The Oddities Department

Gavin & Suzi

 Welcome to The Oddities Department, the podcast where history gets weird, science gets weirder, and Gavin and Suzi gleefully drag you into the strangest corners of the universe. Every episode dives into bizarre true stories, cursed artifacts, questionable science experiments, forgotten folklore, and so many “wait… WHAT?” moments. If you love learning things that make you clutch your pearls, laugh, or rethink reality, you are in the right place.

  1. Einstein's Brain Heist, Operation Mincemeat, Medieval Torture Devices, Cocaine Jazz Rats

    4D AGO

    Einstein's Brain Heist, Operation Mincemeat, Medieval Torture Devices, Cocaine Jazz Rats

    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.

    1h 33m
  2. The Silent Twins, Defenestration, The Gympie Gympie Tree, The Duality Of A Spy, Booty Hole Eel & Tarrare

    APR 27

    The Silent Twins, Defenestration, The Gympie Gympie Tree, The Duality Of A Spy, Booty Hole Eel & Tarrare

    Send us Fan Mail Episode 17 of The Oddities Department is what happens when the museum staff quits, the exhibits get hostile, and absolutely no one is left in charge. This week’s tour is unstable from the jump. We begin with June and Jennifer Gibbons — The Silent Twins, a haunting true story of two sisters who spoke only to each other, mirrored each other’s every move, and ultimately made a pact that only one of them could survive. From there, we open a window—literally—with Defenestration, the long-standing historical tradition of solving political disagreements by throwing people out of buildings. Prague really committed to the bit. Then we step into the Australian rainforest and meet the Gympie Gympie Tree, a plant so excruciatingly painful that contact with it has driven people to the brink. Nature, once again, chooses violence. Next, we follow Juan Pujol García, the Spanish chicken farmer turned double agent who built an entire fake spy network and convinced the Nazis to believe every word of it—helping reshape the outcome of World War II through pure deception. And then… things get worse. Because we arrive at Mr. Liu and the 2023 Butthole Eel, a modern medical emergency that proves not every idea deserves follow-through. Finally, we close with Tarrare, the man who ate everything—objects, animals, entire meals meant for dozens—and left behind one of the most disturbing and unexplainable medical cases in history. Six exhibits.  Zero janitorial support.  And something is definitely still moving in the basement. Welcome back to The Oddities Department.

    1h 43m
  3. The Horrific History of Beauty, Ann Hodges & The Meteorite, Mary Toft & The Rabbit Births, Johan de Witt, The Black Death "Cures"

    APR 9

    The Horrific History of Beauty, Ann Hodges & The Meteorite, Mary Toft & The Rabbit Births, Johan de Witt, The Black Death "Cures"

    Send us Fan Mail In Episode 16, we explore a collection of unbelievable historical moments that will keep you on your toes... • The Great Molasses Flood of 1919, one of the strangest disasters in U.S. history • The only confirmed case of a human struck by a meteorite (Ann Hodges) • The disturbing story of Mary Toft, the woman who convinced doctors she gave birth to rabbits • The brutal fate of Johan de Witt, in one of history’s most shocking acts of political violence • The dangerous and often deadly history of beauty standards and cosmetics • And a list of Black Death “cures” that somehow made a deadly plague even worse This episode blends true crime, dark history, science, and absurd human behavior, uncovering how misinformation, desperation, and curiosity have shaped some of history’s most chaotic moments. If you’re into podcasts about:  Strange historical events  Bizarre medical stories  Silly Historical Figures  Unexplained or unbelievable history …you’re in the right place. 🎙️ New episodes of The Oddities Department drop regularly—where history gets messy, and the truth is always stranger than fiction.

    1h 31m
  4. Nellie Bly, The King Of Sting, Dildos, Casanova, Oysters, The Cadaver Synod & Operation Cat Drop

    MAR 30

    Nellie Bly, The King Of Sting, Dildos, Casanova, Oysters, The Cadaver Synod & Operation Cat Drop

    Send us Fan Mail Episode 15 of The Oddities Department cracks open another tour of historical chaos. This week’s tour contains six stories that are equal parts fascinating, horrifying, and deeply, deeply hilarious. We begin with The Story of Nellie Bly, the fearless journalist who got herself committed to an insane asylum in 1887 to expose the brutal conditions inside, then came back out and changed journalism forever. Next is The King of Sting, Dr. Justin Schmidt, the entomologist who turned getting stung by some of the world’s most painful insects into legitimate scientific research… and then described the agony like a deranged poet. Then we stop by The Weird History of the Dildo Exhibit, tracing one of humanity’s oldest inventions from stone-age pleasure tools to modern taboos and beyond. Because apparently, some ideas survive every civilization. From there, we slide into Casanova & The Oyster, the slippery, seductive history of how one legendary lover turned shellfish into foreplay and helped cement oysters as history’s most overrated aphrodisiac. Then comes The Cadaver Synod, the unbelievably real moment in church history when a dead pope was dug up, dressed in robes, and put on trial by his enemies in one of the most grotesque acts of medieval pettiness ever recorded. And finally, we descend into the chaos of Operation Cat Drop, the time humans tried to fix one ecological disaster by parachuting cats into the Borneo jungle like that was a perfectly normal thing for a government to do. Six exhibits.  Zero sanity.  Maximum historical whiplash. Welcome to The Oddities Department.

    2h 1m
  5. The Kentucky Meat Shower, Juliane Koepcke, Dublin's Whiskey River, Mad Hatters, Chiropractic's & The Great Camel Experiment

    MAR 22

    The Kentucky Meat Shower, Juliane Koepcke, Dublin's Whiskey River, Mad Hatters, Chiropractic's & The Great Camel Experiment

    Send us Fan Mail Episode 14 of The Oddities Department drags us even deeper into the archives, where the case files smell faintly of meat, whiskey, and very poor decision-making. This week’s crate contains six stories that should have stayed under lock and key. We begin with The Kentucky Meat Shower, the bizarre 1876 incident where chunks of flesh rained down over a woman’s yard in Kentucky…  Then comes The Curious Case of Juliane Koepcke, the teenage girl who survived falling out of a plane over the Amazon rainforest and somehow walked out of the jungle alive. Next is the 1875 Whiskey River in Dublin, where a warehouse fire unleashed a flood of liquor through the streets, and locals responded with buckets, cups, and catastrophically bad judgment. From there, we step into Mad Hatter Syndrome, the grim industrial history behind the phrase “mad as a hatter,” where mercury poisoning slowly destroyed the minds and bodies of 18th & 19th-century hat makers. Medicine takes a hard left turn with the inception of chiropractics, a system born from a back crack, a deaf janitor, and a founder who claimed the whole idea came to him from a ghost doctor. And finally, we witness The Great Camel Experiment, the moment the United States Army decided the solution to Southwestern logistics was a full-blown camel corps. Six case files.  Maximum absurdity.  Minimum supervision. Welcome to The Oddities Department.

    1h 44m
  6. The Mississippi Scheme, Princess Caraboo, The Corpse Queen, The Berners St. Hoax, Bizarre Animal Mating & Diogenes The Cynic

    MAR 8

    The Mississippi Scheme, Princess Caraboo, The Corpse Queen, The Berners St. Hoax, Bizarre Animal Mating & Diogenes The Cynic

    Send us Fan Mail 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.

    1h 40m
  7. A Naked Medium, A King & His Nerds, Bavarian Beer Riots, 10 Unusual Deaths, Retrograde Menstruation & A Tumor + A Surprise

    MAR 1

    A Naked Medium, A King & His Nerds, Bavarian Beer Riots, 10 Unusual Deaths, Retrograde Menstruation & A Tumor + A Surprise

    Send us Fan Mail 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.

    1h 43m
  8. An Edible Zoo, The RMS Carmania, Booty Bombs, Henrietta Lacks, A Tank Drivin' Baddie, & The Radium Girls

    FEB 23

    An Edible Zoo, The RMS Carmania, Booty Bombs, Henrietta Lacks, A Tank Drivin' Baddie, & The Radium Girls

    Send us Fan Mail 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.

    1h 25m
See All (18)

5
out of 5
11 Ratings

About

 Welcome to The Oddities Department, the podcast where history gets weird, science gets weirder, and Gavin and Suzi gleefully drag you into the strangest corners of the universe. Every episode dives into bizarre true stories, cursed artifacts, questionable science experiments, forgotten folklore, and so many “wait… WHAT?” moments. If you love learning things that make you clutch your pearls, laugh, or rethink reality, you are in the right place.

Information

  • Creator
    Gavin & Suzi
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    18
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Oddities Department
  • Show Website
    The Oddities Department

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