Episode Transcript
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0:00
Strange News Daily. It's a production of I heart
0:02
Media.
0:15
In a world full of bizarre events, unsolved
0:18
mysteries, and a billion stories from all
0:20
corners of the globe, some news
0:22
gets lost in the shuffle. This
0:25
is your gateway to the stories on the fringe
0:27
of the mainstream map. These are
0:29
your dispatches in the dark. I'm
0:32
Ben Bolan, and this is the Strange
0:34
News Daily, our
0:42
first story today. Hearkens
0:44
back to an earlier report about
0:47
a strange series of deaths
0:50
and injuries in Russia, when
0:52
multiple medical professionals
0:55
died due to falling
0:58
out of windows. Uh In
1:00
many cases these were ruled accidents
1:03
or suicides, but just
1:05
this week, a police major in far
1:08
eastern Russia fell to her
1:10
death from a window after testifying
1:13
against her boss in a criminal extortion
1:15
case. Security cameras
1:18
captured the body of criminal
1:20
investigation officer Yeka Tarina
1:22
Mishkina, who was thirty seven, near
1:25
a nine floor apartment building in
1:27
the city of Kabarovsk, more
1:29
than eight thousand kilometers
1:31
east of Moscow. At this point,
1:34
it was unclear what mis
1:36
Kinna, who was dressed in plain clothes
1:39
at the time, had been doing,
1:41
and she'd been pursuing someone. What
1:44
were her activities before she plunged
1:46
to her death from what appears to be
1:48
a window on the fifth floor. Various
1:52
domestic news websites reported
1:54
that security cameras showed Miskena
1:57
unsuccessfully trying to get access
1:59
to the building's rooftop and
2:01
then descending a few further
2:04
flights. There
2:06
are also anonymous sources
2:08
in local law enforcement agencies
2:11
who say that Maschino was a witness
2:13
in a criminal case against her one
2:15
time boss. This boss
2:18
was suspected of extorting
2:20
subordinates. Miskina
2:22
was reported to have testified against
2:25
him at some point before her
2:27
death. Authorities opened
2:29
that criminal extortion case after Miskena's
2:32
former boss retired. The
2:34
regional police have launched an internal
2:37
inspection into Michkena's
2:39
death, and there's an interesting
2:41
line here. The spokesperson
2:43
for the police, Yaka Tarina Tarasova,
2:46
told local news that the investigator
2:49
assigned to the case was on quote
2:52
yet another vacation at the
2:54
time. Another unnamed
2:56
source close to the investigation claims
2:59
that a shoals found a note in Miskin's
3:02
purse listing a set of key tasks
3:04
she had to complete until a certain
3:07
point This note
3:09
leads this anonymous source to believe there
3:12
was pre meditation involved
3:14
here, saying quote this indicates
3:16
that what happened was not spontaneous.
3:19
Mosquito was divorced and she leaves
3:21
behind a fourteen year old daughter.
3:25
As we noted at the top of this story, this
3:27
death follows at least five other separate
3:30
incidents of Russian healthcare
3:32
workers falling from windows at
3:34
the height of the coronavirus pandemic this
3:36
spring, as well as two
3:39
young journalists back in two thousand
3:41
eighteen to two thousand nineteen, before
3:44
the pandemic began. Our
3:56
second story today is a bit
3:58
surreal, or some people
4:00
it may be the stuff of
4:03
nightmares. Imagine
4:05
you're like any other homeowner, and
4:08
one day your walls start
4:10
leaking. They're not leaking
4:13
water, They're not leaking
4:15
some kind of coolant from the air
4:17
conditioning system. No,
4:20
your walls are leaking honey.
4:24
This is what happened to Andrea and Justin
4:26
Isabelle, a Pennsylvania couple who did
4:28
not know that unexpected house guest until
4:31
they saw fresh honey dripping
4:34
down the walls of their home.
4:38
The isabel family has lived in their
4:40
one year old home in Pennsylvania
4:42
for five years, and so
4:44
far they haven't had any major issues,
4:47
apart from the regular wear and tear
4:50
that comes with owning an older
4:52
home. Andrea reported
4:54
that her neighborhood had received heavy
4:56
rain from tropical Storm Fade,
4:59
so at first she and her husband thought
5:02
these streams coming down the wall of their
5:04
mud room were from water storage.
5:08
That weekend, the couple took a closer
5:10
look and realized the liquid
5:12
was actually fresh honey.
5:15
We've never heard any buzzing or anything, says
5:17
Andrea, when we saw this stream
5:19
coming down the wall, we just kind of
5:21
worked our way up. Isabel
5:25
has made it to their bedroom window
5:27
and looked outside, and that's where they found
5:29
honeybees entering and exiting
5:31
and opening along the roof of
5:33
the house. In a video posted
5:36
on social media, Justin Isabel
5:38
offered a sketch comedy like homeowner
5:41
tutorial called how to Tell if
5:43
you have a b issue. The honey
5:45
streams have traveled from the attic,
5:48
through the second story, the main floor,
5:50
and now down to the basement. Alan
5:53
Lazani, who was a general contractor
5:55
and has been an apiarist for eight
5:58
years, looked at the home on weekend
6:00
and estimated the bee colony was
6:02
anywhere from twenty thousand to
6:04
thirty thousand strong. He
6:07
continued saying, I think water got into
6:09
the colony and washed the nectar out of the
6:11
comb and made it more liquefied, and
6:13
that's what was running down the wall. The
6:16
isabel say their children think the stream
6:18
is crazy, and the family dog
6:20
certainly seems to be into the idea
6:23
of fresh, free honey literally
6:25
oozing from the walls. Zanni
6:28
plans to extract the colony from the
6:30
home and take it to a b yard
6:32
on his own property. The
6:34
Isabel's say, we know bees are endangered.
6:37
We want to be able to save the colony and re
6:39
home them appropriately and carefully. But
6:41
the damage done to the house to extract it
6:44
was concerning. The
6:46
repairs will cost an estimated three
6:48
thousand dollars, and homeowners
6:51
insurance, which is famously
6:53
terrible at covering stuff like this, is
6:55
probably not going to cover the
6:58
unwanted b squads.
7:01
The Isabels are quick to add, by the way
7:03
that no one has been
7:05
stung, and when
7:07
you consider the damage that insects
7:10
living in the home could do to the structure,
7:12
it's understandable why people would
7:14
want them to leave. But still,
7:17
a beehive is pretty cool. Maybe
7:20
just move it to the backyard. Our
7:32
third story today is inspiring.
7:36
Maybe it's about
7:38
humanities, constant
7:40
exploration of our own
7:43
limits. How far can we
7:45
push ourselves? Well, it's
7:48
sort of about that. You see.
7:50
Scientists may have just figured out how
7:53
many hot dogs people can eat in
7:55
ten minutes. This is a
7:57
huge deal for part
7:59
of the population, competitive eaters
8:01
and fans of competitions
8:04
like Nathan's famous Coney Island hot
8:06
dog eating contest. Before
8:08
we give you the answer, let's let's tell you
8:10
a little bit about how we
8:13
arrived at it. Our story
8:15
starts with a physiologist named James
8:18
Smoliga. James works at
8:20
the High Point University in North Carolina,
8:23
and last year he was watching the Nathan's
8:25
hot dog eating contests when an idea
8:28
struck him like a bolt of competitive
8:31
eating lightning. Could we,
8:33
he thought, apply the mathematical
8:35
equations used to estimate the limits
8:37
of athletic performance to feats
8:41
of competitive eating. This
8:44
set him off on his journey.
8:46
He analyzed nearly forty
8:48
years of the hot dog eating
8:51
contests. The current
8:53
record of seventy five hot dogs
8:55
is an improvement over the competition's early
8:58
days, where winners were crowned after
9:00
eating as few as a dozen hot
9:02
dogs. So, based on this data
9:05
from a hundred and fifty two competitors
9:07
over thirty nine years, Smolega
9:09
calculated what he calls an upper
9:11
hot dog limit of about eighty
9:14
three dogs in ten minutes.
9:16
That translates to a consumption rate
9:18
of about eight hundred and thirty two grams
9:21
per minute and more than whenty
9:24
three thousand calories total, at
9:26
least according to his report published
9:29
just yesterday in Biology Letters.
9:32
Hey quick, note, this is producer Dylan fig
9:35
In here. We just felt it was important to
9:37
point out that this breaks down to almost nine packages
9:39
of hot dogs and eleven packages of buns.
9:42
Eating anything above that would be, according
9:45
to this superhuman otherworldly
9:48
or perhaps a t rex in a human suit.
9:51
But let us know if you break the record, dinosaurs
9:54
will be disqualified. He
9:56
goes on to write that whether or not
9:58
competitive eat or has ever reached that
10:01
limit, the scale of improvement completely
10:04
dwarfs other athletic achievements.
10:07
It sounds unbelievable, but keep
10:09
in mind that record performances in sports
10:11
like track and field have improved
10:13
approximately since
10:15
record keeping began. In contrast,
10:18
hot dog eating prowess
10:21
has improved approximately seven
10:24
hundred percent. In
10:26
fact, human beings even hold
10:28
our own pound for pound against
10:31
other meat eating mammals
10:33
when normalized for body mass.
10:35
Competitive hot dog eaters have a consumption
10:38
rate that's higher than that of grizzly
10:40
bears and coyote, although
10:42
to be fair, wolves still
10:45
have a higher consumption rate. And
10:48
it makes sense when you think about it, eating
10:50
large quantities of food very quickly
10:52
can be a tremendously helpful strategy
10:55
for carnivores when food is scarce,
10:58
and Smiliga says human me's capacity
11:01
for a relatively high consumption rate
11:03
may have been crucial at some point
11:05
in our evolutionary past. However,
11:09
nowadays, inhaling six
11:11
or seven hot dogs a minute for ten
11:13
minutes mostly is
11:16
just going to lead to pretty
11:18
hilarious digestive problems. And
11:21
then maybe, of course, if you're
11:23
lucky first prize in the Nathan's
11:25
Hot Dog Eating contest. But
11:28
there you have it something to think about, especially
11:31
if you're one of those people we mentioned
11:33
earlier, the fans of both
11:35
sports and gambling who
11:38
can't wait to bet on competitive
11:40
eating contest that's
11:45
all for now. We've been asking you to chime
11:47
in with suggestions for stories you think your
11:49
fellow listeners should learn more about.
11:52
To hit us with your best or worst dad
11:54
jokes, as well as your personal experience
11:56
with strange stories going on in your
11:58
neck of the global woods. Let
12:00
us know by tagging hashtag Strange Daily
12:03
on Twitter, or reach out to me directly. I'm
12:05
at Ben Bullin hs W on Twitter or
12:07
at Ben Bollin on Instagram.
12:10
Thanks as always to our super producer
12:12
Dylan Fagan, our research associate
12:15
Sam T. Garden. Most importantly,
12:17
thanks to you. I'm Ben Bollin.
12:20
We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, stay
12:23
strange
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