The Box of Oddities

What if the streets beneath San Francisco aren’t sitting on solid ground at all—but on the remains of abandoned ships?

During the California Gold Rush, crews deserted vessels by the hundreds, leaving ships stranded along the waterfront. Some became warehouses, hotels, saloons, even a jail. Others were swallowed by landfill as San Francisco expanded outward into the bay. Today, dozens of nineteenth-century ships may still lie beneath downtown—including the Niantic, whose buried hull has repeatedly resurfaced during construction, complete with artifacts and bottles of wine and champagne sealed underground for more than a century.

Then Kat takes us into a very different corner of human achievement: toilet-related world records. Meet the man who smashed 46 wooden toilet seats with his head in one minute, the record holder who passed his entire body through a toilet seat ten times in sixty seconds, and the Belgian man who spent nearly five days sitting on a toilet in the middle of a bar—all in pursuit of questionable glory.

Plus: Kat goes to jury duty and, completely on brand, discovers she has brought more knives than expected.

Buried Gold Rush ships, forgotten champagne, toilet-seat martial arts, bizarre Guinness records, and one woman who apparently cannot enter a government building without accidentally carrying a weapon.

It’s another beautifully strange episode of The Box of Oddities.
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The Inbox of Oddities is open, and the Freak Family has delivered another beautifully strange collection of listener stories.

This time, Kat and Jethro dive into an accidentally perfect sign at a spay-and-neuter clinic, a spectacularly unfortunate product mistranslation involving “aging horniness,” a rabbit openly mocking someone’s gardening defenses, and a listener determined to bring a beloved Box of Oddities song back into heavy rotation.

There’s also a Phoenix-versus-Tucson debate, memories of a skateboarding Pope look-alike, mysterious internet rabbit holes, questionable bathroom barbecue-tong etiquette, and plenty of pet pictures.

But things take a decidedly eerie turn with the story of a late-night highway rest stop, a strange older man, and a warning to take the next exit. Minutes later, the listener discovers a serious accident on the road they would have been traveling. When they return from the restroom, the mysterious stranger has vanished.

Coincidence, intuition, guardian angel… or something much stranger?

Plus, Kat and Jethro are looking for your creepy, unusual, and unexplained stories for the upcoming Halloween episode.

It’s listener mail at its funniest, weirdest, and occasionally unsettling best on this episode of The Inbox of Oddities.
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A quiet French town is hit by a wave of sickness, terror, and impossible visions after its residents eat the same bread. Were the horrors of Pont-Saint-Esprit in 1951 caused by ergot poisoning, contaminated flour, or something even stranger? Then, deep in the Amazon, male pink river dolphins have a baffling social habit involving aerial urination, zigzagging streams, and very interested onlookers.

The Box of Oddities investigates cursed bread, Cold War suspicions, hallucinations, and why nature remains undefeated at being weird.
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An accidental Australian takeover of The Box of Oddities begins with Vegemite and somehow ends with a prehistoric mystery and a disappearance that only gets stranger.

First, buried in ancient Australian rock are the delicate remains of a forest that vanished from the world millions of years ago. Scientists knew these trees only through fossils—until a park ranger climbed into a remote canyon and noticed something he couldn't explain. What he found would rewrite a small piece of botanical history and eventually trigger an extraordinary fight to keep something ancient from disappearing all over again.

Then, 30-year-old Jessica Zarinsky leaves a Western Sydney pub with a man she's just met and vanishes. CCTV traces their journey toward the Blue Mountains, but eventually Jessica disappears from the cameras—and the man she was traveling with disappears too. Years later, investigators find him in one of the strangest places imaginable. But the discovery only deepens the mystery of what happened to Jessica.

Two Australian stories. One survivor from an almost unimaginable past. One woman whose family is still waiting for answers.

Also: wombat poop, penguin fences, Vegemite, and further evidence that Australia may be the most Box of Oddities place on Earth.

The Box of Oddities — where the strange, bizarre, mysterious, and unexplained remind us that the world is much weirder than we think.
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Halloween is creeping closer, and the Inbox is filling up with teeth, doppelgängers, bizarre coincidences, pet opossums, and the kind of heartfelt notes that make Kat and JG question whether they deserve any of you.

This week: a listener wakes from wisdom-tooth surgery determined to show Kat and JG her teeth, a mysterious ambulance/fire-alarm “Boo Effect,” a license plate coincidence involving the word Gordita, and a pet opossum named Myrtle with absolutely no survival instincts. Plus, a listener suggestion sends the hosts down a dark historical path toward Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries.

And, of course, the ninth annual Box of Oddities Halloween special is coming. Have a spooky story? Record it and send it to curator@theboxofoddities.com.
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