Cool Weird Awesome with Brady Carlson

Today is #BourdainDay, where we celebrate Anthony Bourdain's enthusiasm for traveling, eating, learning and especially for going off the beaten path to really get to know people and recipes and places. In that spirit, we talk about food trucks with personalities big enough to match their culinary skills. Plus: a team at Delta Airlines made a barbecue grill into the side of a jet engine. Now that's...

The Curiosity Rover takes selfies on Mars - so how does it do it without having its robot arm in the foreground of every shot? Plus: the University of St. Andrews teaches grey seals to sing the "Star Wars" theme. For research. Why Don’t We See the Curiosity Rover’s Arm When it Takes a Selfie? (Universe Today) Curiosity Rover Report (June 13, 2013): Curiosity's Cameras (NASA on YouTube)  Grey...

Earlier this month a prototype mower in Germany set a new world record by going from zero to 100 miles an hour in 6.29 seconds… while still cutting grass! Not bad for an invention that's not even 200 years old. Plus: this weekend is the grand finale of the annual Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Contest in New York City, which is... exactly what its name suggests. Lawnmower sets acceleration speed recor...

Bycatch is what fishing boats catch that they're not trying to catch. It's bad for them, their nets and the bycatch - especially for turtles, which are difficult to disentangle from gillnets. But new research suggests illuminating nets with LED lights may warn turtles away and reduce bycatch. Plus:  the floating ball challenge is a sight to behold: a boxer keeping a 20 pound medicine ball flo...

Juneteenth is the annual celebration of the end of the institution of slavery. Today we give some props to the African-Americans who have built the holiday over the year, including the Texan-turned-San Franciscan who used to don his ten-gallon hat and ride his horse through town as part of the festivities. Plus: if you like celebrations, why not try the Midnight Sun Festival in Nome, Alaska? It's...

Guitar great Peter Frampton starts his farewell concert tour, which means if you want to hear him use that famous voice box in “Do You Feel Like We Do," now's the time to do it. How does that talk box work, anyway? Plus: meet Ahmed Ali, a graduation speaker in Minneapolis with a very unique voice.  How Talk Boxes Work (HowStuffWorks) Retro Guitar Effects: Meet the Sonovox, Grandfather of the...

The  University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology - known better as the Penn Museum - needed to move its most famous object, a 3,000 year old Egyptian sphinx, from a gallery to the main hall as part of a renovation project. The move was only 300 feet - but the sphinx happens to weigh 12.5 tons - so it took three days to get from point A to point B. Plus: a regional minist...

Sorry, Simpsons fans: the world's greatest burper is neither "The Critic" Jay Sherman nor Eudora Welty, but an Italian guy in a wrestling mask who calls himself Rutt Mysterio. Plus: for Father's Day weekend, the story of the only time in big league history when father and son hit back-to-back home runs. Longest burp (Guinness World Records)  This undisputed burping master will blow your mind...

The Songwriters Hall of Fame is inducting Yusuf Cat Stevens for his classic, mostly acoustic songs like "Moonshadow," "Peace Train" and "Wild World." But did you also know that Yusuf Cat Stevens was a pioneer in electronic music with his 1977 song "Was Dog A Doughnut?" Plus: Avon, Ohio, the Duct Tape Capital of the World, is kicking off this year's Avon Heritage Duct Tape Festival today.  Key...

Autonomous robot boats are a thing! Over time, researchers have taught them to row themselves gently down the stream and to connect to each other autonomously - soon they could help clean the water or even turn themselves into temporary footbridges. Plus: a band in Mexico knew just what to do when the mall they were playing in started to flood. Celine would have been proud.  Autonomous boats...

We may be taking a big step forward in the effort to stop food waste!  A research team at Imperial College London has developed food freshness sensors that can be embedded in the packaging of meat and fish and detect the gases that show up when food spoils. Plus: if you like sensors, check out the  2019 Sensors Expo and Conference later this month in San Jose, California. It's even got a...

Last week Southern California saw a bloom of ladybugs so big it showed up on radar! As it turns out, there's a whole field of science called aeroecology that's using our increasingly accurate radar to track insects, birds and bats. Plus: ladybugs have had a lot of names over the years, including - for whatever reason - bishops!  High-flying ladybug swarm shows up on National Weather Service r...

Today is the start of the Banana Split Festival in Wilmington, Ohio, where the banana split was born. Of course, if you were in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, locals would point out their town had banana splits three years before Wilmington. Plus: the mind-melting TV show known as the Banana Splits Adventure Hour was actually supposed to have an entirely different name! Wilmington Banana Split Festival &n...

Researchers at Washington State University say they’ve found a way to make jet fuel out of something the world throws out in great quantities every day: household plastic. Plus:  something you might want to fly overseas and check out is the new Easy-E memorial bench that for some reason is in Newhaven, in southern England.  Plastic water bottles may one day fly people cross-country (Wash...

Storm damage isn't cool, weird or awesome, but the ways we spot storms and warn people about them are pretty great. And they've come a long way from the time when the US Army Signal Corps banned anyone from using the word “tornado” in forecasts so as not to scare the public! Plus: the story of an engagement between two storm chasers that will literally blow you away. Illinois Tornadoes Prior to 19...

Attractions - especially weird ones - are a time-honored way to drum up business from people who are at best casual baseball fans, and lately that's extended to team names, including the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, the Vermont Lake Monsters, the Binghamton Rumble Ponies and the Rocket City Trash Pandas.  Plus: the tale of Peter Williams, who in 1972 won the Wisconsin state long jump championsh...

A project to build a clock that will run for 10,000 years got us thinking about how we measure time - and amazingly, 10,000 years is more time than has passed since the invention of hours, minutes and seconds. Plus: a quick look at the shortest official measurement in science,  which is so short that, ironically, there isn't enough time to try to explain it on our show.  Objects of Despa...

It's the 200th birthday of Walt Whitman, the poet best known for his landmark work Leaves of Grass... and the guy who anonymously wrote glowing reviews of his own writing in the newspapers of the day.  Plus: Plymouth, North Carolina is hosting the North Carolina Black Bear Festival, which makes sense because the city bills itself as the originator of National Black Bear Day.  "Walt Whitm...

We’re on the eve of this year’s biggest event in Fruita, Colorado - the Mike the Headless Chicken Festival, where people all gather to celebrate the miracle chicken who had his head chopped off, and carried on as if nothing had changed. Plus: residents of New York are gearing up for quite a show. Manhattanhenge is (weather permitting) happening today, with the sun perfectly positioned within the c...

Today’s show is about a series of earthquake aftershocks in the Hebgen Lake area of Yellowstone National Park measured in 2017 and 2018.  That’s not in and of itself unusual, except that the original earthquake happened in August of 1959. Plus: a dude repairs and cleans a vintage synthesizer and accidentally gets dosed with the leftover LSD residue from a half century before.  Aftershock...

As much as we all like to consider ourselves straight talkers, we all use certain euphemisms when we’ve done something we wished we hadn’t.  Scientists are particularly good at this because they can envelop a faux pas in layers and layers of academic journal language - the phrase “unplanned rapid disassembly," for example, is a formal way to say “accidentally exploded." Plus: Canadian astrona...

Officially, the community that started Memorial Day is Waterloo, New York - in May 1866, the community spent the entire day honoring those killed in the Civil War by placing wreaths and flowers at their graves, then holding a parade, giving speeches and flying flags at half staff.  But Waterloo is definitely not the only place with a Memorial Day origin story. How Waterloo, NY, became the bir...

There’s nothing more fashionable than the jumpsuit - right? Right? Anyway, it was a century ago that the Italian artist Thayaht proposed a one-piece garment with buttons down the front as the next big thing in fashion. The jumpsuit hasn't quite become as universal as he hoped, but it _is_ the only outfit that connects  Rosie the Riveter, Evel Knievel, Amelia Earhart, David Bowie and the cast...

 May is Asian/Pacific-American Heritage Month, and a great time to talk about two exciting, important and sometimes underappreciated Asian-American performers. The dance team of Jew Wing Dong and Dorothy Takahashi, known professionally in their heyday as Toy and Wing. were often compared to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers for their electrifying performances on stage and screen. Plus:  The...

 And now, a look at a study that’s the kind of research Batman would do if he were an academic instead of a crimefighter: a scientific study of virtual burglary.  By watching how burglars burgle, we might learn the difference between how most of us think burglars work and how they actually work - and then take steps that will stop more burglaries before they start. Plus: the state of Mic...