Send us a text Most true crime podcasts lie politely. We don’t. So we decided to explain why. After getting pushback for “disrespecting” a victim, Andrea and I laid out exactly how Things I Want to Know works. This episode is our playbook. How we research. Why we focus on underreported Arkansas cases. And why respecting victims does not mean turning them into saints or pretending uncomfortable facts don’t exist. We start with primary sources. State missing-persons lists, archived newspa...

Send us a text Things I Want To Know Don’t Boil the Water | Charleston, West Virginia A sweet smell coming out of the tap should never turn into a guessing game. In this episode, we dig into the 2014 Charleston, West Virginia chemical spill that sent crude MCHM from a neglected storage tank straight toward a municipal water intake, forcing 300,000 people to stop using their water overnight. Not limit it. Not boil it. Stop. We talk about how a century-old piece of infrastructure ended up sitti...

Send us a text Two women vanish in Arkansas, sixteen years apart, and the details still don’t sit right. In this episode, we examine the disappearance of 18-year-old Cleashindra Hall in Pine Bluff in 1994 and art teacher Mary “Jimmie” Bobo Shinn in Magnolia in 1978. Two very different lives. Two very different towns. The same outcome: unanswered questions and investigations that lost traction early. We walk through what went wrong and why it mattered. What happens when the last known location...

Send us a text Paul G and Andrea trace the violent trail of James “Red” Hall across wartime Arkansas, where a hellfire upbringing and a childhood head injury twisted a drifter into a man who turned small moments into real-life dead ends. A .38 revolver ties the bodies together. The chaos of World War II gives him cover. And Arkansas rushes him from confession to Old Sparky before most people even know who he is. They follow the disappearance of Faye after a night out in Little Rock, the motor...

Send us a text In 1992, seventeen year old Kelly Wilson vanished in Gilmer, Texas. A short walk from a video store to her car became one of the most debated missing person cases in Texas history. What should have been a focused, evidence driven investigation was quickly consumed by the national Satanic Panic that overtook the early nineties. Gilmer followed the same pattern seen in McMartin, Kern County, and the West Memphis Three. Fear replaced facts. Rumor replaced procedure. And Kelly’s ca...

Send us a text In this Episode we dive into the case of Michael Ronning, a convicted murderer who spent years bragging about killings no court ever proved. His life stretched from Michigan to Arkansas to Florida, and everywhere he went the same pattern followed: a missing girl, an unexplained death, and a story he couldn’t resist inserting himself into. Was Ronning a forgotten serial killer, or a drifter who loved the attention that came with pretending to be one? Andrea and Paul sift through...

Send us a text A police lieutenant turns the key, presses the brake, and his truck erupts. He lives. The case almost disappears. We set out to learn why a 1972 Springdale, Arkansas bombing barely made the paper and what the town didn’t (or wouldn’t) say out loud. Along the way we sketch the real backdrop: a rural region on the cusp of change, where Walmart and Tyson were still rising, Sundays went quiet, and a hard-edged meth trade simmered under the surface. We walk through the device itsel...

Send us a text A nameless girl lay in a Florida forest for decades, filed under Judy Doe and lost to a noisy era of serial predators and thin evidence. Forty years later, genetic genealogy restores her identity—Rebecca Sue Hill, a teenager from Arkansas—and forces us to confront how a single misidentification can bury a case and mute a family’s questions for a generation. We walk through the case from both ends: an Arkansas disappearance in the early 80s and a body found near Lake Dorr in 19...

Send us a text The story starts on a quiet May evening in 1991 and never really stops echoing. A nine-year-old sets out to sell costume jewelry in a tiny Arkansas town where people wave from porches and the fields hold the day’s last light. By week’s end, she’s found in a ditch four miles away, and everything residents believe about safety, trust, and “being home before dark” begins to crack. We walk you through what happened and what didn’t: kids who saw a light-blue car and a man with long...

Send us a text A simple errand, a stamped receipt at 3:17 p.m., and a car left on US 71 with the keys still in the ignition. We walk through the last verified hours of 18-year-old Dana Stidham and sort what’s true from what’s been repeated for decades. No theatrics—just timestamps, locations, and choices that still demand answers: the unfixed flat, the Omni facing the wrong way, and a seven-week silence broken by a hunter who waited before calling his discovery in. We unpack why those detail...

Send us a text Ever wondered what dark secrets lurk beneath the surface of America's quiet small towns? In this episode, Paul and Andrea pull back the curtain on two shocking criminal cases from Northwest Arkansas that time has nearly forgotten. The conversation begins with a puzzling 1972 case where Lieutenant Carl Martins, a young Springdale police officer, survived when a bomb detonated under his car right at the police station. Despite involvement from the FBI, ATF, and even a grand jury...

Send us a text Buried in declassified government archives lies a chilling reminder of how fragile democracy can be from within. Operation Northwoods represents one of the most disturbing chapters in American military planning – a moment when the nation's top generals unanimously approved a scheme to attack their own citizens as a pretext for war. The story begins in 1962, with the United States still reeling from the Bay of Pigs disaster. As Castro consolidated power just 90 miles from Flori...

Send us a text Nuclear weapons vanish without a trace. Soviet submarines prepare to launch. False alarms flash across screens in Moscow bunkers. The Cold War was more dangerous than most of us ever realized. We reveal the shocking truth that at least six American nuclear weapons have been lost since the 1950s and never recovered. These aren't training devices or empty shells—they are fully operational thermonuclear bombs, some capable of yields hundreds of times more powerful than Hiroshima,...

Send us a text In 1927, a “modern cure” for ringworm left a boy’s skull collapsed. He wore a hat for 80 years to hide the truth. In a rural Black farming town in Indiana, 1927, a group of schoolchildren were told they’d receive a modern medical treatment for ringworm. It was free, it was fast, and it was promised safe. What followed was one of the most chilling medical betrayals of the 20th century. This is the true story of Vertus Wellborn Hardiman — a five-year-old boy whose sk...

Send us a text Karen Silkwood's final drive down Highway 74 on November 13, 1974, ended in a crash that silenced a whistleblower and disappeared a folder of evidence that could have shaken America's nuclear industry to its core. This haunting story begins with an ordinary woman who took a job at Kerr-McGee's Cimarron nuclear fuel plant in Oklahoma, hoping for a fresh start after her marriage dissolved. Instead, she discovered a nightmare of negligence that put workers and potentially the publ...

Send us a text November 1983, Washington DC. A bomb rips through the Republican cloakroom of the United States Capitol, shattering the illusion of security at America's seat of power. No casualties, just destruction - a pattern that would repeat again and again as federal buildings fell target to a series of precisely placed explosives. Through a dramatized narrative following fictional FBI Special Agent Jack Connors, we unravel the forgotten story of a domestic bombing campaign that struck ...

Send us a text The moon has always been humanity's silent companion, but few know how close we came to scarring it forever. During the darkest days of the Cold War, American military officials developed a classified plan that pushes the boundaries of imagination – Project A119, a serious initiative to detonate a nuclear weapon on the lunar surface. Following the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik in 1958, panic gripped Washington. America was falling behind in the space race, and the implicati...

Send us a text Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin changed the course of human history, but few understand the deeply personal journey that led to this breakthrough. This episode takes you to the blood-soaked trenches of World War I where a young doctor named Alex watches helplessly as infection claims soldier after soldier, including Private James Calloway. The invisible enemy – bacteria – proves more lethal than bullets and shells, leaving an indelible mark on Fleming's psyche. Yea...

Send us a text A witness flips. A town loses its innocence. When a key witness recants in a high-profile murder case, the whole foundation of justice starts to crack. In this episode of Things I Wanna Know with Andrea S., we dive into the chilling 2018 murder of Christopher Alvord—and his dog—in the quiet, storybook town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. A place known for its Victorian charm and artistic spirit suddenly became the backdrop for a nightmare. We walk you through the first moments t...

Send us a text Join us as we sit down with Nancy Purpole, to peel back the layers of divorce law and the importance of client engagement. Nancy's journey from the courtroom offers a unique vantage point, as she discusses the subtle nuances of family law and the emotional toll it can take. We delve into how one's past can shape communication in relationships, the shifting sands of legal acceptance for LGBTQ+ individuals, and the impact of upbringing on one's ability to navigate legal challenge...