The Oddities Department

King Ferdinand’s Royal Rooster, Prehistoric Trees, Unusual Body Disposal Methods & Tobacco Smoke Enemas

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2563520/fan_mail/new] This week on The Oddities Department, Gavin and Lindsay drag you through four exhibits that somehow connect royal anatomy, prehistoric swamp forests, death rituals, and one of the worst medical ideas humanity ever committed to paper. We start with King Ferdinand VII of Spain, a terrible ruler with an allegedly massive, malformed royal problem that required doctors, strategy, and possibly furniture. Then we travel back more than 300 million years to the Carboniferous Period, when trees refused to rot, oxygen levels went wild, and bugs grew large enough to make eye contact with your soul. From there, Lindsay builds Gavin a deeply cursed post-death menu featuring sky burial, Famadihana, mellification, and possibly the most annoying afterlife option of all: becoming glitter. Finally, Gavin closes the tour with the truly real history of tobacco smoke enemas, the 18th-century medical practice where doctors believed the cure for drowning, disease, and general inconvenience was blowing smoke directly up someone’s backside. This episode has everything: bizarre history, strange science, royal scandals, giant prehistoric insects, creative corpse disposal, questionable medicine, and enough wood jokes to get us escorted out of our own museum. Stay curious. Stay weird. And please… keep the tobacco out of your chocolate starfish. Topics include: King Ferdinand VII, Spanish royalty, bizarre medical history, Carboniferous Era trees, prehistoric insects, odd burial practices, sky burial, Famadihana, mellification, tobacco smoke enemas, weird history, strange science, and The Oddities Department.

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

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2563520/fan_mail/new] 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.

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

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2563520/fan_mail/new] 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.

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 [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2563520/fan_mail/new] 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.

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

Send us Fan Mail [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2563520/fan_mail/new] 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.