Cool Weird Awesome with Brady Carlson

Today marks 30 years since the first episode of “The Simpsons” aired, and so we pay tribute to the house Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie call home - not to mention a real-life, 3D version of the place in Nevada. Plus: the closest real-life town to Springfield, USA isn't a Springfield at all.  Duff beers, colorful walls and THAT saggy couch: Inside the real-life Simpsons house that was bui...

Fruitcake is one holiday tradition that's not for everybody, we know that, but those who love it, love it - like the Ford family in Michigan, which has kept a single fruitcake as an heirloom for over 140 years. Plus: if fruitcake is so infamous, why are there two towns that want to be known as the fruitcake capital of the world?  For Tecumseh family, 141-year-old fruitcake represents love (De...

TubaChristmas is an annual concert tradition in which musicians gather to play festive music exclusively on tubas, baritone horns, sousaphones and and euphoniums. We'll explain how Christmas got so tuba-ey. Plus: Stan Freese got so into his tuba that he decorated the tree in his yard with the horns.  For a shining moment a year, tubas get spotlight (New York Times)   About TubaChristmas...

Many communities put down road salt in winter. It can make the roads safer, but too much salt is bad for the environment and for the roads themselves. Scientists at Washington State University may have found a better way to take the ice off the roads: grapes. Plus: meet the creepiest instrument ever, a baby doll head theremin!  Sustaining roads with grape and agricultural waste (Washington St...

Today marks one hundred years since the community of Enterprise, Alabama, put up a very special monument in the middle of town: a statue of a Greek woman holding a boll weevil, an invasive pest that had ruined the local cotton crop. Wait, what? Plus: meet the most destructive holiday force ever, Treezilla!  Boll Weevil Honored (Library of Congress) Treezilla! The Godzilla Christmas Tree (Stev...

If you want a good party, you need the right soundtrack: researchers set up underwater loudspeakers in dead sections of the Great Barrier Reef, and playing sounds of healthy reefs attracted twice as many fish as areas where there was no sound. Plus: Pocatello, Idaho will give you something to smile about today. It's the law there.  Underwater Loudspeakers Make Fish Flock to Dead Coral in Radi...

There are tens of thousands of pieces of space debris orbiting the Earth. We've tried a few different ways to bring them back down over the years. Plus: in Huddleston, Virginia, a giant hay sculpture of a country music legend. Meet Will-hay Nelson!  ESA commissions world’s first space debris removal (European Space Agency) To Clean Up Space Junk, Some People Grabbed a Net and Harpoon (Wired)...

Today in 1877 the Washington Post published its first edition. It brought us landmark coverage of Watergate, and John Philip Sousa named a march for it. But the Post's biggest achievement is helping to create the teddy bear. Plus: this weekend in Ashland, Nebraska, Santa Goes To Space!  Political Cartoonist Clifford K. Berryman and the Origin of the Teddy Bear (Theodore Roosevelt Center) Sant...

The chessboard known as Square Off works if your opponent is nearby or not, because it can use Bluetooth technology to move the pieces for them on your board, and your pieces on theirs. Ron Weasley would be impressed. Plus: you haven't heard "Jingle Bells" until you've heard "Jingle Bells" played on a comb. World’s Smartest Chess Board Lets You Move Physical Pieces Without Touching Them (Oddity Ce...

There's a new medical startup called Cast 21, and, as startups do, they’re looking to disrupt those traditional plaster cast paradigms and make a cast so flexible that wearers could even go swimming. Plus: for National Cookie Day, we pay a virtual visit to the National Cookie Cutter HIstorical Museum in Joplin, Missouri.  Waterproof cast lets patients swim with broken bones (Yahoo Sports) &nb...

It was 48 years ago today that kids first got to play the video game Oregon Trail - the invention of three student teachers from Minnesota who ended up changing video game history without realizing it. Plus: a hospital in San Antonio, Texas marks the holiday season by sending all its December newborns home in red and white hats… and stockings! Oregon Trail: How three Minnesotans forged its path (C...

It was the giveaway to end all giveaways - 70 years ago almost to the day, a store in Oregon advertised a drawing for a baby. How the heck did this actually happen? Plus: it's December and a good way to enjoy the season is a little thing called ice bumper cars.  Free baby? 70 years ago Fred Meyer had a strange giveaway for a store opening (KGW) Toilet seats, gall bladders and eight of the wei...

In 1953 Swanson had several hundred tons of leftover Thanksgiving turkey  - so they created the TV Dinner and changed how we eat. Plus: the 40th annual Holiday Cave Sing is this weekend at Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.  The Rise and Fall of the TV Dinner (Cheddar on YouTube) Mammoth Cave hosts 40th annual holiday cave sing Dec. 1  (WDRB) If you want to sing out, sing out, and if you wan...

This holiday edition of Cool Weird Awesome celebrates that for which we are all most grateful: the bewildering foods that inexplicably become part of our annual Thanksgiving dinners, from "seafoam salad" to "tunies" to hot dog chunks warmed up in pizza sauce. Plus: holiday lights are coming, and "Peteyville" in Hammond, Indiana is one of the best and brightest displays you'll find.  i cannot...

Maker and woodworker Tim Sway built a guitar out of reclaimed nails - which he calls the "Tetanuscaster." Plus: the It's A Wonderful Life Festival is in full swing in Jimmy Stewart's hometown!  Guitar Made of Nails (Tim Sway on YouTube) So Metal: An Electric Guitar Made Out Of Reclaimed Nails (Geekologie) It’s A Wonderful Life Festival  

Researchers at Penn State University have created liquid-entrenched smooth surface, or LESS. Why? To coat our toilets. Why? So stuff can't stick to them. Why? To save water, which we use by the tens of billions of gallons each day just to re-flush that stuck stuff. Why? Because life is unfair sometimes. Plus: Twitter minus words, videos, pictures and links is a pretty amazing thing, judging by the...

The busiest travel season of the year is getting underway, so here's a story 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 pulls over banana car, gives dr...

Some research suggests those plastic tops for disposable coffee cups make up five percent of the millions of tons of plastic waste that end up in the ocean each year. The Unocup aims to do something about that. It's a paper cup that folds up to become its own top! Plus: there's goat yoga and alpaca yoga, but Zoo Miami may top them all with its new Yoga With The Rhinos program. The coffee cup gets...

The nefarious filbertworm is trying to infest our hazelnut supply! Researchers at the University of Oregon think the solution might lie with pigs. Plus: the Ebo is a little ball-shaped robot that will play with your cat when you're not home.  Biology Major Recruits Hogs to Help Hazelnuts (University of Oregon) This Smart Robot Is Designed to Keep Your Cat Happy and Healthy While You’re Gone (...

This week marks 50 years since the Apollo 12 mission, the second time humans went to the moon and the first time we launched an artificial earthquake there. Plus: one of the two moonwalkers painted a picture that included their command module pilot on the lunar ground.  Crash Site Of The Apollo 12 Ascent Module Possibly Found After Almost 50 Years (Bad Astronomy)  Conrad, Gordon and Bean...

Today is the 60th anniversary of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, so in their honor, here's a real life moose who inadvertently helped foil a crime. Plus: a woman in Sacramento puts out a public call for her missing domesticated squirrel, Squeakers. Wandering moose stolen vehicle (CBC) ‘I just need my baby’: Sacramento woman offers reward for missing squirrel, Squeakers (Sacramento Bee) All alumn...

November 18, 1883 is when railroads across the United States adopted a uniform system of time, more or less getting all of us in sync with each other. But what was time like before then? Plus: Japan has had cat cafes, hedgehog cafes and bunny cafes. Now there's a minipig cafe!  Time! (Library of Congress) Standard Time Zones In U.S. Mark 100 Years (New York Times)   The Adoption of Stand...

Underwater photos are usually greenish or blueish and the brighter colors are washed out. An engineer and oceanographer has come up with an algorithm she calls Sea-thru that can bring those colors back into the image. Plus: the Las Vegas Pizza Festival is about to get underway.  Sea-thru Brings Clarity to Underwater Photos (Scientific American) Las Vegas Pizza Festival Brighten your day when...

Who knew the Twilight Zone was a dimension not only of sight and sound but of canned laughter?!? The episode "Cavender is Coming" features Jesse White, Carol Burnett, and a laugh track the network thought might help lead to a spinoff series. (It didn't.) Plus: anybody want to fly in an airplane where the whole interior looks like a giant window?  Dimensions Behind the Twilight Zone: A Backsta...

Stella the dog lives with a speech-language pathologist and has been using a soundboard to "say" several dozen words, raising hopes that someday the show "Dog With A Blog" may come to life. Plus: Quilty the cat likes to spend his nights freeing the other cats at the animal shelter.  A speech pathologist taught her dog Stella to 'speak' (CNN) Sly Escape Artist Shelter Cat 'Quilty' Who Will Not...