Episode 108

The triathlon, where contestants swim, bike and run for various lengths are quite common. What’s uncommon is to have an athlete juggle balls during all three events. Believe It or Not!, that’s what Joe Salter did and Ralf caught up with him afterward for a fun chat. Did he drop any of the balls during the race? Tune in to this week’s Ripley Radio Oddcast to find out!

P.T. Barnum made the Dime Museum of the late 1800s a popular attraction to visit for the entire family. These storefront “museums” displayed wild and weird specimens, plus bizarre and strange human acts. As they were fading in popularity in the early 1930s, Robert Ripley patterned his very first Odditorium after these early expositions and took the presentation up several notches. Sideshow historian James Taylor provides the fascinating evolution of the genre in which Ripley still excels today!

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Other Weird, Bizarre and Unusually Outrageous Things Discussed this Week:

  • Aren’t “All You Can Eat” buffets supposed to serve up ALL YOU CAN EAT? Yea, that’s what we thought too, until we heard about this Wisconsin man who got thrown out for eating TOO MUCH! He’s now picketing the restaurant.

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  • Our Weird Medical Malady host, Jodi Pliszka, has a very strange condition to discuss this week – Walking Corpse Syndrome!

  • What a sad tale: Grandma saves pile of cash for granddaughter’s college. Grandma presents the cash to said granddaughter who takes a picture of it and posts it on Facebook. A not so nice friend of granddaughter sees it, breaks into her house and steals the money during the night!

  • A man in Australia runs a half marathon of 13.1 miles on a treadmill in a hot air balloon high above ground – all for charity.

  • Intern Abby tells us that the most expensive parking spot, possibly in the world, is now on sale in New York City for a cool million!

  • How about a prison in Norway in which the inmates carry keys to their own cells and can come and go as they please? Angela reports on this cushy prison.

  • Ripley archivist Edward Meyer reveals where a couple of the 200-plus new exhibits going into Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Odditoriums this month are headed: St. Augustine gets a Jack Sparrow sculpture made out of old car parts; New York City gets a collection of miniatures including a carving of the Obama family – in the eye of a needle; and Hollywood is gearing up for the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death with a vast exhibit that includes Monroe’s famous sweater, a make-up kit, and her original steps in cement from the Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

  • Rita Ora provides our musical egress this week with her pop hit, How We Do Party.