Everything Is Awful Forever

Has a loved one been grumpy, sickly, and just doesn't play those Facebook games that you keep tagging them in? They may have that stomach bug that's been going around or - and hear us out, here - they may have been stolen by fairies and replaced with a bad-tempered changeling. This week, Jess and Philippa talk about the fairy faith in late 1800s Ireland, and how personal and societal pressures led to a man murdering his "changeling" wife so that he might get his real love back from the fairies who stole her.

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It's time to take the Victorian Period to even stranger places. Jess and Philippa discuss the emergence of the Victorian freak show out of the circus, looking at the lives of two of its stars: Oofty Goofty and Grady Stiles - also known as "The Lobster Boy". As the main act, we look at how Stiles in particular blurred the boundaries between performance and murder - and almost got away with it.

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Blake may have seen "marks of weakness, marks of woe" in every London face he saw, but in a city famously called "The Smoke", it turns out that Victorian skin may have been rather more grubby that previously imagined. This week, Jess and Philippa wallow in the dirty details of Victorian filth and pollution, and discuss the unhappy lives that toiled under its sooty cloud.

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"I've got a cunning plan!" said no Victorian murderer ever. Are you getting tired of ingenious modern killers? Want a little less subtlety in your serial killers?

If you're hankering after the days in which murderers laughed maniacally, yelling "they'll never catch me - I'm invincible!" while twirling their mustaches, you're in the right place. This week, Jess and Philippa talk about the "Bermondsey Horror": a murder replete with hilarious bungling, futile finagling, and a whole bunch of commonplace stupidity.

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What did Adelaide Bartlett, Madeleine Smith, and Mary Ann Cotton...um...Mowbray...er...Ward? Mary Ann Robinson? Cotton again? What might these three women have had in common - aside from a sudden and startling lack of still-breathing relatives and husbands? If your answer is "suspicious amounts of deadly poison" then you're either thinking like a parricide poisoner or you are a parricide poisoner and need to hand yourself in to the authorities.

This episode, Jess and Philippa look into the lives of three Victorian women who became a little too dependent on the bottle - of arsenic - and the absurd number of murders that they managed to get away with.

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This episode comes to you with some fava beans and a nice chianti. This week, Philippa and Jess explore the grisly history of medicinal cannibalism and corpse medicine. Whether it was ancient Egyptian mummies, mossy skulls, or blood fresh from the execution, European kings, priests, doctors, and beggars ate human flesh and bones for well over two hundred years. Join us for the whys and wherefores - but take care to eat dinner, first!

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When an ominous, black granite sarcophagus was unearthed in 2018, oozing with a mysterious red liquid, the prevailing public opinion was "I wanna drink that"! Listen to Jess and Philippa talk about why you should never imbibe the mysterious red liquid; find out more about cursed cheese, historical beliefs about food, and discover what chemicals the Victorians like to ingest (hint: all of them). 

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Hey there, we're about to take you on a downward spiral into the past. Think things have never been so bad? Well, get ready, because everything has always been awful...FOREVER!
Hosts Jess and Philippa teach each other about the weird and wonderful things from the past our ancestors miraculously survived. History, society, other terrible things we;ve endured to get to where we are today.  

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