Einstein's Brain Heist, Operation Mincemeat, Medieval Torture Devices, Cocaine Jazz Rats

In Episode 18 of The Oddities Department, we take you through four wildly unsettling (and occasionally hilarious) exhibits where history, science, and human curiosity collide in the most chaotic ways imaginable.

🧠 Einstein’s Brain Heist
When Albert Einstein died in 1955, he asked for a simple cremation—no autopsy, no spectacle. A pathologist ignored that, removed his brain without permission, and spent decades slicing it up and distributing it to scientists around the world. Science… or theft?

💀 Operation Mincemeat (WWII’s Most Absurd Spy Plan)
British intelligence used the body of a homeless man, gave him a fake identity, a fiancée, and top-secret documents—then dropped him into the ocean to trick Nazi Germany. It worked. Somehow.

😬 Medieval Torture Devices Designed for Women
From iron masks that shredded tongues to devices built for public humiliation and mutilation, we uncover the disturbing reality of gender-targeted torture in history.

🐀🎷 Cocaine Jazz Rats (Yes, This Is Real Science)
In a real 2011 study, researchers gave rats cocaine and discovered something unexpected—they started preferring jazz music. What sounds like a joke is actually a fascinating look at how addiction rewires the brain.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Uh Roro.

SPEAKER_02 0:03

Why did you say it like that? Look at the floor. Why is it white? What is that?

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Flower? That's what I'm trying to figure out. There are footprints. Those are paw prints. And they're everywhere. Are they dancing? Yeah, my scientific assessment is that would be correct. Do you do you hear that? Oh yeah, I hear that. Is that a saxophone? Why is there jazz music playing on the PA system? Who listens to jazz music? Right. Okay. Powder?

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Coffee's.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Jazz.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Kevin!

SPEAKER_01 0:43

This isn't powdered sugar. Nope. Definitely is not powdered sugar. This isn't flour either, is it? Correct.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Oh, this is cocaine. Yup. Yeah, that's that's cocaine. Oh boy. Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

The lab rats. The lab rats! They escaped again! And they are vibing. Gavin! Yep! The janitor's going to kill us. Oh, he's gonna be so mad. Or happy. I guess he'll find out when we start sleeping. Gavin! Oh my god, they are doing the Carlton. Turn on the party lights and let's see those jazz hands. We've got one hell of a tour today. I'm Susie. And I'm Gavin.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

Welcome to the Oddities Department. The part of the museum where the exhibits are sometimes science experiments. And the experiments are ongoing. And apparently, the lab rats have developed a social life. This is episode 18 of the Oddities Department. Tonight we will take you on a tour through some of the strangest oddities in science and in history. The first half of the tour, we will stop by a classic but odd situation. The Einstein exhibit, where we will be taking an in-depth look at his brain. Then we will move on to Operation Mincemeat, where we will learn about how British intelligent operatives deceived Hitler using a very disturbing tactic.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

On the second half of the tour, we will be examining medieval torture devices that are sure to make your body hurt and quiver. After that, we will round the tour out with rats, cocaine, and jazz music. Before we get started, we have two rules. Rule number one. Stay behind the yellow tape when we visit the autopsy room.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

Formaldehyde is not a fluid you want on your clothes or your skin.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Rule number two The Medieval Torture Exhibit is not an interactive experience.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

Trust me, you don't want to play with anything in there. Alright, we'll deal with the rats later, I guess. We are absolutely not dealing with the rats later.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

We've got a tour to run.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

And a jazz party actively unfolding in the hallway. Cool. First up Exhibit 107. Einstein's brain heist. It's April 18th, 1955. Princeton Hospital. Albert Einstein lies in a hospital bed, a lifetime of equations behind him, and by many accounts a simple, humane request as he faced the end of his life. He did not want an autopsy. He asked for a simple cremation. And to be dispersed somewhere undisclosed. He wanted no public grave, no tourist attraction for his final resting place. He valued modesty and death as much as he did in life, which respect. Fair enough. That was his preference, to be left to the quiet dignity of the departed. But snoring dog. But last wishes and logistics sometimes collide. Einstein died in the small hours, lost to an aortic aneurysm in his an abdomen. Yeah, that's a alliteration. You could try to say ten times fast. Aeortic aneurysm in his abdomen. Hoo-ee, okay. His physician, Dr. William S. Frist, and those around him respected his wish to the best of their abilities, but needed to document that cause of death. So enters pathology, which is necessary, clinical, and as we'll find out, morally adventurous. Dr. Thomas Stoltz-Harvey.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

We will definitely be learning more about that later. Mmm, perfect.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

His name was Dr. Thomas Stoltz Harvey, a 26-year-old pathologist on call that night who performed the autopsy. Of Einstein, give me a break. On call. Whatever. He later claimed he was moved by scientific curiosity that the brain of someone who had reconceived physics and was a goddamn genius in every sense of the word deserved preservation and study. So he fucking removed Einstein's brain without explicit permission from the family. What? He considered it preservation for humanity. But others later called it theft.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

I would also agree.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

He also removed his eyes as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Okay. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 5:34

He took the brain, photographed it, weighed it, wrapped it in gauze, and set off on a long, complicated relationship with ethical gray areas the size of a neuron.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Grey areas, I see what you did there.

SPEAKER_02 5:47

Mm-hmm. Harvey sliced the brain into dozens of blocks, mounted samples on slides, and sent pieces to researchers around the world. He cut his braid into approximately 240 pieces.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

And each one of those pieces is still smarter than all of my brain.

SPEAKER_02 6:07

Yeah. Right, that's like ten of my brains in one little block. He kept many parts himself, some stored in jars preserved in alcohol, some of those jars stuffed in a cider box in his garage. Some were moved across the country in the trunk of his car. Others were mailed or given to various scientists, pathologists, and doctors all over, like I had said previously. And he gave his eyeballs to Einstein's own ophthalmologist.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

I wonder if his eyes were smart too.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Probably. Or if the ophthalmologist just wanted a fucking souvenir. Who knows?

SPEAKER_01 6:48

How do I procure a piece of Einstein do I remain?

SPEAKER_00 6:54

I wrote you into this later. For that fucking reason.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

He argued that Einstein's consent was implied by the importance of the brain to science. Einstein's family and many colleagues disagreed, and I wonder fucking why. Yeah. So now consequences followed, as they should. Princeton University, Einstein's stepdaughter, Margaret Marguerite? Margaret? Margaret? Margaret. I know the E on the end throws me off. For all you guys listening at home, it's M-A-R-G-A-R-E-T-E. Margaret A. No, it's probably just Margaret. It's fine. And the wider scientific community bristled. In 1956, the family publicly accused Harvey of removing the brain without permission and demanded its return. The ethical outrage was not instant, headlines aside, but the repercussions were slow and real. Yeah, kind of. I think he should have gotten in more trouble, but we'll get there. Harvey's life took an odd trajectory after that night. Professionally he was criticized and marginalized. In 1958, Princeton Hospital revoked his pathologist role and he was fired. They took his license away, too. Rightfully so. Damn. Hence why he was traveling so much, too. So they threw the hammer at him. Exactly. He drifted through various positions and eventually moved across states and countries, all while guarding, studying, and often defending his actions. The brain became both his scientific obsession and his personal burden. So legally, he wasn't prosecuted for theft, because the lines around cadaveric possession were fuzzier then. But the social consequences were unmistakable. Which I didn't know that cadaveric was a fucking word. I did not either. I'm like, I like that word. That's a nice word, cadaveric. Oh no, it's a good one. He was ostracized by some peers and praised by others who valued the research. Over time, the controversy settled into a peculiar legacy. Harvey as both the keeper of a relic and the subject of ethical case studies in medical schools. Meanwhile, scientists using the brain tissue sent them published papers on cortical thickness and neuron density. That checks out. These papers were not published until almost 30 years after Einstein's death. Despite Harvey's promise of publication and purity in his intentions. Which makes you sit back and wonder because he's like, science deserves to have his brain. We need to study it for science and for people. But then he held on to it for decades. And nothing happened for decades.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

It's weird. They do say that progress in science is always slow.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Oh yeah, especially when you hide it in jars and cider boxes and in your trunk. Yeah, super slow. Some claim structural differences that might explain genius. Others caution strongly against simplistic conclusion. Correlation is not causation. As Einstein might have reminded us in his cute, bemused German accent. And now I would dive more into their exact findings, but that would take hours, and a bunch of scientific words involving the brain that I probably could not pronounce or even understand what I was telling y'all. Because I'm not a neurologist. That's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about a b somebody stealing somebody's fucking brain. Yeah, but I've read the brain shit. I'm gonna I'm not gonna go into every section of the brain. I'm made to love all nope. It's fine. I'm gonna be talking about neuroscience later. Oh well at least one of us did the research. I was like, I ain't fucking doing that. I just want to talk about people stealing brains.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Oh, did I do the research?

SPEAKER_02 11:13

Well that's good. What are the odds too? We're both talking about brains. Perfect. And dead people.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

And uh desecration of corpses.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Oh, I do that like, yeah. There's always a trending theme. There always is. Okay, but cocaine lab rats is probably not. They're just in there for fun. That's a that's a palette cleanser. When we're done. Jeez, I can't wait to hear about that. Okay. So what of Einstein's last wishes? In 1955, his clear desire for no autophy complicated the moral ledger. His family ultimately regained possession, or at least most of it.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Yeah, we're let me 240 pieces, you said?

SPEAKER_04 12:04

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

How the fuck are you gonna track down all those pieces?

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Mm-hmm. Exactly. He shipped them all over the world and drove them and handed them to people over the world. It's yes, thank god. In 1998, Harvey returned the remaining portions to the Princeton hospital. Some of the brain, or what was left, was then cremated and dispersed with Einstein's ashes. But even after a decades-long journey, there is speculation that some of Albert Einstein's brain is still being hidden away in some of the families of the scientists' possessions as relics. Which is creepy. Which is creepy, but who wouldn't want to be the owner of a chunk of one of the most famous geniuses' brains, Gavin? I I would. Some of the other sections of his brain, 46 to be exact, are also on display at the Mutare Museum in Philadelphia in their permanent galleries, which that is M-U-T-T-R with the little two dots over the U, and it means mother. Isn't that cute? That's another place we need to go stop. To the Mother Museum. So in all, Einstein wanted simplicity and repose. A young pathologist wanted discovery and legacy. The collision produced scientific papers, ethical debates, and a personal cost to the man who removed the brain. Harvey's defense, that he acted for science, sits uneasily beside the family's hurt and the modern rules that now tightly govern human tissue. Or so we could hope.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Interesting. Mm-hmm. For whatever reason, Einstein just feels like so much longer ago than that.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

I was reading something and it's uh it was like Einstein's brain like coincides with like Picasso's missing sock because it's around the same timeline. I was like I'm like Picasso and Einstein were in the same timeline. I don't know. I don't know about Picasso's sock either. There might be something I need to look into, but I was like, why are we supposed to be something you should look into? I'm like, why are we comparing this genius' brain with this artist's missing sock? Not socks, one one sock. So yeah, hold please. That might be on 19. Because I'm gonna have to figure that one out. But yeah, that's the whole thing about Einstein's brain. I had no idea.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

I will be waiting and clutching my pearls for that, by the way. Perfect.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

Oh, that's 107, Gavin. What do you got for 108? I heard this one's a long doozy.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

I don't think you're ready for this. So when I found out about this, I was like, this that sounds crazy. And like right on brand for things that I like to cover. But when I got to when I when I got into it, I realized it is a much bigger story than I anticipated. So I'm really glad that we've bumped things down to four exhibits a tour. Because this one pour yourselves a drink, y'all.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

Let's bump it down to four exhibits, and I'm gonna give you this one that's like two exhibits in one 15 pages. Yeah, and size 11 font. Get fucked.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

But like I told you, it's all in the details, and they just you can't skim over it. There's just no way around it. I get it. I get it. Alright, so exhibit 108. Operation Mincemeat. And I don't like it from the title. So like I said, you know how much I love a good old silly war story. And this one's pretty damn neat. It's kinda sad, but it's also pretty fucking funny in its own twisted way. Throughout history, governments have been known to pull off some pretty wild theatrics, as we've seen in previous exhibits. This exhibit is no different. Operation MintMeat. And yes, you heard that correctly, Mincemeat. Why did they choose this codename, you may be asking yourself? No. Well I have some. I'm not unfortunate news for you. No! They chose the name from a list of available operational codenames. They literally just picked it off the menu like they were ordering dinner. What? There is no deep meaning behind it, no strategic creativity involved whatsoever. And when I get to telling you what op what Operation Mincemeat actually is, it becomes abundantly clear that they really missed the mark with this one. Like spectacularly. For starters, and I mean that literally, mincemeat sounds like something you would most definitely avoid ordering at a restaurant unless you hate yourself. Like who the fuck is coming up with these code names?

SPEAKER_02 17:19

Because what is mincemeat? That's not something that's that good. Did you look it up like a mincemeat pie?

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Yeah, it's just it's gross, or at least it sounds like it's a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 17:30

It's a small sweet pastry filled with mincemeat, a mixture of dried fruit, spices, and suet.

SPEAKER_01 17:38

I do not like any of the sounds of that.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

What is suet? I don't want to know. Oh, it's often beef or suet. Then what the fuck is a suet? Hold on, hold please. Suet is a raw, hard fat of cows or sheep. That's a hard pass for me. From around the kidneys and loins of cattle and sheep. It keeps getting worse.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

No. You you lost me in sweet.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Sweet meat, I oh, I got lied fruits, citrus peel, sugar, and spirits like brandier rum with fine mincemeat, which is beef or fat from the loins. Rum is not going to help. That sounds like some Sweeney Todd shit. Fuck you. Okay, keep going.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

But behind the unfortunate shitty code name sits a very real secret military operation during a very real war and involves a very real dead man. And this is where this exhibit asks us to do two things at once. Appreciate the astonishing ingenuity of this batshit crazy plan, and not lose sight of the human being at the center of it. Because yeah, we're gonna be talking about the desecration of a corpse. Again. Again. The setup is brutally simple. It is the 1940s, 1943 to be exact. World War II is in full swing. We're four years in at this point, and Europe is balls deep and up to their necks in Nazi shit. And I do mean drowning in it. Hitler and Nazi Germany still control huge parts of the European continent, stomping around like they own the place. The tide of the conflict really begins to turn right here at this exact juncture in 1943. The Battle of Stalingrad, a two hundred day urban clusterfuck of absolute hell which cost the lives of over a million people, has just ended and marked the turning point on the Eastern Front. It was the first major German defeat, halting their advance and shifting momentum in favor of the Allies. Finally. Meanwhile, over in North Africa, because I was today years old when I learnt that Hitler was just fucking everywhere being a nasty whore all over the damn place.

SPEAKER_02 19:56

He was an Africa do?

SPEAKER_01 19:58

Yeah. This crusty little bastard has dick in every pie from here to Tunisia. Jesus. I had no idea. Me neither. Hitler had intervened in North Africa by deploying the Africa Corps under Erwin Rommel, a highly decorated German field marshal at the time. He's a dumb fuck who eventually was forced to commit suicide by the Nazi regime, and honestly, fuck him. Could have happened to a nicer genocidal dickwad. But I digress. He was sent to form the Africa Corps because Hitler's goal was to secure Egypt and the Suez Canal in order to maintain Axe's influence in the Mediterranean and prevent a humiliating defeat for his Italian allies, who were apparently about as useful as a spork at this point. Because of this move, it had become blatantly clear that once North Africa is secured, the next step will be invasions somewhere in southern Europe. Like no shit, Sherlock, where else are they gonna go? Antarctica? Snow shit. And that creates a very big problem for Europe because when you look at Sicily on a map, you know, the country where Sofia Patrillo, our Lord and Savior, the most golden of the golden girls is from. Picture it, Sicily, 1943. Sicily is the obvious next move. It sits right off the toe end of the Italian boot, right across the Mediterranean Sea, just sitting there like a fucking welcoming mat. It gives the Allies a path into the mainland of Europe. And if the Allies can take Sicily, they can start hitting what Churchill called the soft underbelly of Europe, which is honestly kind of a sexy way to describe a military invasion, but whatever floats your boat, Winston. Soft is a rather optimistic phrase for a continent being overrun by fascist fuckwits. But that was the idea. Right. I mean, calling it soft is like calling a cactus cuddly, but sure, let's just roll with it. Nice analogy. Love that. So from the Allied point of view, Sicily made perfect sense. And that was the danger, because if it made sense to them, Then it would also make perfect sense to Hitler, that paranoid little shit goblin. This would matter because Hitler had the final say over massive military strategic decisions. And by 1943, he was deeply paranoid, increasingly controlling, and absolutely obsessed with where the Allied blow would land. Like a tweaked-out conspiracy theorist with an army.

SPEAKER_02 22:22

There is a fucking conspiracy that he was actually fucking high on meth.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Like his conspiracy, he was definitely high on meth.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Have you seen him tweaking at the Olympics? Yes. We live in Spokane, Washington. We know what that shit looks like. Gavin's right, that's not a conspiracy. That motherfucker was tweaking hard.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Straight meth. But Hitler didn't want to just invade and defend. He wanted to predict what the Allies would do and beat them to it before they ever got a chance to arm any defense. Basically, he was playing 4D chess, except he's a fucking psychopath. The important note here is that Hitler had massive anxieties about the Balkans and Greece. Why? Because those regions threatened Germany's southern flank. Not to mention they sat right next to vital supply routes, and most importantly, they were tied to Romanian oil fields which Germany's military desperately needed. Without that oil, his entire war machine would grind to a halt faster than you can say, fascist asshole.

SPEAKER_02 23:26

Are you a little spicy right in the sun, Cal? Fuck fascism. I don't think I've ever heard you cuss more in a case in my goddamn life. I'm the one that says fuck shit, bitch. Not you.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

No, but we're talking about Hitler here. Yes, you gotta. That's fair. So yeah, Hitler was sweating bullets and about to shit his pants. So during this time, both sides are constantly trying to cop a feel for what the other is up to. You remember Juan the chicken farmer?

SPEAKER_04 23:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

Well, both sides were always finding batshit creative ways to either gather intelligence, thwart efforts, or straight up gaslight the living hell out of each other at every turn. This war was no longer just a war of soldiers, guns, and tanks, it became a war of code breaking, espionage, misinformation, fraud, double agents, and deception. And this is where Operation Means Meat enters the chat. Jeez, I forgot about the shea little pie. Okay. So now that you are up to date on where we are in World War II.

unknown 24:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 24:31

That's why we were talking so fast.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

We're gonna we're gonna sped up version. Well, when I was looking this all up, there was just all this information about the operation and no context surrounding it. So I'm like, what was the whole what was the setup? What was the need? Like what happened? Yeah. Why did they need to do this? Like so I was like, I feel like it's really important to include that whole run through so that you know exactly where where we stand in the war.

SPEAKER_02 24:55

Yeah, and you know what I respect about that, Gavin, is that it's like when I watch reels on Facebook and I hold them down so they talk two times faster. That's what I feel like you just did because we're like we're gonna get through this understand it. If you've got ADHD, you're gonna be fine. If you most people turn their podcasts on a 1.5 or two times faster, you might have to slow Gavin down on that one, put him down to 1.5 and then turn it back up. It's gonna be fine.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

I'm gonna sound like the teacher from the peanuts. So, anyhow, rumors are flying left and right from both sides, like a goddamn game of telephone played by paranoid governments. Documents are being intercepted, messages are being unencrypted. But British intelligence had become very, very good at turning lies into weapons, like scary good. The kind of good that makes you wonder what the hell they were putting in the tea over there. Math. Math. Oh no, we're British. Just kidding, we're in Britain. It's probably cocaine. Probably cocaine. British intelligence already had a taste for imaginative and creative deception tactics. Basically, they were the drama kids of World War II. Back in September 1939, a document known as the Trout Memo had compared fooling the enemy to fly fishing, which is both weirdly poetic and incredibly British. It circulated under Admiral John Godfrey's name, and there's no reason that anyone needs to even know who these two people I'm about to talk about are, but I'm going to explain one of them. And later historians have often pointed to the hand of Ian W why did I say it like that?

SPEAKER_03 26:31

That felt weird in my throat, and I did not like it. I don't like that either. That's like one of the easiest names in the English language.

SPEAKER_01 26:37

Ian? Later historians often pointed to the hand of Ian Fleming in its drafting. And yes, that Ian Fleming, the guy who wrote the iconic James Bond spy books.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

Oh fuck, you're like that Ian Fleming. I'm like, who? Oh, James Bond, got that on.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

He was also a naval intelligence officer, because of course he was. No shit. That's why his books were so good. Makes sense. Ignoring the subtle details for a moment, that memo contained a hidden suggestion that was absolutely bonkers. Use a dead body to deliver fake documents to the opposition. Excuse me? It was characterized with typical British restraint as not a very nice idea. Oh yeah, you fucking think? Talk about an understatement. That dry wit is still very much alive, and even if the person being used for the plan certainly is not.

SPEAKER_02 27:35

You just got a letter. You just got a letter.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

I wonder who it was. That old memo might have stayed a strange little footnote. You know, one of those haha, what were they thinking? Historical tidbits, if not for Charles Chumley. Now let me pr let me spell out this man's name.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

You're fucking joking. You're joking me. There's no way that that is Chumley. You're fucking me.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

You're when we were reading yours earlier. It was spelled out yours earlier. I was like, oh, I've got a better one. Because I was like, how in the hell?

SPEAKER_02 28:11

Let me let me just for the oddities people out there, let me just try to attempt to say this name how it's spelled, okay? Do it, lady. Jesus fucking case. Chummondele.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

That that's how I or Colmondele.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

That's exactly how I thought it would go. Chumley. And then I googled it. It's Chumley. Okay, it's literally in a whole thing.

SPEAKER_03 28:35

It's literally spelled, you guys. Ready? I'm gonna say it because Gabin's talking really fast.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

C-H O L M-O-N-D-E-L-E-Y. Chumondole. But he's Chum Lee. Chumley. Jesus fucking Christ. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

So Charles Chumley is an RAF officer working with MI5 and Ewan Montague. Montague. Very nice. Montague is the naval representative on the 20 Committee, which I also had to look up. It is a top secret MI5 operation that controlled and captured German spies in the UK. And for the rest of this article, I am not gonna use their last names. Chumley and Montague.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

Charloin and Charles.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Charles revived the corpse idea, as one does, and Ewen saw that it could be refined into something operationally useful. On February 4th, 1943, the two men submitted the plan under its new code name, Operation Mincemeat. Weird, but okay. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 29:45

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay, you said it had no relevance, right? Like they just like picked a name because it needed to be like a code name, right? Yep. They're shoving uh messages into dead bodies. What is a fucking pie? What is a pie? What is a piece? It's a pie, and then you break into it and there's like shit in the pie.

SPEAKER_04 30:04

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

Oh my god. Does it get relevance later? Okay. I'm waiting. No. No. But do you see what I mean? There's a there's a correlation there. It is like when you get a pie and you just see like the baked crust on the top of it, you don't know what's in the fucking pie. You just know it's a goddamn pie. And you see a dead body, it's just a dead body. You don't know what's in the dead body.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

So now came the morally difficult part. They need a body. A fresh one. And yes, it is exactly as fucked up as it sounds. The plan only worked if they could plausibly pass the victim off as a plane crash casualty, which meant they couldn't just grab any old corpse from the morgue. In order to do this, they consulted Bernard Spilsbury, a celebrated forensic pathologist who was basically the rock star of dead body science. Not to be confused with the Pillsbury Doughboy. He helped advise them on what kind of body they would need, and if this whole scheme could actually work without immediately falling apart. Because this decomposing was making the entire Kakamimi thing believable. Because let's be real here, this looks more like weekend at Bernie's and less like a top secret, totally official MI5 military operation.

SPEAKER_03 31:28

Damn it, Gavin.

SPEAKER_01 31:31

The trio first realized that they needed a corpse they could pass as a military courier, who had died in a plane crash at sea. The body also needed to be able to pass an autopsy by Spanish coroners without the real cause of death being exposed. You know, just casual everyday shit, finding a dead guy who could play dress up convincingly enough to fool medical professionals. The man who actually helped them source the body's name was, and these names just keep giving better, Bentley Purchase. A London coroner. That's a gangster ass fucking name. And that was his actual real name, Bentley Purchase. And that sounds exactly like a luxury car payment plan, but whatever. That's a gangster ass name, Bentley Purchase. Bentley reportedly said that even in wartime, every corpse still had to be accounted for because apparently during literal Nazi hell, British bureaucracy never sleeps. But he agreed to keep his eyes open for a suitable body. I do not think you are ready for what is about to come. No, I don't fucking think so. The body needed to meet a few practical quote unquote here conditions. It needed to be We had a checklist unclaimed or unlikely to be contested by family, and its condition had to fit the story of a man who had died at sea rather than in some obvious inconsistent manner. Like, say he's someone who might have been hit by a bus. Did he get hit by a bus? No. And on January 24th, Bentley found their body. And this is the moment where the body becomes a person. That the ethical basis for this entire mission was far from solid.

SPEAKER_02 33:20

This is the point just now.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

No, the whole point is now doing it. They're doing it. This is not just a thought.

SPEAKER_02 33:29

Yeah, it's an action. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

That's pretty fucking terrible. Glinder Michael was born on March 29th, 1907, in Forgive Me Aberbargoad, Wales. Yeah, Aberbargoad? He was just a regular guy born into a life that was frankly pretty damn rough from the jump. He lived a life defined by quiet hardship and enough personal loss to break just about anyone. He spent his time working modest jobs as a gardener and a laborer, just trying to scrape by and keep his head above the water where he could. Tragedy hit him early and it hit him hard. His father, a coal miner, committed suicide when Glinder was only fifteen years old. Years later, his mother also passed away, leaving him completely and utterly alone in a world that didn't seem to have much room for him. With no home and no income, he drifted to London and lived on the streets, becoming one of those invisible souls that society just walks right past without a second glance. So sad. That is sad. In January 1943, he was discovered in an abandoned warehouse near King's Cross, and he was in a very bad way. He had ingested rat poison containing phosphorus. What? Maybe because he was desperate, or maybe because he was just so hungry he didn't really know or care what he was eating. The details there are fuzzy at best. Sad. Two days later, he died at St. Pancras Hospital at the age of thirty six. It was a slow, agonizing death as the poison wrecked his organs and filled his lungs with fluid. Right. All around, super brutal way to go. If you listen to true crime and you hear about anybody who has poisoned anybody with rat poison, it is it ain't fucking pretty. Ugly. It was a quiet, tragic end to a life that had already been put through the absolute ringer. Michael was the perfect candidate though. His worldly isolation made him particularly attractive to Ewan and Charles for the most fucked up reason possible. They believed no one would come forward quickly enough to interfere with their plan. La Vassing Kid. Yeah. Their entire selection criteria was basically let's find someone so alone and forgotten that no one will notice that he's gone. Historians and biographers have since emphasized how morally corrupt that assumption was, and they were absolutely correct. This was some dark shit. Bentley reassured Ewen and Charles that the small amount of poison left in Glinder's system would likely not be detected once the body had been treated as though it had been floating in the ocean for several days. Because apparently, decomposition is nature's way of covering up a multitude of sins. Who knew?

SPEAKER_02 36:29

That's weird. That's some scientific shit there, because I'm like, you're floating in water, how would that fuck up the insides of you? Like if you ingest poison but you're just like in water. I guess it gets all in all of your orfices and might wash you out. I don't know, that seems gross. I don't like that.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Not even a little bit. Ewen noted that Glinder looked malnourished and not very officer like. Bentley told him that his body didn't need to look like a combat officer. It needed to look like a staff officer. In other words, they didn't need a G.I. Joe, they needed a G.I. Sheldon, a nerd, a pencil pushing desk jockey, who looked like he'd never seen the inside of a gym, and whose idea of combat was a particularly heated meeting about supply requisitions. Bentley then used his authority as coroner to help hide the body, which is a sentence that should probably raise way more red flags than it did at the time. Using his coroner authority, Bentley forged the necessary paperwork to transfer the body to Ewan and Charles by stating it was being removed out of England for burial, which is how Chumley, aka Charles, officially enters the chat on this pawnstars meets weaken at Bernie's operation. From there, Glinder's body was held in a London mortuary under the supervision of Bentley. He was kept at a crisp 39 degrees Fahrenheit, cold enough to preserve him, but not so cold that his flesh would freeze. Because nothing screams espionage failure quite like a freezer burnt military officer getting fished out of the ocean looking like a freezer burnt TV dinner. Cut the fuck up. Gammon. You're welcome. Being funny is so hard. While Glender was chilling, literally, on ice, Ewan and Charles were busy playing the Sims with a dead man's identity.

SPEAKER_02 38:15

You just don't stop, do you? You just don't fucking stop. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

They turned Glender Michael into a man who had never existed. Poof. Just like that. They started with the basics. A name, a rank, and a service branch. Captain Acting Major William Martin of the Royal Marines. They chose this rank because it was high enough to plausibly carry sensitive documents, but not so high profile that enemy intelligence would know him by name. Which is the acting major. Yep. They used the Royal Marines because that put him under Admiralty authority, which made the paper trail easier for British naval intelligence to manage without having to deal with a bunch of bureaucratic bullshit. Plus, he could wear standard battle dress, which was way easier to obtain and fit than some fancy ass tailored uniform. But here's where these absolute mad lads really earned their paychecks. They didn't stop there. Oh no. They went balls to the walls with it. They weren't about to just slap a uniform on this poor bastard and chuck him off the side of the boat. Are you kidding? That would be too easy. They invented an entire goddamn persona for William Martin. No way. They dressed him up in a military uniform and then stuffed his pockets with personal junk. And not just any kind of junk. We're talking meticulously curated, obsessively detailed personal items. They designed military identification cards, receipts, theater stubs, overdue bills because even fake dead guys have bills, apparently. Keys, cigarettes, matches, stamps, a pencil stub, a Saint Christopher Medal, the whole nine yards. I mean that seems a little overkill for me. Why would he have all that in his pockets? Well, the receipts were especially key. One from Gives and Hawks, one of the oldest bespoke tailoring companies in the world, for a new shirt and a bill for lodging at the Naval and Military Club so that his recent movements around London could be traced in the most boring but believable way possible. Interesting. But nothing says legitimate officer like unpaid tabs and retail therapy. Oh my god. They needed this floating corpse to feel real enough that no one would stop and question him to heart. So they built an entire man around the shell that was once Glinder. They even went as far as to design a whole ass relationship between William Martin and a fictional fiance. Because every modern man in 1943 also carried around romantic baggage. It was the emotional thread of the fake life they had built, and honestly, it was brilliant. In order to give this character absolute realism, they placed a photo in one of his pockets with the name Pam scribbled on the back. The photo itself was actually a picture of Jean Leslie, an MI5 clerk who probably had no idea her face was about to become some dead guy's girlfriend. Jesus. Along with the photo were two love letters and the receipt for a diamond engagement ring. This was a master stroke of genius because it gave him emotional gravity. He wasn't just an officer anymore, he was a man with a future and a lady waiting for him at home. The Nazis were gonna eat this shit up. To really drive home the story, they also gave him real-world problems. Which was pretty fucking clever. Fake people are way more believable when their lives are slightly annoying. Like nobody suspects the guy who's got overdue bills and family drama, so William also carried a letter from his father, a note from the family solicitor, and a pissy message from Lloyd's bank demanding repayment for an overdraft fee. What in the fuck? Can you imagine? They're out here crafting an entire human being and they're like, yeah, let's make him bad with money too. That is so random.

SPEAKER_02 42:22

Like, maybe if he had like was found with like a suitcase. To like, let's give him 17 pockets and fill each one with a different genre. Please. Jesus fucking Christ.

SPEAKER_01 42:32

So now William wasn't just a cardboard cutout hero. He was an ordinary bloke with a fiance, a father, and the kind of financial irresponsibility that hits a little too close to home. The real fucking deal. Finite details like the ink they wrote the letters in were tested to be sure that the paper and the ink would hold up in seawater, but not so well that they looked untouched. The ink needed to bleed just a little bit, and the writing still needed to be legible. You know that perfect I've been floating around for a hot minute kind of vibe. Even the photo on the ID card had to be carefully thought out because taking a photo of an actual corpse was surely not going to hold up under scrutiny. Shocking that I know. They found another MI five officer who looked just enough like Linder to pass, which must have been a pretty weird conversation. Hey, mate, fancy pretending being a dead guy. Oh god. Even wore his uniform to break it in, because you can't shove a dead guy off a ship in a crisp, never-worn uniform. Absolutely not. They really thought this shit through. This is high level espionage at its absolute finest. By the time they were done, William Martin had a name that made sense, a rank that fit the mission, a branch of service that kept the bureaucracy manageable, a fiance, bills, keys, tickets, debt, personal correspondence, and Just enough romantic and administrative clutter to feel alive, even though he was very much not so. Can we appreciate the absurdity here? Cause these motherfuckers Frankenstein's a whole ass existence into a corpse just to fuck with the Nazis. Just like Chef's Kiss. That's crazy that's crazy work. But this was just the beginning of his journey. On April seventeenth, his body was sealed inside a steel canister packed with dry ice, which released carbon dioxide as it sublimated and helped preserve the body during his adventure. The canister was hauled north to Scotland and loaded aboard the submarine HMS Suraf on april nineteenth. And yes, they named a submarine after an angel, and that is what he wrote on, which is kind of poetic. The irony was not lost on me. The British were very careful about where they would release him. They chose the coast near Huelva, Spain. Analysis of the ocean currents in that area made it plausible that a body from an aircraft accident at sea would wash ashore there. Jesus Christ. And because the area had enough German intelligence activity that anything interesting recovered by Spanish authorities might quietly make its way to those Axis bastards. So for all intents and purposes, they were not just dropping a body into the ocean, they were staging an entire theatrical production. Method acting taken to its logical, horrifying extreme. After about ten days at sea, which I'm sure was a totally chill submarine ride with a corpse on board, the HMS Suraff reached the Spanish coast. On April 29th, the sub surfaced off the Huelva coast, and the body of Major Martin, heavy emphasis on those air quotes, adorned in a life jacket with a briefcase literally chained to his wrists, was released into the churning salty waters.

SPEAKER_02 45:57

I caught it!

SPEAKER_01 45:58

That seems way more realistic. Bon voyage, buddy. It didn't take long before someone found him. A fisherman discovered his body early the next morning on april thirtieth, and reported it to local authorities. So far, the operation was a huge success, but the real shtick, the Peace de Resistance, if you will, was the briefcase. It was attached to him so that it would look like he had died while transporting highly sensitive military documents, because what kind of dedicated officer would let go of his briefcase while he was drowning? Uh-huh. Inside were false reports and papers designed to mislead German intelligence about the coming Allied invasion. The most important document was a fake top secret letter addressed to the highest ranking British general in North Africa. It was soaking wet, but it was there. It described a planned Allied attack on Greece and Crete, while implying that any move against Sicily would only be a diversion. And that is like key. That's part. Another key letter addressed to the commander of the Mediterranean fleet referred to failed amphibious landings and included a joke about sardines. Yes, a fucking fish joke that was literally meant to nudge readers toward thinking about Sardinia as a likely invasion target.

SPEAKER_02 47:19

Oh my god, they're like it's right there. We're trying to be sneaky, but like obviously.

SPEAKER_01 47:23

Mm-hmm. Very, very clever. Like genuinely diabolical. Mm-hmm. These British intelligence officers out there are fucking cracking dad jokes to trick the Nazis, and I'm fucking here for it. Once Spanish authorities recovered the body in the briefcase, the body was taken into official custody. British Vice Consul Francis Hasseldon was informed of the recovery, and the British began sending a series of carefully staged, urgent messages about the top secret, highly nutso-thake briefcase. They needed to act panicked as hell, deliberately freaking the fuck out in order to keep up the ruse. The British wanted Spanish officials, and more importantly, German intelligence, that was most definitely eavesdropping, like nosy little fucking shit sticks, to believe the contents were genuinely important. And now the waiting game begins. Cue the nail biting. The next step was the autopsy. Mm-hmm. On May 1st, Spanish doctors examined the body and concluded that Major William Martin had died by drowning, or more formally, by asphyxiation through immersion in the sea. Which, honestly, if it was really how he went, that's how I want to go. Fuck off. I want to drown in the sea. I would rather burn alive. Ugh no. It was a huge win for the British because it meant that Glinder's corpse, a dead homeless man, they dressed up and dumped in the ocean, passed the big test. After the autopsy, the Spanish buried him in Huelva with full military honors on May 2nd, the very next day. Wow. I know so quick. Rest in peace, you magnificent bastard. Meanwhile, the briefcase did in fact not go straight back to the British. The Spanish Navy kept it. Which means, hell yes. The second half of the plan was also on track. German agents in Spain were immediately interested, sniffing around like bloodhounds at a crime scene. But the handoff was not instant nor was it clean. On may fifth, the briefcase was sent to naval headquarters in San Fernando on its way to Madrid. While it was there, German sympathizers photographed the contents even before the key letters were fully removed from their envelopes. Eager little Nazi bastards couldn't wait, could they? Patience is about you. Once it reached Madrid, German intelligence pushed harder. According to detailed historical accounts, the Spanish eventually removed the letters from their still sealed envelopes using a probe, photographed them and then put them back so carefully that the envelopes appeared unopened. Like using a sea in a spy kids movie. Yeah, like a probe. Like a steam probe.

SPEAKER_02 50:11

What? The only problem they have is like an alien probe is they shove up people's butts.

SPEAKER_01 50:15

Yeah, same thing.

SPEAKER_04 50:18

Fuck you.

SPEAKER_01 50:20

But this is the moment the lie finally reaches the people that it was designed for. All the while, the British kept up the charade. They continued pressing for the return of the briefcase, acting all too anxious and offended, like how dare you keep our super important Stephanie real documents. Uh uh-uh. The briefcase was finally returned to British diplomatic hands on May 11th. When they examined it, it was concluded that documents in fact had been opened and read. Soon after, British codebreakers also confirmed through intercepted German communications that the fake intelligence had been accepted and circulated. Success. Sweet, sweet, glorious mission success. The Nazis bought it all. Every little bit. So now that Operation Mince Meat has worked and concluded, what is the payoff? Oh, it's another operation. Shut the fuck up. What is this one called? Operation Husky. Fuck. By mid-May, ultra-related intelligence indicated the Germans had accepted the deception. A famous signal informed Churchill that mincemeat had been swallowed, rod, lined, and sinker. German forces swallowed. Yeah. Swallowed the mincemeat. Mm-hmm. German forces shifted their attention and reinforcements toward Greece, Sardinia, and the Balkans. Hitler was now much less concerned about Sicily. On the night of July 9th, into the 10th, 1943, the Allies invaded Sicily in one of the war's largest combined operations. More than 150,000 troops, 3,000 ships, and more than 4,000 aircraft and thousands of amphibious crafts landed on the south coast of Sicily. That's a lot. The entire campaign ran through the 17th of August. Historical accounts credit Operation Minsmeat with helping to thin and misdirect Hitler's Axis powers and attention. And because of this misdirection, the Axis was not prepared for such a massive strike. They were too busy fortifying the wrong damn island. Hell yeah. 150,000 troops were sent into Sicily and only 24,850 American, British, and Canadian casualties were accounted for. A number that could have been much higher if Hitler had his full powers settled in Sicily instead of chasing ghosts in Greece. Crazy. Operation Husky was a major milestone in the war. By mid-1943, the Allies had already won in North Africa, but they still had not opened a full Western front in France. Husky became the next big step. The invasion of Sicily gave the Allies a way into Italy. It helped secure the Mediterranean and kept pressure on Axis forces. Basically, it was like kicking in Europe's back door while the Nazis were still watching the front door. It was important because it gave Allies their first large-scale foothold in Axis controlled Europe from the south. It also ended up forcing Germany to respond in Italy, which stretched Axis defenses even further. Classic overextension. And we love to see it. Yeah yeah. It was a huge success all around. Beautifully orchestrated. Before we leave this one behind and move on to our next exhibit, it's worth saying the name of the real man behind the mission. Glinder Michael, because within all of the wacky brilliance that was Operation Mince Meat, and between the strategy and the theatrics of it all, lies a real human being. A man whose life was not easy, whose death was lonely and most likely horrible, whose identity was erased and whose name almost vanished into history. But it didn't. History called him Major William Martin, but his name was Glender Michael, and he became a hero after death. Which, let's be real, is not something the average person can say about literally anyone. And that's pretty fucking incredible. Even if it's morbid as hell. And that is Exhibit 108 Operation Mincemeat.

SPEAKER_02 54:28

Jesus fucking Christ, Gavin. Means you take a breath.

SPEAKER_01 54:34

And while I was researching this, I found out they were literally making a movie about it, or they may have already made a movie about it.

SPEAKER_02 54:41

Yeah, no, I was just gonna say that um I think you just packed in like a good month and a half of high school curriculum World War II shit in a matter of like 40 minutes. Holy shit, bullshit. That's crazy work. I would have had no fucking idea. And I wonder if he's like, you know, I don't know, I think about the afterlife. He's just like up there like watching his body go through all this shit, like, what the fuck happened?

SPEAKER_03 55:08

What are we doing here? But he's like, hell yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:11

That's fucking wild. The more I got into it, I was just like, there's no way it can get crazier. And it just kept getting crazier.

SPEAKER_02 55:17

Well, I mean, you told me you're like, it just keeps getting longer and longer, but the attention's in the details. I'm like, really? And then I'm like, yeah, no, I don't think you could have done without any of those details.

SPEAKER_03 55:28

Like they were all needed, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:30

Well, Susie, what is Exhibit 109?

SPEAKER_02 55:35

All right, well, I hate to say it, but it's not gonna get any better. I love that phrase. It never does. There's a lot of uh yeah, a lot of shit in this one. This is Exhibit 109, the hidden her story of torture devices. Oh. Mm-hmm. Medieval and ancient torture methods and devices were rarely indiscriminate, or so we have been led to believe in these modern times just from knowing the surface. When in reality, there were specific devices, psychological torments, and methods that were geared for, conceived, and created with only women in mind. These methods were enforced with the intentions of not just inflicting pain on anybody, but with the intentions of targeting, exploiting, and amplifying vulnerabilities that were thought to be unique to women, as well as targeting the differences in women's physical bodies that men did not possess. Mmm I know, I told you it wasn't gonna get any better. Back in these times, social and economic discrimination was not the only attacks against women by the patriarchy. They were horrifically attacked physically, violently, and psychologically. These torture methods I'm going to educate y'all about today are horrific to say it lightly, and they were often carried out against women that were accused of crimes such as the following heresy, adultery, having a baby at a wedlock, nagging, gossiping, insolence, insubordination, heretics, and of course, our personal fan favorite witchcraft. Fuck the patriarchy. Mm-hmm, yes, exactly. Across medieval Europe and into early modern Europe, the 15th through 18th centuries, it was estimated forty thousand to fifty thousand people were executed alone for witchcraft. And that was just in Europe. But around 75 to 85% of those were, you guessed it, women.

SPEAKER_01 57:54

Of course.

SPEAKER_02 57:55

Now we'll get into these misogynistic torture devices, so y'all can hear just how fucked up this shit was. Starting with number one, the Skold's bridle, aka Brank, aka an iron mask for unruly tongues. This was a device that was designed as a metal cage or mask that was often padlocked onto a woman's head. Think like a giant metal muzzle. If that doesn't sound bad enough, it was equipped with a bit, like a horse bit, that was forced into the wearer's mouth to prevent them from speaking without causing them immense harm, including lacerations of their tongues. The bits could also be built with studded spikes for added pain. These devices were worn in public as well as at home for the s for the specific function of shutting up the wearer, causing pain and public humiliation. Just shut up and comply. Female vocal expression was obviously something that was feared, but look at us now. Cause I know damn well I never shut the fuck up, and I'm proud of that shit. Came a long way. Ugh. Alright, number two, it's called the ducking stool. The what? Similar to the bridal, this was also a method that was often used as the public spectacle of punishment, used to humiliate and control women by, of course, using physical discomfort. It was basically a chair that was attached to a long wooden beam or lever. You were then strapped into the chair, and then lifted and submerged into a pond, lake, river, or any other body of water. Oh dear. And this wasn't just one little dip dunk. This was multiple times. And it also wasn't just a quick little splash into the water, it was prolonged and repeated over and over and over again. What the fuck? Freezing cold water and being submerged would lead to immense discomfort, obviously. Hypothermia and sometimes drowning. And all to try to deter, quote unquote, misbehavior. And honestly, fuck that. Fuck all of that. Yeah, it's like waterboarding, but way more dramatic. I don't know. And I got that little I don't I got a thing where like I don't like water in my face. And so you're like, I would love to die in the ocean. No, keep water off my face. I'm not okay with it. Freaks me the fuck out. Ugh, so now we go to number three, the infamous chastity belt. Which I didn't know this, but there are a lot of myths surrounding the chastity belt, actually. It was thought to originally be a common household object that men would force their wives to wear in order to prevent sexual intercourse, and therefore was a preservation of lineage. Therefore, it was a preservation of lineage tool, which safeguarded a man's property rights and honor. I don't know if you guys can hear me, but I'm I'm air quoting all those words. David can see me on the camera. I'm air quoting all those words. I'm like, lineage tool safeguarded property rights, honor. Yeah, bullshit. Fucking bullshit. So although practical and widespread use of them for common marital implements is highly improbable for the reason of just hygiene functionality, comfort, etc., this points to this all being like a scarcity. This is why they say the chastity belt is like more so a myth than it is an actual thing. It's not as common as everybody thought it actually was. Because everybody knows what a chastity belt is. And I guess I didn't really like explain it, but this is basically like a leather or metal pair of panties, and you have a hole to pee and you have a hole to shit. But the holes were like tiny little slits. So you couldn't have sex, but they were like locked onto you, right? And I guess I always just imagine the chastity about just being like a big iron pair of underwear that had no holes. Yeah. There were some little holes in there, just not enough for a dick to fit in, apparently. But they weren't as commonly used as everybody thought they were. And like our wrote here, I mean, wearing a locked metal pair of panties doesn't sound awesome in the slightest, so that's a good thing. But yet the use of them is not completely denied. They're more so thought to be used as torture devices or psychological threats to scare women into compliance. That shakes out. So they were famous, and the idea of them was famous, but they were only really used as a threat, or in worst cases to torture some women, or in other cases they ended up manufacturing them later along the lines in history and actually just putting them in museums, and it was kind of like a fetishized thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:12

It is still a fetishized thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:14

And it is still a fetishized thing in the 19th and what you know our modern day centuries because it stops a woman from masturbating, but now it's more like consensually used.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:26

They're really big in the gay community.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:29

We know King Shame around here.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:31

Cock cages is what they call them.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:34

Cockages, yeah. Well, if a man wanna wear them fine, but I don't. Yeah, for real. Fuck you. Okay, so this is the one that I wrote the whole case around. I just couldn't find enough information on to wrap the whole case around. I found this on the I don't know where I found it. I found it somewhere. The dark side of the interwebs. Somewhere, yeah. I have my algorithms trained for weird shit. So we're just rolling with it. Number four is called the breast ripper, or also known as the iron spider. And this one is exactly as bad as it sounds. It is depicted as a metal claw-like tool with sharp teeth, like two on each side. So, like, imagine like a big pair of pliers. Uh-huh. Like titty-shaped, yeah, not titty-shaped, but big enough to grab a yeah, like a bad claw machine. Oh, and then the metal would be heated up red hot and used to physically clamp down and tear a woman's breast off after they were bound to a wall to hold them still. Heated up? Yeah, but that's the thing. They're doing too much. The hot metal would literally melt the flesh and rip the skin off their bodies, leaving behind a mutilated scar. And that's if you were to survive a potential infection afterwards. I'm like clutching my bits right and like my titties right. I'm like, ow, no way. My nipples are hot. And not in a good way. No. But they were also left cold sometimes. And then they had a similar use, but just with less melty flesh, which I don't know which one would be worse. At least with the hot ones, you'd be cauterizing the skin as it was happening. I don't know if that's better. I don't like any of that. Either way, yeah, I'm not happy about it. But the intention of targeting the breasts was to violate the female body and to go after the body part that is associated with sexuality as well as nurturing.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:41

They were really doing the most in the worst ways.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:44

If you just hate women, just fucking say so. It's fine. It's not fine, but Jesus. Women were put through this after being accused of witchcraft, adultery, promiscuity, self-caused miscarriages, prostitution, heroic. Heresy, etc. But they weren't used with the intention of death, more so extracting confessions and or punishment. They literally wanted these girls to be able, like, if you had a self-caused miscarriage, they wanted to make sure that if you had another baby, you weren't gonna be able to feed it again.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:18

Or you know, you like your titties being touched because that feels nice. Sorry, mom. But you ain't got no titties anymore. It's fucked up.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:28

It is fucked up. They're also fucking it up for themselves. Fucking idiots. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:34

Don't like it. Number five is called the Stripado. Also known as the ordeal of the rope. This method was when the victims' hands were tied behind their backs and they were hoisted up into the air with a rope attached to their bounded wrists. So at first I thought it was above the head. I was thinking above the head being hoisted. No, that's wrapped behind the back, tied around, and then hoisted up that way. So imagine your shoulder blades on its worst day.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:06

Going the wrong direction.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:08

Going the wrong direction. Exactly. And oftentimes weights were added to their feet to away to weigh the accused down harder. Humans are the worst. Dude, it gets worse. They would sometimes just let you hang like this for hours or days on end to try to force confessions. But if this wasn't bad enough, they would also just lift the rope up higher and then drop you back down. Just to jerk the victim around to cause more injuries. So not only are you hanging there for days on end, like, ow, this fucking hurts, they would just yeet your ass up and drop you back down to like break more bones and rip more muscles.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:47

What the fuck?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:49

Dislocated shoulders and joints, ripped muscles, etc., were just a few of the injuries this would cause. Not to mention the mental and psychological damages this would do to a person's psyche. False confessions just to get the pain to stop was a common occurrence. I guess with just like any other torture, but You'd probably never be the same again either.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:12

Like no. That is gonna cause irreparable damage.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:17

Exactly. One that I didn't put on here was called like the it was a boot, Spain's boot, Spanish boot. And they would like put these wood things on your feet and then just shove shafts in and just like break your legs over and over and over again. So by the time you finally confessed, you couldn't walk ever again. That's fine. That one didn't make the list, but I'm gonna mention it anyways. It sounds like it made the list. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:45

You just assaulted me with it.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:48

I know. I know. That was a bad one. I just couldn't get enough information to figure out exactly how they were hoisting the legs and breaking them, but you get the gist.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:58

They were clearly pretty what's the word I'm looking for here? Evil, shitty, engineering marvels of horror tortures.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:09

Yeah. Oh gross. So now we have number six, which is the rack. Now this one was used on more than just women, but oftentimes it was used on heretics and accused witches, so this is an honorable mention. So those other ones I was talking about were basically only used on women. The rack was used on a lot of people. And you're gonna know what I'm talking about once I start explaining it, I'm sure. Man I don't wanna. The rack is one of the most infamous torture devices in medieval history. The victim is tied to a woman frame. This tied to a wooden frame where their arms and legs are bound to each end of the frame. A roller behind you is then used to stretch the chains or ropes bounding your limbs to essentially rip you in half limb from limb. It's like quartering, but without the horses. Exactly, because there was just a big roller behind you that just kept stretching and stretching and stretching. Nope, nope, nope, noop, nope, noop, don't like that. Mm-mm. This obviously caused excruciating pain and was another more common way they used to punish, interrogate, torture, or force confessions in ancient Greece, ancient Rome, medieval Europe, and Russia. Man, I don't like it. No. It's not my favorite. Not my favorite. I'm too empathetic for this shit. You went real dark. I know. Uh that's yeah. Real dark. I know. But there you have it, folks. The not-so-pretty, more hidden side of female history involving fucked up torture devices. I gave you all a listicle. Gavin's got all the last listicles, I had to do at least one.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:57

Now you're gonna have to do a listicle on all the different ways they tortured men.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:00

Okay, well that's gonna take a whole goddamn episode of talking about all the torture devices. Not even just on men, the ones that they used on everyone.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:08

I expect a 35-minute long exhibit. Fully interactive.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:16

Yeah, I'm like, does this one fall under more of like a true Kaibe thing or is it pretty odd? I don't know. I've never heard of a fucking breast ripper before, but the fact that they called it a breast ripper and then they were like, just kidding, it's actually the spider or the iron spider. I'm like, don't give a cool fucking superhero name, you fucks.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:32

When you s first sent that to me as one of your exhibits, I originally thought or imagined that it's like Jack the Ripper. It might be like a a historical true crime serial breast ripper. And then when I was doing the research so I could write the intro, I was like, that is not what I was mm-mm. Yeah, did you see the picture of it? I sure did. It's not look like a good time.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:59

No, it doesn't, but also to make light of a shitty fucking situation, the picture of those breast rippers, my titties are way too small for that motherfucking thing. I probably would have been safe. You're gonna need a lot smaller pair of pliers, sir. To rip these titties off.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:19

You have to go after your booty.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:21

Yeah. All right. Well, in my humble opinion, females have always been far too intimidating and scary to some men that these means of control and manipulation tactics, physical or psychological, were their way of grasping for what they could control. Their way of grasping for what control they could muster with their busted ass egos. And it's truly a sad, fucked up account of such things. And women have always, always, always deserved better. And I will die on that fucking hill. Thank you. Come again. Men. Fucking men. Uh yeah. Well, I like it. Well, now that I'm horrified and sad. Like I've been horrified and sad. You also need to look up the fucking Einstein brain uh slides. There's pictures of them. It's weird. It's weird shit. Okay, anyways. ADHD. That's exhibit 109. Very nicely done. No, I don't like it. And also side. Yeah, I kept mine kind of short because Gavin had to tell us the big long four-hour, two-month-long story. Well, you have to end it on a high note because we just talked about dead bodies and horrible things this whole time. What do you have now? Tell me it's a little better.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:37

This is definitely going to cleanse the ballot. Thank fucking god. Exhibit 110. Cocaine jazz rats. Hell yeah. Every once in a while, science does something so ridiculous but so funny, you have to stop and appreciate that humans are fucked up and a little too curious sometimes. This is a story about exactly that.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:07

Is this gonna be like giving the dolphins LSD? But we're giving rats cocaine.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:12

Is this what we're doing? We have been drugging everybody for a very long time. There are a lot of smart people out there. People who have are there very real degrees, like Einstein. Okay, people who receive government funding, people who have a whole lot of time on their hands, and somehow an abundance of cocaine. And you may be once again asking yourself, what are these smart people doing with all of this cocaine? They are trying to answer questions that nobody ever asked. In 2011, a group of researchers at Albany Medical College set out to answer a very serious scientific question. I have to like cover up my screen so I'm not reading ahead.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:10

This is fucking stupid. What is the question, Gavin?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:15

Do rats prefer a jazz or classical music?

SPEAKER_00 1:15:20

Uh, hip hop.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:21

Next answer. Next question. Because apparently that isn't crazy enough. Does cocaine change their answer?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:30

Did it?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:31

The answer is yes, it absolutely does.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:34

No, uh.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:35

At first glance it sounds harmless, right? You're picturing a cute little rat wearing. Jamming out to jazz music. He's doing the Charlton boogie-woogie, two shoes, you know, the whole bit. At least that's where my brain went. Maybe he's laying on a little couch, relaxing to Beethoven. Maybe some Miles Davis. He's just vibing. And well, drop the couch on the headphones, and yeah, that's kind of how this starts. This is a real study funded by taxpayer money, and the results are fucked up, scientifically legitimate, and absolutely hilarious. So here's the premise. Scientists took a bunch of rats and gave them a choice between different environments. Some environments played Miles Davis. Some played Beethoven, and some environments were just straight up silence. And then they tracked which environments the rats preferred to hang out in. Simple enough, right? A cute little rat music preference study. Maybe we'd learn that rats have sophisticated taste. That they would appreciate the complex improvisational genius of bebop jazz. Or the mathematical precision of classical composition. No, you'd be wrong. The sober rats, a control group. Those rats just living a normal rat life without any codependencies on illicit substances overwhelmingly chose silence.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:04

Yeah, I'm not surprised by that.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:06

Not even a little bit, but what did the fucked up ones do? They did not pick the environment playing classical music. They chose the sweet, beautiful, interrupted fucking silence. When given the choice between listening to Miles Davis, and yes, they literally chose Miles Davis, the legendary American jazz trumpeter, band leader, and composer who was at the forefront of major jazz music development for over four decades, including Bebop, cool jazz, hardbop, modal jazz, and jazz fusion. Yeah, that guy, or the choice of sitting in a room with no sound at all, the rats chose no sound. Every time. Just the sober ones. Just the sober ones. Okay. When offered Beethoven or Silence, the Rats looked at both options and said, yeah, no, fuck that. I'm good. I'd rather sit in the dark and listen to nothing and think about cheese. Fans didn't prefer one type of music over any other. They found both equally unimpressive. Miles Davis and Beethoven, two of the greatest musical minds in human history, titans of their respective genres, absolute legends, got the same reading from sober rats. I'd rather have nothing than listen to this garbage.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:20

Yeah, but wait, oh actually, from an evolutionary standpoint, any noise that humans are making is a threat to them. So it makes sense that they would have tried to avoid it at any cost, technically, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:34

Very good assumption.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:35

And humans are linked to music, so it kind of makes sense for the sober ones.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:40

So this is already very funny. Scientists proved that rats, well sober rats, have no natural appreciation for music. Which I personally feel like we probably were already aware of that little fact, which you just also mentioned.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:57

Thank you, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:59

But here's where things get interesting and kind of weird. You would think that maybe Beethoven would do the trick. Classical music has been scientifically proven to activate multiple regions of the brain responsible for emotion, memory, and motor control while reducing stress-related cortisol in humans and babies. Right, exactly. It can also enhance cognitive function and focus, all while increasing dopamine levels. Farmers even play Beethoven to make their cows produce better milk, which I did not know. Makes sense. I want Beethoven milk. I don't want no fucking no 2%, no whole milk.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:41

The fuck?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:42

But the rats. No, it was a hard pass. But here's the thing researchers did not stop here. Oh no. They took another group of rats and exposed them to cocaine. That's right. They gave them coke, blow, snow, flake, nose candy, booger sugar. Charlie The White Lady, The Devil's Dandruff, Schneif, Nosebeer, Happy Powder, Giggle Smoke, Pimp Dust, and Yayo.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:08

You just sounded like fucking David Spade in the fucking movie. No sugar. Booger Sugar. The rest of the class is on page nine. You know what I'm talking about? Oh, former Charles Store? Dickie Roberts. Yes, there it is.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:21

After they turned the rats into hood rats, they set them in the same experiment. They overwhelmingly chose jazz over classical music every time. And there we have it. Cocaine jazz rats. Cocaine jazz rats. The now doped out railed rats were jazz fans. I'm not fucking surprised. I'm not at all. When this study hit the media in 2011, the internet 11. 11. The internet absolutely lost its collective shit. Headlines read Cocaine Rats Preferred Jazz and Drugged Rat Research hit Sournote. Oh my god. Talk radio hosts ranted about taxpayer dollars going towards getting rodents zooted and playing the music. Conservative politicians waved it around as exhibit A in their wasteful spending presentations. Personally, this is exactly where I want my fucking money going. Yeah, can we do cats next? At least someone's having fun. The study quickly became a meme, a punchline, and a symbol of everything people hate about classical music and academic research, but only because it feels disconnected from quote unquote real world problems. And I get it, it does look pretty silly on paper. But here's the thing. This study wasn't actually about music preferences or rats. It's about how the brain forms associations between stimuli and reward. It's about the neurochemical mechanisms of addiction. It's about understanding how drugs hijack normal learning processes and create artificial preferences for things that wouldn't naturally appeal to us.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:24

Jazz music naturally appeals to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:28

Well, let me explain the actual science. Because this shit is fucking wild. So listen, jazz wasn't the main event. It was just a prop, a glorified background soundtrack to a drug bender. These rats didn't suddenly turn into sophisticated musical critics. They didn't have some coke-feeled deep thinking moment where they realized the genius of Bebop. Hell no. The whole damn thing was way simpler. The jazz music was paired with the cocaine high. And that's the whole show. What do you mean? When the rats were listening to Miles Davis, they were also getting absolutely blasted on the nose with nose candy. That cocaine created a dopamine hit so massive it was like winning the lottery inside their tiny little rat brains. Way bigger than anything they'd ever normally experience.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:17

Oh, so they've comboed the two together in their brains.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:20

And their brains, being stupidly efficient, went, oh shit. This sound means that we're getting the good stuff. Dope. So trumpet equals kokai. We're about it. This is called conditioned place preference, which is just a fancy scientific way of saying Pavlov's dogs, but way more fucked up. The rats weren't coming back because of the music, they were returning to the context where they previously felt amazing. The jazz became the signal, the official party zone sign. Their brains were shouting, Holy shit, that's the sound. That means we're gonna feel really, really, really good. Let's go hang out where that sound is. This is the same mechanism that makes a recovering addict smell a specific cologne or hear an old song and immediately get that gut punch craving. Your brain doesn't remember the drug, it remembers the whole vibe. The place, the smell, the music, the feeling. It's why people trying to stay sober are sometimes told to burn their old furniture, move houses, and change all of their friends. The brain is an asshole that treats all those environmental cues, that one song, that one street, that one friend as a valuable trigger for the reward. And those associations are powerful as fuck. Right. This is the same mechanism that makes recovering addicts crave drugs when they return to places where they used to get high. It's why certain songs or smells or locations can trigger intense desire in people trying to stay sober. The brain doesn't just remember the drug, it remembers everything around the drug, treating those environmental cues as valuable in themselves. So this is why people in recovery are told to avoid their old haunts and change their entire environment because those associations are powerful. So yeah, the study about cocaine jazz rats, it's actually teaching us something real about how addiction works, about how the brain forms associations and how context and environment shape our preferences and our behaviors in ways that we don't consciously control. But let's be honest, that's not why this study is fascinating. It's fascinating because of what it accidentally revealed. The rats literally needed to be high to appreciate good music.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:40

There reminds me of being a stoner. Music's way better when stoned.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:45

Sober rats found Miles Davis boring. They found Beethoven boring. They preferred silence to either option, but give them cocaine, pair that cocaine with jazz, and suddenly they're fans. The study accidentally proved that at least for rats, aesthetic appreciation might require chemical enhancement. That the sober brain doesn't naturally gravitate towards art or beauty or complex sensory experiences. And if you think about that for more than a few seconds, it gets kind of dark.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:15

I was gonna say, I don't think I really necessarily like totally agree with that, but it does get amplified, like when you're drinking, or when you're smoking some weed. Or right.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:25

Are we as sophisticated as rats? Do we need chemical enhancement to appreciate the things that we claim make life worth living? Well, I mean, it's a pick your poison fucking world out there, Gavin. Or is there something genuinely different about human consciousness? Something that allows us to appreciate complexity and beauty without needing to be high. Both. I don't have an answer to that. Yeah, both. Neither did the researchers at Albany Medical College. They were just trying to study conditioned place preference, using music as a neutral stimulus. They weren't trying to make a philosophical statement about the nature of aesthetic experience or the limits of sober consciousness, but they did anyways, because that's what good science does sometimes. It answers the questions you asked, and then it accidentally reveals something bigger and weirder and more uncomfortable than you intended. Right. Like, whoops! We were just trying to map reward pathways, but we accidentally suggested that art might be meaningless without chemical enhancement. Our bad.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:27

This is why we have a drug epidemic.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:30

Because here's the thing. This study was and is important. It demonstrates exactly how environmental cues become associated with drug rewards. It shows how the brain learns to value things that predict pleasure, even when those things have no inherent value to the organism. That's not frivolous, that's science doing what science is supposed to do testing hypothesis, gathering data, and building knowledge about how biology works. But it's also undeniably funny that we also learn. That when we get rats high, they like jazz. Both things can be true.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:07

LSD dolphins and cocaine jazz rats. Fucking send it. But also animal testing is bad.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:13

It is bad. I mean, if you're gonna give an animal any drug, at least give it cocaine.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:18

I gotta send you that video. It's it's complete satire, but the video about the spiders and they they caught and swabbed drugs under the different spiders.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:26

And then they like were weaving all crazy webs and shit.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:29

It was like the crack spider took the soda spider's house and stole his wife.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:35

You like think it's a total like real thing when you first start watching and you're like, holy shit, this is crazy. And then you're like, oh, this is a complete satire. It's hilarious.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:44

But all in all, the cocaine jazz rat study did all of that. Is this our life?

SPEAKER_03 1:28:52

Is this our life, Kevin?

SPEAKER_01 1:28:54

It is legitimate neuroscience. It is absurd comedy. It is a meme. It is a philosophical puzzle about consciousness and reward and what makes life worth living. It is all of those things all at once. And in my opinion, that's pretty fucking beautiful. Even if you need to be high to appreciate it. And that is exhibit 110. Cocaine Jazz Rats.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:19

Jesus fucking Christ.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:20

You are welcome.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:21

I still can't believe that this is our day job talking about cocaine fucking jazz rats. That was a palette cleanser. We went from I'm getting my brains ripped off to dead body mail letter. What no, Jesus. Brain, thoughts, thought box, dead body envelope for blackmail, basically, to titty rip and torture devices to cocaine jazz rats. That's our day job.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:46

I love this for us.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:48

I love this for us too.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:49

Someday it will make us money. Fucking hopefully. They make a lot of money.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:59

And they have way less fun than we do. Jeez, yeah, well, fucking what the hell was that? Episode 18. Jesus. Gavin? Yeah. That felt intellectual at first, maybe. It did. We started strong. I mean, we really did. I mean, we opened with Einstein. One of the greatest minds in human history, and immediately disrespected him. Immediately. And then we moved into a fake dead guy. Did I make some bluescoose joke too?

SPEAKER_01 1:30:36

Who somehow kind of almost helped win a war. Which again felt like a step down, but also still respectable. Still with reason. And then we lost. Completely.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:50

This is straight into fucking medieval. What the fuck?

SPEAKER_01 1:30:54

Titty rippin' territory. This door just went fully off the rails.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:59

I mean, I thought it did, but it just got worse because then we end with rats.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:05

So, not just rats. Nope. Cocaine Jazz. I literally just want a shirt that says cocaine jazz rats. And then on the back it says like the Odyssey Department with a fucking QR code. Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:22

It was a baby damn tour, whiplash aside. Now we're adding that t-shirt into the gift shop, so.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:28

Thanks for wandering through the museum with us. If you made it all the way from Einstein to whatever the hell that was, at the end, you're one of us now. No take back seas, you're in.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:41

Unfortunately for us, the museum is now closing. But you're in luck because there are so many other exhibits left to explore. History is full of it. And we've got a lot of new exhibits to unpack, publish, and put on display. And next week's lineup is already looking pretty questionable. Yeah, questionable is putting it rather fucking lightly. If this episode was your particular flavor of fuckery, leave us a rating and a review anywhere you listen. It helps other curious weirdos find the show and helps us keep the lights on.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:14

And if you want more of whatever the fuck this is, come find us on Facebook and TikTok and Apple and Mandora and oh Spotify. Ooh, all the things. We're there.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:23

We've got bonus content, behind the scenes chaos, and more opportunities for all of us to question humanity.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:29

Alright, let's get out of here. Stay curious. Stay weird. And if a rat offers you cocaine, send him back to the lab. Oh Lord.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:47

I don't know how we keep outdoing ourselves.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:50

Just keep getting worse and worse. I need to settle down.