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skateboarding cats and speeding wheelbarrows. What a weird week!

Hi friends, I'm Scott and this is What a Weird Week, a show about the weird stuff from this week's news. If you want a transcript or stuff to subscribe to our podcast, all the links that we talk about, you can get everything at shownotes.page. Shownotes.page. This is season five, episode 24, first published Friday, June 14th, 2024.

❿ I'm calling this one Fast Times in Barrowville. When they make the movie.

Dylan Phillips, a British mechanic, broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest wheelbarrow. Record speed was over 52 miles per hour. He built the wheelbarrow just for fun at first and then found out there was actually a world record. If he could make his wheelbarrow go really fast, he set the record in Yorkshire, United Kingdom. Apparently, one of the worst forms of transportation is a fast wheelbarrow because according to Dylan, no suspension. It's a rough ride. and also a little bit terrifying. But imagine how fast you could get all your yard work done if your wheelbarrow went 50 miles per hour. So far not available commercially.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9961lg6l1o

❾ elephant names are in the news. Researchers think that elephants in the wild have names and call each other by their names. Not a lot of animals do that. How do they know elephants are actually doing it? Short answer is they're experts.

That would be me paraphrasing the short answer on that one. Longer answer is they studied hundreds of sounds made by mom elephants and their elephant children over the decades. And it seems as though mom was using a certain sound to talk to each elephant kid. That's me paraphrasing a scientific article. It also seems like those elephant children recognize their unique sound or name because they could record some of these sounds and the kid would be like, what?

Who said my name when they played the sound back? Again, that's me paraphrasing. That wasn't an actual... In case you thought I was playing the actual audio from the field. No, that was it was me saying who's calling my name. It was me portraying the elephant, you guys. All right, we're off to a hot start.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/06/12/call-me-by-my-name-elephants-low-rumbles-could-be-unique-to-one-another-research-reveals

Up next is a dinosaur discovery. A big old hailstone, maybe a record breaking hailstone. It's a biggie.

This is What a Weird Week, a show about the weird stuff from the news.

❽ A driver... No, he wasn't driving. He was diving. Sorry. We'll keep that in. Let's just- We're on a deadline here, you guys. A diver discovered a rare mastodon tusk off the coast of Florida. The diver's name is Alex. First, he thought it was wood, just a big old chunk of wood. But upon closer inspection, a much rarer find than a chunk of wood.

A mastodon tusk measuring four feet long, 70 pounds. Now Alex is a fossil hunter. He goes diving and looking for fossils. He's found some before, but this is rare and big and becomes now this tusk becomes the property of the state of Florida. I believe we'll go to the Florida Museum of Natural History is where this tusk will end up. Well done, Alex, rare find and so much better than a chunk of wood.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/mastodon-tusk-fossil-hunting-diver-florida-b2561733.html

❼ A giant hailstone is in the news. This is in Texas. A couple of storm chasers, Val and Amy, were chasing a storm and they found a hailstone nearly 18 cm in diameter. That's about 7 inches. That's well, they describe it as the size of a pineapple. Hailstone the size of a pineapple. Imagine if you're caught in a storm and it is hailing pineapples down on you. A couple of things. The article doesn't mention if it tasted like pineapple, which... (CHARACTER LIMIT) for full shownotes to this episode see https://www.scottyandtony.com/2024/06/what-weird-week-ten-weird-things-that.html

or www.shownotes.page