Ep: 97 Chelsea Finlayson

Chelsea Finlayson joins Oldmate and Josh to tackle the Zodiac Killer: a man who committed horrific crimes, wrote baffling letters, demanded media attention and somehow turned being deeply annoying into a 50-year brand strategy.

We dig into the murders, the ciphers, the suspects, the newspaper panic and the endless parade of blokes who apparently owned the right shoes and had “a weird vibe.” Was the Zodiac a criminal mastermind, a lucky idiot, or just history’s most committed attention seeking pen pal?

Chelsea helps us sort fact from folklore, credible suspects from absolute nonsense, and one of America’s most infamous unsolved cases from the giant pile of people on the internet who are certain their neighbour’s uncle did it.

Dark, strange, occasionally ridiculous, and still unsolved.

Chealsea's Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/chelseafinlayso.n?

music: Pity Lips.

This episode was supposed to be about the Banana Wars — a wildly fascinating chapter of history involving empire, corporations, military intervention, and the strange dark comedy of how bananas became tangled up with power. That was the plan.

Then special guest Eddi Dąbrowska arrived, brought absolute chaos to the table, and the episode took several sharp turns off the historical highway.

So, caveat: this is not the tightly researched Banana Wars deep dive we intended. It is, however, a very fun ride. We strongly recommend digging into the Banana Wars yourself, because the real story is bizarre, grim, and genuinely worth your time.

This is what happens when good intentions meet great company and the wheels come off beautifully.

Eddi's Insta

https://www.instagram.com/thisiscomeddi?igsh=ZmJweTNhZjBrYXZh

Music: Pity Lips

What happens when the CIA looks at a cat and thinks, “That could be a spy”?

This week on Oldmate & Josh, we dig into Acoustic Kitty — one of the strangest Cold War intelligence projects ever attempted. The idea was simple, if you ignore every obvious problem: surgically turn a cat into a listening device, send it near targets, and let espionage happen.

Because apparently microphones, wires, batteries, animal behaviour, roads, hunger, fear, and the basic personality of cats were all details to sort out later.

We get into the real story, the myths around it, the wider Cold War atmosphere that made ridiculous plans feel reasonable, and why powerful people with huge budgets can somehow make decisions that sound like they were invented by a bored child with a glue gun.

It’s CIA chaos, animal espionage, government logic, Cold War paranoia, and one very unfortunate cat-shaped lesson in “just because you can try something doesn’t mean you should.”

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Music by: Pity Lips

Dezi Freeman...

Criminal mastermind? A convenient suspect? Or a man whose reputation eventually became bigger than the evidence itself?

In this episode, Oldmate and Josh unpack the life, crimes, allegations, investigations, and enduring mystery surrounding one of Australia's most controversial criminal figures. We dive into the facts, the rumours, the media narratives, and the questions that continue to spark debate years later.

As the story unfolds, we explore how public opinion is formed, how legends grow around real people, and why some names become permanently attached to crimes regardless of what can actually be proven.

Was justice served? Did the public get the full story? And how much of what we think we know is fact versus folklore?

Expect deep research, uncomfortable questions, dark humour, and the kind of rabbit holes that make you question everything.

In 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the United States launched a nuclear weapon into space and detonated it 400 kilometres above the Earth.

No, seriously.

What started as a military experiment became one of the strangest moments in human history. The explosion lit up the Pacific sky, created artificial auroras, disrupted electronics in Hawaii, damaged satellites, and left scientists scrambling to understand what they'd unleashed.

In this episode, Oldmate and Josh dive into the incredible story of Operation Starfish Prime—the nuclear test that proved humanity was willing to detonate an atomic bomb in space just to see what would happen. From Cold War paranoia and missile races to electromagnetic pulses, secret military planning, and the long-term consequences for modern technology, this is a story that sounds completely made up... except it actually happened.

From Pubs to Private Jets,

It started in crowded pubs, pints in hands,, smoke-filled terraces and working-class towns. Today it's a global empire worth billions, watched by hundreds of millions and owned by some of the richest people on Earth.

How did English football become the Premier League? What was gained? What was lost? And is the world's most popular football competition still the beautiful game, or has it become something else entirely?

This week, Oldmate and Josh trace the rise of the Premier League, from local passion to global obsession, and ask whether the world's most popular league is football's greatest achievement or its biggest contradiction.

North Korea is often treated like a punchline — strange haircuts, military parades, and impossible propaganda. But behind the spectacle is one of the most controlled societies on Earth.

In this episode, Oldmate & Josh dig into Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim, a rare inside account of teaching the sons of North Korea’s elite. What begins as a story about a classroom becomes something much bigger: truth, loyalty, fear, hunger, surveillance, and what happens when the state doesn’t just control what you do — it tries to control what you are.

It’s bizarre. It’s disturbing. It’s human. And it raises one massive question: what happens to a person when the outside world is treated like a crime?

Music by: Pity lips