The Oddities Department

For centuries, humanity has been fascinated by witches. We've feared them, hunted them, blamed them for everything from failed harvests to mysterious illnesses, and developed some truly disgusting methods of keeping them away.

This week, The Oddities Department continues our four weeks of spooky tours with VVITCHES, exploring the strange history of witchcraft, superstition, persecution, and the extraordinary lengths people went to protect themselves from imaginary supernatural threats.

First, Gavin opens Exhibit A: VVitches: Manufacturing a Monster. From ancient magical practices and everyday folk traditions to religious paranoia, accusations of devil worship, and the infamous witch hunts, we explore how the familiar image of the evil witch came to exist, and how centuries of fear transformed ordinary people into supposed servants of Satan.

Then Lindsay takes us into Exhibit B: Witch Deterrents & The Witch Bottle. Horseshoes, iron nails, protective charms, and some particularly revolting homemade remedies. Discover the bizarre methods people used to ward off witchcraft, including a centuries-old invention that proves humanity has always been willing to put some deeply questionable things in a jar.

Two exhibits. One theme.

Welcome to The Oddities Department

Send us Fan Mail

In Episode 18 of The Oddities Department, we take you through four wildly unsettling (and occasionally hilarious) exhibits where history, science, and human curiosity collide in the most chaotic ways imaginable.

🧠 Einstein’s Brain Heist
When Albert Einstein died in 1955, he asked for a simple cremation—no autopsy, no spectacle. A pathologist ignored that, removed his brain without permission, and spent decades slicing it up and distributing it to scientists around the world. Science… or theft?

💀 Operation Mincemeat (WWII’s Most Absurd Spy Plan)
British intelligence used the body of a homeless man, gave him a fake identity, a fiancée, and top-secret documents—then dropped him into the ocean to trick Nazi Germany. It worked. Somehow.

😬 Medieval Torture Devices Designed for Women
From iron masks that shredded tongues to devices built for public humiliation and mutilation, we uncover the disturbing reality of gender-targeted torture in history.

🐀🎷 Cocaine Jazz Rats (Yes, This Is Real Science)
In a real 2011 study, researchers gave rats cocaine and discovered something unexpected—they started preferring jazz music. What sounds like a joke is actually a fascinating look at how addiction rewires the brain.

Send us Fan Mail

The regular museum tours have wrapped up for the evening, but there's still plenty happening behind the scenes.

Welcome to THE ODDITORIUM, the brand-new after-hours variety show from The Oddities Department, where bizarre discoveries, forgotten headlines, unexplained mysteries, and humanity's most questionable decisions finally get their own place on display.

In our very first episode, we're opening six departments.

The Bulletin Board: We investigate mysterious cosmic objects hiding in old telescope data, two bizarre new species of sea spiders discovered in the Pacific Northwest, and a 3,800-year-old sealed letter that modern technology has finally allowed researchers to read.

WTF Weekly: Gavin digs into a 1910 Spokane newspaper article suggesting that America solve its meat shortage by raising hippopotamuses for food. 

The Visitor Vault: Lindsay explores the Pig War of 1859, when the United States and Britain nearly went to war over a pig eating someone's potatoes.

The Fringe Files: We revisit the Oakville Blobs, a bizarre 1994 incident in Washington state when mysterious gelatinous material reportedly rained from the sky, leaving scientists, residents, and conspiracy theorists scratching their heads.

The Patent Pit: Lindsay hands Gavin $100,000 in imaginary money to invest in four very real inventions with a paranormal twist. Some became successful products. Others probably should have stayed buried.

The Afterlife Department: We process the final wishes of three people who refused to let death interfere with their creativity, including a Ferrari burial, a philosopher who turned himself into furniture, and the inventor who made a Pringles can his final resting place.

Six departments. One very questionable after-hours tour.

Welcome to THE ODDITORIUM.

The regular tours may be over for tonight, but we're just getting started.

Send us Fan Mail

Some places have a history so dark that even death doesn't seem to empty the rooms.

This week, The Oddities Department kicks off four weeks of spooky tours with THE HAUNTED MUSEUM, exploring two legendary landmarks where tragic history, restless spirits, and unexplained encounters have kept ghost stories alive for generations.

First, Lindsay opens Exhibit #144: The Ghosts of the Davenport. Spokane's grandest hotel has spent more than a century collecting secrets. From a fatal fall through its magnificent lobby to an unsolved murder, phantom ballroom music, ghostly bellhops, and an invisible child who reportedly held a security guard's hand, the Davenport has no shortage of unsettling stories. And Lindsay has a particularly strange secret of her own to reveal.

Then Gavin takes us aboard Exhibit #145: The RMS Queen Mary. Once a luxurious ocean liner carrying Hollywood royalty across the Atlantic, she became a massive wartime troopship known as the Grey Ghost. Her history includes catastrophic collisions, deadly accidents, and decades of alleged paranormal activity. From the infamous Watertight Door 13 to the haunted swimming pool and notorious Stateroom B340, we'll explore the tragedies and legends that earned her a reputation as one of the world's most haunted ships.

Two exhibits. One theme.

Welcome to THE HAUNTED MUSEUM.

Send us Fan Mail

Technology has always had a strange habit of outrunning the people who build it.

This week, The Oddities Department is diving into two stories about machines, intelligence, and the increasingly blurry line between human thought and the technology we create.

First, Gavin opens Exhibit #142: Alan Turing. Mathematician, codebreaker, visionary, and one of the most important minds in the history of computing. His work helped change the course of World War II, shaped the foundations of modern computer science, and raised questions about machine intelligence that we are still arguing about today.

Then Lindsay takes us into Exhibit #143: The Meat Cloud, where data centers, computing power, and human biology collide in ways that sound like science fiction until you realize they are very much not.

Two exhibits. One theme.

Welcome to TECHNOLOGIA.

Send us Fan Mail

Welcome back to The Oddities Department, where history gets strange, science gets stranger, and questionable medicine has apparently been trying to kill us for centuries.

In Episode 26, we cut the ribbon on The Odditorium, our brand-new guest wing, and hand the keys to our first Guest Tour Guide, Terra Izora of Thick Thighs & Murder Vibes. Her chosen theme: Strange Cures & Questionable Remedies.

Terra starts with Graham Cracker’d, the story of Reverend Sylvester Graham, a nineteenth-century health reformer who believed bland food, whole grains, cold baths, and a joyless diet could suppress sexual desire and save humanity from moral ruin. Somehow, we eventually turned his legacy into s’mores.

Then Lindsay introduces Wilhelm Reich & The Fantastical Fuck Box, following a respected psychoanalyst from theories about orgasms and emotional tension to orgone energy, a human-sized energy accumulator, Albert Einstein, the FDA, and one spectacular descent into questionable medical science.

Gavin closes the main exhibits with Album Graecum, the elegant Latin name for sun-bleached, powdered dog shit that apothecaries mixed with honey and prescribed for severe throat ailments.

Then we cut the ribbon on three brand-new interactive exhibits inside The Odditorium.

The Lost Exhibit, where Terra must invent the history of a mystery artifact before we reveal the horrifying truth behind a Victorian tapeworm trap.

Oddity or Fraudity, where Terra and Lindsay must decide which bizarre medical treatment was real: live pigeon slippers used to draw out fever, or a deeply suspicious dysentery paste involving cow gallstones, beaver grease, mercury, and opium.

And The Suggestion Box, where we read actual one-star reviews of famous museums and make Terra and Gavin figure out which institution pissed somebody off enough to take it to the internet.

This episode has anti-horny crackers, cosmic orgasm energy, medicinal dog shit, tapeworm fishing, pigeon footwear, fake pharmaceuticals, angry museum patrons, and our first Guest Tour Guide trying to survive all of it.

Please enjoy your visit.

Listen to The Oddities Department anywhere you get your podcasts.

Send us Fan Mail

Welcome back to The Oddities Department, where history gets strange, science gets stranger, and humanity continues proving that absolutely nothing is too weird to document.

In Episode 25, we open the museum doors to four exhibits involving ancient cats, bizarre bird reproduction, explicit medieval carvings, and one of Christianity’s strangest relics.

Lindsay starts with Pussy Cats, tracing the strange history of humans and cats through ancient Cyprus, Egyptian cat worship, Japanese cat folklore, witchcraft accusations, medieval manuscripts, Scottish legends, and famous ship cats.

Then Gavin heads into the barnyard for The Cloacal Kiss, exploring rooster anatomy, bird reproduction, cloaca's, chicken courtship, sperm storage, female choice, and why most birds evolved without a penis.

After that, Lindsay introduces the Sheela-na-Gig, mysterious medieval stone carvings of naked women displaying exaggerated vulvas on churches, castles, and walls. Were they warnings against lust, fertility symbols, protective figures, or something stranger?

Finally, Gavin closes the tour with The Holy Foreskin, the alleged foreskin of Jesus Christ. Multiple churches claimed to own it, saints had visions involving it, theologians argued over it, and the most famous relic vanished from Calcata, Italy, in 1983.

This episode has supernatural cats, penisless roosters, medieval stone anatomy, holy relics, and more questionable history than one museum tour should reasonably contain.

Please enjoy your visit.

Listen to The Oddities Department anywhere you get your podcasts.

Send us Fan Mail

Welcome back to The Oddities Department, where history gets strange, science gets stranger, and humanity once again proves it cannot be trusted with animals, paperwork, or a government budget.

In Episode 24, we open the museum doors to four exhibits that should not make sense, and yet somehow, all of them are real.

Lindsay starts us in World War II with Project X-Ray, the very real military program where one dentist convinced the United States government to strap tiny incendiary devices to bats.

Then Gavin marches us to Scotland, where the Norwegian King’s Guard adopted a penguin, promoted him through the ranks, knighted him, and eventually created Major General Sir Nils Olav III, a bird with more military authority than most of us will ever have.

After that, Lindsay takes us to Brazil for the Lead Masks Case, where two men were found dead on a hillside wearing homemade lead masks beside a notebook full of cryptic instructions.

And finally, Gavin heads into the hills of Kentucky for the Blue People of Kentucky, a story of genetics, isolation, folklore, methemoglobinemia, and one family whose medical mystery became Appalachian legend.

This episode has bats with bombs, penguins with rank, dead men with instructions, and a family tree that needed medical supervision.

Please enjoy your visit.

Listen to The Oddities Department anywhere you get your podcasts.

Send us Fan Mail

This week on The Oddities Department, history gets cosmic, reincarnated, frozen, and deeply classified.

In Episode 23, Gavin and Lindsay take you through four bizarre true stories from the stranger corners of science, history, mystery, and government decision-making.

First, Lindsay looks up at The Sirius Problem, where the Dogon people of Mali, a hidden companion star, French anthropology, ancient knowledge, and modern skepticism all collide in one of the weirdest debates to ever escape an academic journal. Is it astronomy? Is it anthropology? Is it cultural exchange? Is it space fish? Depends who you ask, and unfortunately, everyone is asking loudly.

Then Gavin takes us into the strange life of Dorothy Louise Eady, the little girl from Edwardian England who fell down the stairs, was declared dead, woke back up, and spent the rest of her life insisting she remembered ancient Egypt. She would grow up, move to Egypt, work near the Temple of Seti I, become known as Omm Sety, and build an entire life around a home she should not have known how to miss.

From there, Lindsay drags us into the Alps for Cave Man Carbs, where Ötzi the Iceman shows up frozen, tattooed, arthritic, murdered, and somehow still not done becoming everyone’s problem. What begins as one of the oldest cold cases in human history eventually leads to ancient microbes, questionable science, and the deeply unsettling possibility that archaeology sometimes ends in bread.

And finally, Gavin opens the file on MK-ULTRA, the CIA’s very real, very documented program of mind-control research, non-consensual drug experiments, LSD, safe houses, destroyed records, and reckless disregard for human life. It is not a conspiracy theory. It was the conspiracy.

 This episode has everything: suspicious stars, reincarnation, ancient Egypt, dead pharaoh romance, glacier murder, bad knees, yeasty bread science, LSD experiments, government secrets, safe houses, brothels, shredded records, and just enough chaos to make it worth the listen.

Listen to The Oddities Department anywhere you get your podcasts.

Send us Fan Mail

This week on The Oddities Department, history gets wet, explosive, misrepresented, and unclaimed.

In Episode 22, Gavin and Lindsay take you through four bizarre oddities from the stranger corners of history.

 First, we head to the Great Lakes, where freshwater looks calm from the shoreline, but underneath the surface, things get cold, violent, ancient, and deeply suspicious. There are vanished ships, missing planes, singing sands, underwater stone formations, ghost ships, lake monsters, red goblins, and one very important reminder that “it’s just a lake” is how people end up in the footnotes.

Then we meet Elmer McCurdy, a real-life outlaw with a tragic beginning, a drinking problem, bad instincts, and just enough nitroglycerin knowledge to make every robbery worse. Elmer wanted fortune, glory, and a place in outlaw history. What he got was loose change, destroyed money, poor planning, whiskey, bloodhounds, and one of the most embarrassingly unsuccessful criminal careers the American West ever coughed up.

From there, we pull apart what people think they know about Vodou. Zombies, dolls, curses, demons, possession, and scary movie nonsense all go under the museum lights, and what we find underneath is older, richer, and far more human. This exhibit digs into Haitian history, slavery, survival, resistance, ancestors, religious camouflage, and the way fear can turn someone else’s sacred tradition into a horror prop with bad lighting.

Finally, we end in the back room with A Real Life Oddity, a story that starts with a dead man no one came to claim and spirals into funeral homes, sideshows, carnival theft, wax museums, exploitation films, amusement parks, glow-in-the-dark paint, forensic investigation, and one deeply unsettling question: who the hell let this happen?

This episode has everything: shipwrecks, outlaw stupidity, cursed freshwater, spiritual misinformation, singing beaches, missing planes, train robberies, bad explosives math, mystery bodies, carnival chaos, and just enough education to make the whole thing legally defensible. 

Content warning: This episode contains discussion of drowning, shipwrecks, plane crashes, death, body parts, human remains, slavery, colonial violence, religious discrimination, corpse exploitation, mummified remains, gun violence, alcohol abuse, illness, tuberculosis, profanity, and historical mistreatment of people and bodies after death.

Send us Fan Mail