What a Weird Week Fri Aug 29, 2025: Smell this for a bigger brain! Listen to this while eating chocolate!! Your Soda might be Haunted!!!

Scotty
Scotty
August 29, 2025

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!
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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 36 first published Fri Aug 29, 2025 
 
Wet-sponges-to-the-face World Domination. 
 
World Records to Break TODAY! 

Japanese City Considers Limiting Smartphone Use

Missing Art discovered in House-for-Sale Listing?!


Hurricanes may now go up to 6 in severity 


Glow-in-the-Dark plants could save us all.


Rare Blue Dragons Attack! *citation needed re attack

Smelling Rose Scent seems to increase gray matter.

Listen to this song while eating chocolate. Do it for science. 

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Transcript below.
 
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#weird #news #odd #fun #interesting #strange #whataweirdweek #podcast

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:  
 
00:00
Smell this for a bigger brain. Listen to this while eating chocolate. Your soda might be haunted. What a Weird Week. Hi friends, I'm Scott. This is program we call What a Weird Week. We look at 10 of the weird or odd interesting stories from this week's news.

00:28
We do the top 10 in about 15 minutes, so we don't take too much of your time. If you like the odd and the interesting, this is your program. You could get all the stuff we talk about in more detail if you click our show notes at shownotes.page. This is our episode for Friday, August 29, 2025. 10 is the world record from David Record Breaker Rush and his buddy, Jonathan Hollywood Hannon. This is...

00:54
Most wet sponges to the face. This is for the most wet sponge hits in the face in one minute. You got to throw a lot of sponges. Jonathan is ambidextrous so he can throw with both hands at alarming speed. That's one of the keys right there. I think whoever's throwing those wet sponges at your face, they got to be accurate. They got to be fast. And if they are ambidextrous, well, good night, Irene. You're on your way. David Rush does use the setting of the world records.

01:23
to shine a light on STEM education. that's nice. If you want to watch the video, show notes dot page. Number nine. While we're on the topic of Guinness world records, number nine is the Guinness world records folks themselves. They made headlines this week. It's their 70th anniversary. And so they put out a thing. They got a lot of attention for this. It was a great idea for their 70th anniversary. They marked 70 world records that are unclaimed that they want you to get on, get on it right now. The  fastest.

01:52
400 meter sack race. The furthest distance to bounce a coin into a cup. The longest bottle flip. The most high fives in 30 seconds. I know somebody who tried to beat that record. Sadly,  it's not easy  and you can get injuries and stuff. So don't  jump into any of these without a little bit of a research and proper training. There's another thing, the fastest time to make a burrito. You could do that today.

02:19
fastest time to put Scrabble tiles in alphabetical order. You could do that. I believe in you.  I know others don't. Oh, you didn't? Well, others don't.  Some others don't. But I believe in you. I'll put a link in the show notes to the quiz they have. If you're not sure which of the 70 world records you want to claim, maybe you want them all, but maybe you just want a few.  They have a quiz to figure out what kind of world record breaker you are and what would be the best fit.

02:47
So I'll put a link to that. you click show notes dot page number eight, number eight is the city in Japan that put the idea out there that maybe we should limit our smartphone use. I, what  come again, sits down, spits out coffee,  limit smartphone use. How dare you. So this Japanese city, which I can't pronounce the name I practice and practice. So I'm just going to say this Japanese city and I will put a link with more details in the show notes.

03:15
But their suggestion is that, I mean, use your smartphone or your tablets at work and at school. That's fine. No regulation there. regulation. But  in your spare time, the free time smartphone use should be limited to two hours a day. They're considering making that a law. And then if you get caught, here's the other shocker when you read this story. If you get caught violating the two hours a day smartphone use law, you know what happens? Zero things.

03:45
Zero. will be no penalties for violators. Violators will not be prosecuted. It is just an idea they're putting out there because I mean the research is kind of in, I'm not a scientist, the research is kind of in on smartphones and it's not all great,  the smartphone use. So that's it in a nutshell. If you want to do the deep dive, we'll put a link in the show notes or click show notes dot page. Number seven.

04:12
Number seven, we're getting close to closing the case on this  mystery missing painting, the painting that was presumed to have been looted by the Nazis in World War Two. It's an Italian painting. And then a reporter is looking at a listing for a house for sale in Argentina, 250 some thousand dollar home. And because the reporter was savvy to art, the reporter recognized a painting on the wall and one of the photos for this house, this house listing.

04:42
The reporter was like, Hey, that's,  I'm pretty sure that's  an Italian painting that has been missing since the Nazis.  That's my paraphrase. I don't know if that's exactly what they said. And also they probably didn't pronounce it. Nazis. Anyway, the authorities are contacted  and the wheels are in motion. The home is raided by the way, the house listing no longer online. The home gets raided, but

05:08
So far at time of recording, the authorities do not have their hands on the painting. The experts are very confident that it is the painting in question and they want to get it back to its rightful owners, you know, to the place it's meant to be. But they really have to get their hands on the painting, flip it over and read something on the back and make sure. But that's where we are right now. The mystery painting. If you want to see what it looks like, click show notes dot page.

05:36
Number six is the modern romance survey that might shock you or you might be like no I'm living that right now that is not a shocker that is just how it is. So here's the headline from study finds modern romance young adults turned on by salary talk during dates.  I've been married a very long time when I way back when I would date my now wife it was considered cringe to talk about salary.

06:04
Also, I worked at a radio station so there was nothing to boast about anyway. But that's one of the things that came out of this survey. Half of Gen Z and millennials say it's attractive when your date talks openly about income.  But I think it's less about boasting and it's more about, you know, times are tough. Let's just be honest about where we're at financially. I think so. You can read the whole thing  and come to your own conclusions on that.

06:31
Another thing that this was an American study. So we're talking about you folks in the United States of America, but I mean, times are tough  many places. And according to this survey, a vast majority of folks say that dating because you know, money is tight.  Dating is impacted.  Dates are getting canceled or folks are going into debt to go on dates. What I'm going to do, I'll link to that article if you want to read it, but also I'm going to link to a resource, good ideas for cheap.

07:01
dates  so that you can have fun. Romance can blossom in your life, but maybe it's not going to break the bank. I'll put a link in the show notes. five is not a fun, weird story, but it is a, an indicator of the weird times we're living in, I guess. The folks in charge of the tropical cyclone severity scale are proposing that instead of a category five being the worst hurricane,

07:27
You're going to notch it up one and they're going to make another category, a category six,  because  I guess storms are more severe or we have more information about severity of storms. They're just hoping that it will help people to be more prepared and have a better idea of how severe a storm might be. They're turning it up one. I'll link to the thing if you want to do a deep dive on what exactly would a category six storm be, but you know, worse.

07:57
I would just sum it up to say worse than a five. The numbers all go to 11. Look right across the board. 11, 11, 11, 11. Amps go up to 10. Exactly. Does that mean it's louder? Is that any louder? Well, it's one louder, isn't it? One loud. Why don't you just make 10 louder and make 10 be the top number and make that a little louder.

08:23
These go to 11. Number four is glow in the dark plants. In the headlines this week, succulents that glow green and red and shades of blue. Chinese scientists have created succulents that glow in the dark. And there's a lot of excitement about it because at some point, imagine if we had trees and bushes that would glow in the dark and you could cut down on, you know, having to use electricity to light our parks or perhaps you could play an entire night.

08:53
baseball game in a forest because  the forest was glowing. That would be, wait that, okay. It's going to change the game a little. You guys, I'm not going to lie, but still exciting. If you want to see what the succulents look like, they photographed very well, I must say. And if you want to read how they did it and stuff and where they're going with this technology, we'll link to all of that in the show notes or click show notes dot page.

09:19
Number three is haunted Fanta, which this portion of the program is not sponsored. I think this story did run as a headline as a paid for headline on some of your major news orgs. Double check me on that. We're not getting paid any money for it, but it's interesting that Fanta, if you're unfamiliar, Fanta is a soda pop, a soft drink. And I want to say they began as an orange drink. Now you can get a bunch of different flavors. Well,  they're haunted. That's my takeaway from this story.

09:46
They are teaming up with Blumhouse and Universal Pictures to advertise for Halloween some scary movies. So for a limited time, you can get custom artwork cans of Fanta, Chuckie's Punch,  which is fruit punch flavor Fanta, with Chuckie, the murderous doll  on the can. You can also get the Grabber on the strawberry flavor Fanta. The Grabber is from the Black Phone. I think the new Black Phone movie is coming out in time for Halloween. You can get

10:16
Freddy on the orange can of Fanta, Freddy from Five Nights at Freddy's. And you can get Megan on the grape Fanta. Megan the another doll, murderous doll. And Michael Myers  is on the pineapple flavor. Pineapple itself, pineapple pop is kind of scary to me. But then to have Michael Myers on there. Come on. If you want to see what the cans look like, if you want to find the availability and certainly not available everywhere, there's only certain markets in that.

10:44
If you want to do a deeper dive, click show notes dot page. Number two is the return of the blue dragons, the beach that was closed in Spain because of rare blue dragons.  We've talked about blue dragons on this program before. If you've never seen one, they're very photogenic. They're a vibrant blue. They're a kind of a sea slug. Quite rare. Maybe if you don't have a chance to click a photo, I'm going to say, and sorry that my voice went so high like that. Maybe  they look like a Pokemon, perhaps.

11:14
So imagine you go to a beach, you've never seen one of these things before and these  weird blue Pokemon are in the water and you're like, well, that's freaky. And then maybe you're like, well, gotta catch them all, I guess. And you reach it and you grab one.  And it is an extremely painful sting that you get from the blue dragons. Do not swim with blue dragons. That's the takeaway there. If you want to see a photo, shownotes.page. Honorable mention. I like this one, scientific breakthrough. It's not a huge study. It was done a couple of...

11:44
universities in Japan did this. 28 ladies, this is about boosting your brain through  smelling one particular scent. And it's something that you could smell right now today, I would imagine. This  is the, uh so they had 28 ladies put on rose scent oil every day, a dab on their clothes. So they would smell rose scent. And then they had a control group. And after a month, the ladies who had the rose scent went into the MRI machine,

12:12
and it showed that their gray matter, their brain's gray matter increased in volume, more gray matter because they were smelling rose scent. So more research is needed on this and it doesn't mean you're going to be smarter exactly.  It does seem to, like it could mean moving forward, we have better treatments for things like dementia and it's all from  rose scent. uh

12:37
Classic. Our number one story this week involves two of my favorite things, chocolate and music. Maybe there are two of your favorite things as well. This is from a researcher at the University of Bristol who has designed a piece of music that as you listen to it, if you also eat chocolate, it will make the chocolate taste better. There is some research behind this that the music will make the chocolate taste better, but it was commissioned by the folks

13:07
behind galaxy chocolate, which where I live in East coast, Canada, I think I can get a galaxy bar.  There are a few stores where I could get my hands on some galaxy chocolate, but this will work with any chocolate. It's supposed to work with any chocolate. The research behind it. We're to play the thing here in a sec. So if you want to get some chocolate ready, we'll give it a test. According to the research, the pitch  and speed of music and the key of the musical piece can influence your perception of taste. So if you get the right

13:36
piece of music, it's going to make chocolate taste creamier and sweeter. You could also tweak the thing and make it so that things taste more bitter. I mean, there's more in it there, but let's just get into what it sounds like. Let's get some chocolate going and see how this works.

14:09
Well that's a lovely song and I would say I believe that the chocolate did taste better as I listened to that and ate some chocolate. But  more research needed. So let's stop there.  Let's take the weekend to eat a lot of chocolate and do more science. And then we'll catch you back here next Friday for 10 more weird things from the news  and odd and interesting stories on What a Weird Week.  Thank you for listening.

14:36
If you want to get anything about our podcast or if you want to get in touch, click all the things at show notes  dot page.

 

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