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These are the shownotes for Season 7, Ep 17 first published April 24, 2026.
It's a prototype. This may save us all and solve the footwear industry waste problem. Our future shoes might be biodegradable. (and also delicious on pizza.) (jk.) (https://www.popsci.com/science/shoe-made-from-mushrooms/)
See (https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2026/04/15/Guinness-World-Records-oldest-chicken/6751776275517/)
(https://globalnews.ca/news/11808793/bear-costume-insurance-fraud-sentencing-california/)
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What a Weird Week (Season 7, Episode 17)
[00:00:00] "Your shoes are mushrooms." What a Weird Week. Hi everybody, it's Weird. This is like crazy being here. Weeeird. Really weird. Damn. This foot peaked out of my trash.
Well, I got a great show for you today with some wonderful Weeeird stuff. Hi friends, I'm Scott, and this is What a Weird Week, a show about the weird news and the interesting stuff that happened this week. If you want our show notes, find out about our podcast, and get all the videos and photos we reference, everything is at shownotes.page.
We've got 10 Weeird News Stories for you. This is Season 7, Episode 17, first published April 24th, 2026. By the way, I should say we're not in our usual studio this week, in case you notice it sounds different.
[00:00:54]Number 10. Number 10 is researchers teaming up with a shoemaker to make the world's first boot made out of fungi. It's a prototype. This may save us all because I didn't realize that the shoe industry creates a lot of waste, and this would solve that. Your shoes would be biodegradable. Mushroom shoes, the wave of the future, also delicious on pizza. Just, just kidding. That part, I'm just kidding about that part. Do not eat your shoes. If you want to see what the shoes look like, we will link to a photo if you click the show notes or go to shownotes.page.
[00:01:29]Number 9. Number 9 is are you psychic? If you don't believe you are psychic, somebody you know believes they're psychic. According to a study that we link to, it's written up in study finds, one in five American adults believe they are psychic. So if it's not you, it's one of your friends or one of your family, somebody you know. According to the research, Gen Z leads the way with believing they are psychic, about 30% of Gen Z. Baby boomers are at the bottom of the list. Not as many baby boomers feel those psychic vibrations. What does it mean to be psychic? Well, I encourage you to read the article. We'll link to this in the show notes. My reference point is That's So Raven, the Disney program. Raven could gaze into the future and see what was going to happen. This ain't that, necessarily. The most common psychic experience, according to the article, knowing when something is off, knowing when someone is lying, or predicting when it is time to walk away from a situation. Those are some of the most common psychic experiences. Something else, many of us, 35% of us, report that we cannot tell the difference between our gut instinct and anxiety. And a lot of people surveyed blame social media for that. It's ruining our psychic ability to trust our gut because anxiety.
[00:02:51]Number 8. Number eight is the fellow who made the news this week, the fellow from California, who was arrested for allegedly stealing $34,000 worth of Lego sets from stores and then returning them, but returning them without the valuable pieces. This is all alleged right now, innocent until proven guilty, but the Lego sets got returned with pasta inside. So, you know, it would seem like the Lego was in there, but it wasn't. It was pasta. The valuable Lego pieces, the highly sought-after ones, I guess, were removed and replaced with pasta, and then those boxes were returned to the store. You don't hear that crime too often, Lego pasta crime. Oh, I should have said it wasn't cooked pasta, al dente even. It was dried pasta that was put in the Lego box.
[00:03:41]Number 7. Number seven is the story in the headlines this week. It happened a while ago, but sentencing occurred, and so it was in the headlines this week. A British bride was drenched in black paint by her sister-in-law moments before her wedding. It was some sort of family feud. The sister-in-law was not invited to the wedding, and how it's described is the bride is preparing to walk down the aisle. Somebody calls out the bride's name, gets her attention, and then throws black paint on the bride, essentially ruining the wedding dress and ruining the special moment. There are some photos with the article. I'll link to those. Click shownotes.page. The article says the bride was able to go through with the ceremony in a borrowed dress. The article says the sister-in-law who threw the paint was sentenced to prison, but suspended sentence, and also has to do community service. The article gets into a little bit more about the feud. If you want to read the whole thing, it sounds like one of those family, you know how it goes with family sometimes, one of those family feuds.
[00:04:44]Number 6. I saw this one everywhere. Perhaps you saw this in your feeds or on the late-night shows, and heads up, this one's kind of gross, so I will say that. Gross alert. The Chinese electric vehicle company that was in the news this week, they have patented a voice-activated in-vehicle toilet system. The toilet would slide out from under the passenger seat, so you could use the bathroom on long trips. That's a hard pass for me. No, I'm not. No. I don't want a vehicle with that, and I don't want to catch a lift in a vehicle that has that. Too many things could go wrong. Just think about it. Maybe you're thinking about it right now, aren't you? Sorry. It might be a wonder and, you know, a technological breakthrough of some sort, but no thank you. I should say, right now, we're at the patent stage, though. Like, it's not as though it's in cars that are rolling off the assembly line right now. There's no word on when you'll be... when you'll be able to buy your toilet car.
[00:05:43]Number 5. Number 5 is coffee research in the news. A lot of times lately, on this program anyway, when we've been talking about coffee research, it has seemed like good news a lot of times. This one gets into how coffee drinkers scored higher on impulsivity and reacting emotionally. If you drink coffee, I do. I drink a lot of coffee. I have to get up very, very early in the morning, so I'm more impulsive. I'm more prone to react emotionally. Angry. Now I'm angry about that. I'll stop there. If you want to do a deep dive, perhaps you are a coffee drinker and you want to know more. Perhaps you're not a coffee drinker, but you would like to send it to someone you know and love who does drink coffee and tends to get emotional.
[00:06:29]Number 4. Number 4 was another one that got picked up a lot. Maybe you saw this, the late night shows are in your feeds. Organizers of the Cumbria Nature Festival in the United Kingdom, planet Earth, they had to issue a public clarification that their event, the Cumbria Nature Festival, is for naturalists, not naturists. It's a subtle difference in pronunciation, but if you're unfamiliar, naturalists like nature and naturists like to be naked. So, organizers of this festival to celebrate nature got inquiries from people who were probably naked at the time when they reached out. Confused nudists reached out to learn more about this festival, so they had to issue a public statement, please wear clothes when you come to our festival. They even offered refunds to anyone who bought tickets for the festival who thought they could be naked there. You cannot be naked there. They encourage you not to be naked there and if that was why you bought the tickets because you thought you could be naked there, you can get a refund.
[00:07:34]Number 3. Number 3 is about cocaine in the water. Once again, we had some stories before about sharks who were all hopped up on cocaine. They believe it's, you know, from human pollution. These sharks are getting into our stash of cocaine, human beings' cocaine stash. Well now, it is a Swedish study about salmon, Atlantic salmon. So that's, you know, the salmon where my part of the world, East Coast Canada, that's what we would have in our rivers. Atlantic salmon has traces of cocaine. I saw this one on one of the late night shows, but I'll link to an article. The Atlantic salmon with traces of cocaine swam further than salmon that wasn't hopped up on cocaine and also swam faster. That is my bird clock. I'm not sure if our temporary setup here picked up the bird clock, but back to the salmon on the cocaine. The article says even though salmon swim further and faster on the cocaine, it's not good for them. The change in their behavior could leave them open to predators. I'm not very smart, but that is my summation of the article. We will link to the whole thing at shownotes.page.
[00:08:44]Number 2. Number two is Gertie the chicken from Maine, United States of America, planet Earth, officially recognized by the Guinness World Records folks as the oldest chicken in the world, 15 years and 100 days old. If you want to see photos, we'll link to those in the show notes. Gertie has her own private indoor coop. I'll stop there on that one. That seems like a good news story. I like those. Logging off of social media can improve your mood according to some new research that made headlines this week, but will it make you happier or will it make you lonelier? It could do either and it kind of depends on your situation and your social connections. According to the write-up and we'll link to this, if you take a break from social media, it's the most beneficial to you if you have some other way to stay in touch with friends, family, community. You kind of need a plan on what to do with your free time is how I would sum that up. If you don't have a plan, you can get lonely even though everybody says get off social media or whatever, you know, or you hear that a lot. It's not good for you and you should sign off social media. It's a bit more complex than that.
[00:10:04]Honorable Mention Number Two! A new dinosaur raises eyebrows. I didn't write that very well. It sounds like a dinosaur raised its eyebrows. No. The researchers may have raised their eyebrows because this was a dinosaur found at a quarry in New Mexico that no one knew existed. They found a new dinosaur. I love it when they find new things. We haven't found all the dinosaurs yet. Unless that was the last one. Maybe we've found all the dinosaurs. But maybe we haven't.
[00:10:32]One More Honorable Mention! A bonus story. In this one we do have photos. We will link to a 1 in 50 million lobster. A three pound lobster that's split down the middle. Black one side, red one side or orange. Lobster orange perhaps is how you would refer to that color. Anyway, a clean split down the middle and they say that is extremely rare. If you want to see what it looks like, click the show notes. Or if you don't have time, it looks like a lobster.
[00:11:00]Number 1! Number one is the bear suit insurance fraud scheme. One of the greatest or most bizarre or it's pretty fantastic. Wait till that truck goes by. It's a weird one. Three Southern California residents have been sentenced in what they call a bizarre insurance fraud scheme. It seems as though what happened, my paraphrase here, but they claimed damage to a luxury car inside the interior of the car and they wanted insurance money. They say a bear damaged the inside of their luxury car and they had video evidence of a bear in their car damaging the car. The insurance company was suspicious. They launched an investigation which was called Operation Bear Claw which is a pretty great name for this investigation. They got a bear expert or animal expert to look at the video and that expert said it is clearly a person in a bear suit. So I guess that was the plan. Pretend you're a bear. Dress up like a bear. The plan didn't work. Either the bear suit wasn't convincing. We linked to a photo of the bear suit. It's not high end, I wouldn't say, but I'm not an expert on bear suits. I think if I had to do it, I'd go motion capture maybe instead of putting on a bear suit. Or maybe get a trained bear involved. Anyway, let's not play on insurance scams. We'll link to the story and the photos if you click the show notes or go to shownotes.page.
[00:12:26] And that's another week of weird news and fun things from the news on What a Weird Week. If you want to rate and review our show you can go to shownotes.page. We have links there for everything, not just the show notes. All of the stuff. We'll catch you next Friday with more weird news on What a Weird Week.