The Box of Oddities

Awake During Brain Surgery

Awake brain surgery sounds impossible—until you hear about musicians who play instruments while surgeons operate on their exposed brains. In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro explore the true medical phenomenon of awake craniotomy, including the astonishing case of a professional violinist who played during brain tumor removal to protect the neural pathways that control her music. Then, things take a historical turn as we dive into the bizarre wellness craze known as the Grape Cure, once promoted as a treatment for cancer, tuberculosis, and nearly everything else—despite zero scientific evidence. From neuroscience and identity to medical quackery and human absurdity, this episode asks: How do you protect the part of yourself that makes you who you are? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Inbox Of Oddities #66

Inbox of Oddities: Holiday Hauntings, Freak Flags & Fiery Volcanoes In this festive Inbox of Oddities, Kat and JG unwrap a sleigh-load of eerie encounters, laugh-out-loud listener mishaps, and heartwarming Freak Fam moments just in time for the holidays. From a funeral home organ that plays itself long after burial (yes, really) to a mysterious roadside prophet who triggers a time-slip radio broadcast in the desert, this episode is packed with true stories that are as strange as they are unforgettable. Listeners share everything from a ghost calmly straightening sheet music hours after her service, to hot-coffee courtroom déjà vu, to the world’s most enthusiastic quilter recommending alien-language movies. We’ve also got community favorites: what your Spotify Wrapped reveals about your listening obsession, how kids describe the hosts’ voices (“nice on my ears”), and how one Freak Fam member accidentally taught her child to shout “butthole water” in a grocery store. You’ll hear about chicken prosthetic arms gifted for the holidays, a listener’s pivotal tip that made its way to the RCMP, and touching tributes to beloved pets who helped their humans through hard times. Plus: live-volcano videos from Hawaii, a cave that stores Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, and tales of freak flags waving proudly at 11:11. Whether it’s paranormal activity, bizarre coincidences, unlikely emotional support from podcasts, or stories that push Kat to cry and JG to consider wearing a cardigan and pipe on Christmas Eve, this episode celebrates everything weird, wonderful, heartfelt, and Freak-Fam-approved. This Box contains the following ingredients: True paranormal stories, funeral-home ghost encounters, eerie organ music, bizarre coincidences, listener-submitted mysteries, UFO-friendly anecdotes, holiday oddities, emotional pet tributes, viral Spotify Wrapped stats, and heartwarming Freak Fam messages. Perfect for fans of strange phenomena, supernatural stories, weird history, spooky listener emails, and comedy-meets-creepy storytelling. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Season’s Creepings

On this festive but delightfully off-kilter edition of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro return from an impromptu cruise with a pocketful of overheard conversations, a temporarily abandoned “walking rock,” and the kind of people-watching moments that make you wonder if Thin Mints are actually the glue holding society together. Then Jethro descends—figuratively—into the chilling depths of Sweden’s historic Falun copper mine to uncover the true story of Fat Mats, the perfectly preserved miner whose body was found in 1719 after vanishing four decades earlier. Why did he look freshly deceased after 40 years? Why were his legs missing? And how did a simple silver coin become a family heirloom that still survives today? Kat follows with a world-tour of wonderfully unsettling holiday traditions: a rhyming duel with a Welsh dead horse named Mari Lwyd, a frog-eating, piggyback-demanding winter demon lurking in the Balkans, and Frau Perchta—an Alpine holiday enforcer who rewards the tidy and industrious while punishing the lazy with… well, creatively aggressive disembowelment. It’s a globe-spanning celebration of strange seasonal folklore, preserved miners, questionable cruise-ship conversations, and precisely the kind of merry madness you’ve come to expect from The Box of Oddities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Bone Pits Meet Glowing Squirrels

A buried bone pit filled with dismembered skeletons. Glowing underpants. Flying squirrels that light up like neon signs. Welcome back to The Box of Oddities, where Kat and Jethro dive into the wonderfully disturbing corners of archaeology, biology, and… their own questionable childhood traditions. In this episode, JG uncovers the shocking truth behind Pottery Mound, a quiet rise of earth outside Albuquerque that revealed one of the most unsettling archaeological finds in the Southwest. When excavators cracked open what they assumed was an ordinary pit, they found instead a layered mass of dismembered human remains—meticulously cut, sorted, painted, burned, and arranged over generations. Thanks to modern forensic anthropology, the truth of this centuries-old ritual practice is finally coming into focus. Was it violence? Worship? A conversation with the dead? Jethro explains how new scanning technology has rewritten what we know about Puebloan mortuary traditions. Then Kat swoops in with something equally strange but significantly furrier—bioluminescent animals hiding in plain sight. From glow-in-the-dark fox squirrel bones to flying squirrels that fluoresce bubblegum pink, we explore the weird, luminous world seen only under ultraviolet light. Throw in scorpions, platypuses, sharks, frogs, and one unforgettable pair of glowing Haunted Mansion underpants, and you’ve got yourself classic BOO chaos. Plus: – The gateway dangers of sniffing blueberry-scented markers – Why ancient vending machines dispensed holy water – The mystery of “vomit/popcorn bowls – And the latest inductees into the Order of Freaks If you love unsettling archaeology, strange science, fluorescent wildlife, and the occasional underwear confession, this episode is for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Inbox Of Oddities #65

Inbox of Oddities: When Pigeons Gossip, Alexa Gets Emotional, and Black Ice Attacks In this Inbox of Oddities, the Freak Fam delivers one of the strangest collections of BOO Effects and real-life weirdness yet. A Milwaukee listener befriends a strangely insightful pigeon who may—or may not—be delivering messages from Mom. An Orlando vacationer steps into an Uber only to be ambushed by two Black Ice air fresheners after hearing Kat and Jethro rant about their toxic power... proving the BOO Effect stops for no one, not even on family trips to the Mouse. Then: an Alexa suddenly confesses, “I miss your grandmother,” unprompted. A Rockville festival fanatic discovers she accidentally witnessed the infamous “Brass Against incident” long before hearing it on the show. A listener bingeing hundreds of episodes finds herself unintentionally neighbors with Kat and Jethro. And from corporate dropouts to Dutch cyclists, you’ll hear confessions, synchronicities, strange tech glitches, and enthusiastic fact-checks on Santa, hot coffee lawsuits, Hermetic philosophy, and why TikTok may be the new occult library. Plus—EVPs with Jack the Ripper vibes, mysterious bottle caps, mummified funhouse props, suspicious air fresheners, The Kybalion, and a pair of loyal listeners whose “aureolas are exploding” for reasons we probably shouldn’t ask about. This episode is full of eerie coincidences, hilarious freak-outs, paranormal glitches, and heartfelt Freak Family moments that make the Inbox one of our favorite corners of the BOO universe. This Box Contains The Following Ingredients: Box of Oddities, BOO Effect, paranormal stories, listener submissions, synchronicity, creepy tech moments, Alexa weird response, Black Ice air freshener, pigeon synchronicity, Rockville festival story, EVPs, Hermetic philosophy, The Kybalion, Santa Claus Coca-Cola history, McDonald’s hot coffee case facts, true weird stories, comedy podcasts, Freak Fam. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]