Cool Weird Awesome with Brady Carlson

If you're an astronaut, way up there in space, chances are you started the day with a song. Why? It's a NASA tradition. Plus: an artist in California has turned "Star Trek" into a widescreen format, so it fits on modern TVs.  For decades, NASA has woken up its astronauts with music (The World) Paul McCartney Sings To Space Crew (CBS News) The Final Frontier (Futility Closet) Every time I thin...

Fuel cells need a catalyst for an important reaction, and a team at American University has found that spinach may be the best raw material for a catalyst we've found yet. Plus: ever wanted to smell like old books? A new scent can help make it happen!  Spinach: Good for Popeye and the Planet (American University) Powell's Books creates unisex fragrance that smells like old books (Geekologie)...

We've dedicated statues, memorial walls, works of art, plaques, flags, bridges, roads and more to those who have served in the military. Here's the story of a living memorial in New York's Central Park to women who gave their lives while serving in World War I, that was almost forgotten over decades and generations, and how it was rediscovered in our time. Women in World War I (TheWorldWar.org) Tr...

An inventor in Florida has invented a robot that can put contact lenses in human eyes safety and effectively. This could be a big help to people with neurological disorders or tremors who might not otherwise be able to put those lenses in themselves. Plus: meet an online fluid simulator that's like watching really trippy ripples in a groovy pond.  This Florida man invented a robot that insert...

Today in 1843, former president John Quincy Adams joined thousands to dedicate a public observatory in Cincinnati, a building known as "the birthplace of American astronomy." Plus: this month would be a good time to get out a telescope, cause there's lots happening in the night sky.   How Cincinnati became the 'Birthplace of American Astronomy' (Cincinnati Enquirer)  See Meteor Show...

Bats use their own internal radar - echolocation - to figure out where insects are so they can swoop in and catch their meal. But a study out of Johns Hopkins University shows that how bats track their prey is more complicated than we thought. Plus: today in 2008, music fans named a certain pop and internet legend the Best Act Ever. Hearing the Future (Johns Hopkins University) MTV EMAs name Rick...

Earth makes lots of seismic noise, but there's one that's mysterious - a slight pulse every 26 seconds called a microseism off the coast of West Africa. What causes it? We don't know! Plus: NASA has completed its transmitter upgrades and now it can talk with Voyager 2 again!  The Earth Is Pulsating Every 26 Seconds, and Seismologists Don't Agree Why (Discover) After months of silence, Voyager...

It's National Candy Day, and the day after Election Day, so let's visit the back row of the U.S. Senate chamber, where, for over half a century, senators have kept a desk drawer filled with candy to share with colleagues. Plus: in Japan, candy is also fine art, thanks to the practice of amezaiku , or sculpting molten sugar syrup.  The History Of The Senate’s Sweet Candy Desk (DCist) Reviving...

On this Election Day, here’s a story about an early and not-too-well-known effort to help count votes that came from none other than Thomas Edison. Plus: photographer Ryan Donnell has been documenting some of the most unusual polling places in the country.  Thomas Edison’s First Patented Invention—a Voting Machine for Congress—Was a Total Flop (Mental Floss) Ryan Donnell: Polling Places (Wond...

If you're taking part in National Novel Writing Month, then here's a tip: don't forget the dedication page. They can be full of surprises, as we discovered in quite a few books. Plus: meet the prehistoric pelagornithid, probably the largest flying bird ever, with a 20 foot wingspan and teeth.  Brilliant Book Dedications (Sad and Useless) Scientists Reveal What May Be the Largest Flying Bird E...

In some areas, Halloween festivities actually start the night before October 31, on a night that goes by a few very unusual names. Plus: how about an unusual lollipop that's far off the beaten trick-or-treating path?  Mischief Night? Cabbage Night? Goosey Night? What does it all mean? (NJ.com) Blue Cheese Lollipops (Lolliphile) Joining us as a Patreon backer is all treats, no tricks

Composting can turn some of our food waste back into useful stuff, but it can take a while. A new device out of Germany aims to cut the time it takes to go from food waste to compost to just 48 hours. Plus: on this National Cat Day, we salute the very tiny but impressive Cat Museum in Krakow, Poland.  Kitchen gadget converts food scraps to compost in a claimed 48 hours (New Atlas) Poland Is H...

We’re not the only species that knows the difference between a face-to-face chat and a remote one. Research out of Vienna shows cows prefer live human voices to recorded ones. Plus: on National Chocolate Day, we pay a visit to the world's largest chocolate moose, in Scarborough, Maine.  Cows prefer to co-moo-nicate in person, research suggests (CNN) Lenny the Moose - The World's Only Life-Siz...

A project out of MIT is using artificial intelligence to scan lost languages and find rules and conventions that may help us figure out what all those words from years ago might mean. Plus: historic signs in South Nyack, New York are using QR codes to tell us something timeless - a message that's never gonna give us up. MIT CSAIL’s AI revives dead languages it hasn’t seen before (VentureBeat) Rick...

Scientists at Purdue University have a way to help keep us cool to the point that we might not even need air conditioning, and all it takes is a fresh coat of a special paint. Plus: the town of Asbestos, Quebec has finally chosen a new name! New 'Super-White' Paint Can Cool Down Buildings and Cars (Interesting Engineering)  Goodbye Asbestos, hello Val-des-Sources: Que. town changing infamous...

We're replaying some of our favorite car-themed episodes this week, like this one from July 2020, about a driver in Italy who 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 malfunctionin...

We're replaying some of our favorite car-themed episodes this week, like this one from May 2019, about an exhibit at The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles called “Hollywood Dream Machines: Vehicles of Science Fiction  and Fantasy.” If you’ve ever wanted to get close to the coolest rides  the big screen ever shared with us – like, say, the DeLorean in “Back to  the Future” –...

We're replaying some of our favorite car-themed episodes this week, like this one from December 2019, in which Cornell researchers find that making intersections more autonomous could  help get self-driving cars where they want to go more efficiently.  Plus: on the anniversary of the last day of the last Apollo mission to  the moon, how about a trip to the Museum of the Moon, now vi...

We're replaying some of our favorite car-themed episodes this week, like this one from January 2020, a car that was to be (at least partly) made from soybeans. And it was  the idea of none other than Henry Ford. Plus: Steven Paul Judd is an  Oklahoma-based artist of Kiowa/Choctaw descent, and last month he made a  portrait of Sitting Bull using just over 20,000 black and white dice....

We're replaying some of our favorite car-themed episodes this week, like this one from November 2019, about a vehicle right out of Richard Scarry’s Busytown: the Big Banana Car,  which is a 15 foot long banana with four seats on the frame of a Ford  F-150. Plus: the Volkspod is a motor scooter made with upcycled parts from old-school Volkswagen Beetles! BigBananaCar.com Michigan trooper...

Scientists have been trying for years to figure out why there's a gap in Earth's geologic record that's about a billion years long, known as the Great Uncomformity. Plus: today in 2001 an artist painted a Wyoming house inside and out with government surplus cheese.  Erasing a Billion Years of Geologic Time Across the Globe (Eos) So, Uh, Where Did a Billion Years of the Geologic Record Go? (Po...

Today is the birthday of Ruth Faison Shaw, an art teacher who spotted a kid smearing iodine on the school walls and saw a way kids could express themselves. Plus: art is alive and well in cats, or at least in a photographer taking portraits of cats going wild for - and sometimes on - catnip. Ruth Faison Shaw (A Woman To Know) A Photographer Takes Pictures of Cats "High" on Catnip, and It'll Be You...

Millions of people have back pain that just plain makes things harder to do. A team at Vanderbilt University has developed an exosuit that may ease all that back strain. Plus: how do you let an economist know he's won the Nobel Prize when you don't have his phone number? Have his fellow winner knock on his door in the middle of the night, of course.  Vanderbilt wearable exosuit that lessens b...

Today in 1947 was the first performance of the Weeki Wachee Mermaids, professional mermaids in Florida who put on choreographed shows for hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, completely underwater. Plus: the Oklahoma Banjo Fest is now underway, completely virtual and still completely banjo-ey.  More mermaids than men (Mashable) Oklahoma Banjo Fest (Travel OK) Want more Cool Weird Awesome...

To mark our 400th episode, we have stories of some of the people who have set world records for screaming! Two of them are educators, though I don't think they practice on their students. Plus: scientists have figured out how to 3D print treats out of milk.  Loudest scream (individual) (Guinness World Records) Belfast teacher still in class of her own for shouting (BBC) Got 3D milk? These ado...