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EPISODE 11 — The Oddities Department

This week… history and modern history fully loses its mind.

Suzi and Gavin crack open six case files that feel less like real events and more like something a sleep-deprived historian made up while trippin. We start in 1870 Paris, where a starving city made the deeply unfortunate decision to put the zoo on the menu. Then we head to the South Atlantic, where a luxury cruise ship gets dragged into World War I and ends up in a naval fight… with another cruise ship pretending to be it.

Because human judgment is a fragile thing, we also examine two modern ER visits involving World War I explosives and choices that absolutely did not need to be made.

From there, the tone shifts. Gavin tells the powerful and complicated story of Henrietta Lacks — the woman whose cells changed modern medicine without her knowledge. Suzi brings the fire with Mariya Oktyabrskaya, the Soviet widow who processed grief by literally buying a tank and driving it into battle. And we close with the Radium Girls, one of the most infuriating and heartbreaking labor stories in American history.

It’s weird. It’s heavy. It’s occasionally unhinged.

Welcome back to the basement.

Stay weird. Stay curious. But not too curious.