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The Box of Oddities — Comedy
The Box of Oddities

The Webby Award-winning “Box of Oddities” is a podcast that delves into the strange and mysterious aspects of our world, exploring topics ranging from bizarre medical conditions to unsolved mysteries, and from paranormal phenomena to strange cultural practices from around the world. With a focus on oddities, curiosities, and the macabre, each episode is a journey into the unknown, where hosts Kat and Jethro Gilligan Toth share their love for unusual stories and inject their humor and commentary. From the strange history of medical practices to chilling true crime stories, to natural (and unnatural) events, “The Box of Oddities” satisfies your thirst for the weird and the unusual, offering an informative and entertaining look into the dark and mysterious corners of our world.
JIMMY KIMMEL, ABC-TV says, “Should you be the type who has an interest in weird stuff, this is a fun thing to allow in your head!”

“Truth is stranger than fiction, and the Box of Oddities is the strangest of all!” -SLUGGO, SIRIUS XM LITHIUM

“Kat & Jethro wring humor from bizarre, macabre and perplexing places.” -BOSTON MAGAZINE

Copyright: © 2023 Eleven Eleven llc

Latest Episodes:

The Boys Who Refused to Become Monsters Aug 24, 2026

Show notes

What happens when six teenage boys are stranded on a deserted island for more than a year? Forget Lord of the Flies. The true story of the boys of Ata reveals something far more surprising—and far more hopeful—about human nature.

Then, during World War II, a Muslim family in Sarajevo risks everything to hide their Jewish neighbors from the Nazis. Nearly fifty years later, with Sarajevo under siege once again, an extraordinary act of courage comes full circle.

Two remarkable true stories of survival, kindness, and ordinary people choosing to become the helpers when the world is at its worst. Also: pets may be angels, Kat encounters one at a drive-thru, and we celebrate five astonishing comebacks—including species once believed extinct.

Come fly the freak flag with us as we explore the strange, the inspiring, and the beautifully unexpected.

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Inbox Of Oddities Aug 21, 2026

Show notes

A listener dreams that Mothman shows up at her patio door—and refuses to let him inside because of his dust. Aerial arts may have accidentally cured another Freak’s lifelong motion sickness. And a woman dreams of playing with her late grandfather in an old hot rod, only to discover it may be a memory from infancy—and that her father dreamed about him on the very same night. Plus, the modern medical condition still treated with bloodletting, a breathtaking encounter in Norway, and a desperate plea for the return of “What You Got for Me?” It’s another strange, funny, and unexpectedly moving journey through the Inbox of Oddities. Fly your Freak Flag proudly!

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Buried for 246 Years—and Finally Identified Aug 19, 2026

Show notes

He Vanished at 14. DNA Found Him 246 Years Later—and Why So Many Towns End in “Kill”

A teenage soldier vanished during one of the American Revolution’s most devastating defeats. Nearly 250 years later, DNA recovered from a tiny piece of bone may have finally given him back his name. The remarkable story of Private John Pumphrey begins beneath the soil of a South Carolina battlefield—and ends with a family hearing the name history had forgotten.

Then, Kat turns a 3,000-mile road trip into a linguistic excavation. Why do so many towns end in kill, ville, burg, ton, and ford? America’s highway signs are filled with language fossils revealing who settled the land, what they found, and occasionally, which important dude owned it.

From the unknown soldiers of the Battle of Camden to the hidden histories embedded in American place names—history is everywhere. Sometimes it’s buried beneath your feet. Sometimes you pass it at 70 miles an hour.

Keep flying that freak flag, beautiful freaks.

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Charlie No-Face & The Jesus Mothership Aug 17, 2026

Show notes

A glowing faceless figure stalks the lonely roads of western Pennsylvania—or so the legend goes. But behind the terrifying tale of Charlie No-Face was Ray Robinson, a real man whose tragic childhood accident transformed him into the infamous Green Man of Pennsylvania.

Then, Kat and Jethro explore the bizarre, darkly funny, and sometimes completely unhinged final words of executed criminals—including baked-apple jokes, complaints about SpaghettiOs, one killer’s suggested newspaper headline, and Aileen Wuornos’ promise to return with Jesus aboard a giant mothership.

Urban legends, death-row one-liners, and a Rolex rescued from the sewer after 18 months. Just another perfectly normal episode of The Box of Oddities.

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Horse Manure Apocalypse Aug 14, 2026

Show notes

HORSE MANURE CRISIS! And Victorians Crawl Inside Dead Whales for a Bizarre Cure!

A Freak Family Favorite returns! First, the Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894—and the very real fear that cities would eventually disappear beneath nine feet of horse poop. Then, the spectacularly revolting Victorian “whale cure” for rheumatoid arthritis, which involved spending hours inside a warm, decomposing whale carcass. Two historical problems. Two deeply questionable solutions. One unusually fragrant episode of The Box of Oddities.

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Glitch in Reality & Ghost in the Family Tree Aug 12, 2026

Show notes

What if the world didn’t move smoothly—but jumped from moment to moment like a broken film reel? Meet LM, the woman who could see colors, faces, and objects clearly but couldn’t see them move. Her rare neurological condition, akinetopsia, revealed something astonishing about how the brain constructs reality.

Then, an adopted man searching for his biological mother discovers that she had spent nearly 50 years at the center of one of Massachusetts’ most haunting unsolved mysteries. The Lady of the Dunes finally had a name—but identifying Ruth Marie Terry was only the beginning.

Along the way, Kat accidentally crosses into Canada, gets caught with a stun gun, and briefly becomes an international weapons smuggler while looking for a thrift store.

Motion blindness, a cold case solved through genetic genealogy, and the most stressful grouse sighting in recorded history. It’s The Box of Oddities!

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Before Your First Memory & Valley Of The Calls Aug 10, 2026

Show notes

Your brain was listening before you ever took your first breath. Newborns can recognize their mother’s voice—and even stories heard in the womb—but could any of those experiences survive as actual memories? JG explores prenatal learning, infantile amnesia, and the unsettling possibility that your earliest memory may be something your brain quietly invented.

Then, Kat follows a voice across Saskatchewan’s Qu’Appelle Valley, where the landscape can make distant calls seem impossibly close. An Indigenous tradition, a tragic love story, and Pauline Johnson’s haunting poem all became tangled in the meaning of a name: “Who calls?” From the Cree trickster Wîsahkêcâhk to the mysterious St. Louis Ghost Light, Saskatchewan is filled with stories shaped by the land—and some of them still seem to answer back.

Childhood memories, phantom voices, ghostly lights, and a potentially explosive bucket of dog poop. Just another day inside The Box of Oddities.

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Inbox Of Oddities #95 Aug 07, 2026

Show notes

The Freak Family has been busy.

This week on Inbox of Oddities, Kat and JG crack open the listener mailbag and discover a funeral urn that can preserve the voice of the person inside it, a legendary Texas rock that may have swallowed a man whole, and the deeply unfortunate mystery of a toilet seat that suddenly developed a perfect blue butt print.

Then there’s a possible Boo Effect at one of America’s strangest museums, the surprisingly fascinating history of the Brannock Device, a road trip tradition involving the Uranus Fudge Factory, and the only beach in America where you can apparently land an airplane—as long as the tide cooperates.

Plus, a Freak Family member shares a wonderfully funny near-final line from her mother-in-law, we revisit the weird phenomenon of nipple sadness, and discover that The Box of Oddities has apparently been used as homeschool curriculum. Which feels both flattering and possibly irresponsible.

Listener stories, strange coincidences, weird history, questionable business names, and proof that the Freak Family may be even stranger than Kat and JG.

Keep flying that freak flag.

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Is My Red Is Your Red? Aug 05, 2026

Show notes

What if your brain suddenly decided that words had colors?

In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro dive into one of neuroscience's strangest documented phenomena: a woman who suffered a traumatic brain injury and awoke seeing vivid colors every time someone spoke. Her condition—known as acquired speech-to-color synesthesia—raises an unsettling question: if the brain can rewrite reality after an injury, how much of the world we experience is actually being created inside our own minds?

From disappearing colors and tetrachromats who may perceive millions of shades the rest of us never will, to the mystery of whether your experience of "red" is anything like anyone else's, this episode explores the fragile line between perception and reality.

Then, the conversation shifts to one of South Korea's most haunting unsolved mysteries: the 1991 disappearance of the Frog Boys. Five young friends set out to collect salamander eggs on a day off from school and never returned. After one of the largest searches in the nation's history, their remains were discovered eleven years later in an area investigators had searched repeatedly. Was it a tragic accident, a calculated murder, or something else entirely? Decades later, the case remains unsolved—but it forever changed how South Korea responds to missing children.

Along the way, expect the usual detours into bizarre headlines, questionable road-trip food decisions, and the wonderfully weird conversations that only happen inside The Box of Oddities.

In this episode:

Acquired speech-to-color synesthesia
How the brain creates color and perception
Tetrachromats and the mystery of subjective reality
The neuroscience of consciousness and qualia
The unsolved Frog Boys case
How one tragedy transformed South Korea's missing-child investigations

If you love strange science, unsolved mysteries, psychology, neuroscience, true crime, and the wonderfully inexplicable, welcome home. The Freak Family has been waiting for you.

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Oscar Wilde, Dutch Schultz & Sad Nipples Aug 03, 2026

Show notes

What were someone's last words really supposed to reveal? During the Victorian era, people believed a person's final moments exposed the truth about their soul. Families gathered around deathbeds with notebooks in hand, hoping to capture profound final wisdom—but history suggests many of the world's most famous last words may have been polished, embellished, or invented entirely.

In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Jethro explores the fascinating history behind legendary final quotes from Oscar Wilde, Admiral Horatio Nelson, Nathan Hale, and gangster Dutch Schultz, asking whether these iconic farewell lines tell us more about the dying... or the living.

Then Kat investigates one of the strangest neurological mysteries you've probably never heard of: Nipple Sadness (also called Sad Nipple Syndrome). Why do some people experience an unexpected wave of sadness, anxiety, guilt, or even homesickness when their nipples are stimulated? Scientists think hormones and brain chemistry may be involved, but the phenomenon remains largely unexplained.

It's an episode about the stories we tell ourselves at the end of life—and the bizarre ways our brains can surprise us while we're still living.

In this episode:

The Victorian tradition of collecting famous last words

Were Oscar Wilde's final words invented?

The mystery surrounding Admiral Nelson's "Kiss me, Hardy"

Dutch Schultz's bizarre deathbed ramblings

Why we remember death the way we do

What causes "Nipple Sadness"?

The possible connection to dopamine, oxytocin, and Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex (D-MER)

Strange neuroscience and unexplained human experiences

If you love strange history, neuroscience, medical mysteries, psychology, famous last words, Victorian culture, and bizarre true stories, this episode belongs in your ears.

#BoxOfOddities #FamousLastWords #VictorianHistory #Neuroscience #MedicalMysteries #DutchSchultz #OscarWilde #BrainScience #WeirdHistory #Podcast

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