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.
Episode 267 - The Japanese Balloon Bombs of World War II
Sure China is sending balloons to spy on the United States, but during WWII Japan sent thousands of balloons over the U.S. mainland to start fires and wreak havoc. There were some close calls, but one time they worked with horrific results.
Weird Bit 51 - Quick Cryptid Corner - The Kappa
Introducing Quick Cryptid Corner! - brief takes on unexplained creatures from across the globe. We start with the Kappa, a Japanese beast of lakes and rivers with a turtle shell, a water-filled dish that forms the top of its skull, and, some say, a taste for children who stray too close to its lair.
Episode 266 - Frank Olson, The Man Who Really Did Know Too Much
Frank Olson was there at the inception of MK Ultra. He worked hard at developing mind control drugs, but eventually something got in the way - a conscience. Olson tried to free himself from the awful world he had stumbled into. But "they" would not let him go...
Episode 265 - MK Ultra and the Quest for Mind Control Part 2
In Part 2 of the MK Ultra saga we work through the lowlights of the worst things researchers did in their quest for mind control. Finally, it would all come crashing down and eventually exposed, but is it possible we still don't know what we don't know?