What do you get when you cross a hat with a common (or garden) thermometer?

Mad hatters... and hatted madmen. In this episode, we're delving into Lewis Carroll, mercury poisoning, and all the other ways that tea time might go wrong.

What does it take to get a cow's head onto your doorstep? (Rest of cow, not included). Today, we're talking Ukrainian fairy tales, evil stepmothers, and how to be an awesome dad. Or something like that. 

What would you sacrifice for Art? And, more importantly, what does a wizard give an Armadillo when he comes to tea? In this episode, we take our first foray into South American folklore, featuring an ancient hero, some puffed up bull frogs, and a few insects who really need to get a room.  

What is the juice of smallpox, and when it is it best served? In this episode, we explore variolation, milkmaids, and how a slave in Boston helped change the world.

What's squiggly, saucy, and digs a pirate patch? If Bobby Henderson's open letter to the Kansas School Board didn't spring to mind, this one is for you.

If it did, ditto. 

What do you get when you go looking for the herbs of eternal life? Not that. But maybe something better. In this episode, we talk the Panchatantra, some really mean jackals, and how to hang on to your friends. 

What's the fastest route to unhappy daughters, war with the French, and eventual relegation to the self-help annals of YouTube? In this episode, we talk murder, mayhem, and why Shakespeare felt the need to dish out confusing names to more characters than you could possibly fit on a single stage. 

What came first: the cosmic chicken, or the cosmic egg? Either way, Fred Hoyle would disapprove. In this episode we're off to the edge of the universe, to sort fact from fiction, and the fiction from the totally bizarre. 

What happens in medieval Russia, when sudden darkness plunges you into one of your first (and only) military defeats?

Someone immortalizes it in verse, forever. And then we talk about it some more.

What do Kirsten Dunst, chocolate gateaux and the French Revolution have in common? Today, we're talking about the most famous words Marie Antoinette never said, as well as a few lesser-known ones that she actually did.