them.
Named after you. Made for you. Kept going because... why not! I love you, Rooney!
RandO Facts for Taft O. Derby
Banned: Ridiculous Laws Born from Bureacracy
Let's explore a catalog of prohibitions imposed by governments convinced they were protecting citizens. Why were common recreational games, popular foods enjoyed globally, specific colors, and even reference books deemed illegal? We trace the moral panics that led to restrictions lasting decades, revealing a structural failure: the ease with which fun things are banned compared to the difficulty of regulating profitable dangers.
Content Notice
This episode discusses historical legal restrictions surrounding moral panics, including accusations of organized crime (Pinball) and laws initially targeting prostitution (Japanese dance ban). It also references censorship and "objectionable" words like "knock up" and "ball" in the discussion of dictionary bans.
Let's see what the world's been hiding.