To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Ralph Records, Penn Jillette took part in a very odd tribute. He agreed to be locked into the Bently Motor Inn in San Francisco and do nothing but listen to the entire decade’s worth of Ralph Records discography.

At 8:00 AM on Monday, March 1, Mr. Jillette entered Room 312 of the Bentley Motor Inn at 465 Grove Street (directly across the steet from the, then, Ralph Headquarters) in San Francisco. The door was locked behind him.

Mr. Jillette was to spend the next six days alone in this room. Each day he received a package of records from Ralph. His job was to listen and comment on these recordings.

60 hours of his commentary on the music was whittled down into a radio special which has now partly been uploaded to YouTube.

Here is Day One…

Click AFTER THE JUMP for the rest of the week… (more…)

The anniversary of that mysterious night in New Mexico when a phenomenon crashed to Earth sparks a debate over how the crash would be different today. Spiro and The Fudge are called back into duty when a possum poison caper is unleashed on a small village. Can lil Fudge save the lil critters in time? A horrifying Vietnam vet story. Are aliens managing our civilization’s advance through radio contact?

FINALLY! An EPIC spoiler-filled battle over Amazing Spider-Man! Be warned true believers, some might not survive this edition of Weird Things!

Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Hollywood Pharaohs just click on the image below.

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Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings071212.mp3

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Listener Spots:

• Drowtales

• Barstool Prophets

• Happy Birthday Haley Nelson!

Picks:

Andrew:

Drive

Brian:

Y: The Last Man

Justin:

Locke & Key

We turn it over to listener questions for this July 4th edition of the podcast. Who would win in a fight: a Unicorn or a Pegasus? If you could live forever and but a stranger had to die, would you? Is there a mega shark lurking beneath the waves?

The tables are turned as the hosts feel the brunt of our audiences weird questions!

Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Hollywood Pharaohs just click on the image below.

Try out the brand new PODCASTR player, featuring wireless syncing between desktop browsers and iOS devices.

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Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings070412.mp3

[podcast]http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings070412.mp3[/podcast]

Listener Spots:

• Vinnland Old Time Radio

• The Dolls of Lisbon

• Simone and Andrew

Picks:

Andrew:

Contagen

Brian:

What Are Dreams

Justin:

Amazing Spider-Man

Our perception of the world around us could be very different than the person next to you.

In extreme cases it could mean the luscious red strawberry could look like a bulbous blueberry to someone else. Even more mind altering, results of new experiments with monkeys suggest that these receptors can be altered, allowing us to see colors we have never seen before and possibly helping reverse blindness.

In work published in the scientific journal ‘Nature’, colour vision scientist Jay Neitz from the University of Washington injected a virus into monkeys’ eyes which enabled them to see red as well as green and yellow.

Remarkably the group of squirrel monkeys were able to make sense of the new information despite their brains not being genetically programmed to respond to red signals.

The result was that just four months later the monkeys could see in full colour for the first time.

As well as allowing colour-blind humans to tell red from green, the innovative technique could restore sight to the blind.

Could color blindness really be a thing of the past? Does it make you wonder how different the world looks outside of your own head? How freaked out are those monkeys right now? Is this basically Pleasantville for them?

[Daily Mail]

Brian stumbles into his new infant child’s room only to find a bloody mystery involving a deadly animal and a hidden menace. Andrew reassures the listeners that the labs producing the most deadly diseases on the planet are being kept extremely safe and secure. Wait, no. The opposite of that. Also, ferrets could be the harbinger of a new super plague.

Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Hollywood Pharaohs just click on the image below.

Try out the brand new PODCASTR player, featuring wireless syncing between desktop browsers and iOS devices.

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Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings062912.mp3

[podcast]http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings062912.mp3[/podcast]

Picks:

Andrew:

The People vs. George Lucas

Brian:

Locke and Key

Justin:

Preacher

It’s a skateboard that can roll down stairs. Royal College of Art graduate Po-Chih Lai adjusted the trucks so they adjust to the stress of the steps. But more importantly, is this how our favorite sassy droid gets out of a building in case the fire alarm goes off and the elevators are off limits?

Let’s just hope this video doesn’t make it to Skaro, or else we are all screwed.

[Gizmodo]

The three amigos are reunited yet again in this thrilling episode of the podcast. Justin is rightly ridiculed for refusing to lower his expectations for the already far overachieving Voyager probe. Andrew and Brian debate the feasibility of searching for Dyson Spheres. AND FINALLY all three really hash out their feeling on Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. Tears are shed. Blood is spilled. Things get weird.

Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Hollywood Pharaohs just click on the image below.

Try out the brand new PODCASTR player, featuring wireless syncing between desktop browsers and iOS devices.

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Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings062012.mp3

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Sponsored by:

• Stacey Baldwin

• Scam School Book 2

Picks:

Andrew:

Star Wars: The Original Radio Drama

Brian:

Tron Uprising

Justin:

Preacher

If you could ask ONE question to one of the world’s most creative magicians, what would it be?

If you’ve never been to a magic lecture, there’s never been a better time. Saturday June 16th at 7:00pm, we’re live-streaming Andrew Mayne in a spectacular 2-hour interactive online lecture. Watch, ask questions and learn things you won’t find in any book or DVD.

ATTENDING COULDN’T BE EASIER

Purchase the Andrew Mayne LIVE “product”. This is your ticket.
On Saturday, June 16th, anytime before 7:00pm Eastern, click the “MyPenguinMagic” area at the top of the Penguin site. You’ll see the livestream appear 1 hour before showtime. At 7pm sharp, Andrew will hit the stage and begin his JAM-PACKED professional lecture.

Sit back and watch over 2 hours of DVD-quality live streaming magic from the comfort of your own home.

Ask Andrew Mayne questions and discuss the tricks DURING the lecture.

DON’T WORRY IF YOU MIGHT MISS IT.

Reserve your seat anyway. Within 24 hours of ending, you’ll be able to download and/or watch the full lecture on-demand, and go over all the great routines and subtleties as many times as you want. It’ll be waiting for you in your “MyPenguinMagic” area.

Magicians flock to see “workers” give talks. Why? Because these guys see and learn things that you won’t find in any book or DVD. Yes, you’ll be learning some incredibly powerful A-material, but the INVALUABLE stuff will be the insight you learn along the way.

This lecture is for everyone, from the beginner to the professional and for magicians and mentalists alike. Don’t miss it!

BUY YOUR TICKET NOW!

A fan favorite character is returning to the Walking Dead in the currently shooting third season. In the interest of spoilers, we will move the discussion and uncensored photo AFTER THE JUMP… (more…)

Go ahead and take a gander back through the lineage of human history and you’re going to find some real nightmare fuel. One such grotesquerie? How about a human ancestor with a shark head.

This now-extinct fish was among the first to split from sharks, whose bones are made of cartilage, to evolve into a line of tough-boned species that includes everything from bony fish to human beings. A new analysis finds that this controversial class of animals was more shark-like than expected.

“The common ancestors of all jawed vertebrates today organized their heads in a way that resembled sharks,” study researcher John Finarelli, a vertebrate biologist at University College, Dublin, said in a statement. “Given what we now know about the interrelatedness of early fishes, these results tell us that while sharks retained these features, bony fishes moved away from such conditions.”

This little darling lived roughly 290 million years ago, some 150 million years after sharks and bony fish families split.

[Fox News]

Brian and Andrew are joined by special guest Dr. Paul Zak, author of the new book The Moral Molecule. They discuss how much of the body needs to be replaced by machine parts before you are no longer considered human. Also, the likelihood of robot sexually transmitted diseases. Narcisism inspired by chat bots, how little we know about our own brains and why we are constantly building our next generation to live forever.

Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Hollywood Pharaohs just click on the image below.

Try out the brand new PODCASTR player, featuring wireless syncing between desktop browsers and iOS devices.

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Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings061312.mp3

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Sponsored by:

• FREE SCI FI STORY MarkSelye.blogspot.com

• Wish Ruth a Happy Birthday

• Indie Love

Picks:

Andrew:

The Moral Molecule

Brian:

Scam School Book 2!

Paul:

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination

Who says people don’t read newspapers anymore?

A Colorado woman lied to her employer when she told them she needed time off because her brother recently died. An icky, if not uncommon, crime. But she went too far when she tried to pad the fib but publishing an obituary in the local newspaper.

Needless to say her brother, who is very much alive, was shocked to hear the news. His wife talked to the local television station about the mess.

“She (explained to work that she) had a family emergency that turned into a death that she needed time off,” said Erica. “She had missed a lot of days of work and that was her way to get out of it.”

Edgar is recovering from surgery and wasn’t able to talk about the situation, but Erica agreed to an interview and read a section of the obit to CBS4: Edgar Balderrama, 28, of Greeley, died on January 23rd, 2012. Edward was a real hard worker. He had a great sense of humor and would make everybody laugh.

The lesson? Only lie about the deaths of relatives who are already dead.

[CBS Denver] via Ralph Ware

Is this curious pig/dog hybrid creature a runaway from a lab experiment? A new cryptid? A beast of myth and fable?

No to the first, probably to the second and hopefully to the third.

As it turns out, this little fella is actually a very rare, and expensive, breed.

The bizarre looking stray – actually a rare pedigree Chinese crested hairless dog – was spotted wandering the streets in Xinxiang, Henan province, central China, close to several scientific research centres and a local medical school.

One witness said: “The pink skin makes it look just like pig gone wrong in some sort of genetic experiment.”

Police believe it got loose after giving it’s rich owners the slip.

[Orange] via readers Raph Ware and

The zebra spider is unique in that it jumps to kill prey instead of spinning a web. But what happens when you remove gravity. How will the spider adapt. Will it realize it now has amazing John Carter of Mars powers and jump all over the place killing everything?

Thanks to an Egyptian teenager, we will find out for sure later this year. Amr Mohamed of Alexandria won one or two slots for YouTube’s Space Lab competition where anyone was invited to submit experiments that would be carried out on the International Space Station.

It was conceived through Mohamed’s fascination with both science and spiders.

“I’m just interested in how things work, and science seems to answer all my questions,” said Mohamed. “For example, physics can explain the world with just a handful of equations. And biology tells you how your body works. I’m just interested in that stuff.”

Below is Amr’s original video. When space spiders are the scourge of the galaxy, let’s remember who started this.

Just kidding, this kid is awesome. And props to YouTube for providing the opportunity.

[CNN]