The Haunted Shipwreck and the Sausage Queen

The Box of Oddities

John Elliott and Kat Walls

True Crime, Comedy, Society & Culture

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 1 June 2026

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What happens when a luxury ocean liner sinks... but refuses to stop claiming victims? And why do communities around the world crown queens of hot dogs, herring, pumpkins, and wild turkeys? In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro dive into the haunting legacy of the Andrea Doria, the glamorous Italian ocean liner that collided with another ship in dense Atlantic fog and slipped beneath the waves off Nantucket in 1956. What should have been the end of the story became the beginning of a deadly obsession. Decades later, the wreck remains one of the most dangerous dive sites on Earth, earning a chilling reputation as the "Everest of Wreck Diving" and claiming the lives of experienced divers drawn to its dark corridors and ghostly remains. Then, Kat explores the surprisingly bizarre world of festival queens. From ancient fertility traditions and May Queens to modern-day Sausage Queens, Herring Queens, and Wild Turkey Queens, discover how centuries-old rituals evolved into some of the strangest community celebrations in history. Luxury shipwrecks, underwater mysteries, pagan traditions, hot dog royalty, and the weird ways humans celebrate themselves—it's all waiting inside The Box of Oddities. #AndreaDoria #ShipwreckMystery #Nantucket #OceanLiner #WreckDiving #FestivalQueens #SausageQueen #WeirdHistory #StrangeTraditions #BoxOfOddities Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Box of Oddities. It's baby bird season. Today was a big day of Banner Day. You had a lot of
0:08.7	birds out there. There was a pair of cardinals, which I've seen before. They're beautiful.
0:14.3	But today they brought their baby, and they were feeding their baby. They brought their baby to my
0:20.1	bird feeder, and they were feeding their baby and They brought their baby to my bird feeder. And they were feeding
0:21.8	their baby at my bird feeder. I could not even talk with cat for about 20 minutes. Everything I said
0:28.2	rolled off her back. We've been together for about 16 years. You start to notice things about a person
0:35.5	after, you know. Your quality reading time, for instance.
0:38.2	Sure, exactly.
0:39.4	I noticed today, I've seen you do this before, but today it really stuck in my mind.
0:43.3	Whenever you see a cute animal, especially a baby animal, like that little cardinal you saw,
0:48.8	you bend over and rub your ovaries.
0:54.3	It's my biological clock.
0:56.7	It's ticking, babe.
0:58.1	I've got to have a bird.
0:59.8	Well, that's certainly adorable and endearing.
1:02.3	Also, it's closer to 18 years.
1:04.9	We've been together.
1:06.0	Not quite, but almost.
1:07.4	Mathen's hard.
1:08.4	No, I know shit.
1:09.3	Yeah, that's right.
1:09.9	We've been living together, either it married or in sin for 16 years. Either way, I like it. Sweetheart, you know, I don't believe in sin. That's why I'm okay with gluttony. You saw my breakfast this morning. I'm surprised I didn't see you out on the patio regurgitating into that baby bird's mouth.
	...

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