Cool Weird Awesome with Brady Carlson

"Ambush predators" like lions go after livestock while those animals aren't looking. So scientists at the University of New South Wales tested a theory in Botswana: what if we painted eyes on the back ends of cattle so the lions thought they were watching? Plus: National Roller Coaster Day is coming up, make your plans to visit Japan's famous pedal-powered SkyCycle.  Painting Eyes on The Butt...

Fabien Cousteau is looking to build PROTEUS, a 4,000 square foot underwater research station that has research facilities, a multimedia production studio and an underwater greenhouse. A much more productive use of underwater space than Dr. No and SPECTRE had. Plus: the Racine Art Museum has brought back the annual Peeps Art Exhibition, and this year's submissions are extremely sweet.  Fabien...

Judging by my kids' toy collections I thought fluorescents were already about as bright as possible. But chemists at Indiana University and the University of Copenhagen have found a way to make the brightest fluorescent materials ever made. Plus: for World Elephant Day, meet Lucy, the elephant-shaped hotel on the Jersey Shore.  Chemists create the brightest-ever fluorescent materials (Phys.or...

Today in 1969 was the first day off for the Apollo 11 astronauts in more than a month. Yes, they'd finished their moon landing weeks earlier, but they had to go into quarantine in case they'd picked up some "moon germs" that could lead to a plague on Earth. (Fortunately, they hadn't.) Plus: there's a new augmented reality tour of a church in Florence, Italy that was deconstructed in 1784.  Ap...

There is at least one person in the world who's paid to be a wizard. The city of Christchurch, New Zealand, contracts with him to "provide acts of wizardry and other wizard-like-services as part of promotional work for the city of Christchurch." Plus: there's a museum exhibit in Switzerland featuring works of art that showcase imaginary or invented languages.  This New Zealand man gets paid $...

We don’t have the Olympic Games right now, but we can still mark a big Olympic moment that happened on this day in 1948: the day Alice Coachman became the first Black woman to win Olympic gold. Plus: a chocolate company and an engineer say they've redesigned the chocolate chip. Is it more efficient? I don't know, but I'll be happy to test it out.  The day Alice Coachman became the first black...

There are parts of the world where some of the local spiders are very dangerous to humans. A new app called Critterpedia can scan your spider photos and tell you which spider is which. Plus: on National Root Beer Float Day, a root beer maker in Wisconsin is trying to set a world record for biggest root beer float drive-thru.  Australia just invented Shazam for spiders (CNet) Sprecher Aims To...

On this day in 1999 a court rules in a case involving a guy who tried to use a huge number of points in a Pepsi reward program to buy a fighter jet, which the soda maker had jokingly offered in one of its ads. It didn't work, but still, an A for effort. Plus: there's a new uncuttable substance that might make for a great bike lock. When a Man Took a Joke in a Pepsi Ad Seriously, Chaos Ensued (Lit...

Maybe everyone in junior high was right: the clothes you wear really can make you cool! At least if those clothes are the new fabric developed in China with a kind of cooling system embedded inside. Plus: it's National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day, so let's find out about the largest chocolate chip cookie of all time.  New fabric could help keep you cool in the summer, even without A/C (Science...

Researchers at the University of Washington call it a "GoPro for beetles" - a ultralight, wireless, steerable camera that can ride on the back of a bug. And it's pretty effective at letting us see what these bugs see. Plus: a new online chart tracks the vocal range of famous pop singers, by measuring the highest and lowest notes they ever sung on a recording. A GoPro for beetles: Researchers creat...

Change is in the air in the border region between Spain and France. A small island there called Pheasant Island is about to change countries, as it does twice a year. Plus: some enterprising race fans in Poland use construction cranes to help them get a good view of their favorite drivers even while physical distancing.  The island that switches countries every six months (BBC) Fans Rent Cran...

On this day in 1988, the Ostry family of Bruno, Nebraska got 328 people to lift a barn - a real, actual barn - and moved it 110 feet by hand. That's some impressive crowdsourcing. Plus: a guy invents a machine that can spot his face and lob M&Ms at it, which I'm pretty sure can win a guy a lot of friends.  Nebraska family looks back on barn moving event (WOWT) Guy Builds Machine That Shoo...

A team of engineering students at Harvard is teaming with a startup called Savormetrics to develop a device that can tell us when avocados will be ripe. It's one step on the way to solving the costly problem of food waste. Plus: a project in Belgium called #ArtGenetics is learning about the evolution of fruits and vegetables through classic paintings.  Forestalling food waste (Harvard) Old Pa...

Today is said to be the day in 1858 that a colonial magistrate in India began using fingerprints for identification. But that's just one part of the history of how and why our prints are such a valuable bit of biometric information today. Plus: a guy in Jamaica showed up to collect a big lottery prize in a Darth Vader costume, because why not?  How Fingerprinting Works (How Stuff Works) Jamai...

Most sports teams do promotions to get more fans into the games, but in 2002 the Charleston, S.C. RiverDogs held "Nobody Night," turning fans away at the gate to have an official attendance of zero. Plus: want to see a giant metal baseball? Drop by next time you're in Muscotah, Kansas.  RiverDogs' "Nobody Night" Promotion Recalled on Today's ESPN's "First Take" (MILB.com) Muscotah, Kansas: Wo...

This week we're replaying some of our favorite outer space-themed episodes of the show. In this episode from March 2020, NASA fixes a problem with its Mars lander, essentially by telling  the lander to use a robotic arm to help itself – or, depending on the  headlines you read, to whack itself. Plus: a Wisconsin man finds a  clever way to share a beer with his neighbor in the era of...

This week we're replaying some of our favorite outer space-themed episodes of the show. In this episode from October 2019, science brings whales and outer space together for the first time since the fourth Star Trek movie. The British Antarctic Survey partners with researchers in Chile on a way to protect whales via satellite. Plus: the story of a paraglider who manages to land smoothly  and...

This week we're replaying some of our favorite outer space-themed episodes of the show. In this episode from January 2020, we find out that astronauts on the International Space Station baked chocolate chip cookies, only baking cookies in space is a little different than baking them on Earth. Plus: a new device called the Exolung can keep air flowing for virtually as long as a diver likes. Space-b...

This week we're replaying some of our favorite outer space-themed episodes of the show. In this episode from March 2020, we check out the ultimate in working remotely: sending directions beyond the reach of the sun! The way we send those commands to Voyagers 1 and 2 is pretty  basic, but with twists to make up for the extremely long distance.  Plus: ISS astronauts have been growing space...

This week we're replaying some of our favorite outer space-themed episodes of the show. In this episode from July 2019, we look back at when the BBC brought in Pink Floyd, the band known for playing space rock, to improvise on-air for its Apollo 11 coverage. Plus: it’s been 25 years since the time that  Pizza Hut produced an ad for UK television in which all the dialogue was in Klingon. My mo...

Vantablack is a color that's so black it absorbs almost all of the light nearby. There's new research out about a "vantafish" that does almost the same thing to avoid its hungry bioluminescent neighbors. Plus: you've heard of drive-in theaters; Paris is going to have a "float-in" theater featuring "socially distanced boats" on the Seine.  Vantablack? Meh. Meet the Ultra-Black Vantafish (Wired...

While county and state fairs are canceled for 2020, the 4-H group In Morris County, New Jersey, has found a way to bring the fair experience online, as a virtual fair inside the game Minecraft. Plus: Iceland wants you to send them the sounds of you screaming about this frustrating year so they can play those screams on loudspeakers.  Welcome to the Morris County (Virtual) 4-H Fair! (Rutgers)...

The drone company Skydio has just announced a new 3D scanning software that’s intended for use on large-scale structures like bridges. That may help us deal with the tens of thousands of "structurally deficient" bridges in the US. Plus: ever seen a guy do a shredding guitar solo riding on a OneWheel skateboard?  Introducing Skydio 3D Scan™ (Skydio via YouTube) This guitar-playing skateboarder...

There was a story out of Italy where a driver got a ticket for driving 437 miles per hour. Since that's almost three times as fast as the car could legitimately go, it's believed to have been a malfunction of a local speed camera. Plus: the creations of cabinet maker Henk Verhoeff aren't malfunctioning, they're meant to be, as the artist put it, "broken and weird." Ancona: a Ford Focus caught at 7...

Pastries come and go, but in Brooklyn, people still talk about the blackout cake from Ebinger's, a cake so beloved that when the bakery closed, people bought up cakes, kept them in their freezers and ate them only on special occasions. Plus: it's the birthday of Erno Rubik, so maybe someday visit the Rubik's Cube-themed hotel room in Houston, Texas.  Ebinger’s Blackout Cake is Gone But Not Fo...