The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Death by Trebuchet, Big Bird's Close Call, Dry Scooping Coffee

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

Shane Madej and Matt Real join the show from The Quizard's Pit! There's discussion of sending Big Bird to space (thank GOODNESS we didn't), a suspicious skeleton, and one writer who loved coffee a little too much. Check out The Quizard's Pit: https://www.youtube.com/@TheQuizardsPit The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tweet at us⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to learn more about all of our stories! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Links to Rachel's TikTok, Newsletter, Merch Store and More: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Rachel now has a Patreon, too! Follow her for exclusive bonus content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Link to Jess' Twitch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Link to all of Jess' content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.jesscapricorn.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ -- Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Jess Boddy: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Popular Science: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/PopSci⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Theme music by Billy Cadden: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Use code WEIRDEST at https://jonesroadbeauty.com to get a Free Gift with your first purchase! #JonesRoadBeauty #ad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dustin from Sacred Symbols here. Have you ever wondered what it actually feels like to have a better laptop like the Dell XPS powered by Intel Core? With its premium thin and light design, it feels smooth in your hands. The responsive touchscreen keeps things fast and precise for easy scrolling and swiping. And with long-lasting battery life, you get non-stop energy to keep working without constantly hunting for a charger. Built for those who want better.

The Dell XPS built for you. Dustin from Sacred Symbols here. Have you ever wondered what it actually feels like to have a better laptop like the Dell XPS powered by Intel Core? With its premium thin and light design, it feels smooth in your hands. The responsive touchscreen keeps things fast and precise for easy scrolling and swiping. And with long-lasting battery life, you get non-stop energy to keep working without constantly hunting for a charger.

Built for those who want better. The Dell XPS. built for you. Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com. At popular science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week.

And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts. that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of popular science. I'm Rachel Feltman. And I'm Matt Riel. And I'm Shane Badey.

Matt, Shane, welcome to the show. Matt, welcome back. Thank you. This is exciting. We didn't get the chat last time. Yeah, yeah. You came on when Jess was in the pilot seat. It was a great app,

but I'm very psyched to have you on now that I'm back. And now Shane is also here because you guys have an awesome new show that we want to hear all about. Oh, boy. We've gotten pretty good at explaining it now. Have we? I feel like. So, well, okay, so for people coming from Weirdest Thing, I would say that my impression of Quizzards Pet from the episodes I've gotten to enjoy so far is that it's kind of like Weirdest Thing meets Science Theater, maybe a little hello from the magic tavern in there. I don't know if that helps or you're like, Rachel, we hate that you think that's what the show is.

Please correct me. Those are our influences. You truly. Yeah, Quixis is pit. Every week we get sucked into a space dungeon by an evil wizard and we have to give three facts each between the two of us giving a six facts total before we get to go home. And that's just kind of the mystery science theater style wrappings. But it's essentially the same thing. except we're probably much stupider than anybody.

Well, first of all. People take us to tasks in the comments, you know. There's some pop history. We've peddled out that we're like, oh, we blew it. And then the Quizard turns the room red and yells at us. Oh, good. Yeah. We do pay for it.

We do pay for it. Yeah. See, on this show, the Quizard is just my own obsessive compulsive disorder ruminations. So honestly, I think it's. It sounds better to have a wizard that might, that might punish you. I think it's better. Well, guys, thank you so much for coming on the show. We're really psyched to hear some of the weird things that you've learned in trying to appease the wizard.

So let's dive right in. On the weirdest scandal this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact or story we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, etc. And decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first. Then once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we moved this week actually was, except we don't anymore because we don't have a wizard telling us what to do. We just kind of decide all the facts are good, and that's fine. Matt, since you've been on the show before, why don't you start with your tease? This week, I am going to be talking about the time Big Bird almost went to space. Oh.

Oh. I know a little bit about this. Oh, no. No, no. No? No. Okay. Okay. All right.

My to use is these bones are more than 700 years old. So why do they show all the signs of having been in a car crash? Aliens? No, but maybe. Shane, what's your tease? My tease is Balzax. really hardcore coffee tendencies. Well, that's the name of my favorite cafe in Bushwick.

Wow, great stuff today. I can't wait to get started. I never make guests go first, so that means I have to go first today. Oh, no, I hate sharing weird facts. Okay, so back in 1997, archaeologists were excavating some remains beneath the chapel of Sterling Castle in Scotland. Scotland. They found nine skeletons that based on radiocarbon dating were probably from around the 1300s. This made a lot of sense because there had been some sieging during that time, including one very notably violent incident in 1304 when King Edward I of England had captured Stirling

after a very long and intense siege. These remains, most of them, showed lots of injuries and cut marks. Some of them were soldiers. Others were, you know, more ambiguous may have been civilians, but seems pretty clear that these were people who were in the castle during one siege or another during this time of many sieges. The castle changed hands a few times, you know, during the years around this period. And the fact that they were buried inside also indicates that they were, you know, party to some sieging. It would have been way more typical to take them beyond the castle walls to bury them. So basically, you know, this meant that somebody was like, well, good thing that all of our floors are dirt and we can just dig a hole in a chapel and bury these folks. And, you know, among these people, including some strapping lads who showed signs of having been siege to death, you know, the kind of blunt force trauma and flashes you would expect from hand-to-hand combat sort of Highlander style, remains.

dubbed skeleton 150, they stood out as being in just absolute shambles, a complete wreck. This guy was not doing well other than the whole being dead thing. And so this was back in 1997. Fast forward to now when University of Bradford paleopathologist Joe Buckbury and her colleagues started to like literally try to piece together this absolute veritable jigsaw of a man. so now to give you like really how messed up this guy was he apparently they counted more than 160 fractures on his frame he was 5-5 that's my height i don't i don't know where i have room for 160 things to be broken i do know that we have we have a lot of bones in there but like many fractures on this man his skull alone was in 61 pieces his right yeah his right

They really blew this guy apart. Yeah. What happened? What happened? Yeah. Yeah. That is the big question, right? His upper right leg, like above the knee, basically shattered.

He also had really unusual fractures on his ribs. There were dozens of them, and the researchers described them as a zigzagging pattern. There was a very jagged, kind of zigzaggy break on his shoulder. So, you know, maybe a few decades ago, if we found a guy in this kind of shape, we'd be like, After he died, a wall fell on his bones. Right. I was going to say, like, are they for sure that these were pre-death or posthumous? Did they know when it happened?

So they did a ton of imaging on his remains and forensic analysis. And one of the things that they did look at was that the break patterns were when bones were fresh. So very likely that these breaks happened while he was alive. and certainly were not like, you know, did not happen to an old pile of bones that was already, you know, sitting somewhere with something collapsed. Fresh bones are full of stuff. Yeah. They're wet. They probably know these things.

When you break wet bones, they probably break differently. You think of bones as being dry, but when you're alive, they're relatively speaking, quite wet. So they're. Sopping. Yeah. Yeah, dripping. So they break very differently from when they're old and dried out. And so, yeah, they were like, we know that.

this certainly happened right around the time of death, if not before. They also, you know, in looking more closely at all these fractures, you know, doing all of this imaging, they ruled out stuff like, oh, he just fell from really high up. Like, no matter how slapstick your descent down a stairwell is, you're not going to end up with 160 fractures and a bunch of zigzagging breaks across your ribs. Still don't do that. Don't throw yourself down the stairs to find out. But like, we That's not what happened. Feels like you'd have to get sort of rolled over by a steamroller or put through a mangler. Kind of, yeah.

So they were looking at, you know, sort of historical records on various injury patterns. And they were like, it wasn't, we know what happens when you get trampled by a horse. We know what happens when a cart tramples you. This is not what it looks like. Excuse me. The injury pattern really looked like something very heavy had hit this guy very fast. slammed into the back of his head and his right shoulder, creating that zigzag break and shattering his skull, which thankfully probably killed him pretty instantly.

And then something slammed him into the ground and pinned him there, which would have explained all of the sort of additional weird fractures around his body. The only thing that that looked similar to in terms of injuries that have been studied extensively were victims of collisions with trains and cars. Yeah. Now, there were no bullet trains or tanks present at the siege of 1304. The History Channel may spin this off into something about how he actually got picked up by UFO that then changed its mind and dropped him back down. Yeah, you said it wasn't aliens, but I'm kind of, are you sure? The truth is, we can never really be sure.

And one stupid question, was the Incredible Hulk around at that time? Somebody was doodling him on the back of something. But yeah, so one thing that was definitely on the menu was the trebushie. Yeah. In fact, several master carpenters and dozens of workers had actually worked for weeks to assemble one of, if not the largest trebushes ever, for this very siege. It was called the Warwolf. It launched projectiles that weighed around 300 pounds from distances of more than 600 feet. And while I have not done the exact math, that will...

you up pretty good. I'm doing it now, yes. Yeah. Trebyshe, for listeners who don't know, it is similar to a catapult, but not exactly the same. The catapult is sort of the classic. You pull it back, it springs

forward. A trebicee, it basically looks like a seesaw. It's one of those simple machines, a fomulcrum, I think, if I'm remembering correctly. And so the short end has a counterweight that balances the long end, which has a projectile that's held inside a sling. So you drop the

counterweight, it makes the long end shoot up. And then, you know, separate from the wood going up, there's this long sling that gets really good air. And then the projectile shoots out of that. So you can send stuff really far. You can aim it pretty good for the fact that you're throwing a 300 pound rock. When I was in high school in my physics class, I think it was senior year. Our teacher asked us, it was a project to build, like, we had a group project where we had to build a trebice and it was supposed to be like three feet. Me and my friends in one of their garage has built like a 10-foot trebizade. Yeah.

Out of like real lumber. And we like rolled it to school in a pickup truck. And we called it the hand of God. Whoa. I love that. I've been watching this, there's this YouTube channel called How Ridiculous. And there are these three Australian men who... How ridiculous.

Three Australian men? They make these incredible... They're kind of like Mythbusters if... I guess if there's weirdest thing I learned is the MythBusters in Quizert's Pit. Or the How Ridiculous, I guess. There's nobody watching them or stopping them from doing crazy things. But they just made a whip, a trabusier whip. So it's essentially a big trebushe that has like a long, like, ships,

chain on the end of it. And they're really good at aiming it. They've been able to smack aerosol cans in half. But it is essentially just a big trebouche, and that thing goes crazy. If that hits you, you will be 160 fractures would be a good day. Yeah, I think so. I think you would be lucky to come away, so unscathed. The War Wolf was Edward the first.

like, you know, that was, the assignment was a three-foot trebushie and he showed up with the war wolf, basically. Because we know there were many siege engines, as they called them, you know, various catapult's trebushes already present at this ongoing siege. And he was like, we need to end this back and forth with first Stirling Castle once and for all, had a requisitioned a bunch of material, had it brought from all over. craftsman made this giant tribusche. And apparently it was ominous enough that the castle did surrender, like upon being shown the war wolf. But Edward I said, no thanks. I'm going to shoot you

with it. He had put too much work in. He wanted to demonstrate what the weapon could do. And when it hurled its payload through the castle's curtain wall, observers, because Edward like set up observers, who was like, ladies, here's a nice safe place to sit. And they said it was like watching an arrow shoot through a piece of cloth. And so, yeah, we know that this incredibly powerful trebicee was there and used once around when this guy died. It probably was not the trebicee that killed Skeleton 150. Like I said, there were several other less superlative siege engines that were being used repeatedly.

in the weeks leading up to this demonstration. Plus, someone did take the time to bury him, even, you know, weirdly inside. And things were probably pretty weird after the war wolf, like, literally blew the side of the castle down. So it seems like if they were burying people at all, they probably could have done it outside at that point because the seed was over. So it's kind of a coincidence that the werewolf was present. But it just kind of goes to show how influential trapechees were on, you know, this siege

and sieges during this time. And yeah, they weren't intended to target people. It would be like a very inefficient way of trying to kill your opponents. So this could actually be the first confirmed human casualty of a tribusé. It surely many people cumulatively over the years died when their castles got obliterated and maybe even directly were hit with a projection. like it seems like this guy was. But, you know, they may have then been buried under rubble that, you know, also provided a plausible explanation for their death. They may have had other battle wounds

that offered simpler explanations. This guy was unique in like how obvious it was that what killed him was being hit with an incredibly fast, incredibly large object in a way that simply was not part of standard operating procedure for life in 1304. I should say this study has not yet been peer-reviewed published in a journal. It was presented at a conference, but I have already seen a few experts who weren't involved in the study say it seems plausible. Like these people are not coming out of nowhere and saying something cookie. They have shown their work. It all lines up really well. I'm looking forward to, you know, seeing more about this as they actually publish the study and we, you know, see more of their work. But yeah, it just really, really boggles the mind.

mind to think about how they were hurling cars each other in 14th century Scotland. I don't know if Matt's brain went to the same place that mine did. But when you first started explaining this, I really thought it. And maybe they haven't done their due diligence on this and want to check this out. I was imagining a sort of ACME situation where the person. The whole time I was like, don't just don't invoke wily coyote. I was imagining a person being thrown by the trabusier at a wall and just is sort of splatting and shattering. It could be.

It could be. Which they, I'm sure they did at some point in history. You know, humans have a wicked tendency to them. I'm sure they tried that. I'm sure they tried it. It seems really inefficient. I have seen it in some Bollywood films, but I don't think. Okay.

I don't think it's based in any reality. Well, so one thing that is cool is that there are now folks who, like, do computer modeling to show how various trebushes would have worked. And so the thing is that, like, there is definitely someone who's tried that on the computer. Absolutely. World War Wolf versus 150 Kermits. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And actually, I was looking at it. one guy who does sort of computer modeling of historical trebyshays and apparently there's some contention about exactly what the war wolf looked like because there's sort of like two plausible designs that people have for it but it was clearly an unholy sight because the the scots were ready to to piece out after a long time of really really giving the English what for So, yeah. And all of this is circling back to, you know, the fact that this guy's injuries, if the history channel had gotten a hold of them first, would absolutely have been the linchpin for a documentary about aliens during this Egypt's college. Absolutely.

And let's not rule it out yet. Ratings are ratings. I had a thought about this that, and while you kept it, talking, I was like, yeah, this is exactly my thought about this. But it's interesting to hear that there have been, you know, there's one famous instance of, I shouldn't even say famous, but well-known instance of a doomsday device that was like, hey, I want this war to end. So I'm going to create kind of the most dangerous weapon in the world. And then everybody's being like, okay, that should be enough. And then, you know, someone being like, well, I'd like to use it

anyway. And so it's kind of horrific that, you know, it just speaks to man's, you know, inhumanity to be like, well, I'd really like to see what this is going to do. Yeah. Yeah. Well, at least with a trebushie, you know, one can imagine that they maybe told people to get out of the immediate trajectory of the Trebush. Yeah.

Yeah, maybe not. Again, it seems like he probably got hit by a lesser Trebushie. I can't imagine. I'd be so pissed if I was directly hit. What was the payload? Was it largely just like huge stones, I assume? Yeah, yeah. Big old rocks. And, you know, I imagine that there probably were some sort of like random scraps thrown at various points. I mean, if you just had like a big old chunk of wood from another broken trebuechet, you might launch it. But I think a lot of them were rocks. And yeah. So these were pieces These were not pieces of bone These were like Was the skeleton Or was the skull intact

With like However many would I'd say 60 something fractures in the head So he was He had been like deliberately buried So his remains were All together I mean probably

So that speaks to That speaks to the fact that it was all It was like kind of all still one package When yes Yeah Yeah He had his his wrapping was still on Yeah

Again, we're the dumbest people around. No, not at all. But yeah. I'll link to this on pottside.com slash weird, but there's, you know, some great sort of 3D reconstructions of, you know, his injuries. Because again, they're, they're so wild, full stop. But especially, like, if you don't have trabushes on the list of a list of possible explanations. You know, if you're just thinking, like, what in a castle did this to a man?

It's really like it really does seem like it must have been something supernatural and horrific history, man. An arrow flying through a piece of cloth. I know. Like the Holdo maneuver from Star Wars. Oh, wow. Thank you for invoking that. I think about it a lot. Yeah, me too.

Don't we all? All right. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with another fact. Dustin from Sacred Symbols here. When you're in the middle of a heavy recording session, editing a show, or just trying to get real work done on the go, and your laptop starts slowing down or burning up in your lap, it's the worst. So what does it actually feel like to switch over to a better laptop, like the Dell

XPS powered by Intel Core? For starters, it's built with a premium design that's incredibly thin and light, so it feels smooth, meaning far less weight on your shoulders when you're packing up for travel. you open it up and the responsive touchscreen makes scrolling, zooming, and swiping feel completely fast and precise. Everything just flows. Best of all, with its long-lasting

battery life, it feels like non-stop energy. You get a better way to work without being chained to a charger all day. Build for those who want better. The DellXPS, built for you. Dustin from Sacred Symbols here, you know when you're in the middle

of a heavy recording session, editing a show, or just trying to get real work done on the go and your laptop starts slowing down or burning up in your lap, it's the worst. So what does it actually feel like to switch over to a better laptop, like the Dell XPS powered by Intel Core? For starters, it's built with a premium design that's incredibly thin and light, so it feels smooth, meaning far less weight on your shoulders when you're packing up for travel. Then you open it up and the responsive touchscreen makes scrolling, zooming, and swiping feel completely fast and precise. Everything just flows. Best of all, with its long-lasting,

battery life, it feels like non-stop energy. You get a better way to work without being changed to a charger all day. Built for those who want better. The DellXPS built for you. Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. A fad to some, the future of money to others. We see crypto's trillion dollar swings. the end of jobs or the end of human struggle. We see the endless funds fueling the AI hype. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com.

Okay, we're back. And Matt, why don't we get into yours? Because I'm a little nervous about it. Okay, I understand why. I'm going to be talking about the time that Big Bird almost went to space. And would you like me to reveal the big reveal now, Rachel? so that it's not, you know, because I don't want to spend too much time on that part of it. Yeah, yeah.

I think maybe we can just get, we could just get that other way. Okay. Give them a little bit of context. Who is Big Bird? All right. So Jim Henson was a young boy. No, so, yeah, what I'm going to be talking about ended up being the Challenger mission, which we all know was, has had a pretty horrific.

And about 76 minutes, the seconds into the flight, it exploded. you know, unfortunately killing everybody involved. Those are, you know, real people, and I'm not making light of any of that. That does make this story a little bit more interesting, but that's not, you know, that's not the basis. The main thing I want to be talking about. Yeah, cool. Keep that in mind, I suppose, but it is, this story is fascinating without that. So in the 1980s, there was a confluence of two different successes happening at the time, both Sesame Street and NASA.

Obviously, we had gone and landed on the moon in 1969. I was a little afraid to not get that year right. I didn't write it down. But I remember it from the Even Stevens song. Yeah, I was going to say, I was like, I never forget it because of Eden Stevens. Isn't that so helpful? We need more of those. We need Even Stevens and Schoolhouse Rocking to get back on the, whoever can take up the mantle.

So, yeah, in the 1980s, NASA was developing this space flight participation program to send normal, everyday non-astronaut civilians to space. With the quote-unquote purpose of added, the purpose of adding to the public's understanding of space flight, because, I mean, it had only been 11 years when you landed on the moon. There were a lot of people going, how the heck could we do that? That seems impossible. but also, you know, all of these government programs need public interest. You know, everything lives and dies on how important the public finds this, you know, program to be, which is why go to your libraries. Get out the way right now.

Go to your libraries and utilize government-funded programs while we have them because they are not, you know, they're in danger. Yep. So they also wanted to do this to justify the massive amount of money that was spent by the space program. The according to this is according to planetary.org, but the United States spent, United States spent $25.8 billion of like modern money to get us to the moon and all, Project Apollo from 1960 to 1970. That's, sorry, $309 billion if you adjust it to inflation now. Wow. That's a lot of money.

And so they definitely were like, how in the world can we possibly make this seem like it was of use to the American public at large? Who, mind you in the 1980s, were worried about paying for gas. There was lots going on. So they were like, how do we get this? How do we get people interested in this? And the goal of this, the way that they decided to do this was let's send some celebrities to space. Which, you know, hey, look, we've done that now. And wasn't that worth the time?

So worth the time. Definitely made everyday people think it was... Feeling like... So for them. Asperational. That could be me. Me and Canada, you know, up and down for a second. So there is a short list of people, and you can actually find the short list of the people that they wanted to send to space.

And one Walter Leland Kronkite, the famous as a newscaster, they wanted to send him. He was on the list. interested as far as I know he seemed very interested. The biggest name that shows up on the list was Big Bird. And if you're not familiar with Big Bird, he's an 8 foot two bird from TV. A star of, I would say he's the star. Yeah.

Sesame Street. Elmo's maybe in the running, but probably Big Bird. Yeah, Elmo's kind of like... Almost but a boy. Elmo's the Spider-Man and Big Bird is Iron. You're right. Thank you. So they reached out to Carol Spinney, who was the creator of the originator of Big Bird, who played Big Bird at the time.

And I would encourage you to look up how Carol Spinney fit into that suit. I cannot believe he did it for so long because basically it's one arm above your head. at all times, reaching up fully extended, doing a mouth movement. Do you think his arm was stronger, or do you think his hand was sort of withered after all those years? Do you think it was like a little gollum claw? I don't know. Because there can't be a lot of blood going in there, right? I guess not.

Yeah, and I don't think that they're, I guess he could, no, he couldn't have swapped hands because Big Bird always had the right hand that was, there was kind of like a pulley system that moved one arm, you know, really ingenious. The puppets are crazy. As you know, Shane. Yeah, yeah. I do a lot of puppets. Neither here nor there.

Carol Spinney was reluctant, obviously, to go to space. They had just come up with this technology. They had only, and there are, you know, Apollo, I think 10 or 11. There's some failures in NASA's history prior to the launch. But he was reluctant, but understood. that it would very likely achieve the goal of getting kids more interested in STEM and space exploration, which I also find, think about that for a second. Obviously, the people who make Sesame Street are, you know, the children's education is very important to them.

Right. This is money where the mouth is, though, kind of. Because they're like, we're going to send you to space. How much do you really care about, you know, education for kids? me, I think it's important. They asked me to go to space. I'm not sure I'm going to do it. But he was like, you know what?

I guess I will. There were several months of trying to figure out how to send an 8 foot to space. Yeah, too tall to be an astronaut. Too tall to be. Yeah, I guess I don't really know what the height of astronauts typically are. Are they shorter? Yeah, there is definitely a limit. I know because my

husband is too tall to be an astronaut. 6-4. 6-4 is not for a limit. Whoa, Shane, you're out. Well, do I fit? Like, I am 6-4. I think you can be 6-4 and you can. And of course, that's the only thing standing in your way.

All right, that's settled. Congrats. You're an astronaut. Wow. But yeah. I really thought I had one edge on you one time this go. We're both going to space. Don't worry.

Oh, cool. You've got to space every week. Could they not? Yeah, you're right. I will say that I think the current height limit is mostly has to do with launch vehicles. So that might be changing now that we've got newer, fancier launch vehicles. But still, even once you're up there, there's a premium on space. I was going to say, they don't want you to be so tall.

Even though I technically fit. It's not going to be good. It's going to be like Delta, like a Delta flight. It would be like a Xenomorph up there. Could they not have. just sent the head of Big Bird up there and just have them like pop into frame and be like, it's so true. I don't think that that would have worked because you need the guy.

You need, you know, you know, you hear some weird alt version of Big Bird talking to kids. They're going to go, that's not Big Bird. Kids are pretty keen on stuff like that. And astronauts probably can't do voices. I guess, yeah, you're probably right. But I suppose they could have fashioned some way to send his voice up there. but I don't know. It doesn't seem like they thought about it for too long

because they ended up being like, what are we doing? Oh yeah, this is a really bad idea. This is, we're not going to send. It honestly did come down to space. It truly was just like, oh, we don't think that we can do that because where are we going to, not only, obviously, Carol Spinney is not in the big bird costume all of the time.

But it was about the storage for the big bird. They were like, this doesn't make. any sense. Frankly, it sounds like they maybe were spending a little too much time thinking about that. If that's a poor taste, you can cut that. Well, that's a great point. That is a good point. Rachel, I'll leave it to you whether we want to come down that road or not. They did not end up deciding to send Big Bird. There was an offshoot program known as teacher in space that they did follow through with. But unfortunately, as we noted earlier, the Challenger did explode 73 seconds into space, which has its own history of, I would say, worth looking into negligence

on the part of NASA. So there is a documentary where Spenny talked about this in 1986, quote, we took a break from filming to watch takeoff and we all saw the ship blow apart. The six astronauts and teacher all died and we just stood there crying. So that I can't even imagine. Obviously, you know, it's not worth the mental time to be like, well, that would have been wild for Carol Spinney to see because obviously the family of these astronauts and themselves were far more affected by this. Yeah.

A horrible disaster. But it does, I think, it is maybe worth a little bit of time to think about how awful that would have been for children to see if their favorite character was there. Yeah. I mean, that's the context in which I have heard this before is people being like you know we briefly we we nearly lived in a universe where

every child in America had been hyped up about Big Bird going to space oh my god yeah and then we had to explain to them why he exploded so I think it's good you know Sesame Street tackles some tough topics really well and I'm glad that this is not one that they had to tackle. Yeah, because as far as I know, and we, this is actually something that we spoke about on the Quizzards pit

that the Elmo's father, here's another bonus fact for you, which we love to invoke on Quixote's pit. The Elmo's father, Louis, was briefly in the National Guard. And he did get deployed. We don't know where. But

they said, you know, there was a whole, it was a direct-to-video special that they sent out specifically for children of military families to kind of explain to them what their parents were doing when they're gone. It's really, I watched it,

I watched that particular special and it affected me, my parents were both in the military, not deployed while I was a child, but it was just watching Elmo be like, well, well, you're not going to be at the games, the baseball games? So they do tackle a lot of really important, and this is the value of

Sesame Street. It speaks to both, you know, obviously how wild that would have been to happen, but it speaks to Sesame Street's commitment to, you know, children's education, helping children grow and learn. It's kind of really beautiful in a way when you think about it. But it is good that they didn't have to explain, you know, why Big Bird's not around anymore.

And he's still around. And he's still around. I don't know if they've ever, well, does, never mind. Oh, are you going to say him going, That was a close one or something. He's never acknowledged it. No, I don't think so. I don't know if they've ever...

Yeah, that's for the best. I don't know if any of the characters have ever passed on. No, I think they talked about the passing of a human character who did actually die. Oh, yes. But I don't think they've ever... Yeah, Mr. Hooper, yeah. But to my knowledge, they've never... The puppets get to live.

They only deal with death if they have to. Yeah, the most important work in the world, I think. what they're doing over there. Are they still doing it? Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, good. Yeah.

I know, I only know that they still exist because they keep having like Brett Goldstein come on and talk to, talk to Elmo. Oh, okay. What's he doing there? Cool. He just loves, they had him on once and now he keeps coming back. I wrote myself a movie with Jailo. I don't know how he talks. That was like not a bad impression.

Okay. Good. I like movies. He loves films. And he loves. Sesame Street. But yeah, because those clips keep coming up on my Instagram,

I am positive that they're still out there doing that good work. That's great. And yeah, you know, support PBS, guys, support public media. Are they on,

they're on HBO now, I think. Well, still support public media. Yeah, I mean, no, don't, I wasn't saying don't support PBS. Now more than ever, they don't have Sesame Street anymore. Yeah.

It's viewers like you. Yeah. Yeah. That's how they keep getting Brett Goldstein. No, he's a good guy. I don't know for free. We're going to take one more break, and then we'll be back with one more fact.

Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com. In Toronto, every arrival is a state. And nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025.

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I'm Siaia and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. Shane, all I remember is it has to do with coffee.

It has to do with coffee and it has to do with Balzac. And I, I, I, Balzok, Balz, have any of you ever read? It's a name that's hard to be normal about. I know, it really is. Have any of you ever read any of his stuff? I haven't. Okay, so. So he's known, he was alive in the, largely in the 1800s.

I think he's born at the tail end of the 1700s. French writer wrote the human comedy, which comprises like 90 different. works and it's just his sort of like thesis on on life in France from toe to tip you know as he experienced it considered one of the great works I've never read any of it but in the past few years I've been trying to be more intentional about like if I pick up a book I should finish it so I've been like scouting different old classics and I ran across him at one point and was like well I should read some of this but it seems very daunting so I haven't dipped my toes but he's seems like a very fascinating guy. So coffee, as it relates to him, Matt and I dug into this a little

bit on Quizert's Pit. Coffee is sort of this really interesting paradigm shift in the world when it becomes popularized, especially in like Western culture and Europe. When it showed up on the scene, people drank beer and wine all the time. And I don't know how you feel after. a beer. I'm 40 now. So when I have a beer, it makes me want to go to sleep right away. So they're drinking beer all day and trying to get stuff done and, you know, being real lazy and sleepy. Coffee hits the scene and it affects people's brains like a lightning bolt. They're like, this is crazy. Like, you can drink this stuff. You stay awake. You get ideas. A lot of people. That's the problem.

I did an episode a few weeks ago that was about basically the cocaine boom, like when Freud and all of his friends started researching cocaine. Really similar vibe. Just a little bit. The research showed we love it. Yeah. There was a boom in scientific research in general among people who were using cocaine and also writing about cocaine.

So you go back and look at the studies and they're all like, it's amazing how much science I could do with the help of cocaine. Well, Shane, can I one of the wild Yeah, yeah, yeah, expand upon. Was that coffee might have been the reason for the American Revolution as well as the French Revolution and many revolutions that happen around that time,

specifically because coffee houses not only were feeding the minds of these people, but they were gathering in a way that they hadn't before the Ottoman Empire kind of was like, yeah, coffee's great, and we all like to hang out and talk. So the governments were like, they're hanging out and talking.

This is not very good for us. And coffee became very patriotic. There's a letter from John Adams saying, we cannot be seen drinking tea. We have to be, you know, to his wife, we love tea. Look, we love tea, but we have to be drinking coffee. It's the only American drink.

You know, so it's, it really is quite magical. And I think what you're going to talk about is a little bit more about how great it is. Yeah, well, I mean, so Ballzac, a big, really, really into it. As I said, I don't know what his bibliography looks like beyond the human comedy, but the human comedy alone is, I think, 40-some novels and 90 works total. So he was clearly a very prolific writer. And part of that was that he loved coffee so much he would, I believe he would go to bed around 6 p.m. and then wake up in the middle of the night around like 1 a.m. and start drinking coffee and start writing,

and he would drink more coffee and drink more coffee. There are different sort of disputes about, you know, people dispute exactly how many cups he would drink. But the oft-repeated claim is that he would aim for about 50 cups a day and just, just go nuts. Sometimes he would just write through the night. He was really enamored with this stuff. Some of that, you know, it's like sometimes it's hard to exact,

know the veracity of these things and like how true these things are. But he has written about it specifically. He wrote like a little essay about how much he loves coffee. And eventually he got so hooked on the stuff that he stopped drinking it and started eating coffee grounds raw. Wow. Just dry scooping. going full just empty stomach straight coffee grounds and he has written i'll read this is a little long but i think you know he's a great writer so i think you'll appreciate this is his review of raw coffee grounds he said quote i have discovered a horrible rather brutal method that i recommend only to men of excessive vigor men with black hair on and skin covered with liver spots men with big

square hands and legs shaped like bowling pins. It is a question of using finely pulverized, dense coffee, cold, and anhydrous consumed on an empty stomach. This coffee falls into your stomach, a sack whose velvety interior is lined with tapestries of suckers and papillet. The coffee finds nothing else in the sack, and so it attacks these delicate and voluptuous linings. It acts like a food and demands digestive juices. It rings and twists the stomach. for these juices, appealing as a pythinesse appeals to her god. It brutalizes these beautiful stomach linings as a wagged master abuses ponies. The plexus becomes inflamed. Sparks shoot all the way up to the brain. From that moment on, everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick march into motion like battalions

of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in bright flags on high. cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop. The artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges on imagination's orders, sharpshooters, sight and fire, forms and shapes and characters rear up. The paper is spread with ink, for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water as a battle opens and concludes with black powder. He loved it. Wow. That, as someone who has done that and maybe is currently doing it with coffee, not eating it. I was going to say, you don't do the dry grounds on an empty stomach, I don't think.

Yeah, but maybe I should. Maybe I should try. I do like the nap from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. that's goaded. But I don't know if I need to eat coffee grounds. But the feeling of coffee on an empty stomach, just the drink itself is pretty miraculous. Not encouraging, I guess. Okay, it sounds like I love it. Wow. Yeah.

He really love that stuff. I think the sort of nice cap on this, now it's not confirmed, but he died relatively young at age 51 of I think he had congestive heart failure and gangrene, which sure. Yeah, those two together, I think not a good combo. but modern theorists believe he may have had a caffeine overdose which would really seal just a nice bookend there

to his whole caffeine journey. He went out doing what he loved. He did, just going crazy on that bean juice. I like the idea of him just pushing himself further and further sort of like flatliners, you know? He's just like, Oh, I wrote another novel during that. He doesn't even know.

He's just probably never intended. The nice part of that is that he seems keenly aware of how dangerous this is. Yeah. And he seems to be okay with it. You love it. I don't suggest this to a lot of people. It seems bad for you. You've got to be really careful with this bowling pin legs, he said.

I don't like the thought of that. handsome like bowling pins he likes like bowling pins but yeah just uh you know hey it fueled it fueled the enlightenment many people think and maybe I don't know it's probably for the best that people

weren't just going going raw on the stuff who knows where we'd be honestly we'd be in well we are in space we'd be in space again yeah more further further we'd be on Mars

he would have Like RIP Volzak, you would have loved the Panera Lemonade. Oh, my God. Yeah, we don't even tell you. You get the four local pre, like, man. Human comedy would be like 300 novels. And he'd have died at age 26. Well, guys, this has been great.

It's been so much fun having you both on. Would you remind our listeners what your show is called so they can go, you know, fall into an interdimensional rift with you and get tortured by facts. Yes, we call it getting sucked up. Every single week, it's Quizards Pit, Q-U-I-Z-A-R-D,

apostrophe S, P-I-T. And again, I do think that we were influenced by weirdest thing I learned. I remember telling Jess about this idea we were coming up and she was like, sounds a lot like weirdest thing. I was like, yeah, but what if

we didn't know anything at all? What if there's a crystal ball? in the middle of the room. Yeah. It's great. Honestly, I was just, I was recently talking to somebody about, you know, podcasts with video. And I was like, you know, yeah, like we pretty much all have to have video now. Like, we're just saying it's kind of grandfathered in not having video, but people expect it.

And we're watching some show that's not video forward. And then we're like, man, this adds nothing. Why do people insist on this? And I'm like, Quizzards Pit, excellent set design. Congratulations on actually making it nice to watch. Thank you. Not universal. Yeah, it's unfortunately kind of, that's our lot in life,

was we're going to kind of overdo it a little bit. And I think that we did have a show before, and the Quizzards Pit is a lesson, you know, a lot of lessons learned from other things. Like, why are we doing visuals on this at all? But occasionally we get into the trap of like not explaining what we're talking about. But it's not a very visual thing, but you have something to look at if you do want to.

You know. Yeah. It never hurts to have an orb. No, you know, that's what they say. We just can't touch it or else we'll get... We had one guest touch it and he did disappear. We don't know what happened to him. I'm pretty sure he's dead.

Yeah, we think he died. But yeah, yeah, if you like a little more joking than facts and a little... We do six as opposed to three, so we don't get to go as deep on them as weirdest thing I learned. But very... I would like to say sister shows. Yeah. a little too bold of me to say. No, yeah.

Sisters not twins. Well, thanks again, guys. This has been great. Thank you so much for having us. And may the Quizzards whim get you sucked up as well and you can join us over there. I would love to. We'll do it sometime.

Careful what you wish for. So do your place. The weirdest thing I learned this week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Fultman, along with Jess Bodie, who also serves as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Belloff. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at Weirdest underscore Thing.

Thanks for listening, Weirdos. Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. A fad to some, the future of money to others. We see crypto's trillion dollar swings, the end of jobs, or the end of human struggle. We see the endless funds fueling the AI hype. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com.