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The Box of Oddities

Why Humans Are So Weird

The Box of Oddities

John Elliott and Kat Walls

Society & Culture, True Crime, Comedy

4.83K Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2026

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

From ancient survival instincts and prehistoric brain wiring to butter knives, bras, and the bizarre origin of high heels, this episode of The Box of Oddities explores the strange, hidden reasons humans behave the way we do. Why do we hoard jars and tangled phone chargers? Why does gossip feel irresistible? Why are we constantly checking our phones like nervous cave dwellers scanning for predators? Kat and Jethro dive into the fascinating science of inherited survival behaviors that may still be controlling modern life in ways we don’t even realize. Then, things get delightfully weird as they uncover accidental inventions and bizarre cultural pivots that changed history forever — including the French cardinal whose hatred of toothpicking helped invent the butter knife, the wealthy socialite who accidentally created the modern bra, and how Persian cavalry soldiers inspired today’s high heels. Plus: Olympic cigarettes, Titanic board games, Kiss coffins, Ratatouille wine, and one very traumatic Target yogurt incident during a blackout in Orlando. If you love odd history, strange psychology, human behavior, weird inventions, and darkly funny conversations about the hidden absurdities of civilization, this episode is for you. #TheBoxOfOddities #HumanBehavior #WeirdHistory #EvolutionaryPsychology #StrangeHistory #Oddities #AncientInstincts #BizarreOrigins #FunnyPodcast #Psychology #HistoryPodcast #ButterKnife #HighHeels #SurvivalInstincts #WeirdFacts #BoxOfOddities Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

The Box of Oddities.

0:04.3

Last night we had a big thunderstorm here in Orlando and the power went out.

0:10.1

In order to try to keep myself from getting depressed because it kind of triggered me

0:14.7

after all those rolling blackouts that we lived through in Ecuador.

0:19.1

I got to think, well, I'm going to look at this as a positive.

0:21.7

What is a good way? What is a way that our ancestors used to entertain themselves when they

0:27.1

didn't have electricity? So we went to Target, which was fun, and they had the emergency lights on

0:33.9

and a couple of cashiers working. It was a little spooky. For some reason, it made me feel

0:40.7

like I was shopping in the county. She's referring to the Roostick County, the largest county in the state

0:47.1

of Maine, the entire top of the state where everything is dimly lit. I just, I guess that's what it was.

0:52.8

I'm not sure. It felt, it felt to me like a zombie

0:55.1

apocalypse. It did feel that way a little bit. And when you walked in, they were like, hey,

1:00.1

there are some things that aren't available right now. The pharmacy's not available and the

1:03.9

freezer section isn't available. And I was like, awesome. Because we were there for dishwasher

1:09.5

soap and yogurt.

1:11.3

Like our ancestors used to.

1:13.0

Like our ancestors.

1:14.2

We'd gather.

1:15.0

So we scoodled down and we got to the yogurt area and I opened one of the coolers and this

1:22.8

woman whooped around the corner and she went, hey, which frightened me a little bit. I don't respond well to that. Nothing out of the freezers. And I said, oh, no? And she went, no. It's like, okay. First of all, this isn't a freezer. It's refrigerated. Right. And to avoid an argument about semantics, we just kind of put the yogurt back. It was a refrigerated unit. It wasn't a

1:44.8

freezer. I guess the freezer section. Yeah, maybe. But I intentionally listened for

1:50.9

refrigerators or refrigerated section when we were told where not to shop because I was there for

...

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