Messy Minded Podcast

This episode is a Messy Re-Minder! We're kicking off spooky season by reaching back through the thinning veil and dragging one of last year's Halloween episodes back into the land of the living. Originally released in 2025, this episode explores Samhain, its traditions, folklore, and its connection to the Halloween we know today. It's Halloweens origin story! Ever wonder why we carve faces into ve...

In this episode, Jess revisits Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince —a deceptively simple children’s story about imagination, loneliness, love, grief, and the peculiar little prisons adults build for themselves. We’ll consider what the prince learns from his rose and the fox, how Saint-Exupéry’s turbulent marriage and dangerous life as an aviator may have shaped the story—and whether the L...

In this Messy Morsel, Jess explores the true story behind Australia’s Great Emu War, including the desperate former soldiers farming difficult land during the Great Depression, the military operation that became a national embarrassment, but also a fun story for ages! Have a strange, overlooked, or completely ridiculous true story you’d like Jess to research? Send it to MessyMindedPod@gmail.com ....

Jess is joined by the ever-inquisitive Lolo to dig into the strange history of the Georgia Guidestones: the anonymous people who paid for them, the controversial messages carved into the stone, the conspiracy theories they inspired, and the still-unsolved bombing that finally brought them down. Who built the Georgia Guidestones—and what exactly were they trying to tell us? Music by: SoundPlusUS La...

In 1906, Ota Benga—a young man from what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo—was exhibited at the Bronx Zoo alongside primates. It sounds impossible. It isn't. We trace his story from the atrocities of the Congo Free State and the rubber boom to the rise of pseudoscience and one of America's most shameful public spectacles. It's a short episode, but it's one that stuck with me. Hosted on A...

In the 1980s and early '90s, America was warned about a coming "lost generation." The media told us that babies exposed to crack cocaine before birth would grow up violent, intellectually disabled, and destined for lives of crime. The phrase "crack baby" became part of our vocabulary almost overnight. But then... We stopped talking about them. Researchers, however, didn't. They followed these chil...

This week on Messy Minded, we're setting sail into one of the greatest adventure stories ever told: Homer's Odyssey. Join me as we follow Odysseus, the clever King of Ithaca, on his legendary journey home after the Trojan War. Along the way we'll meet unforgettable figures from Greek mythology, including Circe, Polyphemus the Cyclops, the Lotus Eaters, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, Calypso, Ae...

In this episode of Messy Minded, Jess explores the fascinating, tragic, and sometimes hopeful stories of isolated peoples and first contacts. We travel from the remote forests of North Sentinel Island to the Siberian wilderness of the Lykov family, follow the final years of Ishi—the last known member of California's Yahi people—and examine the heartbreaking life of Ota Benga, a Congolese man displ...

One year ago, Messy Minded began with a simple question: "How do podcasts go from a microphone to a stranger's ear?" That question led to Vikings, scammers, bog bodies, Olympians, secret societies, cursed objects, talking plants, questionable medical devices, alien discussions, and more side quests than any reasonable person should have followed. In this special one-year anniversary episode, Jess...

Why do we say someone “barked up the wrong tree”? What does “beyond the pale” actually mean? Why were medieval people throwing armored gloves at each other? And why does the English language sound like it was assembled during a fever dream involving geese, shellfish, buckets, bullets, and bacon? In this episode of Messy Minded , Jess dives into the strange, funny, surprisingly dark origins of comm...

Why does kindness sound rude, politeness sounds fake, and nobody agrees on what “normal conversation” is? In this episode of Messy Minded , Jess dives into the strange hidden architecture of human conversation — the invisible rules we absorb from our families, cultures, regions, and relationships without ever realizing it. Why does one person hear care while another hears criticism? Why do some pe...

Cronin et al. (2014) – Visual ecology (UV vision in animals)What if you can’t fully trust your own brain? In this episode of Messy Minded , we explore how the brain builds reality through perception, memory, and emotion—and how that process can sometimes go wrong. From sensory perception and optical illusions to false memories, cognitive bias, and the neuroscience behind how we interpret the world...

Jess takes us back to 1976, when a routine maintenance job inside the Korean Demilitarized Zone spiraled into one of the most bizarre and dangerous standoffs of the Cold War. What started with a tree blocking a line of sight quickly escalated into violence, a tense military confrontation, and one of the most heavily armed “landscaping” operations in history. In this Messy Morsel, we head into the...

What do a resurrection story, a rabbit delivering eggs, and aggressively pastel candy have in common? Easter… apparently. In this Messy Morsel, Jess digs into the strange mix of traditions behind one of the most confusing holidays of the year—tracing its roots through ancient spring rituals, shifting beliefs, and a few ideas that somehow just stuck around. It’s a little history, a little myth, and...

In the year 897, one of the strangest events in medieval history unfolded in Rome.  A pope ordered the body of his predecessor to be dug up… and placed on trial.  The event became known as the Cadaver Synod, and it remains one of the most bizarre episodes in the long history of the Catholic Church.  In this Messy Morsel, Jess explores the strange political rivalry that led to this s...

In this episode of Messy Minded , Jess walks through her full cognitive assessment — from interviews and computer tests to memory drills. Along the way she is joined by Sam and Scott and they explore how ADHD can present in adults and how highly structured systems can sometimes mask attention differences. Jess reflects on what the testing revealed, the coping structures she’s built over the years,...

In 2023, testimony about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) moved from internet forums to Congress — under oath, on the public record. In this episode of Messy Minded , we unpack what was actually said during the House Oversight hearing, including claims from former intelligence officer David Grusch about alleged crash-retrieval programs and “non-human biologics.” We also revisit the now-famous...

Full UAP episode drops Friday. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Messy Minded, Jess explores the axolotl — the permanently aquatic salamander that refuses to grow up. Through biology, mythology, and modern science, we unpack how axolotls regrow limbs, spinal cords, and even parts of their brains, and why researchers studying regeneration and immune response are obsessed with them The episode weaves together Aztec mythology and the god Xolotl,...

What began as a baffling public spectacle — bodies moving without permission, collapsing in exhaustion — would echo through centuries of history under a single unsettling name: St. Vitus’ Dance . In this episode of Messy Minded , Jess traces how a medieval dancing plague became a medical diagnosis… and how that same name resurfaced generations later in her own family, attached to a childhood illne...

What happens when our dead talks back? In this episode of Messy Minded, Jess explores the digital afterlife: the growing world of AI griefbots, memorial chatbots, and artificial companions trained on the voices, messages, and personalities of people who have died. Ela Darling (adult entertainer, worlds 1st VR camgirl, ex-librarian, former co-host of the 'Ill Repute' podcast, and not-so-secret nerd...

Behind the lights, the carols, and the forced cheer, Christmas has a quieter side. Christmas Secrets explores the hidden rituals, anonymous kindnesses, secret identities, and strange traditions that surface during the holiday season — stories that are rarely advertised and often deeply personal. From secret celebrations held behind locked doors, to anonymous gifts left without explanation, to Sant...

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

MIT Technology Review — https://www.technologyreview.com/ Smithsonian Magazine — https://www.smithsonianmag.com/ LIFE Magazine Archive — https://books.google.com/books/about/LIFE.html Atomic Ranch — https://www.atomic-ranch.com/ Paleofuture (Smithsonian) — https://paleofuture.com/ Atomic Age design resources Official Site — http://www.thevenusproject.com/ Future by Design (documentary) Zeitgeist A...

A peaceful mountain town. A newcomer with… opinions. And a story that starts quiet and ends in the kind of Appalachian mystery nobody writes down. Come wander the Smokies with me as we uncover what happens when the wrong person arrives in the right place at the worst possible time. https://shows.acast.com/messy-minded-podcast https://www.instagram.com/messymindedpod/ https://www.tiktok.com/@messym...