What a Weird Week Fri Sept 26, 2025: Giant Peaches and Angry Squirrels!

Scotty

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.


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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.
Thanks for rating and reviewing and also subscribing!

These are the shownotes for Season 6, Ep 40 first published Fri Sept 26, 2025
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Who's more generous and Why is it Cat Owners?
https://www.popsci.com/environment/cat-owners-donate-more-money/
 

 
How far would you go for delicious chocolate and why is it 2500 miles?
 
 
 
 
 
Very mean squirrel makes news.
 
  
 
 
The State Park with all the Diamonds strikes again.
 
 
 
Running on All-Fours looks like hard work.
 
 
Fat Bears!
 
 
Unrecognizable Peanut Butter Cup Shapes for Halloween have been saved!
 

 
  
Thanks for rating and reviewing! You're my favorite.
 
Transcript below.
 
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#weird #news #odd #fun #interesting #strange #whataweirdweek #podcast

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
 
 00:00
giant peaches and angry squirrels. What a weird week.  Hi  friends, I'm Scott. This is What a Weird Week. It's a show where we go back and look at the news of the week. We pick out the fun ones,  the odd stories, the weird stories, nothing too serious. And we do 10 stories in about 15 minutes if you want to get the stories in more detail or

00:29
see the photos and stuff, go to show notes dot page,  show notes  dot page.

00:37
is our episode for Friday, September 26, 2025. 10 is a very big peach, which made headlines this week. Child's Peach Orchard managed to break records. This is our biggest peach that we have ever picked and weighed in our 100 year history so far on the farm. The peach came as a surprise that no one expected. We weren't intentionally trying to grow the biggest peach out there. It just so happened that

01:05
The weather that we had this year turned out good for growing a ginormous peach. That's my favorite part about the whole story. They didn't set out to grow a giant peach. It was a happy accident. So that Virginia peach weighs about 1.8 pounds, 1.8 something pounds. We'll link to the news report 29 news. That's WVIR in Charlottesville, Virginia.

01:26
If you don't have a chance to click and see the photos or the video, imagine it's like a small pumpkin, I would say, or about the size of a turnip. Number nine. Number nine is a mystery animal that has been discovered. I love stories like this. I love it when they find new things. Here's the headline. Live science is the article we link to and their headlines pretty great.  Mystery creature found in forbidden cloud forest of Peru. So it's a small like maybe the size of a mouse and it kind of looks like some sort of mouse or maybe a cross between. It's a teeny tiny possum.

01:56
Maybe I don't know for sure because we don't have possums where I live, but it looks like a mouse possum to me. Here's a quote from the article. We know very little about this species, including its natural history and distribution, and only one specimen has been collected so far. So they only have one, this new mystery creature that's been discovered. Right now they have one. We link to the article if you want to see what it looks like. oh cute warning, maybe I should put a cute warning. It's a cute little little creature.

02:25
click show notes dot page. Number eight is a study about daylight saving time. Another study that seems to indicate we should get rid of it,  that it's not good. This study, United States study claims that the researchers think perhaps over 300,000 stroke cases a year could be prevented if we didn't do daylight saving. If they don't do daylight saving where you are, you know what I'm talking about, right? Where like coming up November the two where I am, we're going to

02:53
fall back one hour, our clocks. And then in the spring, we spring forward an hour. Not every province does it here in Canada and around the world, it's  different cases. But if you do daylight saving, a lot of studies indicate it ain't great for us. But I'm not a scientist, I'm not a medical doctor, I'm not any kind of doctor, and I don't own a watch. So I'll just link to the study. But they get into how changing the clocks

03:21
messes with our circadian rhythm and it can stress people in a certain section of the population more at risk to strokes. And so they came up with a number, they ran this thing, they came up with a number of maybe 300,000 stroke cases a year could be prevented if we stopped changing our clocks. More details if you click the show notes or go shownotes.page. Number seven. I'll just cut to it. Cat owners are more generous than dog owners. According to a study,

03:49
where, they looked at $20 billion of  donations, charitable donations, the study, and then they broke it down. Who owns what kind of pet? So first people with no pets, the most generous. Cat owners are next, dog owners after that. And then if you have a cat and a dog, you're  less generous than all of the above.  Why is it? Well, in popular science, we link to the article where they break down a study. They get into some research that,

04:19
suggests perhaps cat owners are more open and prone to worry than dog owners and when you are in that state of mind you're more likely to donate to charitable causes.  I don't have a cat or a dog. I have the asthma. So  I'm not going to weigh in on this but I will leave it up to do the Philip DeFranco answer and I'll turn the question back to you. How do you feel about that one? Do you own a dog?

04:47
Can you ask your dog how they feel about it? The cats, they're just gonna, they're gonna do their own thing anyway, aren't they? Anyway, if you want to read the thing, we put a link in the show notes. six. Number six is, I think, a story about a hero. The hero's name is Kate. Kate is a chef. The headline from the New York Post is this. I flew 2,400 miles on an extreme day trip just to satisfy a food craving. Chef Kate left work the other day.

05:16
10 o'clock at night, got on a plane and flew to Romania, landed 3 a.m. something like that. And this was because they did not have the Ferrero Rocher chocolates that Kate was craving in London, England. She had to go to Romania to get the Ferrero Rocher pocket coffee chocolates, which have a shot of sweetened espresso inside. And they sound delicious. So Kate was craving those, went to Romania, spent the day there and was back home the same day, 11 o'clock at night.

05:46
was back  in London.  Not only did she buy  the delicious chocolates, she also bought a fridge magnet, the article says. So  before we judge, wasn't just for the chocolate. Total price in the article, they say it was $150 for Kate to do this.  And I say, I like the precedent. Craving chocolate so much that you bought a plane ticket. I like that someone has opened that door, that possibility for the rest of us.

06:16
to chase after our dreams of chocolate. Number five is that Venus is hiding something dangerous. Not a good news story, this one. This is one of those get in your bunker stories. So experts agree that there are asteroids around Venus that we cannot see because  the way Venus is located and where we are with our earth bound telescopes, we cannot see and investigate these asteroids. But when they run simulations, it's possible

06:43
Some of these asteroids could be city destroying asteroids that would do us some damage if they hit planet earth. So now we got to lay eyes on Venus another way. We got to get some space telescope action going. Again, not a happy story unless you have a bunker or a bunker business. If you're making those bunkers now, selling those bunkers, well, this is a great story for you then. Business will be booming. Number  four is the attack squirrel, the very mean squirrel.

07:11
seemingly terrorizing people  in San Rafael, California, San Francisco Bay area, United States of America. So posters have gone up. This squirrel has been in the news all over the world. The poster will link to this. It says attack squirrel, beware. And then in highlight, this is not a joke. More than five people have been attacked by a very mean squirrel over the past few days  on Diablo Circle. Several have gone to the ER for severe lacerations.

07:40
So, you know, that poster went up and then the press started reporting on the terrible squirrel, just a very, very vicious mean squirrel.  One of the people in the story is quoted as saying, it clamped onto my leg. That doesn't sound, you know, that's most times you don't want something clamping onto your leg.  I was like, get it  off. Get it off me. That was one of the people victimized by the squirrel. Nothing to laugh at. You got to go to the ER. The squirrel.

08:08
Messes you up so badly that you got to go to the ER to get treatment. Nobody has time for that squirrel Anyway, the expert that they quote in the story says almost every time this happens Oh, first of all squirrels are not vectors for rabies meaning you don't have to worry about rabies from this squirrel But the expert says almost every time something like this happens. It's because somebody was feeding the animal and then the animal just gets I don't know what to  hopped up on

08:37
delicious free food and just wants more. I'm not sure exactly. I guess don't feed the squirrels. That's the takeaway. But at time of reporting, the squirrel has not been captured yet to be continued.  three is another diamond found at the crater of diamond state park in Arkansas and making headlines. I love it. United States of America. I love that you have a state park named after diamonds that you can go and find diamonds at. And so you can make a day of it, pack a lunch, have a picnic, whatever.

09:06
maybe find a diamond. This Oklahoma family were there to celebrate a nephew's birthday. They did go prepared to look for diamonds. They brought some gear with them,  gear that they got at the dollar store, like beach toys, like beach digging stuff. That's what they brought with them. And they found a diamond. And in the article they talk about, I'm paraphrasing, but it's they found a diamond so large when they found this gem, they at first thought it can't really be a diamond. It's too big.

09:32
Imagine finding a gem so big that you just don't even believe it's worth anything. So it was a brown diamond that was 2.79 carats. And I don't know exactly how much that's worth. When you do a search on the internet, it's quite a range, but one of the searches I found it was between $3,500 and $10,000 could be the value of this diamond. If you want to see what it looks like.

09:55
Click the show notes or go to show notes dot page. Number two. Number two is this fellow from Japan who broke a world record for running the 100 meters in under 17 seconds. This is the running on all fours record. It's 16.87 seconds. Yes. Yes, I did it. I achieved my long awaited time in the 16 second range. Thank you. So that's the video of the event and some translation going on. We'll link to this in the show notes. Essentially you line up.

10:24
And then you run like a bear  or like a creepy thing from a horror movie, maybe. And when I read about it, I was like, Oh, that seems silly. This'll  be a silly story. But when you watch  like I'm exhausted just watching, it looks like very hard work. And we have a new world record for running on all fours. Honorable mansion. Fat Bear Week gets the honorable mention every year. This time of year, you can vote on  the website for the, national park in Alaska, where they

10:54
pit one bear against another, the bears are all getting fatter and fatter as they prepare for hibernation. And you're encouraged to vote for the bear that you believe quote, best exemplifies fatness and success  in brown bears. So they have like the webcam  images you can check out and they name all the bears and eventually one bear wins the whole thing gets the most votes and moves on to the end and  is crowned the champion fat bear or king of  queen of the

11:24
fat bear royalty something and people seem to love this  fat bear week gets more and more attention every year and I'm going to say it right now I think the bears love it too I think those fat bears are enjoying the attention number one top story this week a very very important class action lawsuit has been settled the one where Hershey's was being sued that is over and it went in favor of Hershey's this is the lawsuit where I'm paraphrasing but

11:53
some plaintiffs got together, class action lawsuit, when they opened up their Reese's peanut butter cups for Halloween. They were supposed to be Halloween scary pumpkins and scary ghosts. They open them up and they're just blobs. You can't see that is not a ghost. That is not a scary pumpkin. What is this blob? Now they were delicious blobs. And I think that's part of the reason the article talks about how flavor expectations were met. The things were still delicious, albeit unrecognizable. So

12:22
I think perhaps that's one of the reasons it went in favor of Hershey's. The plaintiffs were seeking, I want to say originally it was $5 million in damages. And I guess kind of like their thing was it's false advertising. The picture on the package looks like a spooky pumpkin. Really, it's a blob. Delicious blob. There is one cool thing about Summerween in the article where, you know, Halloween in the summer, Hershey's shipped their Halloween candy earlier this year.  Summerween.

12:50
And they had a boost in earnings because we started buying those Halloween treats as soon as we could in the summertime. mean,  yes,  more of that, please. Personal opinion.  Yeah, we're to stop there, but thank you for checking out the show. Everything we talked about is in more detail if you go to show notes dot page. All the show notes are at  show notes dot page.  How about this? Let's meet up again next week. Same time. Ten more weird or fun, not serious stories from the news  on what?

13:19
a weird week.


 
 
 
 
 
Giant Peach Alert!
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2025/09/19/Guinness-World-Records-heaviest-peach/6441758293973/ 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYmBj8OaQSI&t=33s
 
Mystery Creature Found!
https://www.livescience.com/animals/land-mammals/mystery-creature-found-in-forbidden-cloud-forest-of-peru-is-new-species-of-marsupial 
 
Daylight Saving Time Study - DST aint great maybe you guys.
https://www.livescience.com/health/sleep/abandoning-daylight-savings-time-could-prevent-over-300-000-stroke-cases-a-year-in-the-us-study-claims

Who's more generous and Why is it Cat Owners?
https://www.popsci.com/environment/cat-owners-donate-more-money/
 
How far would you go for delicious chocolate and why is it 2500 miles?
https://nypost.com/2025/09/19/lifestyle/chef-flies-2400-miles-on-extreme-day-trip-for-this-wild-reason/
 
Venus is hiding something dangerous
https://studyfinds.org/undiscovered-venus-asteroids-city-destroying-threat-earth/ 
 
Very mean squirrel makes news.
https://apnews.com/article/aggressive-squirrel-hurt-people-43efad83aa78de39affc1b3cd3c93afe
 
The State Park with all the Diamonds strikes again.
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2025/09/25/Crater-of-Diamonds-Oklahoma-family-birthday/7181758823043/
 
Running on All-Fours looks like hard work.
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2025/09/24/japan-Guinness-World-Records-running-all-fours/1411758736682/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epxVWHgtwlo&t=74s
 
Fat Bears!
https://www.dispatch.com/story/lifestyle/pets/2025/09/25/fat-bear-week-explained-vote-see-results-katmai-national-park/86346135007/
 
Unrecognizable Peanut Butter Cup Shapes for Halloween have been saved!
https://www.fooddive.com/news/hershey-wins-class-action-lawsuit-reeses-halloween/760992/