The What a Weird Week Podcast for Friday 27 January 2023: They ran a Santa Cookie through CODIS and the results are in, also that M&Ms thing has everybody taking sides and getting hungry!

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Hi, How Am You? 
It's been another week of weirdities© (copyright 2023 Weird Week Productions.)
We have ghost trains on fire, the Girl with the Megalodon Tooth (which sounds like a Swedish Crime Novel), and the best Cheese-Eating News you'll hear all day!
If you're new, we do a Weird-News-of-the-Week Top 10 Countdown every Friday and put all the links, videos, and photos in a show notes blog just like this one.  (https://www.scottyandtony.com/search/label/podcast)
You can Listen to the Episode Audio and Subscribe to the podcast!

new: trying out an enhanced episode with video...

Here are the show notes for Fri 27 Jan 2023, Season 4 Episode 17 ...
 
❿Ghost Train on Fire!

Notes:
- Last Friday first responders in southern Germany responded to a 'train-on-fire' call.
- Before they got to the scene, the burning train started rolling down the track!
- "With firefighters in hot pursuit, railway officials managed to switch the “ghost train” onto a side track..." (great line from the article!)
- They got the train stopped and the fire put out with no injuries.
 
smokin' ghost train (sounds like a hot sauce)

❾Rhode Island Girl Seeks DNA Evidence for Santa from Cookie...

Notes:
- A kid sent a partly eaten cookie to the police for DNA analysis. (Also some carrot sticks that had bite marks.) 
- In a statement last Friday, Police Chief Matthew Benson revealed details of the case...
- The girl's note said "I took a sample of a cookie and carrots that I left for Santa and the raindeer on Christmas Eve and I was wondering if you could take a sample of DNA and see if Santa is real?” 
- I watch Law and Order so, pretty sure they ran Santa's DNA through the CODIS Database.
- the results are in and ... Santa is not the father, no wait, wrong results...  
- They said they got a hit on some reindeer DNA from the carrots... but they couldn't confirm nor deny the prescence of Santa's DNA from the Christmas Cookie.
- Seems like a cover-up.

YEAHHHHHHHH!!

❽Have you heard of the Surfdale Sausager? Do You have the key piece of information that could Solve this Mystery?

Notes:
- For a year now, the good people of Waiheke Island have been receiving sausage rolls in the mailboxes (*article describes it as sausages wrapped in bread).
- Who is doing it and why are two questions that are not known and, according to the article, this mystery is tearing the community apart.
- (via Stuff article written by Virginia Fallon) 1st sausaging happened in Summer of 2022... the sausage in question was wrapped in buttered bread, covered in a red sauce, and was cold by the time the victim discovered it in his letterbox... it may have been barbecued... 
- it has happened the same way for a whole bunch of people in the community 
- btw, this area might be home to your favourite wine (https://www.waihekeunlimited.co.nz/waiheke/vineyards/)
- If you have information on this meaty mystery please get in touch with the article's author... virginia.fallon@stuff.co.nz

❼Another Weird thing on Mars...

Notes:
- all the other headlines were excited by the idea of a meteorite on Mars, but CNET's headline was ""Goofy Mars Rock Spotted by NASA Rover Might Be a Meteorite"".
- Finding meteorites on Mars makes researchers excited.
- it's only a 2 on the Weirdometer scale of weirdness but...
- the CNET story photo credit is worth a mention... this story is by Amanda Kooser and they have a photo of the meteorite with the story. There's a red circle around it so you know which rock is the meteorite. The photo credit is really small so you might miss it... Photo by NASA... ""red circle by Amanda Kooser/CNET"". Amanda Kooser is funny.

❻Triumphant Return of Wienerman!

Notes:
- Wienerman is a statue of a human/ hot dog hybrid pouring ketchup on himself.
- He lives at the Dairy Winkle restaurant in Campbells Creek, West Virginia.
- There was a break-in there and Wienerman was stolen a couple weeks ago... but investigators got a tip and recovered the Wienerman statue the other day!!

wearing bun or attached to it like a shell?

❺M&Ms talking candies are out and the hilarious Maya Rudlph is in...

Notes:
- icymi, the company that churns out M&Ms said they were retiring the talking candy cartoons because: too polarising? or something like that. So Maya Rudolph is now the candy spokesperson.
- every news org ran this story.
- This isn't news, right? Like, when I saw this on TV right after the war in Ukraine story, that was a little messed up, right? dgmw, M&Ms are delcious and it was nice to hear from them... it's just like... how did  their publicity department get this story picked up by every news broadcast in North America? And don't you think that it's maybe a Super Bowl commercial setup or something? 
- one newscast I saw this on literally said: ""Coming up, the war in Ukraine, will tanks be enough... but first, get ready to say goodbye to you're favourite spokescandy!"" 
- *late breaking development! A&W follows up the M&Ms announcement with one of their own about the A Dubz mascot getting pants for the first time. (https://globalnews.ca/news/9436035/aw-mms-pants-mascot-spokescandies-pants-bear/)

sorry Greenie

❹Possible Relief for Massachusetts School that could never turn off their lights...

Notes:
- Because of a computer error, they could never ever turn off the lights... day and night the shool was lit up like a Christmas tree.
- It's been lights-on for a year and a half!
-  Minnechaug Regional High School has their lighting on a server that failed (was supposed to save energy)... there were a few things that happened... original installer company had been bought and sold a bunch of times... supply chain issues for the broken parts... replacing the whole kaboodle was gonna be over a million dollars... but now they think they can replace the lighting panels and do a reboot at a cost of around $80,000. Supposed to happen in February. Fingers crossed you guys! 
- btw, they say their light bill is thousands every month because they can't turn them off... and it's been months and months and months of this...

future so bright

🏆Honorable Mention How big is the biggest Pizza Party EVER?
(I was surprised...)

Notes:
- They did the World's Biggest Pizza Party at the University of Tulsa. 
- this record took a thousand pizzas.
- it happened during a university basketball game. 
- in case you want to beat the record this is crucial... in order for it to be a real pizza party, everybody has to have two slices and finish a drink in 15 minutes. That's right from the rulemakers at GWR.
- They ended up with an official pizza party record of 3357 people.
- Raised $40,000 for Make-A-Wish Oklahoma.

pizza party (I've never been to one)

❸The Girl with the Megalodon Tooth!

Notes:
- Molly Sampson is 9 years old. She's from Maryland. Molly was looking for shark teeth over the holidays but instead, disappointingly, she found a 15 million year old magalodon tooth!
- She wants to be a paleontologist when she grows up.
- This got a lot of press, and every interview with her is like "How great are dinosaurs, right Molly!?" and then they end with "... and folks, she wants to grow up to be a paleontologist!" Knowing what tou want to be from age 9 is kind of fantastic. They should bring Molly in on that Oak Island project. She finds stuff.  


❷The biggest pizza in the world is HOW MANY SLICES?! 

Notes:
- There are a couple pizza Word Records in the feeds this week...
- Pizza Hut set the WR for biggest pizza the other day. 
- it was almost 14,000 square feet.
- They assembled the pizza on the floor at the LA Convention Center, then they cooked it in sections.
- it was 68,000 pieces.
- they were able to help out charities too.

❶Cheesy Weirdness from the mattress-testing world...

Notes:
- Sleep Junkie is a website that does mattress reviews. They are looking to pay successful candidates $1000 for a cheesy sleep study. You have to be willing to eat cheese before bed. They want to see if eating cheese before bed really gives you nightmares.
- My theory is that there's no way these candidates will have nightmares. They get free cheese and a thousand bucks? I'd be dreaming happy dreams of spending my thousand bucks... and dreaming about free cheese. 
- There's a bit more to it... they want to see if different cheese have different effects... maybe some Dairy Company will develop a delicious Night Cheese based on this research?!
- Deadline to apply is Feb 10. US only. No Lactose Intolerants. See link.

"The Cheese Dream" by Raphael (melted cheese on canvas)

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