The first version of a dish you eat can become your standard for it. Years later, someone might tell you the recipe was all wrong. And maybe it was. But what does that verdict change about the meals you remember loving?

At Lupita’s on 19th Street, host Mark Long unexpectedly orders what may be his first bowl of menudo, pig’s foot and all. He likes it but then Googles what makes a good menudo to see if he’s right.

That search takes him back to his mother’s huevos rancheros, which appeared on mornings when the whole family seemed to be in a good mood. When he calls to ask how she made them, she says she did it “all wrong”: store-bought picante sauce and shredded cheese. He’d never thought to look up whether her version was good.

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Bad publicity is supposed to be bad. So why do people keep engineering spectacles that invite it? This episode looks at how a staged catastrophe draws a crowd and why the reaction can carry the story further than anyone imagined.

In 1896, the Katy railroad sold excursion tickets to watch two trains smash into each other near Waco. At least two people died, and the railroad fired the man behind the stunt—and rehired him the next day. One hundred thirty years later, Texas railroad commissioner candidate Bo French turned a photo of University of Texas students celebrating a football victory into a claim about “foreigners” that generated millions of views and then made a fundraising pitch out of the resulting backlash.

Only one train wreck was literal, but neither stopped at the point of impact.

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Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for The Weekly Dispatch newsletter.

A price tag used to tell you how much something cost. Now? It doubles as a personality test. Pay for food without complaining and you appreciate quality, respect craft, and support local business. If you have a problem with a price, the problem is apparently you—and your cheap tastebuds.

Host Mark Long visits Waco’s much-celebrated new Sprouts and encounters a $1.30 organic lemon and ten-dollar-a-pound ground turkey. Then, the comments beneath a photograph of a $97 tray of food from Terry Black’s Barbecue demonstrate what happens when somebody is impolite enough to question the arithmetic. Welcome to Wacomaxxing, where living your best local life may depend on paying the price—and possessing the good manners not to ask why.

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Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for The Weekly Dispatch newsletter.