The Oddities Department
Welcome to The Oddities Department, the podcast where history gets weird, science gets weirder, and Gavin and Suzi gleefully drag you into the strangest corners of the universe. Every episode dives into bizarre true stories, cursed artifacts, questionable science experiments, forgotten folklore, and so many “wait… WHAT?” moments. If you love learning things that make you clutch your pearls, laugh, or rethink reality, you are in the right place.
The Oddities Department
A Tooth, An Emu, A Foot, A Vibrator, A Rave and A Brewery
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In Episode 2, Gavin and Suzi dive headfirst into some of the strangest, funniest, and most bewildering stories history and science have to offer. We start with the explosive tale of the tooth that literally detonated, then dance straight into the madness of the 1518 Dancing Plague, where an entire town couldn’t stop moving even as it collapsed from exhaustion.
Things get bird-brained as we unpack Australia’s Great Emu War, a real conflict the emus famously won. Victorian medicine then delivers peak chaos with the invention of the vibrator, originally created to “treat” hysteria in ways that were… let’s just say not very medical.
Gavin then unravels the chilling mystery of the severed feet washing ashore around the Pacific Northwest — a case that baffled the public and sparked years of speculation. And finally, Suzi explores Autobrewery Syndrome, the condition where the human gut ferments carbs into alcohol, turning unsuspecting people into walking microbreweries.
It’s bizarre, it’s hilarious, it’s unsettling, and it’s exactly why The Oddities Department exists.
Stay curious. Stay weird.
Nothing is ever quite what it seems.