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.
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 7, Ep 7 first published Feb 13, 2026.
10 Man Allegedly Breaks Into Pizza Place, Cooks Pizza for Customers. Thanks for rating and reviewing along with subscribing!
These are the shownotes for Season 7, Ep 7 first published Feb 13, 2026.
https://people.com/former-little-caesars-employee-arrested-allegedly-breaking-in-selling-pizzas-11900047
9 Claw Machine Kid
https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/toddler-climbs-into-claw-machine-at-soccerdome-in-webster-groves/
8 During a boxing match at Madison Square Garden, heavyweight Jarrell Miller's toupee came loose, prompting him to throw it into the crowd (Boxer loses hairpiece in the ring and blames mother's shampoo | World News | Sky News). He went on to win the fight by split decision and later blamed the mishap on his mother's shampoo, which he claimed had burned his hair off.
https://news.sky.com/story/boxer-loses-hairpiece-in-the-ring-and-blames-mothers-shampoo-13501837
and see https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUU1IUzEdlB/
7 A 23-foot, 8-inch reticulated python discovered in Indonesia has been confirmed by Guinness World Records as the longest wild snake ever formally measured (Watch: World's longest wild snake found in Indonesia - UPI.com). Nicknamed "The Baroness," the snake was located after rumored sightings and is now in the care of a conservationist and a licensed handler.
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2026/02/05/indonesia-Guinness-World-Records-longest-snake/8411770312850/
and see https://youtu.be/Kosf0h2n9Awhttps://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2026/02/05/indonesia-Guinness-World-Records-longest-snake/8411770312850/
6 A Colorado woman captured video of a rare weather phenomenon known as a "snownado" or "snow devil" in the Divide area (Watch: Colorado woman captures video of rare 'snownado' - UPI.com). The National Weather Service confirmed the event, which is described as a whirlwind of snow similar to a dust devil.
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2026/02/06/snow-devil-Divide-Colorado/2181770394710/
and see https://youtu.be/D1Kxc0gqCwk
5 Five ice skaters were rescued by Vermont State Police and the U.S. Coast Guard after the ice sheet they were on broke away from the shore of Lake Champlain (Watch: Five stranded skaters rescued from drifting ice sheet in Vermont - UPI.com). All five were brought back to safety without injury, prompting officials to warn the public that "no ice is safe ice."
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2026/02/06/Lake-Champlain-drifting-ice-skaters-rescue/9801770396901/
4 A Texas man named Richard DeFreece attempted to set a Guinness World Record by folding 250 functional paper planes in one hour (Watch: Texas man folds 250 functional paper planes in one hour - UPI.com). After confirming each plane was airworthy and surpassing the 200-plane goal, he is now awaiting official verification for the record.
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2026/02/09/Guinness-World-Records-paper-planes-one-hour/2351770657444/
and see https://youtu.be/2w7rHJgozwo
3 Twelve-year-old nabs Guinness Record for nuclear fusion. Also of note, Aiden has been working on this for four years... so like, since he was ~8 years old?! (https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/young-dallas-scientist-builds-nuclear-fusion-machine-eyes-guinness-record/3981178/)
and see https://www.nbcdfw.com/video/news/local/12-year-old-dallas-student-builds-nuclear-fusion-machine-in-quest-for-world-record/3981229/
2 For Valentine's Day, The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore launched a "Dollars for Dung" fundraiser, allowing people to symbolically name a piece of animal dung after an ex-partner for a $5 donation (The Maryland Zoo: Got an ex? This zoo lets you name animal poop after them for $5 on Valentine's Day! | - The Times of India). This humorous campaign offers an alternative way to mark the holiday, with all proceeds supporting the zoo's animal welfare and conservation efforts.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/etimes/trending/got-an-ex-this-zoo-lets-you-name-animal-poop-after-them-for-5-on-valentines-day/articleshow/128209831.cms
1 (tie) Weird Valentine's Promotions 2026, including Nuggs and Caviar, Red Lobster and Vasoline, and the Bro-quet!
https://www.fastcasual.com/blogs/6-ways-restaurants-are-making-valentines-day-wonderfuly-weird-in-2026/
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Transcript below.
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TRANSCRIPT!
00:00
Nuclear Fusion and Valentine's Dung. What a Weird Week. Hi friends, I'm Scott, this is What a Weird Week. It's a show about the weird news from the past week, the odd stories and the fun stories, not the serious ones. We do a 10 story countdown, we drop a new episode every Friday.
00:29
And you can get all our show notes if you go to the show notes page, is show notes dot page. This is our episode for Friday, February 13th, twenty twenty six. Number ten is the fellow who has been accused of allegedly breaking into a pizza place where he used to work. He was let go. This is a famous pizza place that you've heard of. This is North Carolina, United States of America. So allegedly let go from the place, breaks back into the place.
00:58
starts making pizzas and sells the pizzas. Just imagine if you were in a scenario like the one described. Let's use me as an example. Once I was let go from a radio station and if I could have broken back into that radio station, would I just go back to what would I just do a radio show? No, I don't think so. Honestly, I know it's wrong to steal, but I think I would just try to gather up some of the photocopiers and whatnot and maybe try to sell those at a pawn shop.
01:28
Hypothetically, it's wrong again and wrong to steal. I don't think that I would break into my old work and start working again. Not everyone would do that. That's an interesting aspect. That is our number 10 story. Number nine. Here's the headline from Fox 2 now. Toddler climbs into claw machine at Soccer Dome in Webster Groves. This is Missouri, United States of America.
01:54
where a youngster, a mom is described in the story as looking away for 15 seconds. And listen, we, anyone who's had young kids, 15 seconds is all it takes for a kid to get into the claw machine. I believe that sincerely. No sarcasm here. Mom looks away for a matter of seconds and a youngster named Cooper climbed into the claw machine. And then this happens every so often. You see stories like this in the news.
02:19
According to the story, Cooper was in the game, the claw game, for about 20 minutes before being rescued by someone playing the claw game. It took about 30 bucks. They kept getting the knockoff la boo boos, but finally they were able to grab Cooper by the shoulder with the claw and Cooper was rescued. No.
02:38
Here's some of the coverage from Fox 2 Saint Louis. Ended up getting stuck inside a claw machine and it was all caught on camera. It happened Saturday night at the Veta Sports Soccer Dome on East Ave. Now, according to the two year old Cooper Kings family, the little guy got himself into some trouble while they were watching his older brother play soccer. As you can see, he didn't seem fazed. Webster Gros police and fire did show up, but eventually it was just a service tech who got him out with a key. Cooper looks like he's having a blast in that game.
03:07
We'll link to the video if you click the show notes or go to show notes dot page. Number eight is the boxer who was wearing a toupee and it came off during the, in the ring during the fight. I saw this boxer get interviewed on Jimmy Kimmel live and the boxer was really funny, like just a great sense of humor about it. Had some kind of hair mishap shortly before the fight and then was like, well, what do I do? And then somebody knew somebody who, you know, was kind of an expert on toupees.
03:37
And they said, I think we can handle this. I think I got a toupee that will withstand your boxing match. And it didn't. The boxer went on to win, but the hair, the hair, the toupee did not win. It was a loss for the toupee. Guy named Kingsley eBay and Jarrell Big Baby Miller at Madison Square Garden over the weekend that included one of the funniest mishaps in the history of sports.
04:05
Wow! That is going to make the rounds on social media as a cartoon!
04:15
Goodness gracious. It is a toupee. And he just took it up and threw it in the ground. Now that my friends is a champion in every sense of the word. seven. Number seven is a very, very trigger warning, very long snake discovered in the wild in Indonesia. A 23 foot eight inch reticulated Python was discovered in the wild and now confirmed by the Guinness world records folks as the longest
04:44
wild snake ever formally measured. This is one of those deals where there were rumors of a giant snake and then finally somebody was able to measure the baroness. They call this snake the baroness. Maybe you're metric or maybe you just can't visualize sizes. I can never visualize the size of a thing. It's about nine tenths as long as a London bus.
05:07
On the bright side, you took it bowling, it wouldn't stretch all the way down the bowling lane. It's about two fifths of a bowling lane. You know, we're talking about a very, very long snake, a world record breaking long snake. Number six. Number six is the Snownado that a Colorado woman, Colorado, United States of America, a woman captured a video of the weather phenomenon known as a Snownado, which kind of sounds like one of those made.
05:35
for streaming movies, but is a real thing, a snow devil or snow NATO. We'll link to the video, but if you don't have a chance to click, I will describe it this way. And maybe you're in a place where you do not get snow, because our show goes out over the W W W. I'm in a place here, East Coast, Canada, where it snows all winter and most of the spring and part of the fall, but I've never seen a snow NATO either. It looks like when you call time at the ball field because
06:05
The dust is swirling around. Nobody can see. The umpire gets dust in their eye. That's what it looks like, except with snow. five is kind of scary when you think about it. It could have ended badly. Five ice skaters rescued by Vermont State Police, United States of America. They were also rescued by United States Coast Guard after they were skating on the ice of Lake Champlain and the ice broke away and they started to...
06:32
drift away. had to be rescued because they were on a floating island of ice. They were skating on their own little ice island. I'm glad everything worked out okay. Thank you to Vermont State Police and the U.S. Coast Guard for that rescue, for doing what you do. Scary. Another thing, you know Lake Champlain, that is home of Champ, the lake monster, which I'm a true believer. So that just added another layer.
06:57
of anxiety for me when I was reading this. Number four, a Texas man, Richard is his name, attempted to set a Guinness World Record folding 250 paper airplanes. They had to be functional. You have an hour on the clock and you just start folding paper airplanes. And he did 250 functional paper airplanes in an hour. It's not an official Guinness World Record yet. We think he's got it. He had to get over 200 paper airplanes that actually were able to fly. And so
07:28
That all occurred, but it has to be stamped for approval by the Guinness World Records folks. We'll link to the video, but if you don't have a chance to click, it's just a, you know, it's a fellow in a room with a whole bunch of pieces of paper on the floor. This last Saturday, he beat the previous record of 200 planes in an hour with a total of 250 planes. Y'all that's four planes a minute. He trained at home. That's a bit of the coverage from CBS 19.
07:54
And we'll link to that video if you click the show notes. three is the 12 year old who is now a Guinness world record holder for nuclear fusion. Also of note, Aidan has been working on this for four years. So since he was like eight years old, started working on the nuclear fusion. So that's quite impressive. And it also
08:18
uh, makes me feel bad about, like, you know, this week, for instance, I had an accomplishment I was sorta proud of. It was a parking spot, downtown parallel parking, and it was a bit squished, but I was able to do it. I took a lot of pride in that. Until I read this story about the 12-year-old with the nuclear fusion. Still, well done, Aidan. And congratulations on your world record. This is from NBC5. Inspired by the work of this
08:46
not so average seventh grader and his not so average they zoom in on his he has two different sneakers two different color sneakers they zoom in on that not so average seventh grader i mean yes unique shoe choice but zoom in on the nuclear machine science project all of the magic takes place right inside here aiden macmillan built this nuclear fusion machine so that's a bit of the nbc5 dallas fort worth
09:15
coverage. We'll link to the whole thing in the show notes or you can click show notes dot page. two is a story about love lost as we head into Valentine's weekend. This episode dropping just ahead of the day of love. This is something that we've covered stories like this before around Valentine's Day as a fundraiser. The Maryland Zoo, Baltimore, United States of America, launched a dollars for dung fundraiser where you could name
09:42
some animal dung after your ex. You donate five dollars, they get a piece of poop, and they say, this is Chad. Thanks for the five dollars. Thanks for helping the animals. That's kind of it. I guess for me to take away from stories like this is when life hands you dung, charge money. Number one is something that's never happened before on our program. It's a six way tie for first place.
10:11
our number one story this week on What a Weird Week. And it's inspired by an article in FastCasual.com about Valentine's promotions by different restaurants. Some of them are out there. And I like that. For instance, they talk about the statistic that 88 % of men have never received flowers. And so Einstein Brothers Bagels are offering the bro-kay.
10:37
For the bros, you can get instead of flour bouquet, maybe get the bros a bagel bouquet. They also talk about the Dave and Buster's engagement ring human claw machine promotion. We talked about it last week, but you get strapped in. I've never seen a Dave and Buster's in real life. You get strapped in. It's like a human claw machine where you are the claw. You dive down, you grab a mitt full of prizes. And at some Dave and Buster's a $15,000 engagement ring is in there.
11:07
Which we said, what a wonderful memory. How did mommy and daddy get engaged? Well, it all started with a couple of wobbly pops of Dave and Buster's and then we tried this human claw game. Maybe mommy and daddy can recreate it right now here in the living room. Kids gather round. Sorry, I kind of went on a deep dive there. Another thing they talk about in the article is McNuggets. They have partnered with Paramount Caviar. McNugget Caviar Kits is one of the promotions they talk about in this article.
11:37
It's a delicious 10-piece McNuggets meal with caviar. Nothing but the best for you, baby. Nuggets and caviar. Another one they mention in the article is the Red Lobster and Vaseline Valentine's promotion. For a limited time, they're offering a kissing booth dining experience at the Times Square New York location of Red Lobster. You get a delicious meal and then you also get a bunch of Vaseline lip therapy. And that is because
12:06
They did their research. Vaseline users are 54 % more likely to dine at Red Lobster than the average person. And so this one's for you Vaseline lip therapy users. But what if your relationship is fairly new and the other person gets weirded out by all the Vaseline talk or whatever. And then you're the, I mean, you had the reservation, you still have to go. You have to eat both meals. And then you're there in the kissing booth with all the Vaseline lip therapy. Just you and the-
12:36
Lip therapy. I say regret nothing. I'm going to stop there on that. That is an article by Cherry Kansler, I want to say, Cherry, or Sherry, if I got your name wrong. Sorry about that. I enjoyed your article on fastcasual.com and we're going to link to that in the show notes or click shownotes.page. I do want to say, if you're listening to this as the episode drops on Friday, February 13th, 2026,
13:05
I'm sending luck to your w- I'm wishing you luck on one of the most unlucky days of our calendar year. Good luck to you. And this weekend, you loving lovers, happy love. We're back next Friday with ten more Weird Things from the News on what? A Weird Week.
10 Man Breaks Allegedly Breaks Into Pizza Place, Cooks Pizza for Customers.
https://people.com/former-little-caesars-employee-arrested-allegedly-breaking-in-selling-pizzas-11900047
9 Claw Machine Kid
https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/toddler-climbs-into-claw-machine-at-soccerdome-in-webster-groves/
8 During a boxing match at Madison Square Garden, heavyweight Jarrell Miller's toupee came loose
https://news.sky.com/story/boxer-loses-hairpiece-in-the-ring-and-blames-mothers-shampoo-13501837
7 A 23-foot, 8-inch reticulated python discovered in Indonesia has been confirmed by Guinness World Records as the longest wild snake ever formally measured
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2026/02/05/indonesia-Guinness-World-Records-longest-snake/8411770312850/
6 A Colorado woman captured video of a rare weather phenomenon known as a "snownado" or "snow devil"
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2026/02/06/snow-devil-Divide-Colorado/2181770394710/
5 Five ice skaters were rescued by Vermont State Police and the U.S. Coast Guard after the ice sheet they were on broke away from the shore of Lake Champlain
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2026/02/06/Lake-Champlain-drifting-ice-skaters-rescue/9801770396901/
4 Texas man folds 250 functional paper planes, world reacts.
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2026/02/09/Guinness-World-Records-paper-planes-one-hour/2351770657444/
3 Twelve-year-old nabs Guinness Record for nuclear fusion. Also of note, Aiden has been working on this for four years... so like, since he was ~8 years old?!
https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/young-dallas-scientist-builds-nuclear-fusion-machine-eyes-guinness-record/3981178/
2 Love Stinks! ("Dollars for Dung")
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/etimes/trending/got-an-ex-this-zoo-lets-you-name-animal-poop-after-them-for-5-on-valentines-day/articleshow/128209831.cms
1 (tie) Weird Valentine's 2026
https://www.fastcasual.com/blogs/6-ways-restaurants-are-making-valentines-day-wonderfuly-weird-in-2026/
Scotty and Tony Radio Show Contact Links at NEWCOUNTRY969.CA/SCOTTYANDTONY.