Something Offbeat

Here's a taste of the best stories from the past year to get us ready for 2025.

Rodney Jacobs of Stinson Lumber in Oregon joined the show. He’s responsible for selecting the tree that is placed in downtown Portland every year. And there’s a lot more that goes into it than you’d think.

Anthony Clarke, a researcher from Curtin University, joined the show to discuss new findings about Stonehenge that have revealed yet another mystery related to the ancient landmark: how did one of the stones travel all the way from Scotland to reach the Salisbury Plain?

This week Mike spoke with Oriene Shin with Consumer Reports. She tells us how to keep kids safe with the toys we get them over the holidays and answers the age old question… can you eat Play-doh?

Sam Benson Smith, digital managing editor at Audacy’s KNX, brought us a story about insurance fraudsters who clipped up by using a bad bear suit. We’ll tell you all about it.

In this episode of Offbites, Chris and Lauren offer some side dishes of weird news before Thanksgiving, including snake yoga, a bad development for wired headphones, cruel AI and volcanoes on the moon,

Paul Koudinaris, author of "Faithful Unto Death: Pet cemeteries, animal graves, and eternal devotion" and other books on both animals and death, joins the show to discuss French actor Alain Delon’s strange posthumous request and more.

We all like pizza, right? In most settings, that's the case, but pizza in the workplace has gotten a bad rap. Workplace culture expert Dr. Jessica Kriegel joined Mike Rogers to explain what other, better options managers have to say thank you to their employees.

Here’s a collection of our spookiest tales for Halloween! Full episodes available here: Ghosted: Man says ancient corpse is his 'spiritual girlfriend' https://www.audacy.com/podcast/something-offbeat-456dc/episodes/ghosted-man-says-ancient-corpse-is-his-spiritual-girlfriend-1a28c A vampire unearthed: Our interview with an heir to 'Dracula' https://www.audacy.com/krld/news/national/something-offbeat-a-vampire-unearthed Could 'The Last of Us' really happen?: Beyond the zombie https://www.audacy.com/podcast/something-offbeat-456dc/episodes/could-the-last-of-us-really-happen-beyond-the-zombie-fungus-232bd Here are the best and worst US cities to be in when the https://www.audacy.com/podcast/something-offbeat-456dc/episodes/here-are-the-best-and-worst-us-cities-to-be-in-when-the-zombie-apocalypse-happens-9a0b6

Chris and Lauren discuss Spooky season, coffee, animals where they shouldn't be and more.

Starbucks started Pumpkin Spice season in August this year, and some people thought it was a little too early. The “Something Offbeat” team reached out to an expert who could tell us all about people’s reactions to pumpkin spice. Dr. Jin-A Choi is part of a team from Montclair State University that have been releasing the annual Pumpkin Spice Report. The latest just came out this month.

"Vintage Offbeat" continues with our very first episode, from June 13, 2022. ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION: We all know office parties can be a drag, but for some, they can be more than uncomfortable. Recently, a court awarded a man who suffers from an anxiety disorder $450,000 for being subjected to an unwanted office party. Why do some people dismiss mental health issues such as anxiety, and why are some boundaries not respected? To find out, host Mike Rogers spoke with Dr. Kevin Chapman, founder and director of the Kentucky Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders.

The search for the perfect selfie consumes many social media users. But when does it go too far? Content creators have been seriously injured, or even killed, while trying to get that once-in-a-lifetime photo. Sam Cornell a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales and a co-author of the study titled: “Dangerous Selfies Aren't Just Foolish. We Need To Treat Them Like The Public Health Hazard They Really Are," joined Mike Rogers to explain the risks and why we do it.

For our second anniversary, we’re looking back at one of our first episodes! ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION: It’s not hard to find gruesome, macabre images or videos – they’re on TV, in horror movies and online. But what if you wanted to see them in person? Through a series of donations and transactions, the body of a 98-year-old World War II veteran from Louisiana ended up on a table in an Oregon hotel ballroom where attendees paid as much as $500 to view a public dissection. Dr. Gail Saltz, associate professor of psychiatry at the New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill-Cornell School of Medicine and host of the “How Can I Help?" podcast, explains what drives people to seek out such spectacles and what that fascination with death can tell us about ourselves and our society.

On this episode of Offbites, Lauren and Chris discuss the otters who attacked a woman out for a jog, ask how many people is too many people in space, and the dog capturing people's hearts on a beach in Brazil.

Vampires are spooky, bacteria can be scary… and when you put them together? Things get a bit spooky-scary. New research published earlier this year reveal that some bacteria actually act like vampires. That is, they thirst for human blood and will feed on it when the chance arrives. Dr. Arden Baylink of Washington State University, the lead author of the study, joined Mike Rogers on the “Something Offbeat” podcast to explain.

Lauren and Chris are finally back with another episode of Offbites. This week, they discuss their Brat summers, the most unattractive qualities in the opposite sex, and say goodbye to a fast food sandwich staple.

For our second anniversary this summer, we’re looking back at one of our first episodes! ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION: Remember the fun of naming your pet? Now, imagine taking on the task of naming an entire species. Earlier this year, Dr. Christopher Whalen of Yale University got that chance. This week on Something Offbeat, we talk to Whalen about his discovery – an ancient ancestor of the octopus that he named after President Joe Biden – and to Dr. Brittany Kenyon-Flatt of North Carolina State University about the history behind scientific names.

According to a study released this summer, the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago likely helped grapes flourish in the Western Hemisphere. While there may not be a direct correlation between dinosaurs and grapes, Monica Carvalho, the assistant curator at the Museum of Paleontology at the University of Michigan and co-author of a study tracing the origins of grapes in our hemisphere, explains what new grape seed fossils discovered in South America reveal.