Everything from secret government experiments on aliens, implanted memories of sisters being kidnapped, extremely convenient bees...all of the things that filled the stories of the X-Files came from a 30+ year tradition of paranormal documentary style TV shows before it.

But what real world trends inspired THOSE TV shows?

Joining us this month to find out is the creator of the Accentricity podcast and University of Glasgow lecturer Dr. Sadie Ryan!

Go to patreon.com/seeminglyunrelated for the complete episode

Seemingly Unrelated is a podcast all about exploring how everyday things connect to major movements in history, politics and culture.

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Well...not entirely but...sort of? Welcome back to Seemingly Unrelated, while the main feed is on hiatus the bonus feed is still racking up coins and smashing our heads inexplicably into floating bricks.

The full bonus episodes are available exclusively on Patreon for the low price of $2/month sign up now to find out what Nintendo has to do with Arab oil cartels, tobacco giants, and the Yakuza themselves...

go to http://www.patreon.com/seeminglyunrelated to get the rest of this episode

#nintendo  @NintendoJP  @beforemario  @GameHistoryOrg  #hanafuda #yakuza #darkhistory #videogamehistory

Seemingly Unrelated is a podcast all about exploring how everyday things connect to major movements in history, politics and culture.

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Here is a little preview of our final bonus episode with Alice Fraser. Go to patreon.com/seeminglyunrelated to unlock the rest of the episode for as little as $2.

Also, you can book Alice Fraser to help you with your creative work just go to https://www.patreon.com/AliceFraser or https://www.alicecomedyfraser.com/ for details her workshops are exceptional and reasonably priced.

Christmas Island is a really bad song, but not nearly as bad as what's been happening on Christmas Island. That means we needed to find someone extra good to help explore this history and we invited romance novelist, prolific podcaster, comedian/lawyer and all around good egg Alice Fraser to help us answer some questions about Christmas Island like:

How boring was the naming of islands in the 17th/18th century? Is the British military responsible for giving a bunch of people cancer? How important is it to introduce your toddler to Godzilla? And of course: If Batman funded his vigilante life style with his own poo would we be so mad about all the punching of poor people?

All this and more in our holiday bonus spectacular of Seemingly Unrelated

Bibliography:

Alexis-Martin, Becky. “The Atomic History of Kiritimati – a Tiny Island Where Humanity Realised Its Most Lethal Potential.” The Conversation, July 4, 2019. https://doi.org/10.64628/AB.uhxvuqp3p.

Australian Border Force Website. “Australian Border Force Website.” Accessed December 14, 2025. https://www.abf.gov.au/.

“Bird-Lore/Volume 01/No. 2/Suggestions for Bird-Day Programs - Wikisource, the Free Online Library.” Accessed December 14, 2025. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bird-Lore/Volume_01/No2/Suggestionsfor_Bird-Day_Programs.

“Bugbog.Com/Kiribati_line/Christmas_island.Htm.” Accessed December 14, 2025. https://www.bugbog.com/kiribati_line/christmas_island.htm.

“Christms Island.” Accessed December 14, 2025. https://www.thehistoricalsociety.org/history-online/christmas-island.html.

“Formerly Disputed Islands | U.S. Department of the Interior.” Site page. June 12, 2015. https://www.doi.gov/oia/islands/disputedislands.

Gómez-gallego, Tamara, Iván Sánchez-castro, Lázaro Molina, et al. “Phosphorus Acquisition by Plants: Challenges and Promising Strategies for Sustainable Agriculture in the 21st Century.” Pedosphere 35, no. 1 (2025): 193–215. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pedsph.2024.05.002.

“Protecting Birds Where They Live and Migrate.” BirdLife International, March 22, 2021. https://www.birdlife.org/projects/ibas-mapping-most-important-places/.

The Andrews Sisters – The Vocal Group Hall of Fame. n.d. Accessed December 14, 2025. https://vocalgroup.org/inductees/the-andrews-sisters/.

“TimesMachine: July 25, 1856 - NYTimes.Com.” Accessed December 14, 2025. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1856/07/25/77054566.html?zoom=14.61&pageNumber=8.

We Were but Sailing by – Early Impressions of Christmas Island. April 19, 2019. https://christmasislandarchives.com/we-were-but-sailing-by-early-impressions-christmas-island/.

Seemingly Unrelated is a podcast all about exploring how everyday things connect to major movements in history, politics and culture.

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📽️ Find the videos on Youtube

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Welcome to the season finale of Seemingly Unrelated! We've managed 46 episodes so far and we'll be returning in March with season 3 (bonus eps continually monthly patreon.com/seeminglyunrelated )

To cap it off this festive season we'll be traveling to Japan where holidays like Christmas should seem to be unrelated already, but it gets even weirder. Why is there a Colonel Sanders dressed in a Santa Suit every December? What decidely un-Christian like business has its busiest day of the year on Dec 25th? More importantly: Who is Randy Bass and what has he got to do with buckets of Christmas Chicken?

Joining us again is fan favorite co-host Alicia Britt to answer this secret blend of 11 secrets and spices and to tackle the most daunting mystery of them all: Is 7-11 actually from Asia?

All this and more on the seasonally themed season finale of Seemingly Unrelated!

02:48 Episode Proper Starts for new people

Seemingly Unrelated is a podcast all about exploring how everyday things connect to major movements in history, politics and culture.

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When you look at the back of the box of your favorite ready-to-eat meal, where does the list of macromolecules and daily requirements on the nutrition label come from? That's what we are going to find out this week on Seemingly Unrelated as we explore the unusually recent history of the nutrition label by asking: What did we do before we added these things in 1994? Why don't vitamins and minerals show up on every nutrition label? What role did World War II play in getting the governments of the world to take action on minimal nutrition? And why do the founders of vitamines [sic] Funk & McCollum sound like second rate musical writers?

We're joined this week by the host of the Blue Collar White Coat podcast, she is a professional science communicator perfectly positioned to talk about the difficulties in translating hard science to public consumption it's Amy Weldon!

Together we will find out the greatest mystery of all: Did a corpulant, Victorian undertaker trick us all into counting carbs from beyond the grave? Only here, on Seemingly Unrelated!

Seemingly Unrelated is a podcast all about exploring how everyday things connect to major movements in history, politics and culture.

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!!ALERT ALERT!! GO TO BIT.LY/ALPHACAT1 RIGHT NOW THE FUND ENDS FRI 14 NOV !!ALERT ALERT!!

The gorilla enclosure seconds the motion to sanction the cave bats for their hoarding of fresh fruit resources. More like the Zoo-nited Nations amirite? I'll stop.

On this episode we are diving into the other controversial history behind zoos as explore the ways in which zoos and zoo animals have been used in international diplomacy. Was the first ever zoo made up of trophies from conquest or a contemplative garden to debate the animalistic nature of man? Does the English heraldry actually feature three leopards instead of lions? How long is too long for a zoo to put animals in poorly maintained cages before someone intervenes? And of course, did a polar bear really go swimming in the Thames river every day?

To help us answer these questions we must call upon podcasting veteran, director of the film Earbuds: The Podcasting Documentary and current media mogul at White Cat Entertainment it's Chris Mancini!

He'll help us answer that most important question of all: What makes panda bears so damn popular and is it a secret conspiracy? All this and more will be answered this week on Seemingly Unrelated!

To get the full show notes click here

Seemingly Unrelated is a podcast all about exploring how everyday things connect to major movements in history, politics and culture.

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It's the Seemingly Unrelated Spoooooktacular! We've got a terrifying and spinetingling episode for you this week as we look deep into the history of Witch iconography: the point hat, the broom, the black cat, not the nose though...the nose thing is just exactly what you think it is.

Our guide through this spectre of deeply problematic horrors is in fact Michael Johnstone from Walkie Talky Brewing who has to take the reigns because of a Halloween curse placed on Andrew in 1987 that prevents him from leading on main feed spooky episodes.

Michael is better placed for this one because we'll be tackling a popular internet question: Were witches actually just beer brewers who ran afoul of Christian anti-drinking sentiments?

Find out as we repeat the same incantation as a woman around the cauldron did but get all the credit this Halloween on Seemingly Unrelated!

Get the full bibliography on the free post patreon.com/Seeminglyunrelated

Seemingly Unrelated is a podcast all about exploring how everyday things connect to major movements in history, politics and culture.

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We're talking about the very real and physical place that is Hollywood, CA on this episode of Seemingly Unrelated. Why are the hills around Los Angeles filled with the rich and famous while the valleys are home to much more socio-economic diversity? Did film studios set up shop in Hollywood because of the weather? Has the 9th circuit court of appeals been holding back patent law for 150 years? Were the seeds of the Great Recession sown in the Great Depression itself?

We dig into these questions with our special guest co-host Phil W. Bayles!

Plus, the most famous billboard in the world tricked us all into thinking it was a legitimate piece of history. All this week on a star studded episode of Seemingly Unrelated.

Here are those wild 9th Circuit Cases I mentioned in the episode: Click Here

#Hollywood #RealEstateScam #Edendale #BoyleHeights #UniversalCity #ThomasEdison #Hollywoodhistory #historypodcast #podcast

Find the full bibliography for the episode here

Seemingly Unrelated is a podcast all about exploring how everyday things connect to major movements in history, politics and culture.

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At the time of this episode's release we are in the middle of a 10 day period of reflection and piety for the Jewish people. The window between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is known as the 'High Holidays' to many. So, we at Seemingly Unrelated want to take this confluence of events where the High Holidays overlap with an extra 3rd episode of the show inside of a calendar month to put the spotlight on these holidays.

What are the High Holidays about? Why are they celebrated so much in the home and not at the temple? How did the Jews of the Malabar coast in South India and the Egyptian god Anubis help shape the meaning of the word "atonement" during these Holidays? What does it mean to atone anyway and how does the shifting nature of that word reflect a flexible Jewish identity spread over thousands of years and bound to no single region of the world? These are the questions we set out to answer on this extra episode as well as to ask what atonement means for the High Holidays of 2025.

To help guide us on our journey is our special guest and the person who will be leading the discussion while Andrew learns some new things, Dr. Ophira Gamliel. Ophira is a senior lecturer in religious studies at the University of Glasgow and author of Judaism in South India 849-1489: Relocating Malabar Jewry.

If you are listening to this before Oct 2, we also think you'll appreciate this screening of The Rose of Ioannina that is definitely worth checking out.

Bibliography:

“Eyal Weizman ← Forensic Architecture.” Accessed September 28, 2025. https://forensic-architecture.org/about/team/member/eyal-weizman.

Gamliel, Ophira. “Land Fetishism and Genocidal Iconoclasm.” Palestine/Israel Review, The Pennsylvania State University Press, September 2, 2025. https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/366001/.

Gamliel, Ophira. Matrilineal Jews or Slave Descendants? Halakhic Laws and Trade Alliances in Medieval Malabar. Edited by Mahmood Kooria. Amsterdam University Press, 2024. https://eprints.gla.ac.uk/287725/.

Google Arts & Culture. “A 13th-Century Manuscript Depicts an Eastern Muslim Boat from Maqamat al-Hariri.” Accessed September 28, 2025. https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/a-13th-century-manuscript-depicts-an-eastern-muslim-boat-from-maqamat-al-hariri/pwHrty-7mcYEsw.

Lambourn, Elizabeth A. “‘Things for the Cabin’: Inhabiting the Ocean.” Chapter. In Abraham’s Luggage: A Social Life of Things in the Medieval Indian Ocean World, 189–218. Asian Connections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Seemingly Unrelated is a podcast all about exploring how everyday things connect to major movements in history, politics and culture.

🎵 Subscribe to the show everywhere

📽️ Find the videos on Youtube

🎰 Want even more? Get bonus episodes for as little as $2/month and a list of sources for this episode on our Patreon

Follow us on Substack Instagram TikTok

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If it's 2 am in Denver Colorado and you've been out partying all night, where will you go to fill up on some fast food to tide you over? Well, if it's 1858 the answer is: oyster bars. This week on Seemingly Unrelated we are cracking open the shell that hides the secret history of the oyster asking big questions like: How dangerous were oyster beds to early European colonists? Why does anyone know about Altoona, PA? HOW much did the US government spend on the transcontinental railroad?! What putrid Youtube rabbit hole has our guest fallen down recently? And of course, do oysters really get people excited or is it just the beverages we tend to pair with them?

Our guest this week is a marketing guru and podcast producer/host of The Wire Stripped as well as Flixwatcher (both featuring Andrew as a guest in multiple episodes) it's Kobi Omenaka!

All this plus: How McDonald's rebuilt the 11th busiest airport in the world, on Seemingly Unrelated!

Bibliography:

Ali, Rafat. ‘The 23 Grandest Amtrak Train Stations in America’. Skift, 26 October 2013. https://skift.com/2013/10/26/the-22-grandest-amtrak-train-stations-in-america/.

Bill of Rights Institute. ‘Westward Expansion Migration US’. Accessed 15 September 2025. https://live-bri-dos.pantheonsite.io/essays/migration-west/.

Burrows, Michelle. Oyster Nutrition Facts. n.d.

‘Cannery’. The Baltimore Museum of Industry, n.d. Accessed 15 September 2025. https://www.thebmi.org/exhibits/cannery/.

Jennifer Bohnhoff. ‘A Short Inquiry into Canning, Oysters, and Christmas’. Accessed 15 September 2025. http://jenniferbohnhoff.com/3/post/2018/12/a-short-inquiry-into-canning-oysters-and-christmas.html.

‘Kuwait International Airport’. Airport Technology, n.d. Accessed 15 September 2025. https://www.airport-technology.com/projects/kuwait-international/.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. ‘Traveling on the Overland Trails, 1843-1860 | National Expansion and Reform, 1815 - 1880 | U.S. History Primary Source Timeline | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress’. Web page. Accessed 15 September 2025. https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/national-expansion-and-reform-1815-1880/traveling-on-the-overland-trails-1843-1860/.

Maryland, Preservation. ‘This Day in History: Chartering of the B&O Railroad’. Preservation Maryland, 28 February 2022. https://preservationmaryland.org/this-day-in-history-chartering-of-the-bo-railroad/.

‘OYSTERS AND TYPHOID’. Journal of the American Medical Association 84, no. 4 (1925): 286–87. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1925.02660300044015.

Program, Campus Archaeology. ‘The Great Oyster Craze: Why 19th Century Americans Loved Oysters’. MSU Campus Archaeology Program, 23 February 2017. https://campusarch.msu.edu/?p=4962.

Stover, John F. History of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Purdue University Press, 1987.

University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. ‘History of Oysters’. 18 September 2017. https://www.umces.edu/oysters/history.

Virginia Institute of Marine Science. ‘History of Oysters in the Chesapeake Bay’. Accessed 15 September 2025. https://www.vims.edu/research/units/labgroups/molluscan_ecology/archive/vorhf/introduction/.

Seemingly Unrelated is a podcast all about exploring how everyday things connect to major movements in history, politics and culture.

🎵 Subscribe to the show everywhere

📽️ Find the videos on Youtube

🎰 Want even more? Get bonus episodes for as little as $2/month and a list of sources for this episode on our Patreon

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.