What do you do when the government tells you your life’s work might be poisonous? If you’re Mario Fabbrini, you give it a formal burial.

In this episode of Weird Americana, we travel back to 1973 to witness The Great Michigan Pizza Funeral. After a botulism scare led to a massive recall, Fabbrini decided to dispose of 30,000 frozen pizzas by burying them in a 10-foot-deep hole in the ground.

We’ll discuss the white-casket eulogy, the Michigan Governor who actually attended the event, and the heartbreaking twist discovered after the sauce was already in the soil.

It’s a short look at bizarre American history, the drama of the frozen food industry, and the man who turned a business disaster into a legendary piece of Midwest folklore.

In 1869, two workers in Cardiff, New York, dug up a 10-foot-tall "petrified man" that seemingly proved the Bible's claim that "there were giants in the earth in those days."

In this episode of Weird Americana, we uncover the incredible true story of the Cardiff Giant, the greatest hoax of the 19th century. We’ll dive into the mind of George Hull—the atheist who spent a fortune to trick the religious public—and the legendary rivalry with P.T. Barnum, who was so impressed he decided to create a "fake of the fake."

Discover how a block of gypsum fooled scientists, theologians, and thousands of paying customers. It’s a 10-minute masterclass in historical scams, human gullibility, and the fine line between faith and fraud.

Before GPS, cell phones, and interstate rest areas, American truck stops were their own world with their own language, rules, and culture. Pull off at a Flying J or a TA Travel Center in the 1970s and 80s and you'd find massive parking lots full of idling eighteen-wheelers, all-night diners serving chicken fried steak and endless coffee, showers you could rent by the hour, and CB radios crackling with trucker slang that sounded like a different language. "Breaker one-nine, you got your ears on? There's a Smokey with a picture-taker at the 181 yardstick. Better back it down before you get an invitation to the county mountie ball."

This was the golden age of trucking culture, when independent owner-operators ruled the highways, CB radio connected drivers across hundreds of miles, and truck stops were community centers, information hubs, and survival stations all rolled into one. Waitresses knew regulars by name and rig. Lot lizards prowled the parking lots. Truckers had their own code, their own music, and their own outlaw mythology.

Join us as we explore the rise and transformation of American truck stop culture, decode the CB radio slang that baffled outsiders, visit legendary truck stops that are still standing, and uncover how deregulation, corporate chains, and modern technology changed trucking forever. It's the story of America's highway cowboys and the oases that kept them rolling.

Keywords: truck stop culture, CB radio, trucker slang, interstate truck stops, 1970s trucking, CB radio language, trucker diners, truck stop history, eighteen wheelers, trucker lifestyle, Flying J, TA Travel Centers, CB radio culture, independent truckers, highway culture, vintage trucking