The Box of Oddities

The Box of Oddities

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!" “Truth is stranger than fiction, and the Box of Oddities is the strangest of all!” -SLUGGO, SIRIUS XM LITHIUM “Kat & Jethro wring humor from bizarre, macabre and perplexing places.” -BOSTON MAGAZINE

Episodes

August 22, 2025 25 mins
Fall Tour Info And Tickets Here! Inbox of Oddities: Shopping Cart Poltergeists, Boo Fuel & Other Listener Oddventures In this listener-fueled episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro wade waist-deep into the beautifully bizarre world of freaks, phantoms, and fuel price coincidences. A rogue shopping cart with a vendetta. A gas station receipt that channels numerological energy. A haunted laundry hamper that eats only left s...
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Box of Oddities Live Fall Tour Info And Tickets Here Step into the delightfully strange with this episode of The Box of Oddities Podcast, where death and dessert collide in the most unexpected ways. First, explore the eerie world of Victorian funeral mourning practices—a time when grief wasn’t just worn on your sleeve but woven into jet-black dresses, elaborate rituals, and some downright unsettling traditions. Some even killed th...
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August 18, 2025 36 mins
Details for the Live Box of Oddities Fall Tour Here! What separates a stroke of brilliance from a spectacularly bad idea? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro dive headfirst into history’s most baffling tightrope walk between genius and ridiculousness—where “visionary” and “what were they thinking?” become disturbingly interchangeable. Then, things get even weirder: scientists are turning spinach leaves into func...
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August 15, 2025 22 mins
Live Fall Tour Information! Inbox of Oddities: Hands, Spirits, and Shoes Full of Baileys This week, your favorite weird mailbag is overflowing. From mysterious body parts masquerading as “1920s décor” to ghosts who fold your jeans into swans, our listeners bring the oddities straight to our inbox—and we read them all. Hear the heartwarming tales of pets, plants, and fellow freaks connecting across the globe, like a listener in Be...
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August 13, 2025 36 mins
TICKETS FOR THE LIVE FALL TOUR HERE! Somewhere in the shadows of the 1990s UK, an unsettling rumor spread: men and women posing as social workers, knocking on doors, asking questions they had no right to ask… and then vanishing. Were they government agents, criminals, or ghosts with clipboards? JG investigates the eerie phenomenon of the Phantom Social Workers — a case file that manages to be equal parts unnerving and confusingly ...
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August 11, 2025 35 mins
The Box Of Oddities Live Fall Tour Starts Sept. 10 In Seattle and Ends Halloween Night In Chicago! Learn More Here! In this delightfully morbid Box of Oddities episode, we literally put the “fun” back in funerals. From coffin-themed dance-offs to wakes that feel more like weddings, discover real-life funerals where joy took center stage over sorrow—because nothing says “rest in peace” quite like a conga line. Then, we plunge into ...
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August 8, 2025 60 mins
Freak Family Favorite: “Would You Like Guac With That Foot?” In this Box of Oddities classic, we revisit one of the most disturbingly delicious tales ever told: a man, a severed foot, and a taco night that will haunt you forever. (Yes, this really happened.) Then, Kat unpacks the incredible life of Johnny Eck — sideshow legend, half-man, and full-on badass. Finally, why has humanity laughed for over a century at people slipping o...
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August 6, 2025 31 mins
Learn More About Our Upcoming Live Shows! In this episode, Jethro dives face-first into one of the most perplexing murder investigations in modern history—complete with bizarre circumstances, inexplicable evidence, and a twist so jaw-dropping it left seasoned detectives cross-eyed. It’s a true crime story that starts strange and somehow gets stranger. Meanwhile, Kat digs up the mystery of Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna—a crea...
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August 4, 2025 33 mins
Tickets for the Live Tour Here! What do you get when a carnivorous plant develops a taste for rodents and a whole country uploads itself to the cloud? Just another day inside The Box of Oddities. In this episode, Kat and Jethro peer into the leafy maw of Nepenthes rajah—the world’s largest meat-eating plant, known to snack on mice, lizards, and anything foolish enough to slip into its botanical death trap. It’s basically a salad ...
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August 1, 2025 42 mins
Live Show Tickets Here! In this special Inbox of Oddities episode, Kat and JG open the floodgates of freaky listener tales—and what flows out includes bisexual ghost grandmas, haunted Roombas, bloody Marys topped with entire chickens, and one particularly vengeful jar of pickles. Jesse shares a deeply moving dream visitation from her long-passed grandma. Meanwhile, emails pour in featuring cursed karaoke nights in Alaskan dive ba...
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Learn More About The Box of Oddities Live Tour! In this spine-tingling episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro dive headfirst into two tales that are equal parts baffling and bone-chilling. First: the strange disappearance of the Clark family from Detroit. One minute they’re living their quiet, suburban life—next minute, poof—gone without a trace. Is it an unsolved mystery, urban legend, or the world’s most elaborate game o...
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July 28, 2025 33 mins
Live Show Tickets! Learn More Here! How do you survive a 47-story fall? Ask Alcides Moreno—a window washer who defied gravity, logic, and most of the bones in his body. In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro unravel the mind-bending tale of Moreno’s miraculous survival that left doctors speechless and physicists slightly twitchy. Then, ever heard of laudable pus? No, it’s not a new indie band—it’s the horrifyingly...
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July 25, 2025 47 mins
Tickets for The Box of Oddities Live Tour Here! In this Freak Family Favorites episode of The Box of Oddities, we investigate three very different ways humans have tried to solve very different problems—with wildly questionable success. First, we ride back to 1894, when the streets of major cities were ankle-deep in horse poop and people feared civilization would be buried in a literal pile of its own progress. What was the solut...
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July 23, 2025 32 mins
LIVE SHOW TIX HERE Set sail into the strangest corners of history and mystery in this episode of The Box of Oddities! First, we weigh anchor in 18th-century Dublin to explore the baffling disappearance—and even more bewildering reappearance—of the Ouzel Galley, a “ghost ship” that vanished without a trace… only to return five years later with a tale that’s either the greatest cover story of all time or a nautical glitch in the Mat...
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July 21, 2025 39 mins
Box of Oddities Live National Tour September 10 - October 31, Halloween Night. Learn More Here! In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro raise a glass to history’s most unsettling happy hour. First, a post-mortem fashion icon: the corpse of Countess Virginia Oldoini, a.k.a. the Countess of Castiglione—19th-century Italian aristocrat, secret agent, fashion influencer, and full-time narcissist. She posed for over 400 ...
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July 18, 2025 24 mins
Learn More About The Live Fall Tour Tickets! INBOX OF ODDITIES #053– “Wall Wig & The Certified Bird Whisperer” 🕳️ Welcome to the weirdest corner of listener mail. In this jam-packed Inbox of Oddities episode, we crack open some of the most deliciously deranged, hilariously haunted, and poultry-psychic tales our Freak Fam has ever sent. ✨ This week: A shadowy tapping in the night reveals… a single chair in a secret crawlspa...
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July 16, 2025 42 mins
Learn More About The Box of Oddities Live Fall Tour HERE! What do you get when you mix a royal smorgasbord, a deadly dessert, and a man whose name sounds like a Victorian law firm but actually ran 7 marathons on 7 continents in 7 days? You get this gloriously odd episode of The Box of Oddities. First, we chew over the gluttonous fate of King Adolf Fredrik of Sweden, whose last meal was so epic it could've headlined a buffet apoca...
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July 14, 2025 32 mins
Find out more about The Box of Oddities Live! In this delightfully disturbing episode of The Box of Oddities, we unearth two baffling tales that defy logic, science, and perhaps even basic hygiene. First, journey to the plague-ravaged town of Frankenstein (yes, it’s real), circa 1606. As bodies piled up and panic spread faster than a medieval TikTok trend, townspeople pointed their infected fingers at an unlikely culprit: the gra...
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July 11, 2025 24 mins
Learn More About Box Of Oddities Live Show Tickets! A skull bequeathed to a favorite coworker. A traffic cone worshipped like a divine orange messiah. A wisdom tooth turned into fine jewelry. On this gloriously bizarre installment of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro dive deep into the wonderfully weird world of listener emails in an "Inbox of Oddities" episode that defies both logic and conventional estate planning. Mace kicks...
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July 9, 2025 33 mins
LIVE SHOW TICKETS HERE Did you know there was a time when trees never rotted? In this flaming-hot episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro unearth the ancient world’s most eco-unfriendly crisis: a time when dead trees just… stuck around, stacked up, and turned the whole planet into a pyromaniac's dream. Spoiler: it ends in fire. Lots of it. Then, travel back to 75 BCE, when a young Julius Caesar got kidnapped by pirates—and...
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