Cool Weird Awesome with Brady Carlson

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...

Our entire show is based on the idea that we might say something interesting enough that it might get you to perk up your ears, figuratively speaking. Or, as a team at Saarland University has found, maybe not so figuratively speaking. Plus: a sculpture garden in Dublin, Ohio pays tribute to ears of a different kind.  Our animal inheritance: Humans perk up their ears, too, when they hear inter...

Every year in the US there are some 600,000 knee replacement surgeries. But a team at Duke University might help some people avoid those surgeries with a hydrogel that can stand in for cartilage. Plus: engineers at NIKE develop a ball that can really soar.  From The Lab, The First Cartilage-Mimicking Gel That's Strong Enough For Knees (Duke University) NIKE's new flight ball promises a 'revol...

Today we download video games online all the time. Back in the 1980s, gamers without the Internet (such as it was) had to buy or borrow their games. But a few could download programs off the radio. Plus: there's a comet headed Earth's way, and it might make for some great viewing this month, or 6,000 years from now. Either one.  You Could Download Video Games From the Radio in the 1980s (Inte...

Today is believed to be the birthday of Leroy "Satchel" Paige, perhaps the most legendary pitcher baseball ever saw. Paige was a star for decades, and once pitched three scoreless innings in the major leagues at age 59. Plus: we'll visit the man who earned the world's first degree in ninja studies.  Fifty years ago, Satchel Paige pitched his last big-league game in KC ... at age 59 (Kansas Ci...

In the 1980s Deaf children in Nicaragua were sent to a new school that was supposed to help them learn finger spelling. Instead, they built up their own language, now known as Nicaraguan Sign Language. Plus: divers in Mexico find a cave that looked like it hadn't been visited before, only to find a link to civilization thousands of years ago.  The Amazing Story of Deaf Children in 1980s Nicar...

Vivid Maps released a map of the U.S. by demonym, which is the term for a word that describes people from a certain place. Some are straightforward, but there are also plenty of surprises. Plus: you've heard of Four Corners, but did you know there's also a Tri-State Marker where you could stand in the states of Idaho, Wyoming and Utah all at once? Demonyms of the U.S. and Canada (Vivid Maps) My Fe...

Netflix is about to release a show based on The Baby-Sitters Club I used to re-shelve all the time at the public library where I worked. Here's the story of how the series came to life. Plus: if you could use a little beauty in your world right now, check out the photos of Trung Huy Pham, documenting Vietnam's annual water lily harvest.  Over 30 years ago, The Baby-Sitters Club made space for...

Today is Canada Day, marking the 1867 confederation of three provinces then known as Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. But Canada was only one name out of many that were suggested for the new country. Plus: this week got weird at several Canadian Tire stores, thanks to a computer glitch that made every item show up in the scanner as a Mr. Potato Head.  What Canada was ALMOST named (CBC K...

A team at UCLA has built technology into a glove that can recognize the hand movements from American Sign Language and translate those movements into spoken English in real time through a smartphone app. This may even get me to put down the Nintendo Power Glove (for a while). Plus: scientists in Australia say they can modify cotton to make its own color, without not-so-eco-friendly chemical dyes.&...

Back in 1978 the San Diego Chicken was winning huge numbers of fans - which is why Atlanta owner Ted Turner tried to coax the man inside the chicken suit, Ted Giannoulas, to move east. Plus: the Chicken is now in the Baseball Hall of Fame, but why is there also a San Diego Chicken head in the Gerald Ford Presidential Library in Grand Rapids, Michigan?  Profiles in Plumage: The San Diego Chick...