Episodes

Some people get a wedding week. Donny got a week-long assault on his sanity. Episode 11 follows a stretch of chaos that starts with a bachelorette party fight and somehow gets worse from there. An 80-year-old man decides violence is the answer. Cats become involved. Travel plans never survive first contact with reality. Hurricanes appear. Accidents happen. Bears make an appearance. And through it all, Donny keeps finding brand-new ways to ask, “What now?” Meanwhile, Judy finds herself navigat...

Most people get snow. Donny and Judy got snow, floods, fires, evacuations, and a helicopter rescue that sounds completely made up until you realize there were witnesses. Episode 10 takes a hard left turn from normal weather and dives straight into North Dakota chaos. The snow piled up. The rivers fought back. Things caught fire. People got evacuated. And somehow that was just the beginning. If you've ever lived through a storm, a flood, a fire, or a family story that gets more unbelievable ev...

Donny and Judy hit NFL stadiums like a traveling circus of chaos — and the curse comes with them. Donny’s favorite team is cursed… and honestly, Donny might be too. Every Gameday turns into a disaster tour: tailgates gone wrong, superstitions failing spectacularly, and Donny’s pregame, pre‑sportsbook, and postgame food choices becoming part of the curse itself. Meanwhile Judy? She’s the only one bringing any luck at all — and even that can’t save them from Vegas. They hit the sportsbooks, place...

Donny and Judy didn’t invent chaos — they inherited it. This episode digs into the practical jokes they pulled, the ones they survived, and the original pranksters who started it all: Mom and Dad. Their parents’ legacy is so unhinged that restaurants learned never to leave chalkboards or stray pieces of chalk unattended again. There’s a suspicious pattern involving Mom walking away at the exact wrong moment — whether it’s her child pooping… or her child pooping. Donny receives an extravagant “l...

Donny and Judy’s work history reads less like a résumé and more like a cautionary tale HR departments whisper about during training. In this episode, they revisit the bizarre jobs they somehow landed, the coworkers who probably shouldn’t have been allowed near the public, and the disasters that unfolded the moment they clocked in. Responsibility was… optional. Judgment was… missing. And at one point, someone may or may not have been suspected of starting a fire just to escape a shift. (Was it in...

Mom wasn’t just a prankster — she was a menace with a smile. At 91, she’s still out here scaring her kids, her sister‑in‑law, her neighbors, and any grandkid unlucky enough to walk past her hiding spot. She stole hamburger patties off her boss’s grill like it was a sport. She hid steaks mid‑cook just to watch people lose their minds. She created nightmares, chaos, and lifelong trauma… and somehow we all think it’s hilarious now. If your mom ever scared you for fun, this episode will make you fe...

Dad and Mom didn’t just raise Donny and Judy — they ran a two‑person psychological obstacle course filled with catchphrases, chaos, and “celebrity moments” that traumatized every friend who dared step inside their house. From Dad’s legendary “Nothing good happens after midnight” to Mom’s Olympic‑level “That’s bullshit,” this episode exposes the parental shenanigans the siblings barely lived through. Judy gets busted sneaking out of town in a way no adult should ever be caught — and the way she’...

Donny and Judy enter the roommate era… and immediately discover that “shared living” meant “shared chaos.” Donny’s apartment turned into a full‑blown investigation site the moment his mail started disappearing, and one of his roommates had a habit so strange it became a daily jump scare. Watching sports with Donny? That was its own crisis. Judy’s roommate screening process involved a dead bird, and her other roommates were planning an exit strategy that looked more like a heist than a move‑out. ...

SEASON 2 • EPISODE 2 Chaos Packs a Bag Too Vacations and weekends were supposed to be simple… but Donny and Judy’s family never once achieved “simple.” In this episode, they revisit the getaways that were meant to be relaxing and somehow turned into full‑scale chaos before the car even left the driveway. From surprise disasters to travel plans that detonated on contact, this episode proves one thing: whenever they packed a bag, chaos packed one too. If your family vacations ever turned into ...

SEASON 2 • EPISODE 3 — We Celebrated Everything… Prematurely and Dramatically Donny and Judy grew up in a family that didn’t just celebrate holidays — they reinvented them. Christmas, birthdays, Thanksgiving, Easter… none of them happened the way anyone else would recognize. From off‑season birthday gifts to holiday traditions that arrived months early, their family created a celebration style so unusual it shaped how they see every holiday today. And yes — this episode finally explains why t...

SEASON 2 • EPISODE 1 The Moment the Past Woke Up Season 2 begins with a return to Minot that doesn’t go the way anyone expected. Old places feel different. Forgotten moments start lining up. And something from Season 1 quietly shifts into focus. This episode opens the door to a chain of connections that reshape everything you thought you knew about the stories so far. If Season 1 was the spark, Season 2 is the moment the past decides it’s not finished. Disclaimer: These stori...

In the final episode of the season, Judy and Donny look back at how they entered adulthood with absolutely no life skills. Paying bills? Nope. Grocery shopping? A disaster. Donny’s first solo shopping trip even turned into an underwear fiasco that still makes him cringe. They talk about the conversations they never had — including the birds and the bees (Judy is still waiting for hers) — and the “child‑friendly” crime explanation that almost got Donny in trouble at school. They dig into why the...

From a 13‑year‑old’s makeup‑caked attempt to buy TJ Swann, to Donny aging himself with motor oil, to Judy dodging a police raid by pretending to bus tables, this episode dives into the chaotic, unspoken rite of passage that underage drinking became in small‑town North Dakota. It’s a story about risk, improvisation, and the consequences that usually showed up in the form of our dad — the one authority figure we never managed to outrun. Disclaimer: These stories are based on our personal memories...

At seventeen, both Judy and Donny were evicted from their homes for wildly different reasons — one for smoking, one for a hammer and a radiator — sending them into parallel journeys through mice‑infested trailers, chaotic jobs, and the strange freedom of starting adulthood with absolutely nothing. Judy becomes an apartment manager overseeing convicted felons and whackado renters, while Donny heads to Gillette, Wyoming for his first DJ gig, where the men outnumber the women 12 to 1 and the odds a...

Judy and Donny are back with a collection of stories from a childhood where every minor incident somehow became a headline. In their family, even the most ordinary days had a way of ending up in the newspaper — whether they wanted the attention or not. There’s the time their mom called 911 over a beehive and a reporter showed up with the police. Judy’s first day at work turned into a public spectacle after her car was smashed, her commute was broadcast on the traffic report, and she arrived two...

In this combined episode, Judy and Donny revisit the week that proved Donny should never have been left in charge — and the lifetime of spectacular bad luck that followed him everywhere he went. It starts with a rear‑end collision while driving our mom, escalates when a bicyclist flips over Donny’s hood on the way to pick her up (with a TV news crew filming the whole thing), and ends with a backyard grilling disaster that singed off her eyebrows. But that week was only the beginning. From sneak...

In this Fast Forward episode, Judy and Donny jump ahead to the years when the family’s car chaos didn’t calm down — it evolved into something stranger, darker, and somehow even funnier. Their dad asks Donny to drive a corpse across the country to save money, suddenly can’t see white cars, and relies on their mom to guide him from the passenger seat. Meanwhile, Judy racks up hit‑and‑runs and Donny hits a streak of accidents that prove adulthood didn’t make anything safer. This chapter blends dar...

In the late 60s and early 70s, our family lived in a tiny rental owned by a man named Herb — the place where two unsupervised kids in the middle of nowhere turned boredom into chaos. From painting a neighbor’s white picket fence with dirty oil to accidentally creating a silver spray‑painted “martian,” Herb’s House became the birthplace of every bit of trouble that shaped our childhood. This is where it all began. Disclaimer: These stories are based on our personal memories and family experience...

Judy and Donny revisit Perkett Elementary, a North Dakota school that operated by its own logic — where recess was never cancelled, even in subzero wind chills, and frozen dodgeball turned the courtyard into a survival arena. They remember the humiliation of being wrapped in a stiff paper skirt after wet‑pants recess disasters, the secretary who ruled the office with a disciplinarian’s certainty, and the drills that weren’t for tornadoes but were never explained. Inside and outside the building...

Judy and Donny revisit the family’s most unforgettable sports chapter — the era when football dreams were built on hope, hypnosis, and a whole lot of wishful thinking. Donny’s football career began with big ambition and even bigger expectations, including the time their dad hypnotized him to throw perfect passes. But despite all the effort, all the rituals, and all the belief poured into him, he still ended up as the backup quarterback behind the neighbor kid. And just when he thought he’d redee...

In Part Two of The School of Strange, North Dakota school life takes an even stranger turn. Field trips to the mental institution and the funeral home, PE teachers driving frozen buses to roller rinks, ski hills, and bowling alleys, and Donny setting off firecrackers in the bathroom reveal how the very institutions meant to protect us instead shaped our toughness, humor, and understanding of authority in ways no textbook ever could. Disclaimer: These stories are based on our personal memories a...

Left alone while our parents were in Winnipeg, we turned loaded guns into a pretend war game—until a real bullet blasted through the picture window. What followed was a secret we kept all winter, only uncovered when the spring thaw revealed the casing and the truth our childhood imagination never understood in the moment. Disclaimer: These stories are based on our personal memories and family experiences. Some details may be condensed or combined for clarity. Names and identifying details may b...

Donny’s dream car, the Gran Torino, turns into a highway nightmare when it breaks down on a road trip with his high school buddies, leaving them stranded with a stranger whose offer to “hang out” feels helpful at first but, in hindsight, was a close call they were too young and too invincible to recognize. Judy rents a car at age 16 in Miami on a school trip only to abandon the car at the airport a week later. Mom’s driving lessons end with the kids in the field crying. Disclaimer: These storie...

Growing up on the rural edges of North Dakota gave us stories no one believes, no one talks about, and no one ever really explained — until now. Stories from the Middle of Nowhere is a true‑to‑life collection of the late‑night adventures, small‑town mysteries, family chaos, and near‑disasters that shaped us in a place where the rules were loose and the adults were… distracted. Told with humor, honesty, and a cinematic sense of memory, each episode pulls you back into a world where kids roamed f...