A Beetle, A Rooster, A Cat, An Alchemist and a Mummy

Step inside The Oddities Department, where history gets weird, science gets weirder, and Gavin and Suzi open the drawers of the bizarre for your listening pleasure. In this debut episode, we’re diving headfirst into five real stories so strange you’ll wonder how humanity survived long enough to make a podcast about it.We explore Victorian high society’s obsession with wearing live jewel beetles as fashion accessories, the medieval town that put a rooster on trial for witchcraft, and the CIA’s multi-million dollar attempt to turn a housecat into a Cold War cyborg spy. Then we meet the alchemist who boiled fifty buckets of pee trying to make gold (and accidentally discovered phosphorus), before ending with the hauntingly modern case of Nesyamun, the ancient Egyptian priest whose voice was resurrected 3,000 years after his death.If you love bizarre true stories, eerie historical oddities, questionable science experiments, and “wait… WHAT?” moments, you're in the right place. Grab your curiosity and step into the archive. Nothing is ever quite what it seems.Send us Fan Mail