News Sidequest

A collection of stories you might have missed while everyone was focused on the Red Team vs. Blue Team fight newssidequest.substack.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

News Sidequest is a news podcast hosted by Keith Conrad, with 163 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Keith Conrad hosts News Sidequest, a news show with 163 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  News Sidequest

  Praising kids for being smart teaches them to cheat / Great white sharks have moved into Maine / The home feature you didn't know you needed

  Sep 14, 202610 min

  A University of Wollongong study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology found that preschoolers told they succeeded because they were "smart" cheated on a subsequent test 64% of the time — nearly double the rate of kids praised for effort, luck, or an easy task. Also: great white sharks have become regular summer visitors to southern Maine, with nearly a dozen spotted off Scarborough Beach over two days in August, a lifeguard pulled underwater, and the Atlantic white shark population rebounding steadily after decades of conservation. And the WSJ profiled the wild must-haves luxury home buyers are requesting in 2026 — which is a great jumping-off point for the Mackinac Island house. Plus a drug dealer's loyalty card program, the Miami poop bucket neighbor, an art collector who paid $4,000 for trash, and a high school student suspended for coffee. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  News Sidequest

  Remembering September 11 / Bedroom light is quietly hurting your heart / The Ig Nobels crowned rich people for taking candy from children / Snoop Dogg found a $120,000 marketing budget that worked

  Sep 11, 202610 min

  A Tulane University study published in the European Heart Journal found that people exposed to more than 3 lux of light while sleeping — about the brightness of light bleeding under a closed door — developed thicker, stiffer heart walls over three years. Also: the 2026 Ig Nobel Prize in Economics went to a team of UC Irvine researchers who confirmed across multiple experiments that wealthy people are more likely to steal candy meant for children, cut off other drivers, and lie at work — and the prize ceremony itself took place for the first time in Zurich with Nobel laureates handing out awards. And Snoop Dogg posted a job for an international ice cream taster at his Dr. Bombay brand, paying $10,000 a month for three months — received 200,000 applications from 133 countries — and got more coverage of his ice cream brand in a week than most companies get in a year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  News Sidequest

  Teens are reading at a level one year behind where they should be / What makes an AI chatbot actually work for older adults / Pokémon cards as post-apocalypse currency

  Sep 10, 202610 min

  The OECD's 2025 PISA test of 760,000 fifteen-year-olds across 91 countries found reading, math, and science scores at their lowest levels since testing began in 2000 — with teens reading at a level previously expected of students one year younger, and students who regularly used AI chatbots for essays and summaries scoring the equivalent of a year behind in science. Also: a Singapore University of Technology and Design study found that older adults were most likely to adopt and bond with an AI chatbot when it felt authentic and responsive — and counterintuitively, the more human-like the chatbot seemed, the less likely they were to use it. And Peter Levin, founder of Griffin Gaming Partners and owner of 500,000+ trading cards, told the Hollywood Reporter he genuinely believes Pokémon cards will serve as currency after an apocalypse. Plus a coyote catching a roadrunner, the largest Viking silver trove found in Denmark, the Cat in the Hat chasing a teen, and a fake Downing Street Booking.com listing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  News Sidequest

  You can meet people at the gate again / CDs are back and half the buyers don't own a player / Write it down and fall asleep faster

  Sep 9, 202610 min

  The TSA has launched Gateside by TSA PreCheck at 13 US airports, allowing eligible non-ticketed visitors to pass through security and meet family at the gate for the first time since September 11, 2001. Also: CD sales jumped 16% in the first half of 2026 — outpacing vinyl's 2.4% growth — driven by Gen Z collectors, K-pop fans, and one remarkable data point: roughly half of Gen Z buyers who purchased a CD this year don't own a CD player. And a Baylor University study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that five minutes of writing a specific to-do list before bed caused participants to fall asleep nine minutes faster than those who wrote about what they'd already done. Plus a duct-taped first-class passenger, an MMA fighter offered $500K to fight a chimp, a crocodile head in Italian airport luggage, and the one bathroom trip rule. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  News Sidequest

  Being single is actually good for you if you do it right / MapQuest is back and it made a statement / Men skipping showers to attract women and how that's going

  Sep 1, 202611 min

  A Simon Fraser University study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin finds that single people who view their singlehood as an opportunity for growth — trying new things, traveling solo, pursuing hobbies — report higher life satisfaction, less fear of being single, and stronger feelings of autonomy than those who see it as a waiting room. Also: MapQuest announced it would not rename Lake Ontario to "Lake America" on its maps, usage jumped 50 times its normal rate, it became the number one navigation app in the US App Store for the first time in its 30-year history, and hundreds of thousands of new users downloaded an app they assumed had ceased to exist. And "pheromone-maxxing" is a TikTok trend where Gen Z men skip showers before dates believing their natural scent will make them biologically irresistible. Scientists note that human pheromones have not been definitively proven to exist. Women have largely confirmed they are not finding this irresistible. Plus a $30 Walmart manhunt, the John Wayne Gacy brain jar stalker, rabid baby goats, and the disappearing Canadian island. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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