Cool Weird Awesome with Brady Carlson

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...

The busiest part of the year for travelers is coming, meaning that at airports, there will be a lot of people around to clonk into each other. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University may have a solution: a collision-detecting suitcase.  Plus: a brewery offered a keg party to anyone who could find their missing and/or stolen van. Didn't take long for someone to find it. Collision-Detecting S...

Two weeks ago, the staff at the Humane Society of San Diego had to figure out how to help a tortoise with a hole in its shell.  Veterinarians Daniel Barbour came up with a plan involving a trip to the hardware store. Plus: meet Ron Minis, a musician who figured out how to play the classic guitar solo from Guns 'N' Roses' "Sweet Child O'Mine" despite the fact that he doesn't play guitar,.&nbsp...

A group of researchers has been looking at the science behind digital pettiness - that’s like if you go out to eat with somebody and then use Paypal or Venmo to send them the exact amount of money to cover your order, down to the penny. Maybe this isn’t a surprise, but the research suggests that if you’re too particular about paying back the exact amount, it can take a toll on your friendships. Ma...

Today's the 50th anniversary of an overlooked but important visit to a fairly nasty place… the planet Venus.  The Venera 5 craft isn't well remembered, partly because it only got to do its atmospheric testing for an hour before the hellscape that is the second planet basically wrecked it, but it did teach us some important new things about Venus. In short: a nice planet, but you wouldn't want...

What’s in a name? That which we call a corpse flower by any other name would smell as bad. The Chicago Botanic Garden has issued a bloom watch for one of its corpse flowers - not humans' favorite scent ever, but still a special occasion, because a corpse flower in the wild only blooms every two to five years. Plus: a college library in Australia evacuates over a suspected gas leak, only to find so...

For this Taco Tuesday we salute the Washington State University researchers behind the latest in electric tongue technology. The virtual tongue system can better distinguish spiciness than human tongues - and for longer periods of time, too. Plus: a visit to Tio’s Tacos in Riverside, California, where the food is memorable, and the decor is unforgettable.  An electric tongue can handle more s...

Australians have been laughing, cursing, sighing and facepalming over a misspelled word on the newest printing of the Australian $50 dollar note. They left out an I in the word “responsibility,” and no one in the country is apparently missing the irony of misspelling that particular word and not catching it until 46 million of them had been sent out into the financial world.  Creating currenc...

It’s 150 years to the day that the presidents of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads drove a ceremonial golden spike into the first railroad line to cross North America. That's the big event of the weekend - oh, there's also a thing called Mother's Day? Okay, well for you all let's pay tribute to the Mom For A Minute Subreddit, which provides a virtual Reddit mom for you when your own...