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News Sidequest
News Sidequest episodes
- Birdwatching and your brain / Permanent DST and dark mornings / Caught in a tornado on a bikeWe open with a tribute to Sir Patrick Stewart, who died Wednesday at 86. Then: a study finds expert birdwatchers’ brains show less age-related change, and we look at what that does and doesn’t prove. A new study in Current Biology says year-round daylight saving time would put well over a billion more kids on dark school commutes every year, just as we fall back this Sunday. And an Arizona man riding home with groceries got caught in a rare tornado. He’s okay, and strangers showed up with a new bike. Plus a record-setting 499 weighted chin-ups, a Popeyes drive-thru cosplay burglary, Cheerios with a Ziploc bag, and a clock repairman’s very long delay.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
13 min - The first ‘psycho boss’ / A giant ship becomes a reef / A new dwarf planet beyond PlutoA new study says a junior merchant from the Dutch East India Company, shipwrecked in 1629, is the earliest documented “corporate psychopath,” and we look at what the study actually claims. Also: the SS United States, the fastest ocean liner ever built, will be sunk off Florida in November to become the world’s largest artificial reef. And astronomers at the Rubin Observatory announced a possible sixth dwarf planet beyond Pluto, a world roughly 600 to 1,500 kilometers wide that was hiding in a crowded patch of stars. Plus a plea deal over microwaved fish, a great white shark that did not want to be petted, a computer model of the universe’s first 2 billion years, and a $47 million “mini T. rex.”
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11 min - Skipping meals over grocery prices / Robot-dog walkers wanted / More school, less dementiaA poll covered by The Independent says about half of Americans have skipped meals because of grocery prices. We look at what several 2026 surveys actually found, and why the numbers differ. Also: a San Francisco startup is paying people $20 an hour to walk robot dogs, because the robots need real-world data and AI still can’t control hardware well. And a new NIH-funded study of a 1972 British law found that one extra year of school lowered dementia diagnoses decades later, especially for people at high genetic risk. Plus Texas Roadhouse’s steak mix-up, small colleges betting on football, a 3-year-old soccer player and the police, and a cave with 111,000 spiders.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
12 min - Paying to make friends / Betting apps limit winners / Preschool skills pay off at 21The New York Times looks at people paying for apps to make friends, and the fees are part of a bigger story about third places disappearing. Also: regulators and former insiders say online betting apps limit customers who win while rewarding customers who lose. And a Penn State study that followed 356 Head Start kids found that extra preschool lessons on feelings and friendship were still paying off 18 years later, with less loneliness and fewer symptoms of depression. Plus “maxxing” is Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year, the FTC and 20 states sue Dollar General, a man convicted of swallowing Tiffany earrings, and a 93-year-old who laid a trap for a scammer.
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12 min - Gen Z skips the DMV / Would AI tell you when you’ll die? / Can you really pick up an accent?Fewer teens are getting driver’s licenses. Federal data shows about 1 in 4 16-year-olds is licensed now, down from about half in 1983, and cost is a big reason. Also: The Atlantic asks the question you probably don’t want to ask AI, so we look at what an AI model trained on six million Danes can and can’t predict about when you’ll die. And a new Ohio State study says picking up an accent is less automatic than most people think. Plus faking enthusiasm at work, the Pentagon’s latest UFO files, why a deadly fungus is so hard to treat, and an orphaned walrus’s long flight to Florida.
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10 min - Why we love being scared / Social lives and sharp minds / Saving for a first home takes 16 yearsIFLScience spent a night at a famously haunted British castle and came back with a better question: why do people pay to be scared? Scientists call it recreational fear, and it works because the body treats fear and excitement almost the same way. Also: a study of 57,793 older adults in 24 countries links staying socially active, especially volunteering and sports clubs, to better memory and thinking over time. And NPR reports that a median-income renter would need 16 years to save for a starter home, twice as long as in 2019. Plus a runaway kangaroo, a Texas man who returned $128,000 he found on an ATM, an extinct tiger head found under a bed, and scientists who nuked an asteroid in a computer.
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11 min - Reading and your brain / Your old Slack chats are for sale / Can married men have friends?A new Cambridge review in Psychological Medicine pulls together years of research on reading for pleasure. It links reading to better attention and memory, fewer mental health problems, and a lower risk of dementia, though most of the evidence shows a link rather than proof. Also: failed startups are selling their old Slack messages and emails to AI companies. One shutdown service says it has handled nearly 100 deals in the past year, and experts doubt the promise that the data is anonymous. And a TikToker’s advice that married men should avoid close friendships with other women has viewers split. Plus a couple struck by lightning, delivery robots accused of scanning faces, a startup tapping an underwater volcano, and Mariah Carey’s legal win.
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10 min - Chicago Shakespeare Theater: Catching Lightning in a Bottle
Somewhere in this season’s rep is an actor who can convincingly unravel with jealousy as a king in The Winter’s Tale, then turn around a few nights later and play one of the goofiest supporting roles in all of Shakespeare. Finding that actor, before anyone else even knows he’s the answer, is the job of Bob Mason, Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s casting director.
Bob talks about growing up in a small town in southwestern New York, a college acting class that hooked him on Shakespeare’s language, and fifteen years acting in Chicago before a former classmate talked him into casting instead. He explains how casting has changed since the pandemic, what it’s like working with Edward Hall’s very specific audition process, and the particular puzzle of casting a true repertory production for the first time: a single company of actors who all need to work in two different plays, with their own doubled pairings and tonal shifts to balance.
Bringing Up the Lights is an original series from Sound Concept Media, written and narrated by Keith Conrad.
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18 min - Having a baby is too expensive, say 4 in 5 parents / A mom let her 5-year-old collect goose feathers and was charged with neglect / 160-million-year-old sea monster vomit foundA University of Michigan Mott Children’s Hospital national poll of 2,027 parents finds 81% say having a baby costs more than it should, with 40% of parents of children under 3 reporting they are struggling financially or just getting by, and only 14% saying they used none of the cost-cutting strategies listed. Karyann Parkinson, a law school graduate pregnant with her fifth child, let her 5-year-old walk a half-mile to collect goose feathers at a nearby pond in their gated Williamsburg, Virginia neighborhood — and was placed on the child abuse and neglect registry, convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and given a six-month suspended jail sentence. And paleontologist Dirk Knaust, who spent 30 years examining rock cores for Norwegian energy company Equinor, identified centimeter-sized clumps of shells, worm tubes, and plant bits in samples from 160 million years ago as fossilized plesiosaur vomit — the first such identification ever made. Plus knitted traffic cops, shark-bitten boat survivors, a candidate who won city council on funny signs, and a lucky South Carolina lottery stop.
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10 min - One soda a week changes kids’ brains / A whale carried a 19th-century harpoon for over 100 years / A radioactive jet is aimed at EarthA King’s College London study of 9,632 children ages 9 to 11 in the ABCD Study found that even one caffeinated drink per week — mostly soda — was linked to smaller cortical surface area across 22 brain regions, with more caffeine linked to less sleep, and both factors associated with more mental health problems six and eighteen months later. A 2007 discovery getting renewed attention: Iñupiat hunters in Alaska harvested a 50-ton bowhead whale and found a fragment of a 19th-century bomb lance embedded near its shoulder blade — a weapon designed to explode inside a whale, manufactured between 1879 and 1885, that the whale had carried for over a century after surviving the original strike. Scientists estimate the whale was 115 to 130 years old at death. And astronomers have confirmed the first known microblazar in our galaxy — a stellar black hole called IRAS 18293-0941, hidden behind a thick dust veil 12,000 light-years away, shooting a plasma jet directly toward Earth at 75% the speed of light. Scientists say there is no danger. Plus a 99-year-old wing-walker, a brewery ghost, the Andy Warhol fraud sentence, and a front-yard Egyptian treasure.
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11 min
About News Sidequest
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A collection of stories you might have missed while everyone was focused on the Red Team vs. Blue Team fight