What a Weird Week gets you caught up on the weird news of the week. https://www.shownotes.page or search "What a Weird Week" where you get podcasts.
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Hi friends, I'm Scott and this week I'm on vacation. Please enjoy this rebroadcast of What a Weird Week from one year ago. See how many of these stories you remember from 2024. Then if you hang around to the end, enjoy the world premiere of Scott's vacation song which reveals how I am spending my vacation.
To subscribe to the podcast or for social media and more links, you can get everything at www.shownotes.page. These are the shownotes for Fri Aug 1, 2025 *first published on Friday Aug 2, 2024...
❿ Dragonfly Invasion!
Would you stay or go? ⛱️🤔⁉️ Dragonflies swarmed a busy Rhode Island beach on Saturday -- you can hear children screaming as they flew past. https://t.co/xSc1cvImf9 pic.twitter.com/KnhPNf3UUI
— WCVB-TV Boston (@WCVB) July 28, 2024
❾ Famous Space Bikini sells for a lot of money!
❽ Boop and The Ick added to Cambridge Dictionary...
❼ You change to look like your name...
❻ World Record for pulling planes while walking on your hands?!
❺ Bear Car Theft Ring Confirmed (video)
❹ Dorset, UK, soft on crime? #ShopliftingSeagull
❸ Australian Field Hockey Olympian Decides on Amputation #PG13
❷ Desert Sand Fights Hurricanes?
🍅 We love glass. It's an unhealthy relationship.
Scroll down for a transcript🠋
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: (powered by Riverside.fm)
00:00
Hi friends, I'm Scott. I'm near my dehumidifier. I'm not sure if you can hear that, but I'm on vacation this week. So we're going to do a rebroadcast from one year ago and the top stories a year ago. Remember the dragonfly invasion? It's pretty gripping. Also how you change to look like your name. That study came out a year ago. Can you believe it? And we're going to circle back to one of the most famous bikini stories you'll ever hear. Those stories are more in this glorious rerun.
00:28
of What a Weird Week from one year ago. And then I'll be back at the end of the episode with a brand new original number about how I'm spending my vacation.
00:57
Season five episode can't remember for Friday, August the second, 2024. By the way, sometime in the last little while, we got another five star review. That's appreciated. Every show says this, but it's true. Those reviews do help. Especially when I'm lying awake at night and the weight of the world is crushing my spirit. And then I think of that five star review. I feel great.
01:22
Alright, kicking things off this week, the swarm of dragonflies at the beach in Rhode Island. They went berserk and they attacked beachgoers. Oh my god! I'm scared!
01:35
It does look kind of scary you guys. We'll link to that video that's from WBZTV and we'll link to that in the show notes, shownotes.page. Some, if you don't have a chance to click, some beach goers are fleeing in terror. Not really. A couple though, appear to be hiding under a beach towel. So what the heck was happening? was thousands of dragonflies. Has it ever happened before? Is it a sign that we're in the end times?
02:00
First of all, dragonflies hardly ever bother you. Mostly they just fly around and actually do a lot to control the mosquito population. They quote an expert in the article as saying that this swarm happened outside their normal swarming times or migration period. Dragonflies tend to migrate between the middle of August and the middle of September. They have been known to get up and leave when their swamp habitats dry up.
02:27
So the article says that's probably what was going on that the swamp dried up and it was time for those dragonflies to leave and they all leave together. This beach happened to be on their journey. The article does have some advice at the end there. If you're ever involved in some sort of dragonfly swarm panic. Oh no, wait, don't panic. I misread the end there. It's don't panic you guys. Nine. Okay. We have an update to a story that we covered before about Princess Leia's famous bikini.
02:56
Before we get into it, I want to stress how I'm not a fan of clickbait and I try not to do clickbait stuff. We've all clicked on articles where the picture gets your attention and you're like, hello, gov. And then the article is not what you expected at all. What is this garbage? I feel like maybe we did that when we covered the Princess Leia bikini story the first go around last month because we had a photo of the famous bikini in the show notes and it was one of our most clicked blogs.
03:25
If you got click baited by that, not knowing you were clicking onto the blog of this weird news show, this garbage show. Sorry about that. But if you're hearing this, I guess it means you came back for another episode. So click baiting works. I stand by it. So I still haven't seen Return of the Jedi. It's on my list. But the gold bikini worn by Carrie Fisher as the character Princess Leia went to auction. We reported on that.
03:55
It made $175,000 at this auction. Back when we covered this the first time around this bikini, famous bikini auction, the Princess Leia bikini was going to have an opening bid of $30,000. So it got up there $175,000. This one was an interesting auction. Not only did they have the bikini worn by Princess Leia, they had a Harry Potter wand. It went for over $50,000.
04:22
Thor's hammer went for $81,000. Headline from Euronews is, around 3,200 new words and terms have been added to the Cambridge Dictionary, including ick and boop. This article jumps right into ick, where it came from. They attribute its popularity to the show Love Island, a television program where the lovers are on the island. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the official definition of the ick is
04:50
A sudden feeling that you dislike someone or something, or are no longer attracted to someone because of something they do. Perhaps how they eat, or the noise that comes out of their nose whenever they're sitting quietly. You know, there's a number of things that could give you the ick factor. I for one think it's great when they add new words to the dictionary to help us better explain how someone is annoying us. Because after a while you run out of ways to say it.
05:20
Okay, I've been playing some background music there because there was some sort of air conditioning noise going on and I've just changed rooms, changed mics. I'm old. I don't hear those high-pitched whines, but I guess there was something going on there. Seven. This next one could cause an existential crisis, you guys. Just a friendly heads up. At first it seems like, oh, funny. And then you're like, what even is life?
05:48
We link to the article. I'm not a scientist, but I would sum it up this way. Your name causes you to look a certain way. So little kids with the same name, little kids named Bob or Sally have different facial features. But as you grow, all of the Sally's, all of the Bob's, all of us Scots tend to develop similar facial features. Our facial appearance changes over time to line up with the social
06:17
stereotypes associated with our names. And that, to me, is bonkers. The researchers say this is some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that social stereotypes cause us to look the way we look. So, say you're… you have an historical name. Your name is… Santa Claus. Well, if you name your child Santa Claus, by the time they're older, they will look like Santa Claus.
06:46
They will start to develop facial features associated with Santa Claus. I think that was a great example. I think the article has other examples, but I'm sticking with Santa Claus. Science! A fellow named Matteo made headlines this week. He is an Italian fellow who just set the world record, got into the headlines for pulling the most light aircraft while walking on hands. The record is three, you guys, three airplanes.
07:13
Matteo is actually an airplane wrangler when you need an airport in Italy if you need your light aircraft pulled out of the hangar. Matteo does that. That's his job. So no, I'm just kidding. That's not his job at all. He is just very athletic and he pulled three airplanes while walking on his hands. He's already looking forward to setting a new world record, breaking his own record by pulling four aircraft. He's talking about that. That's the next feat. And
07:41
That's the next hand. We link to the video in the show notes. Here's another bear headline for you. Bear opens SUV in search for food while driver was still in the vehicle. We got this story from 98.7 the river. Savannah's at workstation. I will say right out the gate, I'm not a bear expert.
08:08
and the experts are saying the bear opened the vehicle door in search of food. It could easily be a gone in 60 second situation where there is a car theft ring of bears. But for now, experts will go with your theory. The bear in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, hotel parking lot, opens up, has figured out how to open vehicle doors. There is a person in the vehicle. They started honking the horn like that would be nerve wracking. Well, the bear wasn't frightened away.
08:38
by the horn so much, it was quick thinking people who threw food and said, here bear, look, here's some food. And so the bear lost interest in the SUV. We linked to the video in the show notes. If you want to check that out, it is scary, fascinating. There's a bit of giggling in the video. They do not, the people shooting the video are not as terrified as I was watching it.
09:07
One of the longest animal crime sprees I think of the modern era is that of Steven Seagull who over the last six years has been going into a store the Lindale Central store in Dorset. Steven will go in and steal a bag of
09:36
chips or we would call them chips here where I'm at where this occurs. I believe they're referred to as crisps. So it's been going on for years. In the last couple of months, the manager of the store says, Steven, the thieving seagull has stolen about 30 bags of chips or packets of crisps. 30. So that's every other day, right? Every other day, Steven is coming in stealing chips. That ain't right, Steven. They've got signs up in the store. Please close the door behind you.
10:04
People see it happen, you know, they witnessed it and it's fascinating and you're like, wow, that's hilarious. And it probably is, but when you're losing stock over six years, it is a difficult scenario, frustrating scenario. And what, are you going to hire a loss prevention officer who just takes care of the bird situation? That's probably not cost effective. The thing I don't get is, I mean, they have video evidence. We link to the video in the show notes. Are they soft on crime in Dorset? We have all the evidence we need.
10:33
Why hasn't this bird been convicted yet? Three. Okay, this one trigger warning, trigger warning. PG-13 kids ear muffs. This could be triggering to you. This involves an injury to someone's hand. It's a weird story though. The Australian field, I would call it field hockey where we're at because we have ice hockey so much. I would say this fellow plays field hockey, the Australian hockey player who to compete at the Paris Olympics, this fellow named Matt.
11:03
He decided to have part of his finger amputated. The doctor said he got an injury and the doctor said it's going to take four to six months to recover. That would have meant Matt misses the Paris Olympics. So he decided, no, let's have the thing amputated. That's dedication. That's the, let's wrap it there. That's the, well, wrap it. Let's end the story there. Australian field hockey player, Matt and his dedication to his team competing.
11:32
in his third Olympics in Paris. this was the weirdest weather story I heard all week. had no idea any of this happened, and apparently it happens every year. Sand from the Sahara Desert causing recent lull in the hurricane season. So every year the Sahara Desert has this effect called the Sahara Air Layer, SAL, where sand and warm air from the desert gets whipped up
12:01
gets into the upper atmosphere and then it's hard for hurricanes to form. So on my part of planet Earth, the Atlantic hurricane season was predicted to be a doozy and then there's been a bit of a lull. That's why the sand from the Sahara desert, according to the experts. Also on the opposite of a bright note, the experts caution that we're not through hurricane season and it's still going to be bad. This is just a bit of a lull because of that Sahara air layer effect.
12:29
Honorable!
12:58
Well, it turns out glass packaging is one of the worst packagings for planet Earth as far as sustainability goes. It's one of the least sustainable. A carton is best when you're thinking of planet Earth and sustainability. Next is plastic. What? Then, can of orange juice and finally, glass. It's glass that's last. I found that to be surprising.
13:26
This study gets into a bit more of the science of it and that we put a link in the show notes. One of the things to note is we can change our behavior. The number one motivator for how we buy our orange juice is what is the price? So if you can get the price down, we'd buy a carton, we'd buy it in a boot. If the price was right. Now the survey didn't indicate that, but I'm pretty sure further research would indicate we would drink out of a boot if the price was right.
13:52
Number one this week is we're friend rich and researchers didn't know that. Old research seemed to indicate that friendships were dropping like flies. Now the American Friendship Project, the status of health and friendship in America study indicates that American adults have more friends than previously thought with an average of four to five friends. That seems like a lot. I'm trying to think now. Do I have? Oh no, I'm in the 2 % of participants who reported having no friends.
14:21
I'm pretty sure four to five friends, that sounds exhausting, but you know, I'm jealous also. A couple other things from the study. Many Americans desire a closer friendship and more time to spend with friends, but are generally satisfied with their current friendships. So well done America.
14:40
Friend to many. Okay, well, wrap up there. Thanks for listening to the program. This is called What a Weird Week. My name is Scott. You can go to shownotes.page for transcript, or if you want to subscribe to our podcast, if you want to smash buttons and give stars and all that, shownotes.page.
15:07
Well, Scott is on vacation, what's he gonna do? Probably eat donuts, one for me and you Maybe then I'll go out and buy myself a chainsaw I only got ten bucks, so I don't know if that's enough
15:30
Chop, chop, chop and a saw, saw, saw, saw I don't only change saw, don't know what you call it Chop or saw, that's what I'm gonna do, baby
15:52