The Box of Oddities
by Kat & Jethro Gilligan Toth
The Webby Award-winning “Box of Oddities" is a podcast that delves into the strange and mysterious aspects of our world, exploring topics ranging from bizarre medical conditions to unsolved mysteries, and from paranormal phenomena to strange cultural practices from around the world. With a focus on oddities, curiosities, and the macabre, each episode is a journey into the unknown, where hosts Kat and Jethro Gilligan Toth share their love for unusual stories and inject their humor and commentary. From the strange history of medical practices to chilling true crime stories, to natural (and unnatural) events, "The Box of Oddities" satisfies your thirst for the weird and the unusual, offering an informative and entertaining look into the dark and mysterious corners of our world. JIMMY KIMMEL, ABC-TV says, "Should you be the type who has an interest in weird stuff, this is a fun thing to allow in your head!" <b
Episodes
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Halloween Live From Chicago!
Halloween night in Chicago. A theater full of Freaks. And a collection of stories that probably should have come with a medical waiver. In this special live Halloween edition of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro take the stage at Chicago's Den Theatre for an evening of bizarre medical…
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The 9th Annual Halloween Special
It's Halloween, and the Freak Family has been keeping some very unsettling secrets. For our 9th Annual Box of Oddities Halloween Special, Kat and Jethro open the inbox for a collection of listener-submitted paranormal encounters, ghost stories, and unexplained experiences that might make you...
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Common Scolds and Cool Beans
In 1829, journalist Anne Royall was dragged into a Washington, D.C., courtroom and convicted of being a common scold. Her crime? Having opinions, challenging powerful men, and refusing to keep her mouth shut. The proposed punishment involved a wooden chair, the Potomac River, and a medieval...
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Inbox Of Oddities #103
Ghostly Encounters, Scottish Mario & Halloween Chaos | Inbox of Oddities The Freak Family has spoken, and things are getting delightfully weird in this episode of Inbox of Oddities! Kat and Jethro dive into your listener emails, voice messages, and wonderfully unhinged stories, including a…
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New England Vampires & the Alien Intelligence of Octopuses
In this Halloween-season episode of Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro explore a grisly chapter of New England folklore: the 1817 exhumation of Dartmouth student Frederick Ransom. As tuberculosis—then called consumption—devastated his Vermont family, his father followed a desperate “vampire” remedy:...
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Edgar Allan Poe’s Skull & The Honeymoon Murder
Edgar Allan Poe’s Rattling Skull & The Honeymoon Murder at Acadia National Park What happens when you dig up the remains of one of history’s most famous masters of horror and discover something rattling around inside his skull? And how does a romantic honeymoon in one of America’s most beautiful...
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True Ghost Stories From the Freak Family
The Box of Oddities Halloween Special Preview: True Ghost Stories, Haunted Houses & Unexplained Encounters Something strange is happening, Freak Family. And this time, you're the ones telling the stories. As we count down to our 9th Annual Box of Oddities Halloween Special, Kat and Jethro crack...
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Railway Madness & Vagina Dentata: History's Strangest Fears
Can riding a train actually drive you insane? And why have cultures around the world spent centuries telling stories about women with teeth in places teeth absolutely do not belong? This week on The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro explore two bizarre intersections of history, folklore…
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134-Year-Old Corpse & a Car That Makes You a Human Gerbil
Welcome our newest sponsor, FÜM What happens when scientists open a 134-year-old coffin and discover a body that has been remarkably preserved? And what happens when an inventor decides the automobile would be better if the passengers rode inside one enormous wheel? This week on The Box of...
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Inbox Of Oddities #102
Inbox of Oddities: Ghostly Voices, Time Travel & Homesick Nipples The Freak Family has spoken, and once again, we're questioning whether any of you should be allowed out in public unsupervised. In this episode of Inbox of Oddities, Kat and Jethro dig into another gloriously strange collection of...
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Inside the Hindenburg & The Dunes That Swallowed a Town
You’ve seen the Hindenburg footage. You’ve heard the famous radio broadcast. But what was it actually like to be inside the Hindenburg when it caught fire? Kat and Jethro revisit one of history’s most recognizable disasters through the eyewitness accounts of the people who survived it. Passengers...
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The Body in the Glacier & The Woman Who Wouldn’t Stay Buried
A body emerges from a California glacier more than sixty years after a World War II training plane vanished in the Sierra Nevada. He’s still wearing his military uniform, carrying coins, a fountain pen, and an address book—but who is he, and what happened to the other men aboard the missing...
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The Gods Below & The Boy Beyond
It’s time for another Freak Family Favorite, pulled from deep inside The Box of Oddities archives! First, Kat explores the surprisingly widespread history of dwarf mythology and reverence. From ancient Egypt, where people of short stature could hold prestigious positions and dwarf deities were...
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The Letter That Fell From the Sky
A letter disappears in one of the deadliest tornadoes in American history—then turns up 130 miles away. In 1925, the catastrophic Tri-State Tornado destroyed the Indiana home of Will Jones. Among the possessions swept away was a letter written decades earlier by his late wife. About a week later…
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San Francisco’s Buried Ships & Bizarre Toilet World Records
What if the streets beneath San Francisco aren’t sitting on solid ground at all—but on the remains of abandoned ships? During the California Gold Rush, crews deserted vessels by the hundreds, leaving ships stranded along the waterfront. Some became warehouses, hotels, saloons, even a jail. Others...
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Inbox Of Oddities #101
The Inbox of Oddities is open, and the Freak Family has delivered another beautifully strange collection of listener stories. This time, Kat and Jethro dive into an accidentally perfect sign at a spay-and-neuter clinic, a spectacularly unfortunate product mistranslation involving “aging…
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Cursed Bread and Pink Dolphins
A quiet French town is hit by a wave of sickness, terror, and impossible visions after its residents eat the same bread. Were the horrors of Pont-Saint-Esprit in 1951 caused by ergot poisoning, contaminated flour, or something even stranger? Then, deep in the Amazon, male pink river dolphins have…
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The Dinosaur Tree & The Blue Mountains Mystery
An accidental Australian takeover of The Box of Oddities begins with Vegemite and somehow ends with a prehistoric mystery and a disappearance that only gets stranger. First, buried in ancient Australian rock are the delicate remains of a forest that vanished from the world millions of years ago....
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Inbox Of Oddities #100
Halloween is creeping closer, and the Inbox is filling up with teeth, doppelgängers, bizarre coincidences, pet opossums, and the kind of heartfelt notes that make Kat and JG question whether they deserve any of you. This week: a listener wakes from wisdom-tooth surgery determined to show Kat and…
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Ghosts in Your DNA
There are ghosts in your DNA—entire lost populations whose names, languages, and worlds vanished, yet whose genetic fingerprints are still moving through people alive today. Then: the deeply unsettling truth about seeds that have sprouted in human lungs, ears, and other places nature never…
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The Missing Head Behind David Attenborough’s Pub
A forgotten 1952 Pan Am crash helped shape the safety briefing you hear on every flight—and now, 74 years later, the Clipper Endeavor has been found 2,000 feet beneath the Atlantic. Then: a skull discovered during a renovation connected to David Attenborough leads back to one of Victorian…
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Inbox Of Oddities #99
On this Inbox of Oddities, Kat and Jethro open the mailbag for a wonderfully strange collection of listener stories: gargoyle-like creatures watching from a grandmother’s curtain rod, an eerie phone call from a man who may have been dead, a child who seemed to know far too much about the “lady...
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The Psychology of Going Nowhere
A young woman boards an elevated train in 1907, reaches her stop…and simply cannot make herself leave. Her strange case of “nervousness” becomes a newspaper curiosity, but more than a century later, it feels startlingly familiar. Then, why do lost people so often make the one choice most likely…
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Odd Jobs, Bad Science, and Three Generations of Horror
In this classic episode, we celebrate Labor Day by looking at the most unusual jobs. Some people get paid to break into buildings, test mattresses, cuddle strangers, or bring horses into therapy sessions. Then there’s the far darker side of deciding who is “fit” for society: the true story of...
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Inbox Of Oddities #98
This week’s Inbox of Oddities is full of the kinds of stories that make you wonder whether the universe is gently trying to get your attention. From a beloved dog who may have kept watch long after he was gone, to a grandmother’s promise delivered through a stubborn patch of flowers, the Freak...
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Freaks, Feathers, and Yellow Fever
A sideshow performer known as Koo-Koo the Bird Girl becomes one of the most unforgettable faces in Tod Browning’s 1932 film Freaks—yet the real Minnie Woolsey remains almost a mystery. We trace the strange, sad, and surprisingly human story behind the feathers, enormous glasses, and a few seconds...
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Ten Dimes and One Very Stubborn House
What can ten dimes do? For Osceola McCarty, they represented a lifetime spent washing other people’s clothes—and a quiet act of generosity that would eventually change the lives of more than a hundred students. Discover how a Mississippi laundress who left school in the sixth grade saved a...
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Inbox Of Oddities #97
Can you feel time passing—or taste pizza using only your imagination? This week, the Freak Family opens our eyes to the wildly different ways our brains experience the world, including one listener whose sense of time appears as a constantly shifting spectrum of colors. We also hear about an…
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Black Holes, Nazis, & Fresh Baked Goods
Are We Living Inside a Black Hole? And Why You Should Never Trust a Nazi With a Plate Of Cookies. What if our entire universe is hiding inside a black hole? The James Webb Space Telescope has uncovered strange new clues about the early cosmos—including an ancient galaxy that appears far more...
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The Boys Who Refused to Become Monsters
What happens when six teenage boys are stranded on a deserted island for more than a year? Forget Lord of the Flies. The true story of the boys of Ata reveals something far more surprising—and far more hopeful—about human nature. Then, during World War II, a Muslim family in Sarajevo risks...
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Inbox Of Oddities
A listener dreams that Mothman shows up at her patio door—and refuses to let him inside because of his dust. Aerial arts may have accidentally cured another Freak’s lifelong motion sickness. And a woman dreams of playing with her late grandfather in an old hot rod, only to discover it may be a...
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Buried for 246 Years—and Finally Identified
He Vanished at 14. DNA Found Him 246 Years Later—and Why So Many Towns End in “Kill” A teenage soldier vanished during one of the American Revolution’s most devastating defeats. Nearly 250 years later, DNA recovered from a tiny piece of bone may have finally given him back his name. The…
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Charlie No-Face & The Jesus Mothership
A glowing faceless figure stalks the lonely roads of western Pennsylvania—or so the legend goes. But behind the terrifying tale of Charlie No-Face was Ray Robinson, a real man whose tragic childhood accident transformed him into the infamous Green Man of Pennsylvania. Then, Kat and Jethro explore...
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Horse Manure Apocalypse
HORSE MANURE CRISIS! And Victorians Crawl Inside Dead Whales for a Bizarre Cure! A Freak Family Favorite returns! First, the Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894—and the very real fear that cities would eventually disappear beneath nine feet of horse poop. Then, the spectacularly revolting Victorian...
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Glitch in Reality & Ghost in the Family Tree
What if the world didn’t move smoothly—but jumped from moment to moment like a broken film reel? Meet LM, the woman who could see colors, faces, and objects clearly but couldn’t see them move. Her rare neurological condition, akinetopsia, revealed something astonishing about how the brain...
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Before Your First Memory & Valley Of The Calls
Your brain was listening before you ever took your first breath. Newborns can recognize their mother’s voice—and even stories heard in the womb—but could any of those experiences survive as actual memories? JG explores prenatal learning, infantile amnesia, and the unsettling possibility that your...
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Inbox Of Oddities #95
The Freak Family has been busy. This week on Inbox of Oddities, Kat and JG crack open the listener mailbag and discover a funeral urn that can preserve the voice of the person inside it, a legendary Texas rock that may have swallowed a man whole, and the deeply unfortunate mystery of a toilet…
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Is My Red Is Your Red?
What if your brain suddenly decided that words had colors? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro dive into one of neuroscience's strangest documented phenomena: a woman who suffered a traumatic brain injury and awoke seeing vivid colors every time someone spoke. Her…
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Oscar Wilde, Dutch Schultz & Sad Nipples
What were someone's last words really supposed to reveal? During the Victorian era, people believed a person's final moments exposed the truth about their soul. Families gathered around deathbeds with notebooks in hand, hoping to capture profound final wisdom—but history suggests many of the...
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Bat People, Lunar Beavers & Human Skin Books
Freak Family Favorites: Bat People, Moon Hoaxes, and Museums That Shouldn't Exist This Freak Family Favorites episode comes straight from the recommendations of the Freak Family, and it's packed with the kind of stories that remind us why history is often stranger than fiction. First, Kat unpacks...
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The Silence Between the Signals
Long before smartphones and satellites filled the sky with signals, early radio experimenters were hearing something they couldn't explain. Giant antennas stretched across fields captured strange repeating pulses, mysterious buzzing, and what some believed sounded almost like language. Even…
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Echoes in the Clay, Monsters in the Water
Could an ordinary clay pot be the oldest recording device in human history? On this episode of The Box of Oddities, JG explores one of archaeology's most captivating ideas: the theory that ancient pottery may have accidentally preserved microscopic traces of sound while spinning on a potter's...
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Inbox of Oddities #94
Inbox of Oddities: Lettuce Lotion, Florida Organ Recitals & Envelopes Full of Crap It's time to open the Inbox of Oddities, where the Freak Family always delivers the unexpected. This week, Kat explains the surprisingly heartfelt tradition of sending an "envelope full of crap," while listeners...
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The Strange Birth of the Jesus Machine
When Benjamin Franklin's Ghost Designed a Machine and the strange story of The Underwater Orchestra. What happens when people become convinced they can build a messiah out of magnets, copper, and electricity? In this episode of *The Box of Oddities, Kat and JG dive into one of the strangest...
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Dinosaurs,Viagra, & Bubble Wrap
What do dinosaur fossils, Bubble Wrap, Super Soakers, Viagra, and Bob Ross have in common? More than you'd think. In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Jethro introduces the astonishing true story of Baron Franz Nopcsa—the eccentric Hungarian aristocrat who transformed himself into one of...
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Inbox Of Oddities #93
A stranger vanishes into a dead-end Savannah alley, leaving behind a lesson that will last a lifetime. A grieving listener receives possible signs from both her grandmother and beloved dog, while JG recalls the mysterious cab driver who appeared during his family’s desperate trip to Boston...
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Copper Age Cobblers & College Con Artists
The Mysterious Cave of Ancient Shoes & Georgia Tech's Imaginary Graduate This week on The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro uncover one of archaeology's most baffling discoveries: a 5,500-year-old leather shoe found inside Armenia's Areni Cave—along with hundreds of other ancient shoes, a ritual...
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Time Eats Everything
What if an advanced industrial civilization existed on Earth millions of years before humans... and every trace of it has been erased? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro explore the fascinating Silurian Hypothesis—a real scientific thought experiment that asks whether an…
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Inbox Of Oddities #92
The inbox of Oddities is overflowing with unforgettable listener stories this week. A terrifying real-life child abduction that ended in a miraculous rescue, eerie Boo Effects that blur the line between coincidence and the unexplained, a ghostly Roman legion mystery solved decades later, and one...
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The Corpse In The Lighthouse
What happens when the most isolated lighthouse in the world becomes a floating prison with a corpse... and what if one of history's strangest duels was fought over flower arrangements? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro explore two unbelievable tales that prove history is…
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About this show
The Webby Award-winning “Box of Oddities" is a podcast that delves into the strange and mysterious aspects of our world, exploring topics ranging from bizarre medical conditions to unsolved mysteries, and from paranormal phenomena to strange cultural practices from around the world. With a focus on oddities, curiosities, and the macabre, each episode is a journey into the unknown, where hosts Kat and Jethro Gilligan Toth share their love for unusual stories and inject their humor and commentary. From the strange history of medical practices to chilling true crime stories, to natural (and unnatural) events, "The Box of Oddities" satisfies your thirst for the weird and the unusual, offering an informative and entertaining look into the dark and mysterious corners of our world.
JIMMY KIMMEL, ABC-TV says, "Should you be the type who has an interest in weird stuff, this is a fun thing to allow in your head!"
<b
Hosted by
Kat & Jethro Gilligan Toth
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