In January 2005, Greg Ross started the Futility Closet website, an online wunderkammer of trivia, quotations, mathematical curiosities, chess problems, and other diversions.

Gary Antonick of the New York Times' Numberplay blog described the first book as "the literary equivalent of Trader Joe's Tempting Trail Mix".

[3] Futility Closet has sometimes been a conduit or used to popularize results by John H. Conway, Richard K. Guy, Lee Sallows, Solomon W. Golomb, and many other well-known mathematicians when they dabbled in recreational mathematics.

The podcast has a wide scope and is not restricted to any particular era, but most episodes concern colorful personalities and strange events from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Victorian oddities are a mainstay of the show, as are unexplained mysteries, forteana, hoaxes and impostors, sensational murders, remarkable animals, and the adventures of mariners, aviators, and explorers.

[12] The podcast's opening theme is an instrumental bass composition, "Fallen Star", which was written and performed by Doug Ross,[13] brother of Greg.