Cool Weird Awesome with Brady Carlson

Happy Hanukkah! In this episode from December 2022, we visit Hanukkah House in Houston. When most people mark Hanukkah with lights, they mean candles on a menorah. But Philip Grosman brings all the lights for the festival.⁠Houston's famous Hanukkah house shines bright for the holidays⁠ (KHOU)⁠This show is powered by our backers on Patreon!

A little over a century ago, a group of women, fed up with the overly commercial side of Christmas, formed the Society for the Prevention of Useless Giving, or SPUG. And they made a pretty big splash along the way. Plus: today in 1773, the Boston Tea Party, though it was known by a slightly wordier name in its time. Only You Can Prevent Useless Gifts (JSTOR)The Destruction of the Tea (Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum) You don’t have to turn in your Spug button to back our show on Patreon, because it’s very practical

Happy Bill of Rights Day! One of the original amendments Congress sent to the states for ratification made it into our governing document two centuries later. It's literally a long story. Plus: students at Osaka Public University in Japan just built a bicycle that flies. 27th Amendment or Bust (The American Prospect)Japanese Students Successfully Build a Flying Bike That Gets off the Ground by Pedaling (My Modern Met)Don’t wait a couple centuries to back our show on Patreon, join us today

It was this month in 1906 that radio pioneer Reginald Fessenden says he put a Christmas Eve transmission out on wireless that included a rendition of "O Holy Night," which would make it the first Christmas song ever played on the radio. Plus: if you’re into big holiday light displays, they don’t get much bigger or brighter than the ones in the Dyker Heights section of Brooklyn. Reginald Fessenden (National Park Service) Dyker Heights Christmas Lights Back our show on Patreon and we’ll keep sending sound out into the world too

Today in 1979, Germany’s federal parliament, the Bundestag, welcomed a new member, one Jakob Mierscheid. The catch? Jakob Mierscheid is a fictional character, he's completely imaginary. Plus: the last circulating US pennies are being auctioned off starting today. A dubious existence (Süddeutsche Zeitung via Archive.org) Last circulating cents to be sold in Dec. 11 auction (Coin World)Our Patreon backers make a real difference for our show, join them today