Nellie Bly, The King Of Sting, Dildos, Casanova, Oysters, The Cadaver Synod & Operation Cat Drop

Episode 15 of The Oddities Department cracks open another tour of historical chaos.

This week’s tour contains six stories that are equal parts fascinating, horrifying, and deeply, deeply hilarious.

We begin with The Story of Nellie Bly, the fearless journalist who got herself committed to an insane asylum in 1887 to expose the brutal conditions inside, then came back out and changed journalism forever.

Next is The King of Sting, Dr. Justin Schmidt, the entomologist who turned getting stung by some of the world’s most painful insects into legitimate scientific research… and then described the agony like a deranged poet.

Then we stop by The Weird History of the Dildo Exhibit, tracing one of humanity’s oldest inventions from stone-age pleasure tools to modern taboos and beyond. Because apparently, some ideas survive every civilization.

From there, we slide into Casanova & The Oyster, the slippery, seductive history of how one legendary lover turned shellfish into foreplay and helped cement oysters as history’s most overrated aphrodisiac.

Then comes The Cadaver Synod, the unbelievably real moment in church history when a dead pope was dug up, dressed in robes, and put on trial by his enemies in one of the most grotesque acts of medieval pettiness ever recorded.

And finally, we descend into the chaos of Operation Cat Drop, the time humans tried to fix one ecological disaster by parachuting cats into the Borneo jungle like that was a perfectly normal thing for a government to do.

Six exhibits.
 Zero sanity.
 Maximum historical whiplash.

Welcome to The Oddities Department.

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:08

All right, next complaint. My complaint. I found the comment cards mixed in with the overnight incident reports.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Oh no.

SPEAKER_05 0:18

Oh yes. Exhibit A. Dear Staff, one of your historians told me a story about a hairy frog, and now I can't sleep at night. Valid. Exhibit B. I came here for educational enrichment and somehow left knowing too much about booty bombs. Also valid. Then we have Exhibit C. One of the exhibits bit me. Well, those holes are for oxygen, not fingers. Here's another one. The bear in the basement stole my beer and my cigarette? See, that one sounds fake, but around here, you just never know. And this one just says, someone sent 15 grand pianos to my house, I didn't order any pianos.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

So what you're telling me is every complaint is justified?

SPEAKER_05 1:08

Yes, unfortunately, and we're ignoring all of them, right? With professionalism, of course. Perfect. Open the doors. Welcome to the Oddities Department. The part of the museum where the complaint box is always full, the exhibits are feral, and history keeps proving it does not care about what you nor I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

This is where we keep the stories that are too bonkers for the main floor, too weird for the textbooks, and way too entertaining to leave boxed up and buried. I'm Lindsay, and I'm Gavin. And if you're thinking, wait, what? Who's Lindsay? Let me fill you in. Susie is taking a week off. She's currently out in the field doing some very fancy, very official fieldwork. So Lindsay's gonna fill in for her tonight. Everybody say, Hi Lindsay! This is episode 15 of the Oddities Department.

SPEAKER_05 2:00

Inside tonight's tour, the story of Nellie Bly, the crazy situation of a man that is Dr. Justin Schmidt, the King of Sting, and the wild history of the invention of the Dildo.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

And later on the tour, the guy with all the Riz and all the brine, Casanova and the Oyster, the absolute nightmare of the cadaver synod, and the baffling airborne brilliance of Operation Cat Drop. Before tonight's tour begins, two quick rules. Rule number one. If anyone in this building asks you to sample the appetizer, just say no.

SPEAKER_05 2:35

Rule number two, if a cat falls from the ceiling, that is not part of the immersive experience. That's just Bam Bam the department cat. He's from Borneal. Don't mind him. He's harmless.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Things falling from the sky is a pretty common occurrence around here lately. Everyone, line up. Lindsay, lock the doors, dim the lights, and lower your expectations. The tour starts now.

SPEAKER_05 2:58

Let's go. Exhibit eighty nine The Story of Nelly Bly This week's exhibit is a total, honest to God fan pick. Huge shout out to Molly for sending this one in. I am genuinely stoked to share this story. Exhibit number eighty nine is The Legend of Nelly Bly. We're talking about a woman who was so incredibly gutsy and absolutely fearless that she literally committed herself to an insane asylum just to nail a story. Seriously. And let's be clear, this wasn't some stupid modern stunt for social media clout. This was 1887. Back then, women were basically expected to be seen and not heard, squeeze into corsets that were basically internal organ crushers, and maybe just maybe do a little goddamn embroidery. In complete silence, if possible. Sounds great. Her name was Nellie Bly, but she started life as Elizabeth Jane Cochrane. Or Cochrane. Cochrane? The records aren't even sure, which is just typical bureaucratic bullshit. She was born on may fifth, eighteen sixty four, in Cochrane's Mills, Pennsylvania. Yes, a town named after her family because her dad was a pretty big deal there. Nellie grew up at a time when women had zero voting rights, often couldn't own property, and were widely considered too goddamn fragile and emotional to handle anything more complex than arranging a base of flowers. Typical men. Amen. The medical community literally believed that going to college could mess up a woman's reproductive organs. These were certified doctors.

SPEAKER_01 4:48

I beg your finest pardon.

SPEAKER_05 4:51

Certified doctors, but did they have degrees or just certificates? What were the requirements back then?

SPEAKER_01 5:00

From what I understand, there weren't any.

SPEAKER_05 5:04

You got demons in your blood. Do some cocaine about it. Pretty much. But Nellie Blight she just looked at all those ridiculous rules and basically said, That's cute. Watch this shit. When her father passed away young, the family found themselves struggling financially. She watched her mom marry an abusive guy, then bravely stand up against him in divorce court, which was essentially social suicide in the eighteen seventies. That checks out. Kinda checks out today in some some instances. Well But young Elizabeth learned fast that the world wasn't fair and sometimes you have to fight tooth and nail just to make it. Then, in eighteen eighty five, the Pittsburgh Dispatch ran an awful column called What Girls Are Good For, claiming that women belonged at home and that working women were a monstrosity. Damn. I am I am a monstrosity. I like it. I'll keep it. Hell yeah. Twenty one year old Elizabeth Cochrane wrote a scorching, must read rebuttal letter signing it lonely orphan girl. Huh? The editor was so blown away that he published an ad asking her to come forward. When she showed up, he hired her immediately and gave her the pen name Nelly Bly. No shit. Must have been a hell of a letter. I also want to write a letter to that effect someday. Change the world. Because of course, a woman couldn't just use her actual name in journalism. They had to name her after a popular song, like she was some kind of damn racehorse. And just like that, a fucking legend was born. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Oh, I'm so excited. Nellie kicked off her career writing the usual lady stuff. Fashion, gardening, and society gossip. But honestly, giving a shit about that trivial social crap, that was like a fundamental incompatibility for her. Hard pass. Relatable. I've watched play the game to get what you want. I'm with you, Nelly. She wanted to tackle the real social issues, the big stuff. So what did she do? She went deep undercover in factories and sweatshops documenting the shit awful conditions she found. Her articles, they were fucking potent, uncompromising, and made a lot of powerful dudes super uncomfortable. Good for her. Yes. And let's be real, that was absolutely the entire point. The advertisers bitched, factory owners threatened to pull their business. Her editor started leaning on Nelly to go back to what he considered safer subjects. No. Have we heard that before? Mm-hmm. Hmm. So essentially, he wanted her to do the boring bullshit. Frustrated and with ambitions for days, Nelly decided to crank the dial to eleven. In eighteen eighty seven, she bounced to New York City, showing up with the massive balls of someone with next to no money and a gigantic dream. New York was the big leagues, home of the Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, the biggest paper in the whole goddamn country. Nellie marched into Pulitzer's office and dropped an idea so utterly insane and dangerous, he probably thought she was fucking with him at first. She was like, here's the deal. I want you to have me committed to a mental institution. I'll go undercover and expose the absolutely fucked up conditions these women are facing inside. You have to understand how goddamn serious this was. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

That's crazy in its own way.

SPEAKER_05 9:00

In its own right, even today, please commit me, you know. Uh but in the eighteen eighties, mental institutions were basically abusive, profoundly neglected hell holes operating with a fancy medical title. Once you were in, getting out was a bitch. Patients were routinely abused, neglected, and left to freeze or starve. Nelly was volunteering to walk right into that nightmare, knowing full well she may not be guaranteed a ticket out. To his credit, Pulitzer saw the fucking genius of the journalism and greenlit the plan. No shit. Now, did he see the fucking genius or was he kind of like, what do I got to lose?

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Right. Oh, maybe she will just go away forever.

SPEAKER_05 9:49

Either she's legitimately crazy or this is genius. Either way, lock her up. Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

It's wild.

SPEAKER_05 9:57

But he did promise. He promised that the paper would secure her release after a whopping ten days. Ten days. She was ready to spend ten days in an asylum, faking insanity, surrounded by genuinely ill people and potentially abusive staff. She was relying on the word of a newspaper editor, a profession not exactly known for its rock solid reliability, to remember to pull her out. The plan was simple in theory, but terrifying in the doing. Nellie snagged a room in a woman's boarding house and started acting off. I'm down for that part. Can we just do can we just get an Airbnb for ten days and just I don't think we'd like to do that?

SPEAKER_01 10:45

We'd have to try really hard either.

SPEAKER_05 10:48

Actually, knowing us, I think we'd have to try really hard to not act off.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Just put the right person in a room with us and we'd be screwed. And by the right person, I mean a therapist.

SPEAKER_05 10:59

We'll create a club and our sign will say no mental health professionals allowed. She stayed up all night, stared intensely at people, and claimed she had no clue who the hell she was. That's just a Friday, Gavin. That's just what I do after work. It's very easy to get committed in the eighteen hundreds, apparently, but let's I digress. She intentionally looked like a mess and spoke in confused, fragmented sentences. The other residents were absolutely freaked out. The cops were called, and this is where the I I undigressed in deep.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

She was in deep fools.

SPEAKER_05 11:43

This is a little too familiar for my comfort level. But this is where the story gets seriously messed up. Doctors examined her and officially declared her positively demented and undoubtedly insane. These were medical professionals. People with training. Yet after just watching a young woman act weird for about twelve hours, they concluded, yep, she's absolutely nuts, lock her up indefinitely. No second thoughts, no requests for other opinions, no suggestion of just maybe waiting and watching her for a bit longer. The immediate conclusion was straight to the asylum. Yeet This whole process screams that the system was built to just lock away inconvenient women, not to actually help them. That is unsettling. Very just like that, twenty-three year old Nellie Bly was committed to the women's lunatic asylum in Blackwells Island. The alarming ease with which all this went down should give everyone serious pause. So let's get the deal on what she found there. It was way worse than anyone could have possibly imagined. The asylum was basically a nightmare, a horror show disguised as a medical facility. Think of it like a prison where no one was held accountable, but they slapped a we're helping people sticker on that shit.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

This sounds very reminiscent to the Trans Allegheny Asylum that I covered.

SPEAKER_05 13:24

Oh yes. I mean So they were all just the same. If one place is gonna get away with it, the other one's gonna get away with it, that makes sense. A hundred percent. Patients were forced into hours of silence, sitting on hard benches, forbidden to move or speak. Because you know, nothing screams mental health treatment like forced stillness and quiet. The food? Rotten. Spoiled meat, bread that could chip a tooth, and dirty water. And get this, the city was footing the bill with taxpayer money. Women were beaten for the tiniest rule breaking, tied up, doused with ice cold water, and left freezing in thin clothes. Nelly watched the nurses mock and abuse the patients. Their whole approach to mental health seemed to be have you tried being cold and miserable about it? No. Plot twist, I have, doesn't work. Nelly realized that many of these women probably weren't even mentally ill. There were immigrants who didn't speak English, poor women with literally nowhere else to go, and the wives that their husbands just wanted gone. Fuck men. Fuck men in more ways than one. Oh.

SPEAKER_02 14:43

Oh, we're gonna get there.

SPEAKER_05 14:48

It was disturbingly easy for a man to have his wife committed. Even if she was quote difficult, meaning anything from having an opinion to asking about money, he could just get her out of the way. The asylum was a trash heap for unwanted people, and once you were in, you were forgotten. The system was doing exactly what it was designed to do, which was to be absolutely fucking terrible. Nellie documented every single thing. She memorized details, conversations, and names. She made friends with the other patients and listened to their stories. She went through the same abuse the freezing baths, the rotten food, and the dehumanizing treatment. When the staff wasn't looking, she made mental notes, building her story piece by piece.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

It didn't even occur to me that she would have to memorize all this because it's not like they were gonna give her a pen and a paper. Right. But she could have been one of those really cool crazy people that like writes on the on on her cell walls.

SPEAKER_05 15:52

She keys through the pencil before she went in.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Maybe she used her blood.

SPEAKER_05 15:59

Ooh.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

But then they would have really thought she was crazy, so I'm glad she didn't do that.

SPEAKER_05 16:04

It would have been metal, though.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Please tell me she did not do that.

SPEAKER_05 16:09

But really, ultimately, those ten days, they must have felt like a decade. Every morning she woke up wondering if the newspaper would finally come for her. Every night, she slept on a filthy cot, surrounded by the sounds of women crying, screaming, and begging for help that never came. That's brutal. Finally, after ten hellish days, a lawyer from the New York World showed up and got her released. Right. I was I honestly thought when I first read this, was reading this, that she would be forgotten for a while. Like sorry about that, I know we're 20 days late, but hi, we're here now. Nellie walked out and immediately started writing. Her expose, Ten Days in a Madhouse, came out in October 1887 and was a massive sensation. It was shocking, detailed, and utterly impossible to ignore. Nellie wrote with incredible clarity and heart, finally giving a voice to the trapped woman in that awful place. The public was furious. A grand jury launched an investigation. Damn right. I mean, and what kind of article would move our own government today? Nothing.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

We're gonna get right on this. There is nothing that they can write today that would make any impactful, meaningful, you know, impact.

SPEAKER_05 17:45

We do try sometimes, though.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Well, we try. But Nellie Bly out here just changing hearts. All day, every day.

SPEAKER_05 17:54

What a badass. The city actually dedicated more money to mental health care and real reforms were put into place. Apparently, all it took was one woman willing to risk everything to expose what everyone in charge should have already known was going on. Nellie Bly, at just twenty three years old, had completely changed things. But she was nowhere near done. She kept doing undercover work, exposing women's prisons, investigating baby buying schemes, and working in sweatshops. I want to read those articles.

SPEAKER_06 18:31

We're gonna have to look into that.

SPEAKER_05 18:35

Let's we shall. People read the New York World just to see what Nellie Bly's next move would be. But Nelly wanted something even bigger. She decided to race around the world. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. So get this. Back in 1873, Jules Verne dropped his book, Around the World in Eighty Days. It was this wild ass story about a dude zipping around the globe and people went absolutely nuts over it. But let's be real, that was just a story. Nobody had actually done it. And naturally, no woman had even tried, because everyone knew that women couldn't handle traveling alone. Woe is me. Oh what a load of bullshit. Nellie pitched the idea to her bosses. She'd raise the world solo and try to be the fictional 80-day mark. She wanted to prove that a woman could travel the globe without a babysitter, without a man to protect her. And without all the dreams. No man, I'm a strong, independent woman.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

I and D E P E E N D E N D.

SPEAKER_05 19:49

Do you know what that means? I wish I could time travel. I wouldn't be her babysitter, but I would be her companion, be like Nelly, let's go.

SPEAKER_06 19:58

Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_05 20:00

She wanted to prove that she didn't need a man to protect her, and with all the dramatic crap Victorian society assumed would happen to an unaccompanied female, her editors loved the idea. But this is where it gets totally ridiculous. They wanted to send a man with her for protection.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

Of course they did.

SPEAKER_05 20:22

And also for propriety.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

I would not fuck with her.

SPEAKER_05 20:36

I mean, it's they their logic is flawless if you're a complete fucking idiot. Fair. Nelly basically told them, send a guy with me, and I'm taking this idea to your competition. They backed off. Oh. I mean, it was a good move, honestly, because on November 14th, 1889, at 9.40 a.m., Nellie Bly left New Jersey with one small bag. Seriously, one bag. For a road trip around the entire damn world. And this is in the Victorian times. Women thought they needed 17 trunks for a weekend visit with their cousin.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

I would need 17 trunks.

SPEAKER_05 21:24

I'm not a small person. Uh I would still pack light, but I would still need seven suitcases. What if I need my possum in a jar?

SPEAKER_01 21:39

I brought my Xbox with me. I was prepared.

SPEAKER_05 21:45

Oh. What was inside her one bag? A few changes of underwear, toiletries, and a decent coat. She wore her now famous checkered coat and carried a small grip sack. No steamer trunks, no human. Huge wardrobe. She was all about traveling light and fast. The New York world hyped the journey like crazy, printing updates and getting readers to bet on her return time. The entire country was obsessed. Could she do it? Would she beat the record? Oh, she had adventures. She sailed to England, crossed to France, and actually met Jules Verne himself. Damn. He was right. He was absolutely thrilled to meet the young woman turning his fiction into a real challenge. He and his wife both were super welcoming, and Verne told her he thought she'd win. From France, she hit Italy, sailed through the Suez Canal, to Ceylon, which is now Sri Lanka, then on to Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan. She used steamships, trains, sandpans. A sandpan is a traditional small flat bottomed wooden boat that's commonly found in East and Southeast Asia. She also used horses and gin rickshaws. If you're asking yourself what is a jin rickshaw, it's a rickshaw. But its name originates from Japanese culture. Jin means human, rick means power, and shaw means vehicle. Fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

Very fascinating.

SPEAKER_05 23:25

I've learned so much. So much. So much learning. She even bought a pet monkey in Singapore, which I am so jealous of. Bro. Because why the hell not?

SPEAKER_04 23:36

Not even fair.

SPEAKER_05 23:38

I love that for her. But here is the twist. Nellie wasn't the only one. Cosmopolitan magazine, not wanting to miss out, sent their own damn reporter, Elizabeth Bisland, around the world in the opposite direction. Oh. What a twist. They left on the exact same day. It was a proper race, even though they'd never crossed paths. The media went wild. Nellie was relentless. Every delay was torture. If her ship was slow, she paced the deck. If connections were tight, she sprinted through stations with her single bag focused on moving forward. She charmed captains into speeding up. The American public followed her every move. The New York World published telegram updates constantly. People bet money. Kids played Nelly Ply games. There was a board game. Songs were written. She became a total icon, a symbol of the modern woman who refused to be boxed in by old shitty ideas. Fuck yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

I love her so much.

SPEAKER_05 24:57

She was basically a viral influencer when no such thing existed.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

We're so used to covering like shitty, fucking lunatic ass dudes. It's really refreshing to get a really badass woman.

SPEAKER_05 25:14

Right? Every time I finish a sentence, I want to be like, hell yeah. Hell yeah.

unknown 25:21

Get it.

SPEAKER_05 25:22

Get a girl. Do it, lady on your birthday. As she crossed the Pacific, heading back to America, the pressure was insane. Could she make it? She was ahead, but barely. One big delay and it was all over. On january twenty fifth, eighteen ninety, seventy two days, six hours, and eleven minutes after she started, Nellie Bly rolled back into New York. She had circled the globe. She beat the fictional record by nearly eight days. She did it all alone with one bag and made it look easy as hell. That's unreal. Yeah, I can't like just the fact I keep having to remind myself that this was an 1890. Yeah, I'm a lazy piece of shit.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

I bitch about having to drive to town, and she went all across the whole world and back.

SPEAKER_05 26:27

I feel the fire. I'm like, man, it would be really cool to visit Japan. I'ma Google it.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Like now we have TSA and airports.

SPEAKER_05 26:44

When she did make it home, the crowds were enormous. Cannons fired, bands played, people cheered. Nellie Bly instantly became the most famous woman in America, maybe the world. She proved that women could be brave, capable, self sufficient, and successful. She blew up old assumptions and inspired a generation of young women to dream bigger. Oh, and Elizabeth Bisland? She arrived four and a half days later, having also completed an incredible trip. Both women were amazing. But Nelly's win and the New York world's massive publicity machine meant history remembers her name a little louder. After her amazing comeback, Nelly didn't slow down. She maintained an intense pace, continuing her work as a high profile journalist, fearlessly diving into the biggest labor strikes of the era, bringing the stories of exploited workers to the forefront of the national consciousness. She used her platform to engage with and champion progressive thinkers, chatting with famous people like the towering figure of the suffragist movement, Susan B. Anthony, and political activist, Emma Goldman, demonstrating her commitment to a broad range of social issues. She never stopped fighting for women's rights, workers' rights, and social justice, issues that remained central to her identity as a reporter and a citizen. This dedication defined her life right up until she passed away from pneumonia on january twenty seventh, nineteen twenty two, at the relatively young age of fifty seven.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

What a life.

SPEAKER_05 28:42

The New York Evening's Journal Obituary paid her the ultimate professional compliment, even calling her the best reporter in America, a title few women or men of her time could ever claim. But here's the real deal with Nellie Bly. The core of her enduring impact that goes beyond her list of achievements. She wasn't just reporting the news, she totally changed the landscape of journalism itself. What an incredible woman. That is amazing. If I could just be one of the 20 million things that she was and did and accomplished in her life, I would be so happy. A hundred.

SPEAKER_06 29:28

Hashtag goals.

SPEAKER_05 29:32

I love that. That was a great story. And again, thank you so much, Molly, for submitting that story. What an amazing story. Fantastic. Alright, and next up, Gavin. What do you have for us? Oh a little titty. A little titty.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

So uh exhibit number 90, the king of sting, Dr. Justin Schmidt. Let's talk about Mr. Dr. Justin Schmidt, shall we?

SPEAKER_06 30:04

We shall I am ready.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

Is an entomologist who basically decided the best use of his fancy PhD was to get himself stung by pretty much every painful insect out there on purpose. Over and over again. I hate it. And then, get this. He wrote poetry about the experience. And I'm completely serious about the poetry part. Of course you are. He once took a sting from a tarantula hawk wasp, which apparently feels like getting zapped by a car battery, and his description was blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. Almost like he was writing critique about a fancy wine. A searing agony with a bold finish of wanting to check out. Most of us get nailed by a simple bee and spend the next hour whining to anyone who's within earshot. I would. I'm a little babyback bitch when it comes to getting stung or bit. Dr. Schmidt, though, turned getting stung by over a thousand insects into an entire career. And he is the genius behind the Schmidt Pain Index, which I had never heard of. Oh, I have heard of it.

SPEAKER_05 31:25

I have never connected those dots.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

That's all's gotta do it, right?

SPEAKER_05 31:29

So I hope he was fairly compensated for his troubles.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

Couldn't be me. So the Schmidt Pain Index is a scale from one to four that rates insect stings by how much they make you question your entire existence. And he did not crowdsource this data. He personally volunteered to take a hit from every single one of them. Fire ants, bullet ants, warrior wasps, tarantula hawks. If it had a stinger and a seriously bad attitude, Justin Schmidt was ready for a meet and greet. For research purposes, obviously.

SPEAKER_05 32:08

Why wasn't I was gonna say, why wasn't he put in the mental asylum?

SPEAKER_00 32:12

Is this not a qualifying this this is crazy shit?

SPEAKER_01 32:17

Sir, are you okay? This is the guy who looked at a bullet ant, which is named that because its sting is supposed to feel like getting shot, and thought, yeah, I need that to sting me for science. The bullet ant scores a four plus on his scale.

SPEAKER_05 32:38

I don't kink shame, but I have suspicions that he may have liked that a little more than a normal person.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

Well, to be fair, Dr. Schmidt wasn't just some weird masochist with a bug net. He was a totally legit scientist doing totally legit research. It just required a level of personal commitment that most people would immediately nope out of. I am one of those. Same immediate nope. So how does professional sting victim end up on your CV? Justin Schmidt was born in 1947 and was obsessed with insects growing up, which is pretty normal for kids, sure. Most of them move on eventually. Some of them. I also am not one of them, but I mine aren't alive. Justin Yeah, you're totally normal. You just keep them on display in jars forever. I get to admire their beauty from beyond the grave. Forever.

SPEAKER_05 33:47

I just imagine hundreds of tiny little bug ghosts haunting you, but they're so small you don't notice. They're just desperately trying to fuck with you at night, and you can't hear them.

SPEAKER_01 33:59

So most people or most kids move on, right? Justin did not. He went to college, got his PhD in entomology from the University of Georgia in 1974. He studied bees and wasps and their venoms, and at some point he realized something odd. No one had ever actually standardized how much different stings hurt. They were just vague comments. This one's worse than that one. That wasp is pretty nasty. Really high level stuff. You know the big facts.

unknown 34:33

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

But burn a little ouch. But there was no actual system in place. No consistent way to measure things like that. No way to compare a fire ant to a yellow jacket or a harvester ant. So Schmidt decided to fix that problem. Which is where things got wild. Oh they weren't wild already. Okay, continue. He figured you know what the scientific world is really missing? A pain index for insect stings. And I'm gonna be the one to create it. His colleagues probably thought he meant theoretically, but he did not mean theoretically. He started getting stung. A lot. He'd catch a bug, let it sting him, and then immediately start taking notes, all while he was actively in pain. Why? Because apparently screaming and running away wasn't considered useful data. He needed documentation, structure, consistency. And here's the kick. A brave man he was. He wasn't just getting randomly attacked, he was totally in control. He'd grab the insect with forceps, press it directly to his skin on purpose, in the same spot, under the same conditions, over and over. If you're going to turn pain into solid data, you need that kind of consistency. Basically, he was repeatedly poking himself with very angry insects in a very controlled environment.

SPEAKER_05 36:06

You cannot convince me that this that was not a fetish of some kind, on some level. I'm sorry. I decline to believe otherwise.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

And he did not cheat. He used no anesthetic, no painkillers, nothing to take the edge off. That would defeat the whole point. You can't measure pain if you, you know, are numbing it. So every rating on his scale is completely raw, unfiltered, and fully experienced. The other major hurdle, pain is personal. You can't just survey ten people and average the sting experience. Everyone feels pain differently. To get consistency, he needed one constant. One person who was willing to take the hit every single time, and that person was him. Committed is an understatement. He developed a simple scale from one to four. A one is something like a sweet bee. Annoying, but you forget about it pretty quickly. He actually wrote light, ephemeral, almost fruity. Fruity. What? No way I would never be able to describe a bee sting as light and fruity, let alone ephemeral.

SPEAKER_05 37:27

I don't know about this guy, Gavin. I don't know if I could get all bored.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

I f honestly, I feel like I would probably get along with him pretty well. But he'd have to keep his little friends away from me.

SPEAKER_05 37:39

Right. I'd be like, so nice to meet you. I'd love to hear all about you. From over there. You need to go over there.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

A two is a honeybee or fire ant. Definitely painful, but you can deal with it. A three is a red harvester ant or a paper wasp. That's when things get serious. And a four is reserved for the absolute worst. The kind of things that make you instantly regret your life choices. But he didn't stop at just numbers. He wrote full descriptions, detailed, dramatic, and honestly a little unhinged. And I'm here for it. Surprising. Like I said, for the sweet bee, light, ephemeral, almost fruity, a tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm. For the yellow jacket, hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine WC Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue. For the tarantula hockwasp? Blinding fierce shocking the electric. A running hairdryer just has been dropped into your bubble bag. Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_00 38:55

Love this guy.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

He's growing on me a little bit. These descriptions are wild. They're not how most people process pain, but they worked. Suddenly, scientists had a reliable, consistent way to compare different insect things, and for everyone else, it created a super clear warning system. See anything rated a four, steer clear. Seriously, just don't fuck with it. I got you, bro. I got you, I'm good.

SPEAKER_05 39:22

Unless you're Schmidt and then just head first.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

He just needs a glass of wine, a good book, and a nasty boat.

SPEAKER_04 39:32

Feeling a little fruit. Where's the hairdryer? Let's go.

SPEAKER_06 39:36

Bubble Bubble bubble by off.

SPEAKER_01 39:43

So Mr. Justin, he didn't figure this out overnight. He built this scale over the course of decades. Years of field work, hundreds of stinks, constantly refining the numbers, comparing reactions, and adding new species. It was a massive long-term commitment to something most of us would run from for the rest of our lives. Yep. Yeah. Yep. And then the Schmidt Pain Index really took off. It wasn't just scientists who loved it, everyone did. Why? Because people are totally fascinated by pain, as long as it's happening to someone else. Hi, that's valid. That's very valid. Schmidt became a low-key celebrity. He was on TV, doing interviews and constantly fielding questions from journalists trying to figure out if this was seriously a real job. So you just let bugs sting you? Yep. On purpose? Mm-hmm. And this is your actual career? That's right. His most famous example, the bullet ant. These guys are native to Central and South America and are used in intense initiation ceremonies by the Sateri Mawe people in Brazil. They literally fill gloves with bullet ants, stingers facing in, and you wear them for ten minutes. Most people pass out. Yeah, yeah, duh. Naturally, Schmidt decided he needed to check this out personally. He gave the bullet ant a four plus. That's the highest score possible. He described it as pure, intense, brilliant pain, like walking over flaming charcoal with a three inch nail embedded in your heel. But here's the thing. But here's the thing people often miss. It's not just how bad it hurts, it's how long it hurts. Some stings are gone in a matter of minutes. Others stick around for hours. The bullet ant? That kind of pain can last for an entire day. Now you might be thinking, okay, but what's the big deal? And that's a fair question. Schmidt's work genuinely matters. Understanding insect venoms gives us huge insight into evolution. It helps explain why some species evolved to have these intense pain responses and why others didn't. Pain is basically a built-in alarm system, a survival tool. Bright colors, powerful stings, it's all just communication. It's nature's way of saying don't fuck with me. And animals that get that message once definitely don't make that same mistake twice. Unless you're me. Schmidt's research helped map the connection between venom and pain, which is super useful for medicine, pharmacology, pain studies, and even antimicrobial research. So yeah, this whole bizarre commitment to getting stung repeatedly actually contributes to real science in a really big way.

SPEAKER_05 42:38

I truly wonder if it all of that venom has to have some kind of effect on you as a person as so far as like your health goes. I wonder if he documented that too. I bet he did.

SPEAKER_01 42:50

But more research. Unfortunately, Dr. Justin Schmidt passed away in February 2023 at the age of 75. He spent his career checking out insects. Most people would spend most of their lives avoiding. Dude got stung over a thousand times and created a scale that people still use today. He wrote a book, appeared in documentaries, and basically became a legend in his own field. And the whole time he was genuinely stoked about it. Even the painful stuff. Especially the painful stuff. That freak. Because for him, pain was basically just a way to get information. Every sting was a data point. Every reaction told a story. He once mentioned that the pain helped him really get the insects. Appreciate how they evolved and see things from their point of view. Which is a pretty awesome idea, even if it's kind of absolutely bonkers way to go about it. Just a scoche.

SPEAKER_05 43:55

And not only that, he lived to be seventy five years old. Obviously, venom does the body fucking good.

SPEAKER_01 44:02

Maybe so. There are people who literally sing themselves with bees every single day. To help with arthritis and other um inflammatory diseases. And apparently it helps. Don't tell me that. I am not that brave.

SPEAKER_05 44:20

Where are them sweet bees at? They sound a little less than the sweet bees.

SPEAKER_01 44:25

Can I get the sweet bees? Light and airy, please. I would like light and airy. Almost fruity. Fruity sounds great. Science seriously needs more people like Justin Schmidt. People who are willing to go further than anyone else to ask all of the weird questions. To try all of the weird things. Even if the answer's sting. Oh.

SPEAKER_05 44:50

I see what you did there. I love that his descriptions of pain read more like a menu. I know. He's like a Somalier.

SPEAKER_01 45:05

I thought that was pretty cool. Crazy but cool.

SPEAKER_05 45:07

Absolutely. Uh it I will be cringing for the rest of my evening, and I hope to never randomly think of it throughout my working day because I will shudder. But other than that, yeah, great.

SPEAKER_01 45:20

Fantastic. Well, Lindsay, what do you have for us next?

SPEAKER_05 45:27

I am so excited to be able to present Exhibit 91. The Weird History of the Dildo.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

I cannot wait.

SPEAKER_05 45:41

I'm so excited. So let's talk about it. One of humanity's oldest inventions. Not the wheel, not fire, not agriculture or written language. No, we're talking about the goddamn dilto. No no The dilly The non vibrating, purely mechanical, been around for literally thousands of years, fake cock. Thousands? Thousands Because apparently, the moment humans figured out how to make tools, someone looked at a piece of stone and thought, I could fuck myself with that. Girl sing that horny ass idea has persisted through every single civilization since. We have archaeological evidence of dildos from thirty thousand years ago. Holy shit. Thirty thousand years. That's older than pottery.

SPEAKER_01 46:54

That's a lot of years.

SPEAKER_05 46:56

It's older than the domestication of dogs. Humanity looked at survival, hunting, gathering, not freezing to death, and said sure, but also let's carve some stone dick so we can get off. There's priorities, people. Our ancestors were literally starving and fighting off predators and still found time to chisel themselves a fuckstick. That is that's dedication, Gavin. I love that for them.

SPEAKER_00 47:43

Let's just have this very vivid image in my head of a caveman or cave woman looking at her man and just thinking, hmm, no. But that rock though Why the hell not?

SPEAKER_05 47:59

Or uh probably thirty thousand years ago. The ancient Greeks called them olisbos, which sounds like a pasta dish, but was actually a leather dildo stuffed with wool. Leather and wool. Let that sink in, Gavin. Some ancient Greek craftsmen were sitting there carefully stitching leather around a wool core, creating a fake cock for profit. That was his job. Dick maker.

SPEAKER_06 48:32

What do you do for a living? Oh I stuff wool into leather tubes so women can pleasure themselves. Cool, cool, house business. Fucking booming. Make that money, honey.

SPEAKER_05 48:45

Can you imagine what a dildo made of leather and stuffed with wool smelled like? Probably horrible. The fuck? But the Greeks were shockingly open about this shit. They wrote about Olisboy in plays. Aristophanes, the famous comic playwright, wrote a whole scene in Lysistrata where women are bitching about a dildo shortage. A dildo shortage.

SPEAKER_01 49:18

Where can I see this play? Why is this not on Broadway?

SPEAKER_05 49:25

Did they run out of sheep? Why was there not enough leather and wool? Because they were turning the sheep into dildoes. Can you imagine the headlines? Sheep are going extinct, whatever will we do? Not my dilly. Oh shit. The dildo shortage was because apparently the men were off at war and the dildo supply chain collapsed. Oh you'd think it would be more in demand if all the men were away at war. You would think We're we're gonna keep going. The women are literally complaining that they can't get laid or get themselves off because there aren't enough fake dicks to go around. That's a crisis. The Romans took it even further. Because of course they fucking did. Romans were horny as hell. They made dildos out of everything wood, leather, stone, glass, even bronze. Bronze dildos. Can you imagine? Cold, hard, unforgiving metal Honey, warm this up by the fire before you use it. It's incredibly durable. Baby Holy sh What if I wouldn't I wouldn't I mean I love I love men and I love my spouse, but never in a million years would I ask him to warm up a bronze dildo by the fire because he would just stick in the fire, it would be red hot and be like, here you go, I did it. You're welcome. But for bronze dildos, with them being so incredibly durable, you could pass that shit down through generations. Um This bronze cock has been in my family for two hundred years.

SPEAKER_03 51:30

The wrong This is passed down to me from my granny's granny's granny. What? Stop it right now.

SPEAKER_05 51:42

So with all the available materials, the Romans had a thriving dildo trade. Merchants sold them in markets alongside bread and olive oil, just casual shopping. Excellent choice, ma'am, that's our best seller. They even had a god associated with giant dicks. Priopis.

SPEAKER_01 52:07

Priopis. Okay. That must be where prioprism comes from. Uh-huh. Man, you learn something new every day. Is this my version of the blitzkrieg bop right now?

SPEAKER_03 52:24

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 52:25

Priorprism is when a hoienar has been filled with blood for too long and the blood is not escaping. Like from over Viagra usage. And chastity belts. And so the blood gets stuck in the chambers, and you have to go get it removed. Like the blood has to be pulled out of your leanar.

SPEAKER_03 52:51

Don't like that.

SPEAKER_05 52:52

Don't like that.

SPEAKER_01 52:56

It's called priaprism.

SPEAKER_05 52:58

Very grateful that I have the ability to acquire a penis, but that one is not attached to myself. That's something to be thankful for. Tell me more about Priapus. Well, for Priapus, statues of him featured comically oversized cocks. Like absurdly huge. And Romans would rub his statues for good luck.

SPEAKER_03 53:24

Just out there in public, rubbing stone dicks. Bless me, giant cock god.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

It's spirituality's weird. I will never be shocked nor surprised. Actually, I will, about anything that the Greeks or the Romans did. I yeah. They were wild.

SPEAKER_05 53:45

Absolutely. And like how do we get back to that to some extent? I wouldn't mind.

SPEAKER_01 53:53

Me neither. Just buying some dildos and I'm getting my bread and olive oil. Little charcuterie, little dickin' down.

SPEAKER_05 54:04

It sounds delightful.

SPEAKER_01 54:06

Sounds like a great evening.

SPEAKER_05 54:11

Oh, but you know, then we hit the Middle Ages, and things got a little creative. Because the church was very much against sexual pleasure, especially for women. God forbid women enjoy getting off. So dildos went underground. But they didn't disappear. Medieval women were horny and resourceful. They made dildos out of whatever they could find. Wood was popular. Carve it, sand it, that's the most important part, I think, and oil it up. But here's where it gets wild. Bread dough. You heard that right. Fucking bread dough. They would bake it until it was firm, let it cool, and boom, edible dick. Use then eat the evidence. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do, I guess. This makes me rethink the whole loaves of bread and olive oil being sold alongside with the dildos. It was not an accompaniment, it was simply another option.

SPEAKER_01 55:19

With a snack leader.

SPEAKER_05 55:27

Would that not lead to the most horrible yeast infection? You're literally shoving yeast up your yeast pole. I didn't even think about that. Hmm. Anywho moving forward. What is that? It's bread, obviously, for eating. Later. Mind your business. Zero waste, maximum pleasure. There are actual historical records of nuns being disciplined for making dildos out of candle wax. Nuns. Poor ladies. In convents, they melting down perfectly good candles to make contraband fuck toys. Sister Mary over there's like the Lord works in mysterious ways.

SPEAKER_03 56:21

He sure does. Amen. So does this wax cock.

SPEAKER_05 56:27

The commitment was inspiring, to say the least. Think about it. These women were risking eternal damnations to get themselves off. That just goes to show how important orgasms are. Hundred percent. Absu fucking Lutley. There's one medieval text that warns us against using vegetables. Specifically cucumbers and carrots. Because apparently that was common enough to require a written PSA. Ladies, please stop fucking the produce. The text claimed that vegetables could cause infections, which is fair. But also someone had to write that down. At least wash your cucumber.

SPEAKER_01 57:24

It had to The cucumber had to be way better than the leather dildo.

SPEAKER_05 57:29

It had to. And thus is the not a non-official story of how pickles came to be. Shut the fuck up. Listen, man, I don't make the rules. It just makes sense. Some medieval doctor was like, hmm, we need to address the cucumber in pussy situation immediately. Imagine being the guy who had to treat those infections. Ma'am, did you did you put a carrot up there? It was a cucumber, actually. Jesus fucking Christ.

SPEAKER_01 58:11

I knew this was gonna be funny, but I didn't think it was gonna be this fucking funny.

SPEAKER_00 58:16

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_05 58:20

If you didn't think that was bad enough, the twentieth century brought us modern materials. Plastics revolutionized everything, including fake dicks. Suddenly you could mass produce them, make them different colors, different sizes, different girths. The 1960s and 70s brought the sexual revolution, and with it the normalization of sex toys. People stopped pretending that they were only medical devices, they were sex toys for fucking revolutionary concept. Companies started getting creative. Silicone became the material of choice, body safe, flexible, easy to clean, perfect for shoving inside yourself repeatedly. Some companies went absolutely fucking weird. There are dildos shaped like dolphins. Dolphins. Someone looked at a dolphin and thought, yeah, it fucked that. There are unicorn horn dildos, sparkly rainbow colored unicorn horn dildos for people who want their orgasms to be magical. And then there are dragon dildos. Yep, dragon dildos. There's an entire market for fantasy creature dildos with scales and ridges and color gradients.

SPEAKER_00 59:48

Insert pterodactyl noise here.

SPEAKER_05 59:56

Think about it. Someone sat in a design meeting and said, What if we made a dildo that looks like it belongs to a mythical beast? And everybody else was like, Yeah, brilliant. Let's make dragoncock. Do it, lady. Not only were they manufactured, people started buying them. Lots of people. There were reviews. Quote, the ridges really hit the spot. Five stars. End quote. There are glass dildos, which I'm sorry is terrifying.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:32

I don't like the idea of that either.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:34

No. Um hand blown glass, artesianal fuck sticks. You can get them with swirls and colors. Bougie. They look like fancy paperweights. Hide them in plain sight on your desk. No one will ever know. You could display them on your mantle. Art. Oh that, that's Murano glass. Very expensive. Also, I fuck myself with it. There's crystal dildos, rose quartz, jade, obsidian. For people who also want their sex toys to align their chakras. Well, it's not just an orgasm, it's a spiritual wellness. Coming and manifesting abundance. That is motherfucking multitasking, if you ask me. I feel like Bubba Gump right now reading off different kinds of shrimp. There's metal ones, stainless steel, aluminum, temperature play, they call it. You could stick it in the freezer, run it under hot water, which sounds like either the best idea or the worst idea, depending on your pain tolerance and sense of adventure. Just like that bronze one next to the fire. And where's Dr. Schmidt? Where's this scale?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:00

The dildo pain scale.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:03

I have found my new career path.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:09

You can pretty much find any variation of fake cock on Etsy at any given time. They are readily available. The reviews are exactly what you'd expect. But here's the thing about dildos. They've been around for thirty thousand years. Through every civilization, every culture, every era, humans have consistently decided that fucking ourselves with objects is important. We've made them out of everything. We've hidden them, celebrated them, medicalized them, normalized them, and through it all the basic concept hasn't changed. It's the same horny idea someone had thirty thousand years ago. I want to fuck something that isn't a person. Bet just with the better materials and significantly more color options. You know, I think there's something weirdly beautiful about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:05

I too, too.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:06

It's just humanity's unwavering commitment to getting off. It proves that we are uh able to innovate and adapt. Our willingness to carve fake cocks out of literally anything available. We've come a long way. But also, we really haven't, because we're still doing the same shit.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:26

We're on the same bullshit.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:31

Just this time it's with better marketing and FDA approved materials.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:35

Always trying to find ways to replace a man.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:38

This is poetry. My god.

SPEAKER_05 1:03:43

Uh, to fuck some selves. Yeah, I'm skipping all that. Because some things are just that fucking important. We'll consider exhibit ninety-one closed. And humanity's thirty thousand year commitment to getting off? It's still going strong. One artisanal hand blown glass dick at a time. Bravo Bravo. Beautifully done. Thank you. I am personally invested in the history of the Didadillio. I love that so much. And cheers to the future. What on earth will come next?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:30

Well, I can tell you that my next exhibit is probably going to be the reason why the dildo was invented. Oh no. Exhibit number ninety two. Casanova and the oyster. And if you think those two things do not have any commonality, he would be so wrong. I'm a little frightened, Gather. Me too. So picture this Venice seventeen fifties. A man sits across from a beautiful woman at an intimate diner, candle light flickers. The wine is flowing. And then he pulls out a plate of raw oysters. He picks one up, tilts his head back and slurps it down. Then he looks at her with bedroom eyes and says your turn. This is apparently foreplay. Charming. I like it. This is his version of seduction. This is Giacomo Casanova's entire fucking strategy. See what I did there? Eat oysters, get laid, repeat until Tell you a legend, and somehow somehow it worked. The man allegedly seduced over a hundred and twenty women nuns, noble women, servants, married women, virgins. His success rate was unmatched. And a huge part of his reputation? Oysters. The man ate oysters like his dick depended on it. Which, according to him, it kind of did. Casanova believed oysters were the ultimate aphrodisiac, the secret weapon to seduction. The magic food that turned regular dinner into a prelude to forking, and he wasn't alone in his belief. For centuries, oysters have been considered the food of love, the ultimate libido booster, the edible equivalent of Spanish fly. But here's the question why? Why did an entire civilization decide that eating slimy seasonot would make you horny? And more importantly, why did it actually seem to work for Casanova? So let's dive into the weird, slippery, surprisingly fascinating history of oysters and seduction.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:16

I'll just say I'm I don't know if I'm ready. And then also I was like, well it does make sense because maybe men are attracted to the face that women make when they're having to swallow a load of slimy something that doesn't taste that great.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:36

Uh I think you're onto something here. I think you're definitely on to something. But first let's talk about Casanova himself. Giacomo Girolamo Casanova, born in Venice in 1725, son of actors, which is in eighteenth century Venice, meant he was basically born into scandal. Actors were considered one step above prostitutes in terms of respectability.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:04

Which was an interesting fact, actually. And it makes sense based on the context so far.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:09

Yep. So Casanova grew up around theater, drama, and people who made their living by charming and manipulating. Perfect training for a future legendary. And I use that word lightly. Seducer. Because his tactics would not work on me. Apparently, though, he was smart as hell, studied law and theology, spoke multiple languages, could hold his own in conversations about philosophy, science, and literature. He wasn't just some pretty fuckboy. He was educated, cultured, and witty. But he was also a con artist, a gambler, a spy, a prisoner who escaped from the inescapable Doge's palace prison. The man lived like he was a protagonist of a picarestque novel. Which eventually sounds good. Which eventually he literally became when he wrote his memoirs. History de Mavi Story of My Life Twelve volumes of detailed accounts of his adventures including his sexual adventures. And they were very detailed accounts. Like pretty much smut. The man wrote about his sex life with the enthusiasm of a food critic reviewing Michelin Star restaurants. There's always a tie in with between gays is swearing.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:43

How does it compare to a sweet bee?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:46

How would you what's the scale? Her brecles were like ripe peaches. The encounter lasted three hours. We did it seven times. Dude kept all the receipts. And throughout these memoirs, oyster appeared again and again. Because Casanova ate them constantly before seductions, during seductions, imagine that. As part of elaborate seduction dinners, he wrote about eating fifty oysters in one sitting. Fifty No Decline.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:30

Can you imagine being stuffed to the actual gills with oysters sitting back at the tail and be like wadafuck?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:39

No. Cause I ate one oyster one time and I was violently ill. And apparently, you can die from eating a bad oyster. I was just rolling the dice for science here, man. Eating that many oysters in one sitting is not a meal. It's a fucking cry for help. Also, I forgot to mention that this is also a fan pick. I want to shout out Vanna. Thank you so much for um ruining my life with this one. Because this is this is something.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:21

It's life changing, I do believe. I'm gonna have horrible dreams tonight. I would just like to point that out. Also partially fun because of the dildo story, um, but mostly horrifying.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:34

But you know what a dildo doesn't make you do? What? Watch a man eat oysters Fuck men. So why oysters? What made these particular shellfish the food of seduction? Well let's start with the obvious. They look like vulvas. There. I said it. That was it. That's it. Oysters are shaped like vulvas. Slippery, wet, fleshy. You pry them open with a knife, but please don't pry your vulvas open with a knife.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:10

That sounds like a story for the other podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:13

You slurp out the soft, glistening interior. The symbolism is not subtle. Eighteenth century Europeans weren't idiots. They saw the resemblance. Eating an oyster was basically an edible innuendo.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:29

So's a banana. Like, what are you doing? It would be way more turned on with bananas. Have you heard of tacos?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:38

Where is Mexico? If someone threw an oyster at me in an attempt to get me sexually aroused, I would throw it back. If someone threw a banana at me, I would be like, hmm, okay. Gavin? Yes.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:52

You realize just how much that makes sense, right? It resembles a vulva? Fuck you. You are not wrong. You are not wrong. This is getting Freudian very quickly. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:12

Casanova knew exactly what he was doing. He ordered oysters, made a whole production out of opening them slowly, deliberately, and then he'd tilt his head back and let the oysters slide down into his mouth, down his throat. All right. At his dinner companion, some poor woman, unsuspecting victim. It was theater was porn actually. Apparently it worked. Women were very into it. Which I cannot really hate them.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:55

I do not understand. Can I talk to these women? Is there a way?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:00

Maybe it was his confidence while he was doing it. But I'm pretty sure, let's be real, the oyster itself wasn't doing much. But the performance, the audacity, maybe that's what sold it. But there's more to the oyster myth than visual symbolism. People genuinely believed oysters had magical sex enhancing properties. The ancient Romans, because it's always the Romans, thought so as well. They served oysters at orgy's. Of course they did. Of course they did. Romans were horny as hell, as we've already discussed in this episode. And would try anything. These shellfish make you fuck better. Great. Bring out a thousand of them.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:49

More is better.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:52

The Greeks associated oysters with Aphrodite, the goddess of love. According to myth, Aphrodite was born from sea foam.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:01

Isn't the painting of Aphrodite her standing nude in the o in an oyster shell? Is that Aphrodite? Is that the painting I'm thinking of?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:10

That you might be right. That actually sounds pretty to the googel. Yep. Bitch, oh hell yeah, there she is. Wow, that's graphic. There was there's just I will never look at an oyster the same again.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:28

You didn't like it in the first place. I don't think this story's doing you any favors here. Just doubling down on your current opinion. I think Thanksman, I am traumatized. What other dicks-shaped foods can we talk about instead?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:48

So according to myth, Aphrodite was born from seafoam. Oysters come from the sea. Therefore, oysters equal Aphrodite equals sex. Flawless logic. Airtight reasoning. Yep. Definitely not just an excuse to eat expensive seafood and call it religious. But by the eighteenth century, oysters were a luxury food. They were expensive, exclusive. Eating them was a status symbol. So when Casanova ordered oysters, he wasn't just ordering food. He was flexing. Look how rich I am. I can afford to eat dozens of these fancy seabers. And wealth is inherently and unfortunately attractive. Always has been. So maybe the oysters worked not because of any magical properties, but because they signaled that Casanova had enough money to eat them. And money gets you laid. A tale as old as time.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:47

That would make sense though. The women were not actually affected by the oyster eating. Uh yeah, that's this dang you on again French, because I can't do an Italian accent.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:06

No, but the steak you're about to pay for is.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:09

No, yeah, it totally does. I'm so turned on right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:12

Anyway, uh So here's where it gets interesting and I don't it it's already interesting. Modern science has actually found a tiny kernel of truth in the oyster aphrodisiac myth. Oysters are loaded with zinc. Like packed with zinc. And zinc is essential for testosterone production. Low zinc equals low testosterone equals low libido. So technically, if you're zinc deficient, eating oysters could actually boost your sex drive. But here's the thing. Most people aren't zinc deficient. Especially not wealthy eighteenth century Venetians who ate a varied diet. So for Casanova, the zinc probably wasn't doing shit. He was already getting plenty of zinc from other foods. The oysters were just expensive sex props. Delicious which is questionable. Symbolic, status signalling props. But none uh but props nonetheless. Also, oysters contain amino acids that supposedly trigger sex hormone production. De asparitic acid and n menthyl de aspirate sounds sciencey. There's meth in it. There's meth. That makes a lot of sense. But the studies on this are not great. Most of them were done on rats, and the results were mixed. So maybe oysters make rats horny, the jury's still out on humans. Probably just the placebo effect doing most of the heavy lifting.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:50

I'd rather just take a supplement if I'm gonna be real. Or just Viagra. I got a bottle of zinc in my cupboard. I can make it happen.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:59

Nothing will do you better than just poppin' a boner. So here's the truth about Casanova and his oysters. The oysters didn't make him a legendary lover. His confidence did. His intelligence did. His ability to make women feel seen and desired did. The oysters were just a tool. A prop in a much larger performance. But they were a damn effective prop. Because they were expensive, which signaled wealth, because they were sensual, which set a kind of tone. Because they were associated with romance, which created expectation, and because Casanova believed in them, which made him more confident. And confidence is the real aphrodisiac here. Not zinc. Definitely not amino acids. And definitely not the vague resemblance to vulvas.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:54

Not so vague. Once you said it.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:57

No, it's not vague. But that's what Casanova had. The oysters were just his signature move, his trademark. To this day, oysters are considered romantic, somehow sexy. The food you order on a date when you're trying to set a mood, restaurants market them as aphrodisiacs, and oysters the food of love, but it's all just bullshit. The science doesn't really need to support it. And even though he convinced generations of people that the secret to great sex was hiding inside a shell at the bottom of the ocean, it obviously wasn't. The secret was just him and his charisma, his riz. His audacity. A very memorable image.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:53

That I wish I could wipe from my mind in actuality.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:59

All of it's kind of beautiful in its own way. And so that is exhibit number ninety-two. The trauma.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:10

The tr absolute trauma.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:14

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:17

Learned a lot, yeah. And I'm sure, I mean, now you hear warnings about oysters because they're literally the filters of the ocean. So pollution, heavy metals, all of that. You can't sit there and eat 50 order 50 oysters safely. Like No.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:40

There is a there is a statistic, actually, about hold on, let me find this.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:45

And for me, I do enjoy oysters. Like they're they're fine. I'm not gonna sit there and eat a bunch of them, but if there's like an oyster shooter or something, I'll do it and I'll like it. But I'm not gonna be doing it seducely either. I'm not gonna be like, hey baby, watch this.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:03

No, it's just not. One in every 160 servings of oysters is likely to cause illness. Oh, brother. Mm-mm. No.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:16

The illness is called uh vibrio. I wonder what the statistics are for actual vaginas. One out of how many could make you ill. If they are similar statistics, I will rethink the whole oyster vagina connection.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:39

We're not dogging on women this episode, Lindsay. We're dogging on men, okay?

SPEAKER_05 1:22:45

We deserve it sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:48

Lindsay, what kind of nonsense are we gonna get into with exhibit number ninety-three?

SPEAKER_05 1:22:54

Let us find out. Exhibit ninety three The Cadaver Synod Sometimes history makes a decision so unhinged that even the people who lived through it named it the horrible thing. They didn't call it the unfortunate event, they straight up labeled it the horrible thing. Synod horenda, that's what they called it. And medieval people had seen some shit. Yeah they did. Crusades, inquisitions, plagues, constant warfare. But this was something special. This is what happened when political revenge, religious authority, and human pettiness collided in the worst possible way. This is the story of how the Catholic Church looked at the concept of letting the dead rest in peace and said you know actually fuck that guy in particular. Welcome to late ninth century Rome, because of course Rome. Where being Pope was the most dangerous job in Europe. Let's set the scene. The year is eight ninety one AD, and the papacy is a shit show. Absolute chaos. Popes are being elected, deposed, and murdered at an alarming rate. The position has become a political football. Powerful Roman families are fighting for control. Whoever controls the Pope controls Rome. Whoever controls Rome controls a massive chunk of Europe. The stakes are incredibly high, and people are willing to do absolutely insane things to maintain power. Into this mess steps a man named Formosus. He's just been elected pope already controversial. Before he even got the job. Formosus had been bishop of Porto. But years earlier, he'd been excommunicated for political reasons, then unexcommunicated, then made bishop again. Then he made pope. His entire career was a roller coaster of church politics. He had enemies, lots of them. Powerful enemies who thought he had no right to wear the papal crown. But Fromosis didn't give a shit about his haters. He had his own agenda, his own political alliances, and his own plans for who should control the Holy Roman Empire. Here's where Fromosis made his fatal mistake, and I do mean fatal in the most literal sense. Rutro Rutro There was a succession crisis brewing. The Holy Roman Empire needed an emperor. Multiple candidates were vying for the position. Formosus had to choose who to crown. This wasn't just a ceremonial decision, this was choosing who would be the most powerful secular ruler in the entirety of Europe. One of the candidates was backed by a powerful Roman family called the Spoleto dynasty. They had money, they had armies, they had influence, they expected Formosus to crown their guy. Formosus looked at their candidate and said. Instead, he crowned a man named Arnulf of Corinthia. A completely different guy. The Spileto family was furious, absolutely livid. You don't reject the Spileto family and expect them to just shrug it off. They had long memories, and they were petty as hell. But what could they do? For Moses was the Pope, protected by his position, untouchable. So they waited. And they plotted, and they remembered every single slight. Of course they did. Dun dun. Fromosis died in April of eight ninety six AD. He was in his seventies. Natural causes, apparently. He died in his sleep. He had lived a full life, had a proper papal funeral, and was buried with honor. Which should have been the end of the story. He should have been mourned, remembered, and then gradually forgotten you know, like most popes. But the spl But the spileto family wasn't done with him. Not even close. After Fromosis died, there was a brief pope named Boniface VI. He lasted fifteen days. He died too.

unknown 1:27:59

Just

SPEAKER_05 1:28:00

Literally a moment of glory, I guess. Just a little bloop Ital And after fifteen days, he died too. Suspicious timing, but whatever. Medieval Rome was like that. Then came Pope Stephen VI. And Stephen VI was the Spileto family's guy. Their puppet their popal puppet. Their instrument of revenge. Here's the twist. Stefan had been appointed by Formosus himself. Formosus had literally given Stefan his career. But Stefan didn't give a shit about gratitude. He cared about power. He cared about pleasing the Spileto family, and the Spileto family wanted Formosus destroyed. Not just his reputation, not just his legacy. They wanted him humiliated, desecrated, erased from history. And Stephen VI was happy to oblige.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:05

Damn, they were petty. Right?

SPEAKER_05 1:29:07

This is like some F. Like I keep wanting to do the Italian hand motion. You don't mess with the spallettos. Stephen come to get you. In January of eight ninety seven AD, Pope Stephan VI made a decision. A decision that would horrify even medieval Rome, which is saying a lot. A decision so unhinged that people would talk about it for centuries. He was planning something, something that had never been done before. Something that would make people question his sanity. His advisors knew, the Spileto family knew, they were all in on it. But the people of Rome had no idea what was coming. Stephan VI gathered his counsel, he made preparations, he issued orders, and then one cold January morning he sent men to the Basilica of Saint Peter, to Formosus tomb with shovels. Oh no Oh no. They opened the tomb nine months after Formosus had been buried.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:28

That's long enough Too long and yet not long enough.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:35

This was a full nine months of decomposition. The body was exhumed, pulled from the ground. It was rotting, it was falling apart. I can't even imagine the smell. But Stefan's men didn't stop. They had orders. They dressed the corpse in full papal vestments, the fancy robes, the miter, the ceremonial garments. They propped the body on a throne in the papal council chamber. They positioned him as if he was still alive, still in power, and then Pope Stephan VI walked in. He looked at the corpse of his predecessor and announced that they were going to hold a trial. A formal ecclesiastical trial, with charges, with persecution, with a defense. They were gonna put a dead body on trial for crimes against the church.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:38

And they thought that Nelly was crazy. This guy Fuck men. The audacity.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:54

It's always a man, it's always a motherfucking man. It's always a man, it's always Rome. What the fuck is going on? But let's pause here, uh because this is the specific moment, the absolute peak of medieval insanity. They dug up a corpse. They dressed it like a pope, sat it on a throne, put it on a trial. This actually fucking happened. This is real history. The trial was called the Cadaver Synod. Synod just means a church council, but cadaver synod has a certain ring to it. Just a little bit of that, you know, what the fuck energy. Just a little th what?

SPEAKER_03 1:32:44

A little smell.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:46

Pope Stefan VI presided. He was the prosecutor. He was also the judge. Gorzi was the entire he was the entire show. Because why the hell not? You're the Pope, you're like, guess what? Rules changed. Welcome to religion, I guess. And the corpse, obviously, would a tick. One of them bronze wands that was heated up by the fire. That's the one. That's the one. And the corpse, obviously, couldn't defend itself, so they assigned a deacon named John to stand next to the body and answer questions on its behalf. Poor John Can you imagine being John? My immediate mental image was him standing behind the corpse, using the shrimp voice, You see I had a valid reason for that.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:47

No, Mr. Prosecutor and George Ann Polp, that's all wrong. You got it all wrong.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:53

They were like, Hey John, we need you to speak for this rotting corpse. I'm sorry. You need me to do what? Answer the charges. Defend the dead Pope.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:06

But he's dead.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:07

Yeah, uh he's also on trial, so get over here and do your fucking job. So John did just that. He stood next to the decomposing body and tried to mount a defense. While Stephen VI screamed accusations at a corpse. The charges were mostly political bullshit. Formosis had allegedly violated church law by moving from the bishopric of Porto to become Pope. You weren't supposed to switch diocese. It was technically against the rules. He'd also, supposedly, committed perjury. He'd crowned the wrong emperor. That was the real crime. The rejection of the Spileto family's candidate. Everything else was just window dressing. Stephen VI yelled at the corpse, demanded answers. The deacon tried to argue that the charges were unjust. That for that Formosus had been a legitimate pope, that this entire trial was insane. But it didn't matter. The verdict was predetermined. Oh shit. You don't dig up a corpse and put it on trial unless you've already decided that it's guilty. Formosus was found guilty of all charges. Poor guy. It was a unanimous decision. You don't say. Judge, jury, prosecutor, I wonder how many hands had to be raised for that. But then came the punishment. They stripped the body of its papal vestments, ripped the fancy robes right off the rotting corpse, then they cut off the three fingers of his right hand. Specifically, those are the fingers used to give blessings. The benediction fingers.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:08

Baby come here, give me them benediction fingers.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:11

Benediction fingers.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:13

Them three right there. I want those three right. Holy shit. Okay. They mutilated a corpse. In the name of God. In the name of justice. In the name of petty political revenge. Then they dragged the body through the streets of Rome, literally dragged it, but through the city. Oh passed crowds of people. Some were horrified, some were cheering. Medieval Rome was a wild place. So wild. After parading the corpse through the streets, they threw it in the Tiber River. Just chucked it in the water, like garbage. The body of a former pope floating in the river, decomposing, being eaten by fish.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:04

The amount of yeeting in history is astounding. There was a lot of heating.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:11

And also is this where this sleep with the fishes comes from? Like maybe that later. That would be wild if that was the origin of that specific statement. Cause hello, mob family, Dahlia, revenge, dead body sleeping with the fishes. You might like me on to something. Being eaten by fish. This was the final humiliation.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:42

Fromosis Papacy Papacy Popacy Pi Pipi Papasi Papacy.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:56

There it is. Fromosis' papacy was declared invalid. All his acts as Pope were nullified. Every single person he'd ordained was no longer ordained. It was like he never existed. Except for the fact that everybody knew he had existed, and everybody knew just what they'd witnessed. Here's the thing about doing something this unhinged. It tends to backfire spectacularly. The cadaver sinud horrified people. Hold on, I put too much emphasis on that, like I don't know what I'm doing 'cause I'm not. The cadaver sinud horrified people. Even by medieval standards. This was too much, too cruel, too insane. Public opinion turned against Stefan VI. People started questioning his sanity, his legitimacy, his right to be pope. A few months after the trial, there was an earthquake in Rome. A big one. The basilica where the trial had been held partially collapsed. People saw this as divine judgment. God was pissed. God was saying, What the fuck did you just do? The political wind shifted. Stephan VI's enemies saw an opportunity and they deposed him. As they get in jail, you psych that motherfucker too. And then in August of eight ninety seven AD, less than a year after the cadaver synod, Stephen VI was strangled to death in his cell. Oh shit. Karma works fast sometimes. She's a bitch. She's a bitch. Meanwhile, Fromosis' body was fished out of the Tiber. A monk found it. Supposedly, the body was miraculously preserved, which sure, let's go with that. I saint it with my own eyes. God did it. His body was reburied quietly. Then, a few years later, Pope Theodore II officially rehabilitated Formosus, declared the cadaver synod invalid, said Formosus had been a legitimate pope all along, restored his acts, tried to undo the damage, but you can't really undo something like that. No. You can't undesegrate a corpse. Give me my fingers back, like you can't do that. You can't undrag a body through the streets. The damage was permanent. The horror was real, and the story lived on. So you may be asking yourself what was the fucking point of any of this? Why did Stefan VI do it? He did it for power. He did it for revenge, politics. The Spileto family wanted Formosus destroyed, and Stefan was their tool. But it was also about legitimacy. If Formosus's papacy was invalid, then everyone he'd ordained was invalid, including Stefan VI himself. Stefan had been made a bishop by Formosus, so by declaring Formosus' papacy invalid, Stefan was technically invalid Stefan was technically invalidating his own position. Unless he could argue that he was reordained by someone else, which he probably did. Medieval church politics were a fucking nightmare of circular logic and self-serving justifications. Nothing has changed. I was about to say medieval church politics.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:53

Just a couple thousand years later still doing the same things.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:59

The point is, this entire situation was about power, about controlling the narrative, about using the church as a weapon. And it backfired horribly. The cadaver synod became legendary. Not in a good way. No. Definitely not in a good way. Man, that was definitely an odd story and depressing. I am depressed.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:26

You know, when we're like trying to figure out the cases we're gonna cover, this one pops up so often that I was reluctant to even put it on the episode. But now I get it. I get it. Yeah. Cause holy holy shit.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:45

It's kind of relatable to today and organized religion in general. It's like it's history just repeats itself. It's still about fucking power-hungry people.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:59

And if history isn't repeating itself, it sure rhymes. Right. But you know, I'm about to turn all of this around, and you will not feel so depressy expressy anymore.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:16

Can we go back to the dildo story? Because I had a really good time with dildos.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:21

I think I have something better than dildos, actually, maybe. I don't know. We'll see. Okay. Alright. Exhibit 94. Operation Cat Drop.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:30

So it deals with pussies of sorts. It is dildo adjacent. I will accept it. I can't wait.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:38

Talking about real cats here. But you know what's really great about humans? We're really good at solving problems. Absolutely fantastic at it, really. Absolutely fantastic at it, really. Speak for yourself, Gavin. But continue, please. We see a problem, we analyze it, and then we come up with a solution. We implement that solution with confidence and determination. And then and this is the important part here. Because we've learned this lesson already on the audience department several times. We create a completely different and often worse problem than the first problem.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:21

Yeah, that sounds about right.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:23

And then we have to solve that problem too, with an even more insane solution. It's a beautiful cycle of fuck ups and fixes. A never-ending spiral of seemed like a good idea at the time. This is the story of one of those spirals. A story about good intentions, unintended consequences, and the day the Royal Air Force drafted barn cats into the military. Welcome to Borneo. What let me set the scene. Borneo is a massive island in Southeast Asia. Specifically, we're talking about Sarawak, a region that was dealing with a serious public health crisis. Malaria. Malaria was killing a lot of people. Mosquitoes were everywhere spreading the disease like it was their job. Because it literally was their job. That's what mosquitoes do. They're tiny flying little assholes with a biological imperative to ruin your life. The World Health Organization was on the case. They had a solution a miracle chemical that would solve everything. Dun dun dun D D T Oh no Forgive me for what I am about to attempt to pronounce.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:53

I can't wait.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:00

Except for super frolic. I can't even say that one. Oh my god, do that one. Okay, okay, I got this. Dichloradephenyl tricholariethane. That is closer than anything I could have ever. Done. And that is why they just call it DDD. Because you can't say that twice.

SPEAKER_05 1:46:27

Or even Well, at least they were smart about its name, but maybe not the application, but you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:34

Why does it have to be that much of a name? It's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_05 1:46:40

We just call it dick for short.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:42

Dick.

SPEAKER_05 1:46:44

Put the dick on ya.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:46

Moving forward, DDT was the wonder pesticide of the mid-20th century. Sprayed everywhere. Kill all the mosquitoes. Problem solved. Simple, effective. What could possibly go wrong? So they sprayed DDT. Everywhere. Inside houses, on walls, on roofs, in every nook and cranny. They went hard with the DDT. Absolutely saturated the entire place. And you know what? It actually worked. The mosquitoes did in fact die. Malaria rates dropped. I bet they did. Good job, folks. Yep. People stopped dying from mosquito born diseases. Mission accomplished. High fives all around. The World Health Organization patted themselves on the back. Local officials celebrated, everybody was thrilled. But only for about five minutes, because then they started to notice something. Something weird. Something they had not anticipated. Shortly after, villagers' thatched roofs began to rot and collapse. The DDT had accidentally killed a species of parasitic wasp that previously kept thatch eating caterpillars in check. Without their natural predator, the caterpillar population exploded and started devouring all of the thatch roofing material. Oh no. But that wasn't the only thing that was dying. The cats were also dying. And not just a few cats. A lot of the cats, like a very concerning number of cats. The local cat population was absolutely decimated. So here's what happened. The DDT killed the mosquitoes, but it also killed other insects, flies, cockroaches, all kinds of bugs. The bugs didn't die immediately. They got poisoned, but they were still moving around, still crawling, still being bugs. And then the geckos ate the poisoned bugs. Because that's what geckos do. They eat bugs. The geckos ended up being poisoned. But they didn't die right away either. They just got slow and lethargic. They became easy targets, and then the cats ate the poisoned geckos. Because that's what cats do. They hunt small animals. The cats got a concentrated dose of DDT through the food chain. Bioaccumulation. It's called biomagnification, actually. The poison gets more concentrated as it moves up the food chain. The cats didn't stand a chance. They started dying in large numbers. The local cat population completely collapsed. Now you might be thinking, okay, that sucks for the cats, but what's the big deal? Oh, sweet summer child, the cats were doing a job, a very important job. They were keeping the local rat population in check. Rats are everywhere in tropical regions. They breed like crazy. They eat crops, they spread disease, they're a nightmare. But cats hunt rats. Cats are naturally. Natural rat predators, they keep the rat population manageable. Without cats, the rats have no natural predators. And when rats have no predators, they do what they do best. They multiply exponentially. Within months, Borneo had a massive rat problem. Rats were everywhere, in houses, in food stores, in fields, eating their crops, destroying supplies. And here's the kicker. Rats also carry disease, including the plague. The actual bubonic plague. The Black Death. The thing that killed a third of Europe in the Middle Ages. So the World Health Organization had successfully eliminated malaria and accidentally created the conditions for a potential plague outbreak. Fantastic work all around. Stand up job. Stand up. The local officials were panicking. The World Health Organization was also panicking. Everyone was panicking. They needed a solution and fast. They needed to get rid of all of these rats, but how? Poison? They just tried that. Look how well that worked. Traps? They can't even trap enough. Fast enough. They needed something that could hunt rats. Something that was good at killing rats. Something that had already been doing the job perfectly well. Before they'd unfucked everything up. They needed cats. And a lot of them. But there were no cats. This sounds like fucking poetry. What are you fucking fucked up doctors? Doctor Zeus We're really good at fucked up Dr. Seuss. So they needed to import cats from somewhere else. Bring in cats from an outside region, repopulate the area, and let cats do what cats do. Simple enough, right? Except Borneo is an island. A very big island. And Sarawak is in the interior. Dense jungle, no roads, no easy way to transport anything. Especially not live animals. So how do you get thousands of cats into the middle of Borneo? Someone and history doesn't exactly record who had an idea. An idea so stupid, but also incredibly amazing. So audacious, so completely unhinged that it might just work. They would fly the cats in by plane and drop them from the sky. With what? Parachutes. What? You heard me right. They were gonna put the cats in crates, load those crates onto military aircraft, fly over the affected areas, and push the crates out of the plane with parachutes attached. Unfortunately, the cats were not wearing their own personal parachutes, which would have been way more way more amazing.

SPEAKER_05 1:52:55

Gavin, you ruined it.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:57

I'm so sorry.

SPEAKER_05 1:52:58

I that was my mental picture. Each cat was like jumping out of the plane, with CCR blaring in the background. Hidday me! Hidden me! Fine. So that was your factual way.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:15

That was the plan. The cats would float gently down to the ground and then presumably get out of their crates and start hunting rats. Operation Cat Drop. And that's exactly what they called it. The Royal Air Force was brought in because of course it was. The RAF had planes. Very, very big cargo planes. The RAF already had planes that were suitable for dropping supplies to troops in World War II. Now they were going to be used to drop cats. The pilots must have been thrilled. What's the mission today, sir? We're dropping cats into the jungle. Sorry you, dropping what? Cats. About 14,000 of them. Are you fucking with me? I wish I was son, I wish I really was.

SPEAKER_05 1:54:08

Are you fucking kidding me? My entire mission is to make it rain pussy in the middle of the jungle.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:13

Where the hell were you in World War II?

SPEAKER_01 1:54:18

The logistics were insane. They needed to source thousands of cats. Where? From Singapore, mostly. They put a call out for cats, any cats, stray cats, house cats, whatever. They'd take them all. People brought in cats, loads of cats. Just swimming in pussy.

SPEAKER_05 1:54:45

Can you imagine how the cats felt? That's quite an adventure for a cat. And oh I found a home. Wait, I'm being put into a crate. Holy shit.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:58

Like Nobody asked the cats.

SPEAKER_05 1:55:05

They never do.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:09

But one by one, crates with parachutes attached floated down through the sky, drifting over the jungle canopy, landing in clearings in villages, sometimes in trees, sometimes in rivers. It was absolute chaos. Beautiful but absurd chaos. The villagers watch crates fall from the sky, parachutes billowing, and cats yowling from the inside.

SPEAKER_06 1:55:37

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:38

I feel so bad for them, but it's also a very funny fucking picture.

SPEAKER_05 1:55:44

Why is there not an animated some kind of Pixar movie about this?

SPEAKER_01 1:55:53

Operation Cat Drop was against all odds, a success. The cats established themselves, they bred, they multiplied, they kept the rat population under control. The threat of plague was averted. The crops were saved, the villages were safe. All because someone decided to throw cats out of airplanes. The whole operation cost a fortune. The logistics were a nightmare, the execution was absolutely chaotic at best, but it worked. It actually fucking worked. The World Health Organization learned a valuable lesson about unintended consequences, about the importance of understanding ecosystems before you start spraying chemicals everywhere. About how fixing one problem can create 10 more problems. And about how sometimes the solution to your problem is to just throw cats at it.

SPEAKER_05 1:56:50

Pussy can fix most problems.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:55

It's ridiculous. It's very human though. And we dropped 14,000 cats out of airplanes to fight a problem that we created. So maybe you're about to do something completely unhinged. Something that will make people question your sanity. Something that will become a legendary story. Do it anyways. Embrace the chaos. Throw cats at your problems. Metaphorically, of course. Or literally, if the situation calls for it. Just make sure they're wearing parachutes. And that is exhibit number 94.

SPEAKER_05 1:57:32

Oh my man, we fuck up a lot of shit as humans, don't we? We really do.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:39

And we just kinda cover it up with a baby. Whoopsie. We only kinda make up for it in the funny shit that comes afterwards, though. Only kinda. What'd you think about all this, Lindsay?

SPEAKER_05 1:57:49

Well, I'm a little traumatized. I feel like I'm a little bit of a better person, and uh my sides hurt a little bit from laughing mostly at the dildo situation. My god. I have to say this was a pretty damn good tour. Uh yeah, I think we covered just uh a little bit of everything this episode. As a listener, it's always chaos, but as somebody who's actually present this time, it's more chaos. Way more. Alright, Gavin. Before we close up, anyone have any complaints they want to file? Yeah, a couple, actually. Let's list them off. One. Undercover journalist. Very brave. One man who treated insect stings like Yelp reviews. Unwell, but committed. One oyster situation that absolutely did not need to become public knowledge. And yet here we are. One dead Pope dragged back into workplace conflict. Hate that for him. And an unspecified number of falling cats.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:01

Which somehow was the least upsetting part of the night.

SPEAKER_05 1:59:04

We have an estimate on emotional damage?

SPEAKER_01 1:59:07

Yes. Cause of incident? History being gross, dramatic, and incapable of acting normal for five consecutive fucking minutes. Thanks for wandering the archives with us tonight. You survived institutional horror, insect agony, sexual archaeology, corpse politics, and tactical cat deployment. Honestly, that's pretty respectable. The exhibits are settling down, the complaint forms are piling up, and it is officially time to escort you guys to the exits.

SPEAKER_05 1:59:39

But unfortunately, for everyone involved, we are nowhere near done with this tour. New crates are being shipped in every week, just begging to be opened. And next week's lineup looks awfully suspicious.

SPEAKER_01 1:59:55

I mean tour, made you laugh, cry, gasp, or question reality, leave us a rating and a review either on Apple Podcast or head on over to our Facebook page, the Odyssey Department, and hit us with a good one.

SPEAKER_05 2:00:06

It really does help us out, and it helps other curious weirdos to find the show. It also encourages us in ways that probably aren't all that healthy, but we love it. Alright, folks, form a single line and head for the exits.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:20

Please leave calmly and do not lick, summon, seduce, sting test, or prosecute anything on your way out. And ignore that bucket of dildos. They are not complimentary.