Café del Weirdo: The Mysteries of the Thames Garnets & Baba Yaga
We Can Be Weirdos
Global
4.9 • 793 Ratings
🗓️ 12 December 2025
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today’s episode is a two-for-one feast of mystery. First, the curious gems that keep washing up on the river Thames. What are they? Who put them there? And why? Historian Ellery Weil joins Café del Weirdo to dig into the leading theories and the world of Thames mudlarks.
Next, we slip into the shadowy woods to visit Baba Yaga, the legendary Slavic witch-grandmother who may help you, may eat you, and definitely lives in a house with chicken legs. Author Kris Spisak tells us why this ancient figure still hooks us today.
Host: Dan Schreiber
Guests: Ellery Weil and Kris Spisak
Producer: Cassie Merritt
Head of Podcasts: Al Riddell
Transcript
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| 0:29.1 | Obviously. |
| 0:31.9 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 1:04.0 | Oh! Global Player Original Podcast Hey everyone, Hello. Hey, everyone, welcome to Cafe del Weirdo. This is the show where we put down the bat shit list and we just sit down with some interesting people and just chat to them about what they're up to at |
| 1:08.3 | the moment. And today I've got two people joining us |
| 1:11.5 | in the cafe. They're both riders, the first of whom I stumbled across when I was reading an |
| 1:17.2 | article that she's written up in Atlas Obscura. So I'm really interested in cursed items. I'm more |
| 1:22.9 | interested in the sort of psychological effects that it has on people who think that they have a |
| 1:27.4 | cursed item and what happens when they hand it over to someone else who also believes it, the sort of psychological effects that it has on people who think that they have a cursed item |
| 1:28.0 | and what happens when they hand it over to someone else who also believes it, |
| 1:31.1 | the sort of trail of chaos that that leaves. |
| 1:34.1 | So anyway, I ended up stumbling on this article by Ellery Wheel, |
| 1:38.4 | and I just wanted to chat more to her about it. |
| 1:41.1 | And then also joining me after Ellery is Chris Spizak. |
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