103: Jester? I Hardly Know Her

This week on an all new Oddball History Podcast, it's the Pig-Faced Lady Craze of 1630-1865--arguably one of the bizarre crazes in recorded history. PLUS: Muladona the mule-woman, mermaids & Power Rangers!

This week on the Oddball History Podcast, it's a salute to bareknuckle boxers past and… further past. From Georgian London to Ancient Greece and back again, meet the baddest, toughest and most brandy-drunk bareknuckle boxers in history, including Elizabeth Wilkinson, the Undefeated First Lady of 18th Century Brawling; Ancient Olympian Glaucus of Carystus, whose greatness was foreshadowed when he fixed a broken plow as a kid by punching it really hard; Bendigo Thomas, the Jester of Nottingham, whose feud with Ben Caunt took the sport to new levels of underhandedness; and many, many (or at least like three or four) more! PLUS: Horsey rides, a King Kong review 21 years in the making, and Elizabethan bloodsports!

This week on a very special but possibly cursed Oddball History Podcast, it's curses, curses and more curses, including the TRUTH behind the Curse of Tutankhamen… The GOAT whose removal from a 1945 World Series game led to the Chicago Cubs being cursed for 71 years… SEVERAL CENTURIES of Macbeth-related mishaps and tragedies… PLUS: Donkey Kong Country Returns, funny bumper stickers, and pretzel dogs!

Ancients die in the darnedest ways this week on a very special Oddball History Podcast--including a philosopher who laughed himself to death after seeing a donkey eat some figs; a wrestler who was eaten by wolves (or lions!) after getting his fingers caught in a tree stump; a legendary playwright who was struck down by a falling turtle, and so much more! PLUS: Unsolved Mysteries, fun with trebuchets and the Little Rascals.

So it's come to this: An episode about farts. This week on a very special Oddball History, a 3,925-year-old fart joke from Ancient Sumer; Martin Luther farts at the Devil; Roman emperor Elagabalus breaks out the whoopee cushion; Benjamin Franklin writes an essay called "Fart Proudly," in which he sarcastically proposes scientists focus their efforts on making farts smell good; and so, so much more! 

This week on a very special Oddball History Podcast, Scott learns all about the lost art of court jestering and meets a few of the most famous jesters in history, including Roland the Farter, King Henry VIII's favorite funnyman Will Sommers, and Britain's Smallest Man, the amazing Jeffrey "Lord Minimus" Hudson. PLUS: Baseball, the wrath of Lucky the Leprechaun and olive talk!

This week on a very special Oddball History Podcast, it's everything you always wanted to know about marooning (the practice of punishing someone, usually a sailor, by leaving them stranded on a desert island) but were too afraid to ask, as well as a somewhat comprehensive rundown of the most famous maroonings in history. ALSO: Pirate humor, the Jenny Jones Show and the golden age of dynamite!

This week on a very special Oddball History Podcast it's the lighter side of historic murder plots, from the Roman emperor Nero resorting to Wile E. Coyote technology in an attempt to commit matricide to the CIA's decades long Fidel Castro-centric brainstorming session to the near indestructible "Irish Rasputin" Mike Malloy, the man who couldn't be murdered (almost). PLUS: The Waltons, Regular Rasputin and dated microphone humor!

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad kings episode this week on the Oddball History Podcast, as Scott gets to know the most bizarre and least sane royals of all time, including the Zhengde Emperor of the Ming Dynasty and his loyal army of eunuchs, the Tsar who hated Russia and once put a rat on trial for treason (it was found guilty and given the death penalty fwiw) and Caligula, the original dangerously insane Roman Emperor. PLUS: Warm memories of the WWE Attitude Era, King Ralph and more!

This week on a very special Oddball History Podcast, we shamelessly attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the World Cup with our very own soccer episode, featuring the wildest stories in the history of the beautiful game--from the 1915 British Football Match Fixing Scandal to the 1966 World Cup being saved by a collie mix named Pickles to the altogether insane tale of Carlos Kaiser, the Brazilian con man who spent the 1980s and 90s as an active professional soccer player while never actually playing any soccer.