Podcast thumbnail for Distinctly Montana Stories

Distinctly Montana Stories

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by Joseph Shelton

4.9(7 reviews)
10 episodes
Updated Daily
Accepts GuestsHas SponsorsLocation 🇺🇸

Podcast Overview

Someone threw a pitcher at Bob Weir and the Grateful Dead never came back to Missoula. Masked men forced a sheepherder to make them coffee before spending eight hours clubbing his flock to death. A 19-year-old named Cromwell Dixon became the first person to fly over the Continental Divide — and was dead a month later. An entrepreneur carted a 365-pound "petrified man" from Montana to New York City and failed spectacularly. Long George Francis, outlaw and poet, crashed his car on Christmas Eve with a broken leg and crawled through a blizzard toward an increasingly uncertain safety. These are true stories, drawn from the literary journalism of Distinctly Montana magazine and adapted into produced audio by editor-in-chief Joe Shelton. The show takes Montana's mythology seriously enough to look at it honestly — and what it finds is both darker and more wonderful than the postcard version. Each episode pairs careful narration with sound design and music in service of the story. Episodes run between twelve and twenty-two minutes and release monthly. Subscribe to Distinctly Montana magazine at www.distinctlymontana.com/subscribe.

Language

🇺🇲

Publishing Since

2/18/2026

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Recent Episodes

Episode thumbnail for How Bobby Became a Legend

July 3, 2026

How Bobby Became a Legend

In 1950s Butte, a teenager named Bobby Knievel was scoping out new cars, lifting their hubcaps, then doubling back to sell the owner his own missing property. When Marsh's Jewelry got robbed, Bobby let it be known he had merchandise to move cheap and fast—and half the town went home thrilled to be wearing stolen gems, until they looked closer. He would later sell 271 insurance policies to the staff and the residents of Warm Springs State Hospital. But money and cons were only ever going to hold a kid like this so long. There was a motorcycle coming, and a broken leg, and a jail cell next to a man the cops had already nicknamed Awful.

Episode thumbnail for The Life and Afterlife of Comanche

June 9, 2026

The Life and Afterlife of Comanche

On a hot Sunday afternoon in June of 1876, thousands of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors surrounded 210 cavalrymen and cut them down. Two days later, when General Terry's column arrived, the bodies on the field had been so changed by sun and wind and the hands of the victors that Terry mistook them for buffalo carcasses. The burial party had eight shovels among them. They used bullet casings to pin paper names to the makeshift grave markers. They shot the wounded horses where they stood, after letting them drink. One horse they did not shoot. His name was Comanche.

Episode thumbnail for The Devil's Brigade in Helena

May 26, 2026

The Devil's Brigade in Helena

In 1942, a secret joint American-Canadian commando unit trained in the hills outside Helena, Montana, learning to ski, parachute, and kill silently with a custom-designed knife built for one purpose. By night, the same men crowded into Last Chance Gulch bars and danced at the USO. Before they shipped out, more than two hundred had married Helena girls. They went on to fight some of the most brutal engagements of the European war. After, some of them came back to Helena, to the wives they'd married in a rush, and tried to be ordinary men again.

10 total episodes available

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What is Distinctly Montana Stories?

Someone threw a pitcher at Bob Weir and the Grateful Dead never came back to Missoula. Masked men forced a sheepherder to make them coffee before spending eight hours clubbing his flock to death. A 19-year-old named Cromwell Dixon became the first person to fly over the Continental Divide — and was dead a month later. An entrepreneur carted a 365-pound "petrified man" from Montana to New York City and failed spectacularly. Long George Francis, outlaw and poet, crashed his car on Christmas Eve with a broken leg and crawled through a blizzard toward an increasingly uncertain safety.

These are true stories, drawn from the literary journalism of Distinctly Montana magazine and adapted into produced audio by editor-in-chief Joe Shelton. The show takes Montana's mythology seriously enough to look at it honestly — and what it finds is both darker and more wonderful than the postcard version. Each episode pairs careful narration with sound design and music in service of the story.

Episodes run between twelve and twenty-two minutes and release monthly. Subscribe to Distinctly Montana magazine at www.distinctlymontana.com/subscribe.

How often does this podcast release new episodes?

This podcast updates daily.

Where can I listen to this podcast?

This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.

Does this podcast accept guests?

No, this podcast does not typically feature guests.

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