Tulare Lake sits in the middle of California, larger than four Disney Worlds, covering some of the most fertile farmland in the world - and it wasn't there last year. Plus bonus coverage on the methane-spewing lakes of Alaska and the 1000 new lakes in Switzerland. Its lake week at Weird World!
Episode 284 - The Robbers' Cave Experiment - Good Kids Gone Bad
What might happen if you isolated a bunch of 11-year-old boys and set them against each other? Would it be roasting marshmallows and telling scary stories around a campfire? Or it would be Lord of the Flies? Or worse?
Episode 283 - 1904 St Louis and the Greatest Olympics Ever
There was foxy boxing. There was barrel jumping. There was tug of war. There was a super racist thing called "Anthropology Days." And there was a grueling, near-lethal marathon almost won by a guy who bummed a ride for half the race, and was won by a guy carried across the finish line while jacked up on strychnine. There was the 1904 St. Louis Olympics.
Episode 282 - Losing Your Mind Along With Your Pounds
Without an ounce of exaggeration you need to listen to this episode to save your life. Grapefruit, sexy pineapples, wine and eggs, hooves and horns, drinking only milk. Here are some of the craziest fad diets of the past and a few of the hottest today.
CONTENT WARNING - This episode is about fad diets and we discuss some very restrictive and dangerous diets which may make this episode one to skip for some people.
Episode 281 - Weird News Updates
Updates on some of our favorite weird news items - boat-smashing Iberian orcas are getting more aggressive every day, drug-loving animals, and new science that might indicate our favorite cryptid the thylacine hung around longer than thought.
Episode 280 - An Outrage in Silicon Valley Part 2
1933 San Jose was in an uproar over the kidnapping of favorite son Brooke Hart. All it would take was a spark. When that spark came, it woud lead to one of the most heinous acts in California history. (Part 2 of 2.)
Episode 279 - An Outrage in Silicon Valley Part 1
With the Great Depression in full force, Brooke Hart made an inviting target. Rich, young, and driving a flashy yellow converible. Nabbed in broad daylight, his kidnappers teased the family for a week before they were caught. What they had done brought the city to a bloodhthirsty boill. (Part 1 of 2.)
Episode 278 - The White River Monster
It may have been 12 feet long, it might have been 60, but it was big and it had no business being in the White River in Arkansas. Where did it go? Will it ever come back? And just what the hell was it?
Episode 277 - The Zanesville Slaughter
The state of Ohio didn't think it was any of their business how many and what kind of animals you could keep. One man in Zanesville thought he should have lions and tigers and bears at his ranch. That was never going to end well.
Weird Bit 53 - Is The Government Taking UFOs Seriously?
We wrap up our recent UFO episodes and then we talk about whether the U.S. government is finally seriously examining UFO phenomena.
Episode 276 - The Michigan Light Show: A (Possibly) True UFO Story
Did an armada of alien craft light up Lake Michigan in 1994? 300 people thought so. National Weather Service radar thought so. With no obvious explanation, this may be one of the best arguments for visitation in U.S. history.
Episode 275 - The Phoenix Lights: A UFO Flare Up
In 1997, the Valley of the Sun was set upon by an array of floating lights bright in the night sky. Was this the mother ship? And what was that giant five-light triangle soaring across northern Arizona just before the mysterious lights appeared above Phoenix? It didn't help that the airport and the Air Force said they had no idea what was going on.
Episode 274 - Weird News #5
We have stories - the psychics who saved a woman's daughter by taking millions of dollars worth of art and jewelry from her. Cocaine Cat and a $63,000 iPhone. A pine nut farmer who took an unexpeced balloon flight. And two cities in Mexico that haven't been hit by a hurricane for over half of a century because they have an alien base just off shore. Lucky.
Weird Bit 52 - Quick Cryptic Corner: Buru
If we had to pick one cryptid that has the best case for being an actual thing itmight be the buru. Did a 12+ foot aquatic lizard once inhabit a few isolated swampy valleys in India’s isolated northeast? That is a defnite maybe.
Episode 273 - Eadward Muybridge and the "Gift" of Sudden Genius
Imagine if a terrible accident turned you into an overnight genius. For those who experience Acquired Savant Syndrome (ASS, seriously) this "gift" can sometimes come with a cost. Also naked tennis. We'll explain.
Episode 272 - Big Flops and Drops - Part 2
Maybe even weirder than mega movie flops are prominent movies and television shows with major talent and money behind them that were literally buried. Two seasons of an animated Star Wars series? Never happened. Jerry Lewis playing a clown in a concentration camp? Nope. Dudes telling their guy friends they're gay? Okay, that one was probably a good call.
Episode 271 - Big Flops and Drops - Part 1
This is in episode about Heaven's Gate, but not the suicide cult. About Cats but not the animal, Sahara but not the desert, and Battleship but not the game. This is about the biggest movie flops ever, movies that rational people thought they should spend hundreds of millions of dollars on. That's weird, right?
Episode 270 - The Magical Mystery of the Placebo Effect
We are all familiar with the placebo effect - how medicinal mind over matter can make the pain go away. But the placebo effect might either be so much more - or a lot less - than we think.
Episode 269 - Beyond Dyatlov: The Korovina Mystery Deaths
What happened to the nine Dyatlov Pass hikers found dead in the Russian wilderness in 1959 is a classic mystery. But 20 years later what killed five hikers in the Ural Mountains is stranger still since one of them lived and we still don't know what happened.
Episode 268 - Weird News 4
More weird news - anthropology edition! In this edition we bring you skulls washing ashore in Florida, ancient amputations, Polish vampires, a six-inch "alien" skeleton from Chile, and the intriguing possibility that the so-called Hobbit hominid may still be roaming the forested mountains of the island of Flores in Indonesia.