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Episode 13 of The Oddities Department takes us way in the back of the museum, and it gets weirder by the minute.

This week’s crate contains six stories that history couldn't keep locked up.

We start with The Mississippi Scheme, a French colonial program that tried to populate Louisiana by forcing prisoners to marry sex workers and shipping the couples across the ocean.

Then comes Princess Caraboo, a servant girl who convinced an entire English town she was a mysterious foreign princess from a completely fictional island.

Next is Inês de Castro, the murdered noblewoman who was exhumed, crowned Queen of Portugal, and presented to a horrified royal court forced to kiss her corpse.

From there we dive into The Berners Street Hoax, the most elaborate prank in history, where thousands of letters summoned doctors, clergy, musicians, and dignitaries to one very unlucky London address.

Science gets aggressively weird with the mating ritual of flatworms, where reproduction is decided through a literal duel known as penis fencing.

And finally we meet Diogenes the Cynic, the philosopher who lived in a jar, bullied Plato with a plucked chicken, and told Alexander the Great to move out of his sunlight.

Six case files.
Maximum audacity.
Minimum dignity.

Welcome to The Oddities Department.

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EPISODE 12:

Welcome back to The Oddities Department, where the paperwork is optional and the back halls are absolutely not OSHA-compliant.

This week’s unauthorized tour proves, once again, that history is just humanity repeatedly making eye contact with bad decisions and proceeding anyway.

Inside tonight’s crate:

A scandal-prone French medium who convinced actual scientists she was producing ghost goo… while fully naked.
A powerful Korean king who could command armies but couldn’t stop historians from documenting the day he absolutely ate dirt.
The Bavaria Beer Riots of 1844 — when Munich collectively chose violence over beverage pricing.
Ten wildly avoidable historical deaths that will make you question natural selection’s patience.
A medical deep dive into retrograde menstruation (yes, it goes the other way).
And the jaw-dropping case of Suze Lopez — who went in for tumor surgery and discovered a full-term abdominal pregnancy nobody saw coming.

It’s weird.
It’s uncomfortable.
It’s aggressively educational.

And as always… it somehow gets worse.

🎧 Listener discretion advised. Curiosity encouraged.

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EPISODE 11 — The Oddities Department

This week… history and modern history fully loses its mind.

Suzi and Gavin crack open six case files that feel less like real events and more like something a sleep-deprived historian made up while trippin. We start in 1870 Paris, where a starving city made the deeply unfortunate decision to put the zoo on the menu. Then we head to the South Atlantic, where a luxury cruise ship gets dragged into World War I and ends up in a naval fight… with another cruise ship pretending to be it.

Because human judgment is a fragile thing, we also examine two modern ER visits involving World War I explosives and choices that absolutely did not need to be made.

From there, the tone shifts. Gavin tells the powerful and complicated story of Henrietta Lacks — the woman whose cells changed modern medicine without her knowledge. Suzi brings the fire with Mariya Oktyabrskaya, the Soviet widow who processed grief by literally buying a tank and driving it into battle. And we close with the Radium Girls, one of the most infuriating and heartbreaking labor stories in American history.

It’s weird. It’s heavy. It’s occasionally unhinged.

Welcome back to the basement.

Stay weird. Stay curious. But not too curious.

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Welcome back to the staff-only basement of the museum… where the lights flicker for reasons we don’t investigate anymore.

In Episode 10, we open a crate packed with cursed productions, scientific lunatics, catastrophic weather, medical breakthroughs with body counts, funeral industry nightmares, and a frog that turns its own skeleton into a weapon.

This one swings hard between horror, wonder, tragedy, and absolute disbelief — because history, once again, refuses to behave.

📂 CASE FILES THIS WEEK:

🎬 Case File #53: Haunted Film Sets
Suzi takes us through Hollywood productions where the horror didn’t stay on screen — fires, deaths, lightning strikes, and sets that may have been genuinely cursed.

🦴 Case File #54: William Buckland
Gavin introduces the Oxford genius who helped invent paleontology… and also tried to eat his way through the entire animal kingdom. Including, somehow, the heart of a king.

🌪️ Case File #55: The Joplin EF5 Tornado
Suzi covers one of the deadliest tornadoes in modern American history — a story of unimaginable destruction, and a community that refused to stay broken.

🩻 Case File #56: The Invention of the X-Ray
Gavin tells the story of the discovery that let humanity see inside itself for the first time… and the pioneers who paid for that miracle with their bodies.

⚰️ Case File #57: Mad Morticians
Suzi guides us through the strange, unsettling, and occasionally criminal history of the funeral industry — from Victorian corpse photography to modern crematory scandals.

🐸 Case File #58: The Hairy Frog
And finally, Gavin introduces nature’s most unhinged evolutionary choice: a frog that breaks its own bones to create claws. Because apparently that’s a thing that exists.

Six files. Zero chill.
Welcome to Episode 10.

🎧 Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

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We’ve unpacked cosmic delusion, bird violence, ethically bankrupt science, peak female rage, and one of the most profitable headless animals in American history.

📂 IN THIS EPISODE:

Case File #48: Madame Vesta La Viesta. Gavin introduces a spiritualist who found fame during the Golden Age of Mysticism… and then committed to a very specific kind of long-distance love.
Case File #49: Pope Francis & The Dove Incident. Suzi covers the 2014 peace-dove release that immediately turned into a sky mugging, broadcast live from the Vatican.
Case File #50: The Dolphin Language Experiments. Gavin dives into the NASA-funded attempt to teach dolphins English, featuring LSD, a flooded house, and a relationship dynamic no one saw coming lmao.
Case File #51: Olga of Kiev. Suzi brings you the patron saint of revenge: boats, bathhouses, weaponized birds, and a body count that somehow ends in sainthood.
Case File #52: “Mike” The Headless Chicken. Gavin tells the true story of a rooster who lived 18 months without a head and went on tour, proving you don’t need a brain to become a celebrity.

🎧 LISTEN & SUBSCRIBE: If you enjoyed this unauthorized tour through the museum’s back rooms, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. It helps us keep the lights flickering and the dolphin tank paid for.

🏷️ TAGS: #OdditiesDepartment #WeirdHistory #HistoryPodcast #ComedyPodcast #WTFHistory #Spooky #ScienceGoneWrong #Vatican #OlgaOfKiev #HeadlessChicken #DolphinExperiment #Martians

Stay curious. Stay weird. And please… don’t pet the dolphin, he has mommy issues.

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In this episode, Suzi and Gavin pry open the crates that prove history is actually a fever dream we can't wake up from. Tonight, we are exploring horrific surgical tools turned lumberjack hardware to wars over a bucket?

We go hard with this one. We've unpacked a whole lot of female rage, more cats, fashion, a whole lot of war, and a huge medeival "I told you so".

📂 IN THIS EPISODE:

• Case File #42: The Origin of the Chainsaw. Suzi reveals the horrifying truth: the chainsaw wasn't invented for trees. It was invented by doctors... for childbirth. (Trigger Warning: It’s a medical nightmare).
• Case File #43: The Lioness of Brittany. Gavin tells the story of Jeanne de Clisson, a widow who sold everything to buy three black warships and spent 13 years being an absolute menace to the French Crown out of pure female rage.
• Case File #44: Pope Gregory IX vs. Cats. The story of how one Pope decided cats were agents of Satan, ordered them exterminated, and accidentally rolled out the red carpet for the Black Death.
• Case File #45: The Invention of the High Heel. Men, you did this to yourselves. Gavin explains how high heels started as masculine military gear for short kings before men decided they were "too painful" and dumped them on women.
• Case File #46: The War of the Bucket. That time Bologna and Modena went to war, killed thousands of people, and held a grudge for 700 years... all over a stolen wooden bucket.
• Case File #47: Eleanor of Aquitaine. The ultimate medieval "I told you so." When the King of France divorced her for not producing a son, she married his rival and immediately built an empire of male heirs.

🎧 LISTEN & SUBSCRIBE: If you enjoyed this tour through the hot mess of history, please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform! It helps us keep the lights flickering.

🏷️ TAGS: #OdditiesDepartment #WeirdHistory #TrueCrime #MedicalHistory #ChainsawOrigin #PirateQueen #MedievalHistory #Podcast #Comedy #Spooky

Stay curious. Stay weird. And seriously... don't Google "Symphysiotomy."

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In Episode 7 of The Oddities Department, we travel all over the world, and back and forth through time to show you some of history's wildest oddities.

In this episode, we cover:

• Case File #36: Wojtek The Bear. The incredible true story of a Syrian Brown Bear who drank beer, smoked cigarettes, and carried ammo for the Polish II Corps during World War II.
• Case File #37: The Winchester Mystery House. Sarah Winchester spent 38 years building a mansion to confuse the ghosts of the Civil War. Was it madness, or was it the most expensive panic room in history?
• Case File #38: The War for Breakfast. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg didn't invent Corn Flakes to help you start your day right. He invented them to stop you from sinning.
• Case File #39: The Teenage God Emperor. Meet Elagabalus, the 14-year-old ruler of Rome who replaced Jupiter with a giant rock, kept pet lions in guest bedrooms, and smothered his enemies with rose petals.
• Case File #40: The 10,000 Year Warning. How do we tell the future not to touch our nuclear waste? The government’s solution involved "hostile architecture" and glow-in-the-dark cats.
• Case File #41: The Judas Goat. The dark industrial history of the "traitor goats" who led sheep to the slaughterhouse in exchange for a nicotine addiction.

Join the Department: If you enjoyed this tour through the weirdest corners of history, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify! It helps us keep the lights on in the basement.

Follow Us: TikTok: @TheOdditiesDept Instagram: @TheOdditiesDept

Stay curious. Stay weird. And don't eat the cornflakes.

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In Episode 6, Gavin and Suzi crack open the "Staff Only" files to explore what happens when biology, technology, and monarchy go horribly wrong.

We travel from the frozen isolation of Antarctica, where a surgeon faces an impossible choice, to the throne room of France, where the King makes a bunch of questionable choices. We dive into the ocean to find ancient computers that shouldn't exist, and we look at the animal kingdom's most brutal dating rituals (spoiler: the male usually dies).

If you’ve ever felt like your brain is working against you, or if you think your job is hard, this episode is for you.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Case File #30: Charles VI (The Glass King) We recount the tragic and bizarre reign of the French King who believed his butt was made of glass and sewed iron rods into his pants to prevent shattering.
• Case File #31: The Arctic DIY Surgeon The harrowing true story of Leonid Rogozov, the Soviet doctor who performed his own appendectomy in the middle of an Antarctic blizzard with no anesthesia.
• Case File #32: "Male-Hating" Female Animals Romance is dead. Suzi explains the mechanics of the Praying Mantis, the Deep-Sea Anglerfish, and the absolute nightmare of Spotted Hyena birth.
• Case File #33: The Antikythera Mechanism Gavin explains the 2,000-year-old "laptop" found in a Roman shipwreck that rewrote the history of technology.
• Case File #34: Alien Hand Syndrome A look at the neurological condition where one hand develops a mind of its own—unbuttoning shirts, slapping faces, and sometimes choking its owner.
• Case File #35: Emperor Norton I The heartwarming story of the homeless man who declared himself Emperor of the United States, and the city of San Francisco that decided to play along.

LINKS & NOTES:

• Mentioned in this episode: The "Mating Ball" of the Green Anaconda, The "Blue Hour" of Polar Night, and the currency of Emperor Norton.
• Rate & Review: If you enjoyed this tour of the strange, please leave us a review! It helps keep the Department lights on.

FOLLOW US:

• TikTok: @TheOdditiesDepartment
• Instagram: @TheOdditiesDept

TAGS: History, Science, Weird History, Medical Mysteries, True Story, Antarctica, Emperor Norton, True Crime, Biology, Comedy, The Oddities Department