Something Offbeat

What are your chances of winning the lottery? It may seem like a long shot, but one man in Maryland recently won three times using the same numbers, according to a report from Audacy’s KYW Newsradio. This story caught our attention at "Something Offbeat" and we wanted to find out the real odds of winning. So, we reached out to Robert Davis, associate professor and chair of the statistics department at Miami University in Ohio.

When a 15-foot-tall, red spoon disappeared from outside a Phoenix Dairy Queen, it left many wondering why someone would take a spoon too big to eat with and how the thieves got away with such a large item. The spoon was ultimately found days later near a middle school baseball field.

Terrence Shulman of the Shulman Center for Compulsive Theft, Spending, and Hoarding explains how these tendencies can be treated as an addiction and why we're drawn to getting something for nothing.

Joey Santore and his friend Al Scorch were out kayaking on the Chicago River when they came across a sight more fit for “Jurassic Park” than a big city – a giant snapping turtle Santore named “chonkosaurus.” Santore, who runs the “Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t” YouTube channel, joined “Something Offbeat” to talk about the now-viral turtle video he captured as well as offbeat wildlife.

From shacking up in Michigan to eating oranges in the bathtub on California soil, there are some truly bizarre “dead crimes” on the books in the U.S. Joel Johnson, a law professor at Pepperdine University’s Caruso School of Law, penned “Dealing with Dead Crimes”, an examination of these outdated rules and how they actually undermine the rule of law. He joined “Something Offbeat” this week to dive deeper.

This episode also features audio from Audacy’s “The Daily J” podcast and WWJ Newsradio’s coverage of a current push to get rid of that Michigan cohabitation law. Special thanks to Zach Clark and the WWJ team!

Earlier this spring, a man in Peru was found with human remains estimated to be 600 to 800 years old inside a food delivery cooler bag. According to local media, the man told authorities he’d named the remains Juanita and described them as his "spiritual girlfriend." The mummy is believed to be an adult male.

To learn more about relationships with spirits and how we cope with loss, Mike Rogers talks to Mike Huberty, the founder of American Ghost Walks, on this week's episode of Something Offbeat.

Earlier this year, the team at “Something Offbeat” learned about Elvis Francois, a man who survived for weeks on his capsized boat by eating mostly ketchup. Heinz was so impressed that it vowed to buy him a new boat. This story made us interested in survival situations and how to deal with them.

So, we reached out to Josh Piven, co-author of “The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook,” a bestseller that has spawned several sequels, including the upcoming “Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Apocalypse".

The original version of an animal welfare bill filed in the Florida Senate included a provision that would've banned dog owners from allowing their pets to stick their heads out of a car window. While that part of the bill was removed, it still got the Something Offbeat team wondering, why lawmakers would take so much joy away from our four-legged friends.

To get to the bottom of it, host Mike Rogers is joined by Dr. Melissa Bain, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Cal Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

A recent analysis found that $2 bills can be sold for up to $4,500 dollars – way over their $2 value. This seemed a little… well, offbeat to the team at “Something Offbeat” and it made us want to learn more. So, we reached out to Heather McCabe of Two Buckaroo, a site that documents what happens when people actually spend $2 bills.

From spray-painting a stolen tractor-trailer in a hotel parking lot to live streaming an attempt at driving under the influence, there's never a shortage of "dumb" criminals in the news.

This week on Something Offbeat, Northwestern University criminology professor Kaitlin Devaney explains why some criminals make seemingly simple mistakes, what role the complexity of our criminal justice system plays, and how economics impact the cost-benefit analysis of crime.

Bernhard Hufenbach, head of the European Space Agency strategic planning and outreach office for space exploration, joined “Something Offbeat” to explain why they are looking into making a time zone on the moon. With NASA’s Artemis mission aiming to put astronauts back on the lunar surface, humans might be spending more time there soon.