What a Weird Week gets you caught up on the odd, interesting,
strange, fun, and weird news that happened this week. Ten stories in 15
minutes!
See https://www.shownotes.page or "What a Weird Week" where you get podcasts.
See https://www.shownotes.page or "What a Weird Week" where you get podcasts.
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Hi friends, I'm Scott and this is What a Weird Week, a look at the
odd, interesting, strange, fun and weird stories that made news this
week. See bottom of shownotes page for a transcript of the podcast
episode. To Subscribe/ get in touch/ other/ see www.shownotes.page.
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These are the shownotes for Season 6, Ep 27 first published Fri July 4, 2025
Thanks for rating and reviewing and also subscribing!
These are the shownotes for Season 6, Ep 27 first published Fri July 4, 2025
Cheesy Nightmares
Whales feed people?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/orcas-sharing-prey-1.7574759 and also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cQu7eA_EnU
Facebook/ Fishbook
https://www.thedrum.com/news/2025/07/01/ad-the-day-mcdonald-s-resurrects-filet-o-fish-facebook-group-2012
https://www.thedrum.com/news/2025/07/01/ad-the-day-mcdonald-s-resurrects-filet-o-fish-facebook-group-2012
What's up with Cats Sleeping on the Left-Side?

Whales Need to Get a Room
https://www.sciencealert.com/orcas-caught-kissing-for-two-minutes-with-tongue
Laser those mosquitoes
Atlantis Discovered. No Big Deal
The Emoji that can Save Your Relationship!
Big screw-up at Norwegian Lottery
Woman Rows Across the Entire Ocean!
To subscribe to the podcast or for social media and more links, you can get everything at https://www.shownotes.page or search "What a Weird Week" where you get podcasts.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
00:00
Mosquito lasers and whales getting fresh. What a weird week. Hi, everybody. It's weird. This is like crazy. Really weird. Bigfoot eats out of my trash. Well, got a great joke for you. It was so wonderful. Weird stuff. Hi, friends. I'm Scott. And this show is called What a Weird Week. It's a look back at the news of the past week, but not the serious stuff. It is the fun, the interesting, the weird and odd news items from the past week. If you're new here.
00:29
We give you 10 interesting news stories in about 15 minutes or less. This is the episode for Friday, July 4th, 2025. Oh, if you want our show notes, you can click the website shownotes.page. Number 10 is the cheese and nightmares story. A lot of the news orgs pick this up, but if you missed it, the headlines were always something like, is cheese giving you nightmares? Could dairy be the reason for your terrifying slumber? Something like that. And the answer is
00:58
Maybe this study was looking, was done by, it was a psychology study, not a food science study, but it was looking at eating habits and sleeping habits of people. And they found a correlation between lactose intolerance and nightmares. If you eat a trigger food before you go to bed, you're more likely to have a nightmare, not a pleasant dream, an unpleasant dream. And the worse your lactose intolerance is, the more intense your nightmares will be. That's kind of the takeaway.
01:26
If perhaps you are a fan of the dairy or you're not able to eat dairy and you'd like to do a deep dive on the story, we'll put a link in the show notes. Good night. Pleasant dreams. Number nine. Number nine is this weird whale story. They're the ocean's top predators, but now killer whales are offering people their catch of the day. Take a look at this. Oh no, it's spring over food.
01:56
Oh my goodness, it's bringing over food. That's a clip from the New Zealand Herald YouTube channel. We'll link to that in the show notes. What's happening in the clip? Well, people are filming a whale. It comes over. It brings them food. That's I guess that's pretty much what the person in the video said. So why is it happening? I'm not a whale scientist, but to me, it feels like a trap. Hey, the whales are trying to trap us, setting some sort of trap for us.
02:26
The experts think it's something about figuring us out, getting to know who we are. They'll bring over food. And this has happened all over the world, by the way. This is not unique to one area. It's rare, but documented cases all over the world, according to the experts who studied it. And they think the whale brings over food, waits to see what we'll do, and then I guess has some kind of indication about who we are and what makes us tick.
02:54
So it's some sort of social or communication thing happening when the whales bring food over. That's what the experts think. They continue to study the weird phenomenon and to be continued. eight is this marketing campaign. The Filet-O-Fish has diehard fans around the world, but they've long been in the shadows. In 2012, one brave UK fan set up a Facebook group to bring all Filet-O-Fish fans together. Alas,
03:22
It did not catch on. Five members. Okay. Six members. Such a shame. Now 13 years later, it's time to make this dream a reality. So the marketing campaign or publicity stunt or whatever, making some headlines, especially in the marketing world, you know, different marketing publications, it's McDonald's bringing back 13 years later, bringing back, throwing their support and shining a light on this Facebook group.
03:51
of Filet-O-Fish lovers, which originally had five or six members. Kind of funny. This portion of the program not sponsored by Filet-O-Fish. Number seven. This one's a cat study. If you have cats or somebody you know has cats, check this out. See if it rings true for you. Researchers watched, this is how they got the data. They watched cat videos. They watched 400 and some cat videos on YouTube.
04:14
Looking into cat behavior and one of the things they discovered is that two-thirds of the time so the vast majority of the time a cat will sleep on its left side and why Because they want to No, that's not that's not what the researchers actually say they say it has to do with Spatial awareness and how cats senses work that if they sleep on the left side They're more able to detect if there's a threat
04:41
Something, it's a bit more complicated than that, but if you want to read the whole cat study, you don't have to watch 400 and some YouTube videos. You can just click the link, shownotes.page. Number six is another one about whales. We had the deal about whales sharing their food and also orcas kissing, made headlines this week. Two weird whale stories in one week. I don't know.
05:07
The headline from Science Alert, from the sciency-sciencers at Science Alert, the headline is Orcas Caught Kissing For Two Minutes With Tongue. And you know what? I'm just going to stop there. If you want to know why it all happened and what's going on in the love life of an orca, you can click the show notes if you want to. Show notes dot page. There's a link to some video. you're, if that's what you're into. Look, no judgment here, but.
05:37
We do have a link to the video also. Here's part of it.
05:43
That's all we can play. Number five is a product that has been gaining momentum on the trend watching websites. So this is not a product placement or anything like that. But number five is the photon matrix, which is a LIDAR enabled laser mosquito zapper. So it uses LIDAR to detect mosquitoes and then zaps them with a laser. Like this is high tech stuff. Those mosquitoes don't have a chance.
06:12
I was at the ball field last night and as soon as the sun went down, the mosquitoes were bonkers and I was like, where is my laser? Again, not product placement. This is not available yet. It's in one of those fundraising deals. One of those websites will link to all of this in the show notes or click show notes that page. The cost would be right now you can pledge just under 500 American dollars and that would get you a basic edition photon matrix if they do get enough money to start production.
06:42
Number four for number four. I'm just going to read the headline from the mirror. Lost city of Atlantis found as expert claims, mythological kingdom discovered. So they found it. Next story. No, let's get into it a little bit more. I'm not very smart. I don't know history, archaeology, oceanography. Good night. No way. The lost city of Atlantis, according to the expert quoted in the article,
07:12
is off the coast of Spain. Then they have a photo that is really just a computer graphic, which I'm paraphrasing, but it's sort of like, this is what it probably looked like. The jaw-dropping news started making headlines gaining momentum when this Michael Fellow, the expert gave a talk, a presentation at the Cosmic Summit in North Carolina. This is a summit, an event where people get together and they have different points of view about
07:41
history. So there is a documentary that is going to come out and some people are eagerly anticipating the documentary, which will prove that Atlantis has been found. I don't want to be skeptical there. This was apparently an eight year study using LIDAR, which is also, found out useful in capturing mosquitoes. But if you've ever watched the Oak Island show, sometimes that LIDAR and that
08:09
technology, doesn't pan out. Sometimes the results are not as conclusive as one would hope. So I'm just going to say to be continued on whether Atlantis has been found or will ever be found or has already been found before it was found this time.
08:28
All of those questions still up in the air for me. Number three is about relationships and how to save your relationships and make stronger relationships. And it's easy and it's a hack and it's at your fingertips. And I still am a little bit in disbelief of this study, but a study has concluded that sending emojis with your text messages will make you seem significantly more responsive and caring by your friends. So you send your friends a message.
08:57
include an emoji and they have higher relationship satisfaction. So you have become the king or queen or prefer not to mention of your relationships through emojis. They think it's because if you're doing a text only conversation and people can't see your facial expressions or your body language, emojis kind of bridge that gap. The advice is you should text and back up what you're saying in the text with
09:26
appropriate emojis. So if you want to heal a relationship, don't just start sending eggplants, everyday eggplants. Your boss is not going to appreciate that. It's an interesting article. If you want to read the whole thing, click show notes dot page. two is the tragic and sad tale of the Norway lottery and what happened. It would suck to get a note that said, oh yeah, you thought you were rich, but you're not.
09:52
but also sucked to be the person who had to send those notes out because you screwed up the math. So nobody wins in this one. Here's what happened. The Norway lottery, the national lottery, the funds that get dished out are originally German currency. And so they paid the prize money out in Norway currency. So somebody has to do the exchange rate and do the math. Well, they did the math wrong. And so people thought they want a whole lot of money and they did not.
10:21
For instance, one of the people in the story, he was told he won $119,000, the equivalent of 119,000 United States dollars. Not bad, 100 grand. Then he got the text message, oh, sorry, we meant $12. Not 100 grand, 12. The lottery had to send out tens of thousands of text messages apologizing. By the way, the metrics report on this show,
10:50
Indicates we have one Norwegian listener. if you first of all, hello Secondly, if you played the lottery and thought you were rich and then it turns out you only won 12 bucks I am sorry Also, can I interest you in a $12? What a weird week t-shirt available in our merch store Just kidding. We don't have a merch store. I'm only kidding. No merch number one. Number one is this lady
11:19
Adventurer Zara Loughlin is here with us. She's 21 years old and she hopes to break three world records. Tell me about it. So I will be rowing from mainland Europe to mainland South America and hopefully take me just under three months. So Zara did that. Zara, the 21 year old British lady adventurer, did the thing she was talking about in that interview. We link to the interview if you click show notes dot page. What an inspirational story. You put your mind to it. You do stuff.
11:47
Zara road for about 17 hours every day. The trip took 97 days and change 4,300 miles and something. And here are the records. First female to row across the Atlantic from Europe to South America. Youngest person to row solo across the Atlantic from Europe to South America. And the youngest person to row any ocean solo.
12:12
So I don't want to get too corny there, but maybe that story inspires you to start your own adventure of some sort. Too, was that, maybe that was too corny. We're going to stop there. Thanks for listening to What a Weird Week. You can get our podcast details and the show notes or get in touch. Everything is at shownotes.page. Where the show notes live is where all our links are. Shownotes.page.
12:41
are in the United States of America celebrating a long weekend. Be safe, have fun. We'll catch you next Friday with more weird stuff from the news on What a Weird Weekend.