- 1 week ago
In this episode, we’re going to hear about a tennis player who spent more than two hours bouncing balls during the US Open and about how AI and robotics are being used to create perfume and cologne. Then, we’ll hear the latest on wild, unruly air travel incidents, and hear an expert’s suggestion for how to stop them. Finally, we’ll hear how a dog helped find a cause for narcolepsy.
Featuring audio from the Dana & Parks Show out of KMBZ in Kansas City, WWJ Newsradio in Detroit, KNX News in Los Angeles and KCBS Radio in the Bay Area.
Featuring audio from the Dana & Parks Show out of KMBZ in Kansas City, WWJ Newsradio in Detroit, KNX News in Los Angeles and KCBS Radio in the Bay Area.
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00:11Welcome to a Weird News Roundup, presented by Odyssey's Something Offbeat podcast.
00:17We explore strange tales reported on by Odyssey's radio newsrooms from coast to coast.
00:25I'm your Roundup host, Lauren Berry.
00:28In this episode, we're going to hear about a tennis player who spent more than two hours bouncing balls during
00:36the U.S. Open.
00:38And we'll hear about how AI and robotics are being used to create perfume and cologne.
00:46How does that work? We'll find out.
00:49Then we'll hear the latest on wild, unruly air travel incidents.
00:54And hear an expert's suggestions for how to stop them.
00:59And to end our show today, we'll hear about how a dog helped find a cause for narcolepsy.
01:05First up, let's listen to the Dana and Parks show out of Odyssey Station KMBZ in Kansas City.
01:13They're talking about how much bouncing is too much bouncing when it comes to tennis balls.
01:20It's a question that came up during the U.S. Open, the tennis championships that ended last Sunday.
01:31Ben Shelton says there needs to be a rule in tennis for what Alexander Zverev did to him.
01:39Oh, yeah. The bouncing?
01:41Yes. Ben Shelton says there needs to be a rule limiting the bouncing of the tennis ball before the serve.
01:48Did you watch?
01:49No, I did not. Not a minute.
01:50You guys, reading about this in some headline, okay, he's bouncing the ball, who cares, is one thing.
01:56When you watched it, this, we call him man bun lovingly.
02:00I know he's one of the greatest athletes in the world, but I can't pronounce his name and he wears
02:03a man bun.
02:03So, man bun is serving and he bends down as if, here he goes, he's going to serve.
02:09So, the other guy, the receiver, in this case Ben, is squatted down in a defensive, like ready for the
02:14146 mile an hour serve that your body cannot even calculate it's going so fast.
02:20And then he goes bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce.
02:25We counted at one point 22, 22 times he bounced the ball.
02:32In tennis, apparently, on the first serve, you have 25 second clock.
02:37Oh, yeah. He burned all of it.
02:38After that, there is no time limit on when you've got to get that ball into action.
02:44Somebody counted how many times Alexander Zverev bounced the ball.
02:49It was north of 12,000 times during the U.S. Open.
02:53He bounced the ball for two and a half hours during the tournament.
03:00Okay.
03:00So, it is extremely annoying.
03:04It's almost like once you see a purple Volkswagen, you keep seeing purple Volkswagens.
03:09Once you noticed his ball bouncing, you can't stop fixating on it.
03:15And you just want to scream, serve the damn ball.
03:18He said, and I quote, I'm not doing it on purpose.
03:20I saw the stat, like I bounced it 12,000 times or something like that.
03:24That's quite funny.
03:25Okay.
03:26Not if you're on the other end squatted down waiting for that 140-mile-an-hour ball to come at
03:31you.
03:31It jacks with your rhythm.
03:35Even in baseball, we have a pitching clock now, right?
03:38Mm-hmm.
03:38And I love it.
03:39I heard one of the commentators say, is this a nervous habit, more of a tick?
03:45I think it is, yeah.
03:46So, I'll take his side here.
03:47And I think that he shouldn't bounce the ball for three and a half hours because I think that tennis
03:51matches take far too long.
03:52Oh, come on.
03:53Let's, you know, cut it down to 10 seconds before each serve.
03:55Why not?
03:56I don't care.
03:56But, in his defense, once you reach this level of athleticism and this level of excellence in any sport, you
04:03have certain ticks.
04:04You'll see it with, specifically in softball.
04:08If you watch a softball pitcher, they do the exact same thing before every single pitch.
04:14Like the exact same routine.
04:16Whether or not they tap their hip.
04:18Yeah.
04:18Whether or not they kind of mess with their glove.
04:20They might twist and lift an elbow.
04:22They might touch their hat.
04:24They do the same exact thing every single time.
04:26You'll see the same thing in the NBA before they make a free throw.
04:30Watch the same player take 500 free throws.
04:32Odds are, 495 of those, they're going to do the exact same thing.
04:35Okay, but we don't allow a basketball player to bounce the basketball 22 times before they shoot.
04:39Why not?
04:40You could if you wanted to.
04:41You absolutely could if you wanted to.
04:42They would step in and put an end to it like that if you were doing that.
04:45Well, that's exactly what Major League Baseball did with what was happening was batters would, after every, they would un
04:52-velcro their gloves.
04:54And then velcro them right back.
04:55Step out of the box.
04:56Step in.
04:57How did you just change the feel of those gloves?
04:59You didn't.
05:00It's just become a nervous habit.
05:02And that's why they instituted the pitch clock was to keep the batters in the box.
05:09And keep the game flowing.
05:11I don't think he was doing it on purpose just to jack with Ben.
05:15I think you would have to know that at the point that two and a half hours.
05:23Two and a half hours of bouncing the ball.
05:25Now, if that story caught your attention because you're a fan of tennis or the tennis aesthetic,
05:32you can find limited edition tennis diamond-themed candles from a business called Detroit Wick.
05:39But that's not the most interesting thing about this business.
05:44Have you ever wanted to have your own unique perfume or cologne?
05:48A scent that nobody else has.
05:52Well, Detroit Wick's owner, his name is Doug Schwartz, is using artificial intelligence and robotics
05:59in a new scent creation platform that allows users to create unique fragrances.
06:06He joined Christina McDaniel at Odyssey Station WWJ News Radio in Detroit this week to discuss the project.
06:16All right, so this platform is really interesting, this AI scent-driven platform.
06:21So explain to me how it works.
06:24You can interact with it in two different ways.
06:27One is called The Discovery, and it's a guided set of questions that is a more introspective journey.
06:41And at the end of that journey, the platform will create for you three unique scent profiles.
06:52And you get this beautiful, custom fragrance set of three in a five-mil bottle.
06:59And the second is what we call the chat, and that is like a blank slate.
07:05So you just start describing.
07:08So that's more of you're talking about a memory or a personal experience.
07:13It can be fragrance-related or not.
07:16So you can call out different fragrance notes, for example, or just talk about anything at all,
07:23and the platform will interact with you until you get to a point where you want to start creating.
07:29And that output will be one unique fragrance profile.
07:34And the cool thing about this is with this piece of equipment,
07:38this can make over 500 billion unique scent combinations.
07:44So nothing will happen twice.
07:46Everything is unique.
07:48And, you know, the really interesting thing about this,
07:51the best part is the guest becomes the fragrance maker in real time.
07:58And so when you think about fragrance and you walk into a store, for example,
08:02and you're smelling different scents,
08:05and then you pick which one you like,
08:07this is actually in reverse of that.
08:09So you don't find out until the end.
08:13And you get to smell at the end of your journey with either of those two I just described.
08:20So can you give me an example of some of the questions it asks?
08:24You know, fragrance-related questions, like,
08:28do you like green?
08:29Meaning like, you know, a grassy scent.
08:32It has some very random, like, are you Kiki or Boba?
08:37And people really get, you know, stop there a lot of the time and say, what is that?
08:42And it's, you know, a very abstract question, more about, like, shape.
08:46So it's a very random set of questions.
08:50But again, it's, they make you pause a little bit and think about, you know, what the platform is asking.
08:57I think one thing that's so interesting about this is, like, scent is so often associated with memory, too.
09:03So is it like you tell it a memory and then it kind of spits back out something that, like,
09:10is associated with that memory?
09:11Or is it a little more complicated than that?
09:13Yeah.
09:14So the digital chat is incredible because you can't interact with it in that way.
09:19We've had so many people come in and, you know, when they start, they have to, you know,
09:24everyone pauses for a minute to think about where they want to start, right?
09:29And we've had the most unbelievable inputs.
09:34And let me say that a very cool component of this is we have a visual component to this where
09:40we project onto the wall.
09:43It's called characters.
09:44And it's an abstract color that is tied to the person doing the digital chat.
09:54And in real time, it projects whatever output they, during their session.
10:02So it'll display the name of the scent that you just created and this color block.
10:08And it gives, like, little keywords as the fragrance is running down the line.
10:14And it's, you know, very interactive in that way.
10:17So people have talked about, I mean, everything so far.
10:21I had someone come in last night that a girl who was getting married,
10:25and she talked about her relationship over the last five years.
10:28And the scent was called Five Years Aged.
10:31And it created this unbelievable, and she was making it for her fiancé,
10:35who she's getting married to soon, and gifted it.
10:38So I've had that happen.
10:40And I've had, as abstract, someone came in and talked about a Pokemon character
10:45and Jeff the Shark from Marvel, and it created something.
10:49And I was amazed by that one.
10:51That really stands out.
10:53When we're back from a quick break, we'll hear about unruly plane passengers
10:57and how a dog helped find a cause for narcolepsy.
11:01That's all on this Weird News Roundup from Odyssey's Something Offbeat.
11:07Thank you for listening to this special presentation of Weird News
11:12from Odyssey's Something Offbeat.
11:15Back in 2021, during the days of the COVID-19 pandemic,
11:21unruly passenger incidents on airplanes skyrocketed by 492%
11:28to nearly 6,000 incidents in a single year.
11:32And that's according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
11:37These incidents have been decreasing in the years since,
11:40but they're still higher than the pre-pandemic levels.
11:44And Odyssey station KNX News reported this week
11:49that travel insiders say the number of unruly and disruptive passengers on flights
11:55has exploded by almost 50% from this time last year to right about now.
12:01So far in 2026, the FAA has already received more than 1,200 unruly passenger reports.
12:10That's more than the total amount reported annually from 2017 through 2020.
12:18One example of these unruly passenger incidents was reported on this week by USA Today.
12:24It involved a passenger removed by authorities from a flight in Florida.
12:30And it cited one report that indicated the passenger was a woman who took off her clothes during the flight.
12:39KNX News' Mike Simpson and Margaret Carrero discussed the unruly passenger problem with a travel expert earlier this week.
12:48Let's listen.
12:50Did you see the latest video of the guy duct taped to a seat on an airline?
12:54People are still behaving badly.
12:56They're unruly.
12:56They're disruptive.
12:57And it's gone up like 50% from this time last year.
13:00The airline's apparently not doing too much about it.
13:02We're also getting some new details into the deadly Amazon jet crash at Miami.
13:07KNX travel editor Peter Greenberg is on the line with us.
13:10Hey, Peter.
13:11Welcome from Los Angeles right here in town.
13:14Let's start with, of course, the deadly Amazon jet crash.
13:19What have investigators discovered so far at this point?
13:22Well, they were able to discover it very, very quickly because they had an abundance of evidence.
13:26They had the plane itself.
13:27The plane was not destroyed.
13:28They had the physical evidence to investigate.
13:30They had the cockpit voice recorder.
13:32They had the flight data recorder.
13:34They were able to construct a second-by-second timeline.
13:37And it doesn't look good for the pilots.
13:39And it doesn't look good for the operator.
13:41The pilots did not have a stabilized approach.
13:43And as any pilot will tell you, if it's not a stabilized approach, you do a go-around.
13:47They didn't do a go-around.
13:48They never declared an emergency.
13:50In fact, they landed in a very unstable way with the nose gear hitting first.
13:54Planes don't do that.
13:55And then they were going too slow to be able to get back up in the air and too fast
13:59to stop.
14:00And by the time they decided to do a go-around and to throttle up those engines, it was too
14:04late.
14:05They exited the runway, hit that van, killed those five people.
14:08And now we have that story.
14:09But going beyond that, you should know this.
14:12Anytime the NTSB does an investigation, it takes them about a year to issue a final report about the probable
14:18cause.
14:18They won't have to wait a year on this one.
14:20Let's talk a bit, like Mike was leading into this, about the disruptive, unruly passengers.
14:25I mean, you've got to be pretty unruly to get duct-taped to your seat.
14:28I mean, what are airlines doing?
14:29Can they do anything to deal with this?
14:31Well, let's go back to the days of COVID when people just were refusing to wear masks and were becoming
14:35unruly disruptive and, in some cases, violent.
14:38A lot of people got, quote-unquote, banned from the airlines.
14:41Well, did they really?
14:42Actually, they did not.
14:43In fact, they really were invited back by the airlines because they wanted the revenue.
14:49If you're going to ban an airline passenger for disruptive behavior, which, by the way, cost the airlines a minimum
14:54of five figures just to divert the plane, not to mention the inconvenience to the passengers.
14:59If you're going to do that, then why would you invite them back?
15:02You need a full ban that goes across all the airlines.
15:06For example, if I'm disruptive on an American flight and I'm banned by American, it doesn't stop me from going
15:11to Delta or United and behaving the exact same way.
15:14Last but not least, guys, the alcohol factor.
15:18Short of putting breathalyzers at jetways, remember, people come on the plane already drunk, and now the airline pilots and
15:25the flight attendants have to become sky cops,
15:27and the passengers have to help out.
15:29Nobody wants that.
15:30You're a fan, I know, of the, like, cut off at a certain amount of time before you get on
15:33the plane kind of thing.
15:35Oh, I've been arguing about this for years.
15:37It's a very simple solution.
15:39You do the fourth quarter rule from the NFL.
15:41You say to everybody that no retail establishment that serves alcohol at an airport can serve anybody alcohol within 45
15:49minutes stamped on their boarding pass for the boarding time,
15:51and that will solve the problem.
15:53Otherwise, you've got a problem in the air at altitude with alcohol, and nobody wants that.
15:59So, Greenberg says that at least one treatment for unruly passenger incidents is avoiding too much in-flight booze.
16:07Now, there's another treatment for a completely different issue that's been making headlines recently.
16:14It's the first FDA-approved drug to treat a cause of narcolepsy, a disease characterized by attacks of sleep.
16:22Steve Scott, out of Odyssey Station KCBS Radio in the Bay Area, spoke with Emmanuel Minow,
16:30a sleep specialist at Stanford's Sleep Medicine Center, who's been recognized for discovering the cause of this disorder.
16:40And during this interview, Minow revealed that he got some help from none other than man's best friend.
16:48Happy to be here.
16:49Can we start with a basic definition?
16:51I think a lot of people have heard of narcolepsy, but in layman's terms, what is it?
16:56It's very simple.
16:57These patients have a problem with staying awake and controlling their REM sleep, which is the episode of sleep where
17:04you're normally dreaming.
17:07So, basically, if these patients are tired all the time and they have to take multiple naps during the day,
17:13they usually feel better after a nap, but it doesn't last very long.
17:17And also, in addition, they dream a lot.
17:20Sometimes they dream, feel very real.
17:23And they have this strange symptom where when they're laughing or getting excited about something, happy about something, but mostly
17:30laughing, sometimes they feel muscle weakness.
17:34They kind of feel a little bit muscle paralysis due to a symptom called cataplexy.
17:42So, to be clear, this is more than somebody staying out until 3 or 4 a.m. and they're just
17:48tired during the day.
17:49This is an actual clinical problem.
17:53Absolutely.
17:54In fact, there is a chemical in their brain missing, so it's entirely, totally biological.
17:59In fact, we can measure that chemical and show that it's completely undetectable in people with narcolepsy.
18:07How widespread is it?
18:09Is it relatively rare, relatively common?
18:13It's relatively rare, but it's not very, very rare.
18:16So, it affects about 1% for 3,000.
18:19So, 0.03%.
18:22So, it's one of these disorders that's rare enough that it's often missed, but not exceptionally rare.
18:34Most of the patients don't know that they have it.
18:37I want to get into your research into narcolepsy in a moment because you've made some exciting breakthroughs.
18:44But you say most patients don't know they have narcolepsy.
18:48What makes identifying narcolepsy so difficult?
18:51I think I like to say that the patients don't tell and the doctors don't listen.
18:58So, I think sometimes being tired and sleepy, people find excuses about it.
19:04They say, oh, I didn't sleep well.
19:06And in fact, sometimes these patients don't sleep very well.
19:08So, sometimes it feels normal to be tired and they don't complain to the doctor about it.
19:15Or sometimes they have had it for a very long time and they just don't think it's a big deal.
19:22And also the doctors, they don't know much about narcolepsy.
19:27So, they would very often miss it.
19:30Think, oh, you don't sleep enough or, you know, you're tired for another reason.
19:35Dr. Mignot, you have just received one of the top prizes in science for your research.
19:42And we understand your dog played a big role.
19:46Can you tell us more?
19:48Yes, of course.
19:49You know, I'm a big friend of the canine species.
19:54And indeed, the cause of narcolepsy was unknown.
19:57But my predecessor, Dr. Demenz, had found that narcolepsy could affect dogs.
20:03So, in dogs, of course, it's hard because they sleep all the time already.
20:08But in fact, a dog with narcolepsy has trouble staying awake even harder than a normal dog.
20:14So, you see it mostly when you walk with a dog.
20:17You know, I have a dog with narcolepsy.
20:19When I walk him for long walks, he becomes very tired and starts to fall asleep.
20:24But also, when he gets excited about something, in humans, it's laughing and joking and being happy about something.
20:31But in dogs, it's when you give them good food.
20:34Then he gets paralyzed.
20:35He gets, like, muscle weakness.
20:37It's a cataplexy.
20:40And indeed, the cause of narcolepsy in humans was unknown.
20:43And I found the gene that caused narcolepsy in dogs.
20:47And that helped me to understand the cause of the human disease, which is slightly different because in dogs, it
20:54can be genetic.
20:55Whereas in humans, it's sporadic.
20:57People develop it when they are children or early adulthood.
21:02And it's an autoimmune disease.
21:03Thank you so much for listening to this Weird News Roundup presented by Odyssey's Something Offbeat podcast.
21:12This episode was written and produced by me, Lauren Berry.
21:17Special thanks to the Dana and Parks Show out of KMBZ in Kansas City, WWJ News Radio in Detroit, KNX
21:27News in Los Angeles, and KCBS Radio in the Bay Area.
21:32You can find all of these programs and the Something Offbeat podcast on the Odyssey app or wherever you get
21:41your podcasts.
21:49You can find all of these programs and the Something Offbeat podcast on the Odyssey app or wherever you get
21:51your podcasts.