What a Weird Week, a Weird News report on Fri Aug 7, 2026: How many of these ones do you remember from last year? #rebroadcast #NewSong

Scotty
Scotty
August 07, 2026

It's Friday, Aug 7, 2026 and here is a repeat from a year ago. A weird news update from 2025 featuring some of the odd and fun things from the news. This is What a Weird Week (show notes: shownotes.page).



 
 
 



7 Squonkapalooza: A Festival to Cheer Up that sad ol' Squonk 
https://nypost.com/2025/08/02/us-news/pas-ugliest-saddest-pig-the-squonk-needs-festival-cheer/ 
 
 
 


Bonus! Giant, Cat-sized Rat Discovered in England Sparks Calls for Action 
https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2025/08/05/massive-rat-Eston-North-Yorkshire-England/6271754424099/
 
 

 

TRANSCRIPT for Season 7, Episode 32 which originally aired on Aug 8, 2025:

 

Hi friends, I'm Scott from What a Weird Week. Just a note here about this week's episode. It's going to be a rerun. We weren't planning on doing a rerun but something happened to our website and I'm hoping it's a glitch. I guess it's been happening to some other website, similar thing, but our website got taken down. I am trying to fix this situation and rather labor-intensive, so we're going to do a rerun this week. At the end of this episode, some brand-new content, a song about a cursed hat in a windstorm. A soulful number, perhaps you'll enjoy it. So thank you for your understanding. And here we go.

Potatoes are tomatoes? What a weird week. Hi everybody, it's Weird. This is like crazy being weird. Weird. Really weird. They flicked me out of my trash. Well, I got a great show for you today with some wonderful weird stuff. Hi friends. I am Scott and this is the show we call What a Weird Week, where we look back at the news of the past week, we pick out the odd, the interesting, the fun stories, and we count down 10 of them for you in about 15 minutes. Here we go. This is the episode for Friday, August the 8th, 2025.

Number 10: Potatoes are Tomatoes Okay, let's jump right in to number 10, the controversial story that potatoes are tomatoes. New research indicates, first let me say, researchers who study potatoes, thank you. I love that we're still looking into potatoes because we don't know everything we need to know about potatoes. And I love that somebody is on that case. Millions of years ago, tomatoes co-mingled with another South American plant and the result was potatoes. How, what, and what? Potatoes are tomatoes. That is my non-scientific summation of that story. You can do a deep dive into it. Maybe you're a potato fan or somebody you know would love to read all the details of the scientific discovery that potatoes are tomatoes. Well, we put a link in the show notes. Click show notes dot page.

Number 9: Radioactive Wasps Number nine. Number nine is the story about the radioactive wasps. You know, it wasn't on my radar things to worry about, and now it is because there are radioactive wasps. I would say by far the best coverage, I'm going to let Seth Meyers take it away from here because his show, they had some great lines about the radioactive wasps. "You know, we have our fun around here, but if you thought I was joking about the radioactive wasps, I'm sorry to say, it's time to break out the heavy duty citronella candles. A radioactive wasps nest has been disposed of after being found at a South Carolina location that once made nuclear bomb material. The nest had a radiation level 10 times higher than allowed by regulations. First of all, what do you mean 10 times higher than what's allowed? I wasn't aware there was a certain level of radiation that's allowed for wasps, like a sweet spot level, which is low enough not to kill us all, but high enough that if a kid on a field trip gets bitten, he might turn into a superhero." That was from earlier this week on Late Night with Seth Meyers. Their extensive coverage of the radioactive wasps, our number nine story this week.

Number 8: Video Games and IQ Number eight. Okay, number eight isn't a weird one or odd, but it's great news, especially if you're a kid who plays video games and mom and dad are always on your case about it. Because video games, a new study in the news this week, seems to fall in line with some other studies we talked about before. It would appear as though video games, when you're a kid, it will increase your IQ to play video games. This study was 10,000 kids, pretty big study in the United States. They found that kids who played video games more than average had an IQ boost, two and a half points higher IQ on average, and that was over a couple of years of playing video games. So I guess the takeaway here is we need to have video games in schools pronto. It's good for the kid's IQ. Let's get that going. We'll have to get rid of geography or something. I don't know. You administration, you work on where we can fit in video games in our schools, but it has to happen, right? If you want to read the whole study, get the science behind it and stuff, click show notes dot page. Maybe you're a kid who wants to email that article to mom and dad because they just don't get it. Well, you can click the show notes.

Number 7: Squonkapalooza Number seven. Number seven is the Squonkapalooza, which made headlines this week. I don't know all the paloozas. I can definitely say I'd never heard of Squonkapalooza before. It is a festival to celebrate Pennsylvania's saddest creature, the squonk, which is reportedly very ugly and constantly crying. And it seems like a modern invention, but it's from a book, I guess. The squonk originally appeared in a book in 1910, and now in Pennsylvania, they have a festival to try to cheer up the squonk. Please, squonk, stop crying. One of the things they do is a compliment contest, and I think that's wonderful. This story has it all, celebration, uplifting moments of compliment, and also a strange creature that is apparently covered in warts.

Number 6: Expensive La Boo Doll Number six. Number six is the rare La Boo doll that made headlines this week as the most expensive La Boo doll of all times. It sold at auction for $10,000 American dollars, something like that. And if you're unfamiliar with the La Boo doll, it's one of these trends that a lot of times gets compared to Beanie Babies, except most of the Beanie Babies weren't terrified. But the La Boo dolls, they're unique, they're plush, they are hideous? No wait, cute. No wait, hideous. I can't decide. But people are collecting them, and this La Boo doll of the La Boo wearing a ball cap and on a skateboard made headlines after it sold for a lot of money. If you want to see it, we'll put a link in the show notes or go to shownotes.page.

Number 5: Haunted Museum Purchase Number five. I'm not sure how to feel about number five. Is it scary or is it comedy? I'd be interested to know what you think. Number five is the story from this week where comedian Matt Reif and his friend Elton teamed up to purchase the Ed and Lorraine Warren home and museum. So Ed and Lorraine Warren inspired those Conjuring movies. They were paranormal investigators. Supposedly those scary movies inspired by actual events that occurred in the life of Ed and Lorraine Warren. And their haunted museum is where that haunted Annabelle doll is. Good thing it's just chock full of haunted. And now a comedian owns that. Is it comedy? Is it? How should we feel about this? I don't see the humor in it. I'm scared. Maybe this is the perfect thing for me. Maybe the comedian Matt Reif will change my view about scary haunted things and I will laugh in the face of terror. Ears open.

Number 4: Paddle Boarding Pooches Number four. Number four will put a smile on your face probably. It involves paddle boarding pooches. Who can resist paddle boarding pooches? They had the 2025 UK Dog Surfing Championships in Dorset, England, and they set a few different Guinness World Records. One of them was the most dog human pairs paddle boarding at the same time, the more the merrier. And then they had a 50 meter dash, the fastest ever paddle boarding pooch and human 50 meter dash. And that one was a tie between Matt Jenkins and his shih tzu, Gigi, and Ben Gray with his border collie, Boo. They both finished in 32 seconds. That is the fastest pooch paddle boarding 50 meter dash. Very exciting. If you want to have a look at some of the photos on that, go to shownotes.page.

Number 3: New Tarantula Species Number three. Okay. I don't know how I'm going to navigate number three. There are some things I really don't want to get into about it. First of all, let me say it involves spiders. So maybe that's a trigger for you and you're out already. These spiders, these are some new tarantulas that have been discovered in the headlines this week. Scientists have identified four new tarantula species. The thing that sets them apart is the male tarantulas, well, a certain part sets them apart, I guess. And maybe that's all I have to say. Something about the spiders and romance that scientists were like, wow, well, what do you know? So I'll just stop there on that. I know some other programs maybe would have a field day with this story, but I'm going to stop. And if you want to read more about the new tarantulas and their special feature, you can click the show notes.

Number 2: Asteroid vs. Rabies Number two. Kind of interesting, kind of morbid. Good news, bad news, maybe. So scientists crunching some data on different ways we might perish. Just to see the statistics and they determined, well, do you think it would be more likely for you to perish because of an asteroid or because of rabies? It turns out the asteroid wins that based on the research and the statistics, the data. Asteroids still a concern. It's a low, you know, the odds of us perishing from an asteroid still pretty low, but not zero. If you want to read the whole thing, they get into some other things. If you're, you know, want to do a deep dive on different ways you could perish and what the odds are. We'll put a link in the show notes, shownotes.page.

Honorable Mention 1: Giant Rat Honorable Mention. So this one, Unsettling, a giant rat discovered in England. This is in North Yorkshire, England, where after the rat was discovered, there was an outcry. We need to do something about the rats. Officials in North Yorkshire got a rat that was 22 inches long, the size of a cat. And that's all I have to say about that. If you want to read more, maybe see a photo, I caution you, you can't unsee it. But if you want to look, check the show notes.

Honorable Mention 2: Denmark Zoo Honorable Mention. One more Honorable Mention before we get to the number one weird story of the week. This one, highly controversial, I would imagine. The Denmark Zoo that made headlines this week asking for donations to help feed their predators. And what they asked for was not like money donations or I don't know something like that to help the animals. It was if you have a pet you don't want anymore. If you have a guinea pig as an example, that's one of the things they mentioned, we'll take that off your hands, we can help you with that. And I can't imagine any scenario where somebody who owns pets would receive that story in a good way. Like I can't imagine how many complaints they are receiving as we speak because they were like, "Hey, are you done with your pets?" That one, not a nice story. A weird story, yes, but not nice.

Number 1: World's Tallest Sunflower Number one is a tale of triumph. A happy story, uplifting. It's about Alex the gardener in Indiana, United States of America. He's going for the world record for the world's tallest sunflower. He's not there yet, but he's getting close. The world record is 30 feet one inch. That's like a school bus. Imagine a school bus, how long that is, that's Alex's sunflower almost. And so now he's getting close. He already has the United States record, going for the world record. And every day the community rallying, the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana rallying behind Alex. I imagine people are constantly like checking, go down to the post office and people are like, "Alex, how, what's the number now? How close are we?" And I'm sure Alex goes out every morning and talks to his sunflower. "Come on, you can do it, Sally, you got this." And it's just an uplifting story. Best of luck, Alex. I guess the city of Fort Wayne loaned Alex a cherry picker to protect the sunflower. You gotta be concerned about squirrels. You gotta be concerned, I imagine, wind, things like that, crows. I would hire round the clock protection for my sunflower at this point. When we circle back to this one, hopefully it'll be a tale of triumph with Alex setting the new Guinness World Record for the tallest sunflower in the world. And I don't know if his sunflower is really named Sally, but it seemed like a pretty good name for a sunflower.

Outro & Song: Evil Hat All righty, I hope you enjoyed that rebroadcast from yesteryear of the What a Weird Week show. This is Scott from the future. Hopefully we will be up and running with our website and everything back to normal next Friday. We'll figure something out and we'll have a new episode next Friday. In the meantime, here's a song you might enjoy about windy weather and a cursed hat. It's called Evil Hat.

(song)

 

#weird #news #odd #fun #interesting #strange #podcast 

 


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