Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

Aaron Mahnke created Lore, one of the most successful podcasts in history, and then launched Cabinet of Curiosities as a companion project with a very different format. Instead of 30-minute deep dives, each episode here runs just 8 to 12 minutes and packs in two short stories about historical oddities, strange facts, and bizarre real-life events. The show drops twice a week, and with 807 episodes in the archive, there's an absurd amount of content to work through. The stories span everything from obscure crimes to scientific curiosities to cultural phenomena you've probably never heard of. One segment might cover the inventor of a food product you eat every day, while the next tells the story of a 19th-century con artist who fooled an entire city. Mahnke's narration style is measured and deliberate -- he knows how to build tension and land a punchline without rushing. The production is clean, with subtle music and sound design that never overwhelms the storytelling. For road trips specifically, the bite-sized format is ideal. You can listen to three or four episodes between gas stops, and each one is self-contained so there's no serialized plot to track. The show has a 4.5 rating from over 8,300 reviews and a content rating of clean, meaning it works in a car with passengers of any age. Think of it as a bottomless bag of conversation starters -- you'll spend half the drive discussing what you just heard.