Cool Weird Awesome With Brady Carlson

It's National Rollercoaster Day, and while there have probably been thrill rides since humans first figured out the concept of ramps, the roller coaster as we know it has a direct ancestor that dates back to 15th century Russia. Plus: a RollerCoaster Tycoon player devises the longest, most diabolical virtual coaster of all time.  From Death Traps to Disneyland: The 600-Year History of the Roller Coaster (Popular Mechanics)  Ups and downs: The history of roller coasters (USA Today) Crazy Roller Coasters (Travel Channel) RollerCoaster Tycoon Ride From Hell Lasts 12 Years (Kotaku)  Steer Cool Weird Awesome through the ups and downs of podcasting - back us on Patreon today!  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

Richie Havens wasn't supposed to be the first act at the Woodstock festival, which started 50 years ago today. But like so much of Woodstock, what was supposed to happen was very different than what actually took place. Oh, also, there were cows there!  Woodstock Remembered: Richie Havens on Opening the Fest of ‘People Just Being People’   Don't take the brown acid. DO back Cool Weird Awesome on Twitter. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

It’s the 100th anniversary of a time that roosters built a bridge. Ok, not literally, but an auction of roosters donated by the most prominent people in the world helped raise the money needed for a bridge over the Tombigbee River in western Alabama, a span known as Rooster Bridge. Plus: it's day one of the Telluride Mushroom Festival in Colorado! The Rooster Bridge: How one man’s vision paved the way (West Alabama Watchman)  The Rooster Bridge Historical Marker at the US Hwy 80/Tombigbee River Bridge (Rural SW Alabama) Telluride Mushroom Festival You don't need to auction a rooster to make Cool Weird Awesome, just back us on Patreon! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

The online plant store Patch is offering to take care of the house plants for you while you’re on holiday, in what it’s calling the world’s first plant hotel. Plus: meet the  Social Escape Dress, which tracks your stress and activates built-in fog machines if the moment gets to be too much for the wearer.  Hotel for plants takes care of your greenery while you're gone (CNet)  Urban Armor #7: The Social Escape Dress (Kathleen McDermott)  Back Cool Weird Awesome wherever you go through Patreon! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

When a cougar started walking toward her on a logging trail in British Columbia, Dee Gallant used the power of rock to protect herself. Plus:  in a move that might make heavy metal even heavier, guitarist Takamizawa Toshihiko designs a guitar shaped like Godzilla. Metallica responds to B.C. woman who fended off wild cougar with the band’s music (GlobalNews.ca) A Very Resourceful Woman Scared Off a Cougar by Blasting Metallica (Noisey) This Limited-Edition Godzilla is a Monster of a Guitar (Guitar World) Ride the lightning when you back Cool Weird Awesome on Patreon! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

Elvis Week is getting underway in Memphis, Tennessee, and while I can't be there, I can still celebrate, because my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin is where the King once broke up a fight at a gas station in the middle of the night. Plus: Hastings, Nebraska is kicking off the annual Kool-Aid Days.  About Elvis Week (Graceland)  Neglected marker shows where Elvis Presley in a karate stance stopped a fight in Madison in 1977 (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) Kool-Aid Days (Visit Nebraska)  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

It's day one of the Iowa State Fair, and what would that fair be without its centerpiece - the butter cow! The most bovine of butter sculptures made its debut in 1911, but the long and interesting history of butter-based art goes back even further. Plus:  Minnesotans are heading to the community of Darwin this weekend to celebrate the Biggest Ball of Twine.  The surprisingly lofty history of American butter sculpting (The Takeout)  This Year's Ohio State Fair Butter Sculpture Pays Tribute to 50th Anniversary of Moon Landing (Cleveland Scene)  Twine Ball Day in Darwin, MN (Explore Minnesota)   Help create the biggest ball of backers for Cool Weird Awesome on Patreon!  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

Later this month tens of thousands of people will head to Buñol, Spain for La Tomatina, otherwise known as the world’s largest tomato throwing festival.  Also, today is day one of the World Yo Yo Contest in Cleveland, Ohio.  But most of all, it's Cool Weird Awesome's 100th episode! Thanks for listening and supporting the show!  Tomatina History (Tomatina.es)  World Yo Yo Contest   Make the next 100 episodes of Cool Weird Awesome happen as a backer on Patreon! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

If you were a royal back several hundred years ago, this might be a time when you’d pack up and leave the castle for one of your other castles. This wasn't just because that’s what you do when you’re wealthy; it was because the castle staff needed everyone out so they could clean out all the filth!  Plus: to balance out all the dirty stuff, let's hear about how companies are launching just-add-water cleaning products.   Naked Cooks, Excrement, Rats: The Secretly Disgusting History of Royal Palaces (History.com)  Could just-add-water products save us? (Vox) You can feel like a queen or a king when you back Cool Weird Awesome on Patreon! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

It was a hard, hard weekend - so we thought it would be a good day to just take the few minutes we share together and have a little fun, before we have to go back out into the world. So here's an Instagram account called Homesickdotcom, which shares photos of the hilarious letters kids at camp send their parents when they maybe don’t want to be at camp. Plus: two brothers on their way to the Twins Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio, have a very twinny experience with the State Patrol.   homesickdotcom (Instagram) This Instagram Account Full Of Kids' Homesick Letters From Camp Is Hilariously Real (Buzzfeed) Twins pulled over by OSHP for nearly identical license plates (Fox 8 Cleveland) Dear Parents, camp would be better if you backed Cool Weird Awesome on Patreon --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

There’s a new cafe in the Indian city of Ambikapur known as a "garbage cafe." It aims to help very poor people by offering them meals and/or shelter in exchange for the trash they often pick up and try to sell - and it uses the reclaimed plastic to build new roads. Plus: this weekend in Twinsburg, Ohio, near Cleveland, the annual Twins Days festival is getting underway.  Bring Plastic Waste And Eat Full Meal At India's First Garbage Cafe In Chhattisgarh (India Times)  Twins Day Festival Double your pleasure, double your fun when you back Cool Weird Awesome on Patreon!  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

The Lee Maxwell Washing Machine Museum in Eaton, Colorado, is facing an uncertain future. Its namesake wants to pass on his collection of some 1,600 machines to the next generation. Hopefully someone takes him up on that offer, because there’s a lot of history here. Plus: the Lumberjack World Championships begin in Hayward, Wisconsin, and we go for the obvious Monty Python reference in describing the event.  The Secret History of Washing Machines (Popular Mechanics) Lumberjack World Championships    I'm a Cool Weird Awesome backer on Patreon, and I'm ok  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

Someday, smart speakers might be able to sound off if we don’t sound quite ourselves. Researchers at the University of Alberta have been working on a way for AI to detect depression through voice recordings. Plus: Today in 1989 is when Nintendo brought the US the Game Boy, the landmark portable video game system that made black and green displays cool again.   Sound mind: Detecting depression through voice (University of Alberta)  10 Amazing Facts About the Game Boy You Didn't Know (Houston Press) Back Cool Weird Awesome for just $1 a month on Patreon! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

Trailblazing journalist Nellie Bly once feigned severe mental illness to expose abuses at an asylum from the inside. New York City is now putting up a monument in her honor on the site where the asylum once stood. Plus: today is the birthday of the Trans-Canada Highway, which runs from St. John’s Newfoundland to Victoria, British Columbia. If my math is right, you could listen to like 1,600 episodes of this show while driving from one end to the other.  Journalist Nellie Bly Will Receive a Monument on the Grounds of the Asylum She Helped Close (Hyperallergic) Trans-Canada Highway (The Canadian Encyclopedia) Backing Cool Weird Awesome on Patreon would be... monumental!  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

Last week the organizers of the 2020 Olympic Games revealed that 100 percent of the gold, silver and bronze used to create the Olympic medals is recycled - the metal comes from used cell phones. But the ancient Olympians got olive branches as prizes. Why is it that we have Olympic medals in the first place? Plus: today,  Louisville, Kentucky hosts the World Championship Dainty Contest!   The Games: A Global History of the Olympics by David Goldblatt (W.W. Norton & Co)  Tokyo 2020 Olympic medals made from 80,000 tons of recycled mobile phones, electronics (USA Today)  Olympic Medals (Olympic.org) 49th annual Dainty Contest set for Monday, July 29, in Schnitzelburg (Insider Louisville)  Go for the gold as one of Cool Weird Awesome's backers on Patreon! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

The National Postal Museum in Washington, DC, has an exhibit telling the story of Owney, the dog who loved the mail so much that he helped deliver it all over the world.  Plus: Freeman, South Dakota is holding its annual Chislic Festival, a two day celebration of cubed meat on a stick. (Sorry, dogs aren't allowed.)  The National Postal Museum tells the history of America through moon mail, rare stamps, and one taxidermy dog (Roadtrippers)  The History of Owney the Postal Dog, Mascot of the Railway Mail Service (USPS Blog)  South Dakota Chislic Festival  Patreon backers are Cool Weird Awesome's best friends! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

Whenever a new Prime Minister takes office in the UK, the first question many people ask is: what happens to the cat living at the official residence at 10 Downing Street? We'll look at some of the most famous felines to ever hold the title  Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office. Plus: for reasons only known to mascots, the New Jersey Devil ran out of a game of parachute at a kid's birthday party and ran into a plate glass window. Which broke.   Downing Street Cats (and other British Government felines) (Purr-n-Fur UK)    The new PM's first job: Impress the cat (BBC)   Home Office cat history revealed (BBC)  Cats that left a mark in the corridors of power (Telegraph UK via Internet Archive)  New Jersey Devils Mascot Runs Through Window At Boy’s Birthday Party (Huffington Post)  Even the most passive-aggressive cat in the world knows you should back Cool Weird Awesome on Patreon!  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

There’s a quadcopter drone that uses spring-loaded arms and a process called "rapid aerial morphing" to fold itself up as it flies. So we’re a step closer to real-life Transformers. Plus: the story of the all-robot band Compressorhead, whose members twist and turn their mechanical parts so they can ROCK! Spring-Loaded Drone Collapses Mid-Flight to Zip Through Windows (IEEE Spectrum)  Compressorhead (Weirdest Band In The World)  Support Cool Weird Awesome for just $1 a month as a backer on Patreon!  --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

Lots of parents multitask but Cynthia Arnold is completely off the charts, having just run the Missoula Marathon while pushing a triple stroller containing her three kids. Meanwhile, Tony Fisher bought some salami and did the only logical thing with it: construct a 2x2x2 Rubik’s Cube out of it. Hooray for marathon and/or meat-based puzzle achievers! Mom Runs 3:11 Marathon With a Triple Stroller While Pushing 185 Pounds (Runners World) Real Salami Sausage 2x2x2 Rubik’s Cube (Tony Fisher on YouTube)  Go the extra mile with Cool Weird Awesome as a backer on Patreon! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message

The website and book Sad Topographies teaches us that our planet is home to some unusually-named places, like Gloomy Lake in Ontario, Divorce Beach in Mexico, New Jersey’s Shades of Death Road (!) and a spot in Washington state known as Point No Point. Plus:  the annual World Santa Claus Congress is getting underway in Denmark. Watch for some serious Santa-to-Santa networking. 21 Of The Saddest Places On Earth From Instagram’s sadtopographies (Brilliant Maps)  Shades of Death Road (Weird NJ)  Washington State’s bummer place names, mapped (Curbed Seattle)  World Santa Claus Congress  Feeling bummed out by sad place names? Backing Cool Weird Awesome on Patreon could help you feel better. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/coolweirdawesome/message