What a Weird Week, featuring the Weird News of the Week. Interesting stories to amaze your friends, impress your colleagues, and make you the boss of small talk! See shownotes.page or "What a Weird Week" wherever you get podcasts.
It's Friday, July 10th, 2026 and here are ten weird things from this week's news. Hi friends, I'm Scott and this is What a Weird Week, a show about the weird news and interesting stuff that happened 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 28.
10 Giant Hot Dog Buns Flavored like chips/ crisps. You have my interest.
BTW, Hot Dog Day is the 3rd Wednesday of July each year, so July 15th this year.
Article Link and video
9 Finally a lifehack I can really use: how to eat an entire pie in under a minute. No hands!
Article Link and video
8 Mystery solved after beach closed because of space balls.
BTW, "A pressure vessel is a robust, sealed container designed to hold gases or liquids at pressures significantly different from the ambient environment. Because they store massive amounts of potential energy, they are strictly regulated and built using highly durable materials like steel or aluminum." via Science Direct
News story link: KTLA News and video
7 They may have discovered a new kind of fish/ ghost shark. I hope it has a nice personality.
Article Link and video
6 Lady rows from California to Hawaii. That's really far. She set a speed record.
Article Link and video
5 Enormous paper airplane breaks record. How big? It's a monster!!
Article Link and video
4 Sorry, vampires, a freakishly large garlic bulb has been unearthed.
Article Link and pin
3 I am sorry, Karen. The survey has spoken.
Article Link
Bonus: Did you know about divorce rings?
Article Link and video
1 Bugs, Heart Monitors, Protein Bars!
Article Link
TRANSCRIPT:
00:00
Coming up, 10 weird things from this week's news, including a bit of a hot dog bun breakthrough and the mystery of the space balls. Space balls on a beach. This is what a weird week. Hi, everybody. It's weird. This is like crazy.
00:14
uh Hi friends, I'm Scott and this is What a Weird Week. It's a show where we go through the news of the week and we pick out the weird stories or the fun ones, the odd ones, not serious news, and we count down 10 of those stories for you. You can get everything we talk about in more detail if you go to our show notes page, is show notes dot page. This is our episode for Friday, July 10.
00:43
2026 number 10 is the shake up in the hot dog space that I'm quite excited about whereby for a limited time you can get hot dog buns the size of a Pringles can first. Let me say if you're unfamiliar with Pringles because our show goes out over the internet. So if they don't have Pringles where you are at Pringles are chips or crisps potato based snack. They are packaged in a can like a tennis ball can.
01:10
But for a limited time you could open up that Pringles can and inside is a giant potato based hot dog bun. And it might be flavored like sour cream and onion, smoky barbecue or honey mustard. That is to celebrate National... Well first let's be honest. It's to get attention for the brand. What I would call a publicity stunt I think. No shade. But I think that's what's going on here. It is to celebrate National Hot Dog Day July 15th this year. If they're available where you're at the
01:40
Pop dog buns. They're calling them pop dog buns. If they're available where you are on planet Earth, they're free with the purchase of a special package of like a three pack of Pringles crisps or chips. The photos are delicious looking of these giant pop dog buns coming out of the Pringles can. If you want to have a look, I will put all the details in the show notes. Show notes dot page. Number nine. Number nine is an inspirational story. Come back in the century, maybe.
02:10
One of these tales of triumph where you don't win the championship one year, you go back to the drawing board and then you come back and you win the whole thing. That's what's going on with this story. This is the fellow named Kevin in Florida who won the Key Lime Pie Eating Championship and got in the headlines because of his unique style. Really, I think. I mean, he attained greatness in eating a pie very fast with no hands, but also unique style. So a little bit of the background on this is Kevin has
02:39
entered the Key Lime Pie Eating Championship before and not won it and went back, developed a new strategy. Once he discovered you don't have to eat the whipped cream on top of the Key Lime Pie, it doesn't count towards the contest. He developed a strategy where he would take his shirt off and use his chest and chest hair to remove the whipped cream. And then he also flipped the pie upside down and ate through the bottom of the pie to get
03:08
the delicious key lime filling. Which you don't see that every day either in a pie eating championship. Another thing maybe to note is Kevin did all of this on his wedding anniversary so that'll be a wedding anniversary they'll never forget probably. A wonderful victory eating a pie very fast. Oh and how fast did he do it? 59 seconds and change. Just under a minute to eat an entire key lime pie with no hands.
03:35
Number eight is the mysterious space balls or the space beach balls or the beach space balls. I've said this before, if you're new to the program though, I love a good mystery, but I really, really love a mystery that gets solved. And I think that's what we have going on here with the space balls. This is a beach in Australia where some mysterious space balls showed up.
03:58
Balls from space. So let me paint a picture. If you don't have a chance to click the photo, we do have a link in the show notes. But it's a beautiful Australian beach nestled on the sand or some metal balls with little nibs on a couple of sides bigger than a basketball, a fair size metal ball. But you could clearly see one of the photos shows a seam so you could tell they were manufactured. according to the Australian Space Agency, the mystery is solved. Pretty sure those are pressure vessels.
04:28
from a space launch vehicle. They don't know at time of recording. They don't know which space launch lost these and they fell to earth and washed up on the Australian beach. But pretty sure pressure vessels, which I had to look up. This is from Science Direct. A pressure vessel is a robust sealed container designed to hold gases, etc, etc. It's supposed to be a strong container essentially for fuel in this case for a space vehicle.
04:57
So that's the end of the mystery pretty sure. If the space balls start to move around or assemble, unite perhaps, form a giant humanoid and start to walk around that beach in Australia, I'll keep you posted. But pretty sure we're looking at pressure vessels. They may have discovered a new kind of ghost shark in Costa Rica. I love it when they discover new things. Just when you think we've discovered all the things, they discover something new. I love that.
05:27
And so this is a fish which is commonly referred to as a ghost shark. That's one of the ways it's referred to. There are some other names, but in Costa Rica, they believe they have found a new species of this fish, this ghost shark. And I'm looking at the photo. Usually I can do a pretty good job of describing the photo. If you don't have a chance to click, I'll save you a click. I'll describe the thing. But this one, I don't even know what I'm looking at. I think that's the tail that is not the face. I will say this.
05:57
I hope the ghost shark has a nice personality because the photo yikes. Anyway, to sum up, I love it when they find new things. I will link to the story. It is kind of a to be continued, but they believe it is a new kind, a new species of ghost shark. And if you want to learn more about ghost sharks or have a look at the thing, you can click the show notes. six is the lady who got in the rowboat and started rowing from California.
06:27
to Hawaii, 2400 miles. The lady's name is Kelsey Fendler. She made headlines this week because she went 2400 miles in that rowboat incredibly fast, broke the record. She is the youngest person to ever go that far in a rowboat and broke the record. The male record and the female record did it in 44 days. That is an inspiring story. I know I said the key lime pie eating contest earlier in this episode. That was inspiring.
06:55
Imagine what you would have to overcome to be able to row 2400 miles and do it in record time. I'll put links in the show notes or you can click our show notes page which is show notes that page. If you want to read more about the journey and all that, quite inspiring. Congratulations Kelsey.
07:23
Number five is the enormous paper airplane that broke the record. How big is it? It's a monster. It's a monster size paper airplane. A group of students from the University of Pisa in Italy made a paper airplane. The wingspan was 65 feet and something. So how big is 65 feet? If you're metric, that's 19 meters and something. The 65 foot wingspan on this paper airplane, about the same.
07:50
length as a cricket pitch. If you're a cricket enthusiast, we don't have cricket so much around here where I'm at, East Coast Canada. A little bit. Perhaps a bowling lane is familiar to you. This paper airplane, the wingspan is longer than a bowling lane. The wingspan starts before the foul line and into the pin setting machine. That's how big this paper airplane wingspan was. And listen to when they broke the record.
08:20
They just had to, made the thing and they just had to get it to fly a certain amount. Listen to the joy.
08:40
Actually, that sounds like something I would throw in as a sound effect, dramatic music and cheering, but that really was the video. I think they added the dramatic music and post, but the cheering and the joy, legit, and we'll link to the video. That is what it sounds like when you break the world record for the world's largest paper aircraft. four. I wrote this headline. I thought I was a comedy genius. The headline is, sorry vampires.
09:08
And then you click around and see this story got picked up all over the world and everybody basically had the same headline, some variation. So we're all comedy geniuses. This is the Gardener, the Great Britain Gardener named Graham Barrett, who made headlines after breaking the Guinness World Record for the heaviest garlic. Graham grew a garlic that's three pounds and something. It's bigger than his head. When you see the photo.
09:37
Graham is wearing a hat. It's bigger than his head and hat, this giant garlic. And I'm thinking there are some possibilities here. First of all, it's enough garlic. It's a lifetime supply of garlic. If you just want to keep it as garlic. But also there's some kind of marketing campaign here with mouthwash to combat your garlic breath for big, big breath odor. You need whatever, Listerine.
10:03
You know, so Graham, that's one for free. Sell that to Listerine. They buy that in a heartbeat. You're going to be a millionaire, Citation needed. You may not become a millionaire. The other thing is just a comedy prop for like, take it to an Italian restaurant and be like, I brought my own garlic. Last time I was here, there wasn't enough garlic. You know, something like that would be hilarious. They'll give you free meals for life, Graham. Citation needed. They may not give you.
10:33
They may ask you to leave. Anyway, if you want, that's kind of the whole story. If you want to see the garlic, the giant garlic, you can click the show notes or go to show notes dot page number three. For number three, I want to first apologize. And I do want to say, Karen, if you're not sitting down, please sit down. This is not good news. This is the study about names. A survey of 2000 Americans. The name with the strongest negative connotation is Karen.
11:03
People feel strongly and not good strongly, but bad strongly about the name Karen. And I'm sorry, if your name is Karen, it's not fair. Perhaps you're aware that your name became a bit of a meme. Also on the list is Chad. So Chad, I'm sorry. Donald. Damien. Which I believe is affiliated with the evil Damien from those scary movies. So Damien, I'm sorry if people think you have an evil name. And also John is on the list. John has a negative connotation.
11:33
There are a lot of Johns. I mean, what is happening here? Here's one thing that I found scary. One in five people, according to the survey, judge you based on your name, just your name. They meet you, they learn your name, and then they decide whether they like you or not. They will decide, Chad, that they don't like you. And I'm sorry, that's not fair. Karen, it's not fair. Damien, it's a little bit fair. You're kind of scary, Damien. No, what? I'm kidding.
12:01
So I don't know how to fix that. What do you, how do you fix it that I guess a lot of people want to change it. The study gets into how many people want to change their name, not happy with their name. That's one way. It would seem as though the name change attorneys are going to have a lot of business in future. Maybe you're someone in law school or you know someone who's looking to get into law, name change law. That would seem to be a smart move. Honorable mention. The honorable mention this week.
12:31
about the divorce ring. The BBC did an article about divorce rings. I was not aware. It was a thing, I guess, when you're on certain parts of TikTok, you would see that trend or other social media. But now the BBC also, if you read the BBC news articles, it's kind of right in the name. You get a divorce and you take your engagement ring, put it on your, resize it to fit your middle finger and perhaps redesign the ring. And presto, change-o, rearrange-o, you got yourself a divorce ring.
13:00
We'll link to the article in the show notes. two is another inspiring story. We already had the fellow who ate the pie overcame his not winning the pie eating contest by winning the pie eating contest. And we had the lady who broke the world record for the fastest row from California to Hawaii rowing. This one is about world domination for a water skier, a fellow named Brian from New Zealand.
13:29
Now 95 years old, but just before turning 95 years old was named the world's oldest water skier. Think of something you love to do. Right now, what do you love to do? Wait, don't say it out loud. You know what? Let's all say it out loud at the same time. Three, two, one. Dressing up my cat like a little baby. What? Who, what? I thought we were all gonna say it. Anyway, think of something you like to do.
13:57
And imagine you could still be doing it at age 95. That is this Brian fellow. And congratulations Brian on your Guinness World Record. Number one is the research involving the protein bars and the heart monitors and the bugs. It could be a game changer. It could save us all. They hooked up some people to brain and heart monitors and they gave this test group a protein bar, apple cinnamon protein bar made with
14:26
cereal protein and then the same flavor but made with insect protein. And according to the data, the taste testers enjoyed the insect protein bars more than the traditional protein bars. If you want to read like that's kind of a brief summation and I'm not a smart person. So if you want to read the whole thing, the write up from study finds, we'll link to that in the show notes. Essentially the taste testers enjoyed the protein bar made with insect protein more than the other one.
14:55
And then they were surprised. So we might all be saved as we are on a planet that may run out of food, not enough food to go around. There are a lot of bugs. So it's a bad day for bugs, I guess. But let's wrap up on that happy note. Thanks for checking out our program. If you're new here, I do appreciate your listening all the way through. If you want to find out more about our podcast or anything like that, or get all of the stories we talked about in more detail, you can click the show notes page, which is show notes.
15:24
We will come back next Friday with 10 more weird stories from the news on What a Weird Week.
Coming up, 10 weird things from this week's news, including a bit of a hot dog bun breakthrough and the mystery of the space balls. Space balls on a beach. This is what a weird week. Hi, everybody. It's weird. This is like crazy.
00:14
uh Hi friends, I'm Scott and this is What a Weird Week. It's a show where we go through the news of the week and we pick out the weird stories or the fun ones, the odd ones, not serious news, and we count down 10 of those stories for you. You can get everything we talk about in more detail if you go to our show notes page, is show notes dot page. This is our episode for Friday, July 10.
00:43
2026 number 10 is the shake up in the hot dog space that I'm quite excited about whereby for a limited time you can get hot dog buns the size of a Pringles can first. Let me say if you're unfamiliar with Pringles because our show goes out over the internet. So if they don't have Pringles where you are at Pringles are chips or crisps potato based snack. They are packaged in a can like a tennis ball can.
01:10
But for a limited time you could open up that Pringles can and inside is a giant potato based hot dog bun. And it might be flavored like sour cream and onion, smoky barbecue or honey mustard. That is to celebrate National... Well first let's be honest. It's to get attention for the brand. What I would call a publicity stunt I think. No shade. But I think that's what's going on here. It is to celebrate National Hot Dog Day July 15th this year. If they're available where you're at the
01:40
Pop dog buns. They're calling them pop dog buns. If they're available where you are on planet Earth, they're free with the purchase of a special package of like a three pack of Pringles crisps or chips. The photos are delicious looking of these giant pop dog buns coming out of the Pringles can. If you want to have a look, I will put all the details in the show notes. Show notes dot page. Number nine. Number nine is an inspirational story. Come back in the century, maybe.
02:10
One of these tales of triumph where you don't win the championship one year, you go back to the drawing board and then you come back and you win the whole thing. That's what's going on with this story. This is the fellow named Kevin in Florida who won the Key Lime Pie Eating Championship and got in the headlines because of his unique style. Really, I think. I mean, he attained greatness in eating a pie very fast with no hands, but also unique style. So a little bit of the background on this is Kevin has
02:39
entered the Key Lime Pie Eating Championship before and not won it and went back, developed a new strategy. Once he discovered you don't have to eat the whipped cream on top of the Key Lime Pie, it doesn't count towards the contest. He developed a strategy where he would take his shirt off and use his chest and chest hair to remove the whipped cream. And then he also flipped the pie upside down and ate through the bottom of the pie to get
03:08
the delicious key lime filling. Which you don't see that every day either in a pie eating championship. Another thing maybe to note is Kevin did all of this on his wedding anniversary so that'll be a wedding anniversary they'll never forget probably. A wonderful victory eating a pie very fast. Oh and how fast did he do it? 59 seconds and change. Just under a minute to eat an entire key lime pie with no hands.
03:35
Number eight is the mysterious space balls or the space beach balls or the beach space balls. I've said this before, if you're new to the program though, I love a good mystery, but I really, really love a mystery that gets solved. And I think that's what we have going on here with the space balls. This is a beach in Australia where some mysterious space balls showed up.
03:58
Balls from space. So let me paint a picture. If you don't have a chance to click the photo, we do have a link in the show notes. But it's a beautiful Australian beach nestled on the sand or some metal balls with little nibs on a couple of sides bigger than a basketball, a fair size metal ball. But you could clearly see one of the photos shows a seam so you could tell they were manufactured. according to the Australian Space Agency, the mystery is solved. Pretty sure those are pressure vessels.
04:28
from a space launch vehicle. They don't know at time of recording. They don't know which space launch lost these and they fell to earth and washed up on the Australian beach. But pretty sure pressure vessels, which I had to look up. This is from Science Direct. A pressure vessel is a robust sealed container designed to hold gases, etc, etc. It's supposed to be a strong container essentially for fuel in this case for a space vehicle.
04:57
So that's the end of the mystery pretty sure. If the space balls start to move around or assemble, unite perhaps, form a giant humanoid and start to walk around that beach in Australia, I'll keep you posted. But pretty sure we're looking at pressure vessels. They may have discovered a new kind of ghost shark in Costa Rica. I love it when they discover new things. Just when you think we've discovered all the things, they discover something new. I love that.
05:27
And so this is a fish which is commonly referred to as a ghost shark. That's one of the ways it's referred to. There are some other names, but in Costa Rica, they believe they have found a new species of this fish, this ghost shark. And I'm looking at the photo. Usually I can do a pretty good job of describing the photo. If you don't have a chance to click, I'll save you a click. I'll describe the thing. But this one, I don't even know what I'm looking at. I think that's the tail that is not the face. I will say this.
05:57
I hope the ghost shark has a nice personality because the photo yikes. Anyway, to sum up, I love it when they find new things. I will link to the story. It is kind of a to be continued, but they believe it is a new kind, a new species of ghost shark. And if you want to learn more about ghost sharks or have a look at the thing, you can click the show notes. six is the lady who got in the rowboat and started rowing from California.
06:27
to Hawaii, 2400 miles. The lady's name is Kelsey Fendler. She made headlines this week because she went 2400 miles in that rowboat incredibly fast, broke the record. She is the youngest person to ever go that far in a rowboat and broke the record. The male record and the female record did it in 44 days. That is an inspiring story. I know I said the key lime pie eating contest earlier in this episode. That was inspiring.
06:55
Imagine what you would have to overcome to be able to row 2400 miles and do it in record time. I'll put links in the show notes or you can click our show notes page which is show notes that page. If you want to read more about the journey and all that, quite inspiring. Congratulations Kelsey.
07:23
Number five is the enormous paper airplane that broke the record. How big is it? It's a monster. It's a monster size paper airplane. A group of students from the University of Pisa in Italy made a paper airplane. The wingspan was 65 feet and something. So how big is 65 feet? If you're metric, that's 19 meters and something. The 65 foot wingspan on this paper airplane, about the same.
07:50
length as a cricket pitch. If you're a cricket enthusiast, we don't have cricket so much around here where I'm at, East Coast Canada. A little bit. Perhaps a bowling lane is familiar to you. This paper airplane, the wingspan is longer than a bowling lane. The wingspan starts before the foul line and into the pin setting machine. That's how big this paper airplane wingspan was. And listen to when they broke the record.
08:20
They just had to, made the thing and they just had to get it to fly a certain amount. Listen to the joy.
08:40
Actually, that sounds like something I would throw in as a sound effect, dramatic music and cheering, but that really was the video. I think they added the dramatic music and post, but the cheering and the joy, legit, and we'll link to the video. That is what it sounds like when you break the world record for the world's largest paper aircraft. four. I wrote this headline. I thought I was a comedy genius. The headline is, sorry vampires.
09:08
And then you click around and see this story got picked up all over the world and everybody basically had the same headline, some variation. So we're all comedy geniuses. This is the Gardener, the Great Britain Gardener named Graham Barrett, who made headlines after breaking the Guinness World Record for the heaviest garlic. Graham grew a garlic that's three pounds and something. It's bigger than his head. When you see the photo.
09:37
Graham is wearing a hat. It's bigger than his head and hat, this giant garlic. And I'm thinking there are some possibilities here. First of all, it's enough garlic. It's a lifetime supply of garlic. If you just want to keep it as garlic. But also there's some kind of marketing campaign here with mouthwash to combat your garlic breath for big, big breath odor. You need whatever, Listerine.
10:03
You know, so Graham, that's one for free. Sell that to Listerine. They buy that in a heartbeat. You're going to be a millionaire, Citation needed. You may not become a millionaire. The other thing is just a comedy prop for like, take it to an Italian restaurant and be like, I brought my own garlic. Last time I was here, there wasn't enough garlic. You know, something like that would be hilarious. They'll give you free meals for life, Graham. Citation needed. They may not give you.
10:33
They may ask you to leave. Anyway, if you want, that's kind of the whole story. If you want to see the garlic, the giant garlic, you can click the show notes or go to show notes dot page number three. For number three, I want to first apologize. And I do want to say, Karen, if you're not sitting down, please sit down. This is not good news. This is the study about names. A survey of 2000 Americans. The name with the strongest negative connotation is Karen.
11:03
People feel strongly and not good strongly, but bad strongly about the name Karen. And I'm sorry, if your name is Karen, it's not fair. Perhaps you're aware that your name became a bit of a meme. Also on the list is Chad. So Chad, I'm sorry. Donald. Damien. Which I believe is affiliated with the evil Damien from those scary movies. So Damien, I'm sorry if people think you have an evil name. And also John is on the list. John has a negative connotation.
11:33
There are a lot of Johns. I mean, what is happening here? Here's one thing that I found scary. One in five people, according to the survey, judge you based on your name, just your name. They meet you, they learn your name, and then they decide whether they like you or not. They will decide, Chad, that they don't like you. And I'm sorry, that's not fair. Karen, it's not fair. Damien, it's a little bit fair. You're kind of scary, Damien. No, what? I'm kidding.
12:01
So I don't know how to fix that. What do you, how do you fix it that I guess a lot of people want to change it. The study gets into how many people want to change their name, not happy with their name. That's one way. It would seem as though the name change attorneys are going to have a lot of business in future. Maybe you're someone in law school or you know someone who's looking to get into law, name change law. That would seem to be a smart move. Honorable mention. The honorable mention this week.
12:31
about the divorce ring. The BBC did an article about divorce rings. I was not aware. It was a thing, I guess, when you're on certain parts of TikTok, you would see that trend or other social media. But now the BBC also, if you read the BBC news articles, it's kind of right in the name. You get a divorce and you take your engagement ring, put it on your, resize it to fit your middle finger and perhaps redesign the ring. And presto, change-o, rearrange-o, you got yourself a divorce ring.
13:00
We'll link to the article in the show notes. two is another inspiring story. We already had the fellow who ate the pie overcame his not winning the pie eating contest by winning the pie eating contest. And we had the lady who broke the world record for the fastest row from California to Hawaii rowing. This one is about world domination for a water skier, a fellow named Brian from New Zealand.
13:29
Now 95 years old, but just before turning 95 years old was named the world's oldest water skier. Think of something you love to do. Right now, what do you love to do? Wait, don't say it out loud. You know what? Let's all say it out loud at the same time. Three, two, one. Dressing up my cat like a little baby. What? Who, what? I thought we were all gonna say it. Anyway, think of something you like to do.
13:57
And imagine you could still be doing it at age 95. That is this Brian fellow. And congratulations Brian on your Guinness World Record. Number one is the research involving the protein bars and the heart monitors and the bugs. It could be a game changer. It could save us all. They hooked up some people to brain and heart monitors and they gave this test group a protein bar, apple cinnamon protein bar made with
14:26
cereal protein and then the same flavor but made with insect protein. And according to the data, the taste testers enjoyed the insect protein bars more than the traditional protein bars. If you want to read like that's kind of a brief summation and I'm not a smart person. So if you want to read the whole thing, the write up from study finds, we'll link to that in the show notes. Essentially the taste testers enjoyed the protein bar made with insect protein more than the other one.
14:55
And then they were surprised. So we might all be saved as we are on a planet that may run out of food, not enough food to go around. There are a lot of bugs. So it's a bad day for bugs, I guess. But let's wrap up on that happy note. Thanks for checking out our program. If you're new here, I do appreciate your listening all the way through. If you want to find out more about our podcast or anything like that, or get all of the stories we talked about in more detail, you can click the show notes page, which is show notes.
15:24
We will come back next Friday with 10 more weird stories from the news on What a Weird Week.