Something Offbeat

French authorities were alerted to cocaine that washed up on a beach along the English Channel in late February. But it wasn't just an amount that could've fallen out of someone's bag, it was 850 kilograms -- or nearly two tons -- of cocaine.

Steve Rolles of the U.K.-based Transform Drug Policy Foundation says it's not uncommon for large amounts of drugs to wash up on shore and explains why trace amounts of cocaine showed up in British wastewater samples.

A drive through line at a new Burger King restaurant in Canada prompted one person call 911. Headlines were written about it and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police even tweeted about it. This week, “Something Offbeat” dives into why most of us agree to wait in lines with Dave Fagundes, a lawyer and professor at the University of Houston Law Center. He’s the author of a paper called “The Social Norms of Waiting in Line.”

Two Massachusetts lawmakers introduced a bill earlier this year that would have allowed incarcerated people to shave up to a year off of their sentences if they donated an organ or bone marrow. After an outcry from criminal justice advocacy groups, the lawmakers said they'd amend the language in the bill to eliminate sentence reduction.

But simply the introduction of the bill got the Something Offbeat team thinking about the ethics of such a setup and about the prison healthcare system at large. This week, host Mike Rogers talks to Cary Aspinwall of the Marshall Project, a journalism outlet that focuses on criminal justice.

After learning about a New York City pop-up gallery focused on autonomous sensory meridian response, more commonly known as ASMR, from Time Out, the team at the “Something Offbeat” podcast wanted to find out what exactly ASMR is. Dr. Craig Harris Richard, the founder of ASMR University and host of the Sleep Whispers podcast and Joy Bhattacharya, a professor at Goldsmith University in London, the lead researcher of a study on ASMR published in the Cortex Journal on ASMR, joined the show to explain.

The election of U.S. Rep. George Santos (R-Long Island) to Congress raised questions about why someone who fabricated much of his resume didn't get discovered sooner and how he convinced constituents and donors to support him.

Psychology professor Dr. Erin Heerey of Western University in Ontario, Canada is the author of a study titled The Influence of Similarity and Mimicry on Decisions to Trust and explains what characteristics we consider when we choose who to trust.

Last month, a group of astronomers from the University of Arizona discovered what looked like the face of a bear on Mars. This isn’t the first time that people have found a face in the heavens, and it made the team at “Something Offbeat” wonder why we are always looking to the sky for meaning. So, we reached out to two experts: Dartmouth researcher Nathan H. Heller, who specializes in pareidolia – hearing or seeing a specific sound or image in a seemingly random visual or auditory stimulus – as well as well-known astrologer Jessica Lanyadoo, host of “Ghost of a Podcast”.

Madison Square Garden Entertainment has used facial recognition technology to keep some fans out of Rockettes shows, Knicks games, and other events at its properties in recent months. But not just any fans -- attorneys who work for firms with pending litigation against the company.

This week, Leila Nashashibi with the nonprofit Fight for the Future, explains the biases of facial recognition, who controls the information, and the "creep" of technology that concerns her.

In the episode, Nashashibi mentions how people concerned about the technology can get involved, by visiting Fight for the Future or by clicking here.

Sabrina Boyd-Surka of Audacy's KYW in Philadelphia fills in for Mike Rogers this week.

What is the likelihood of an apocalypse like the one of “The Last of Us” actually happening? Dr. Cameron Carlson of the Zombie Research Society told the “Something Offbeat” podcast that one of the greatest zombie risks may be hiding in litter boxes. Carlson and host Mike Rogers also discussed the real-life Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus that inspired the pandemic depicted in the ‘Last of Us’ video game and HBO show.

Strange things have been happening in recent weeks at the Dallas Zoo. First, a clouded leopard went missing from its habitat, which had been tampered with. Next, a 35-year-old vulture was found dead. Then, two emperor tamarin monkeys went missing, though they were later found in an abandoned home. Environmental writer Emma Marris, author of the book “Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World” joined “Something Offbeat” as the mystery unfolded to talk about zoos and if they are the right place for animals to live.

During the world cup, a Brazilian soccer star known as Neymar was busy making appearances. Except, it wasn’t really Neymar. It was his identical, unrelated doppelganger, who calls himself “Ney’s Lookalike.” Could you have a rouge lookalike out there somewhere too? Canadian photographer François Brunelle has been working for years to photograph strangers who look like twins from all over the world. So far, he has captured 250 pairs of doppelgangers. He joined “Something Offbeat” this week to discuss the project. If you have your own doppelganger, you can learn more on his Instagram page, and at his website, http://www.francoisbrunelle.com.