Returning Pandas and A Special Neighborhood - 10 Things You Need to Know

LISTEN HERE

The Ten News: Episode 512

10 Things You Need to Know with The Ten News!

1. 🐼 The Return of the Pandas!

2. 🍂 Leaf Peeping Time

3. 🧇 The Waffle Index

4. ⚾ NY Sports Wins

5. 🥪 Bunch of Bologna

6. 🇪🇬 Egyptian Treasures

7. 🥾 A Cold Discovery

8.🏔️ Everest Growth Spirt

9. 🎮 Mario Party Jamboree

10. 🏠 A Special Neighborhood

Resources

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/10/15/dc-new-giant-pandas-national-zoo/

https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/new-hampshire-hiking-trail-overcrowded-artists-bluff/

https://apnews.com/article/waffle-house-index-hurricane-milton-e0547ca1fb11ddcadab50035a0da7819

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/yankees-and-dodgers-meet-in-world-series-for-12th-time-see-list-of-mlbs-most-common-fall-classic-matchups/

https://www.nationaldaycalendar.com/national-day/national-bologna-day-october-24

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/egypts-long-delayed-mega-museum-open-main-galleries-114819517

https://www.npr.org/2024/10/12/nx-s1-5150469/mount-everest-climber-foot-discovered-national-geographic

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/everest-worlds-tallest-mountain-growing-even-taller-rcna173395

https://www.cnn.com/style/worlds-largest-3d-printer-homes-maine-hnk-spc-intl/index.html

Get Connected

🫶 Help fund The Ten News by donating today!

✔️ Subscribe to our Ten News-letter!

📱 Follow the show on Instagram: @thetennews

📧 Email us at hello@thetennews.com if you have any questions or want to submit audio!

🖱️ Visit thetennews.com for additional resources, our online store, the Ten'ers Club, and more!

Transcript:

INT. TEN NEWS STUDIO 

<SFX trying to open a locked door>

PAM (yelling): Ry, are you in there? Why is the door locked?

RYAN: It’s not locked, it’s glued shut with maple syrup!

PAM: It’s what?!

RYAN: Well with all the crazy weather we’ve had, I’m turning my office into a Waffle House. But I’m almost out of syrup and waffles…

PAM: That sounds architecturally delicious but why would you be doing this?

RYAN: Because Waffle Houses can predict the weather. And also…I want to be able to eat my walls, if I get hungry. 

PAM: Yup, that’s not how the Waffle House index works, it’s actually–you know what? We’ll get back to that one… I’m Pamela Kirkland. 

RYAN: And I’m Ryan Willard, it’s Thursday October 24th.

PAM: This is Ten Things You Need to Know.

PAM: It’s the return of the -

RYAN: WAIT - we should let the Ten’ners guess! 

PAM: Great idea! Ten’ners for 10 points, what animal is this? <SFX panda sound sounds> <SFX three second clock tick> It’s the return of the…giant pandas!

RYAN: AAAAAAAAH - wait, did you say giant pandas? That’s not as scary as I thought. 

PAM: Two giant pandas Qing Bao and Bao Li are at the National Zoo in Washington DC! The pair of 3-year-old pandas traveled 8,000 miles from China, arriving in style to the states on a white-and-blue cargo jet with “Panda Express” and an image of a giant panda on it. And that’s before rolling up to the zoo with a police escort. Their arrival is part of a renewal of the National Zoo’s partnership with China, and a half-century-long project to study and ultimately conserve and help giant pandas. The pandas won’t make their public debut until Jan. 24, since they need to be quarantined. It’ll be worth the wait, because the quarantine will reduce the risk of spreading parasites or diseases, and they need some time to get used to their new home and handlers. 

RYAN: In the meantime, it’s fall. Autumn leaves are gorgeous but you know what’s not so beautiful? Trail traffic. During the mid-October long weekend, things got a little nuts on the trail- but I’m not talking about spilling your trail mix.. In popular New England hiking spots, there was such a rush of people trying to see the changing leaves that things actually got pretty dangerous. Hikers reported people shoving to get through, and a lot of inexperienced hikers struggled with the trail difficulty, especially without the proper footwear or gear. One woman needed 25 rescuers to carry her 4.2 miles to the trailhead! If you’re going to hike this fall, be careful and be prepared - make sure you have proper footwear, warm clothes, extra food, water and batteries…also trail mix. With extra M&Ms. 

PAM: Ryan’s Waffle House may sound like a dream home, but Waffle House but it’s actually a popular restaurant! And it's become even more than that - introducing: The Waffle House Index. This is a way for people to gauge the severity of weather conditions based on if local Waffle Houses stay open. A map of the chain’s almost 2,000 locations, mostly in the Southeast and mid-Atlantic, helps people in storm-prone places see how likely they are to lose power or experience flooding - things that might cause a restaurant to close. But with storms brewing, people can't really be expected to drive around looking at Waffle Houses, so their social media shares color-coded maps of the locations! Green means the location is serving a full menu, and minimal damage is expected in the area. Yellow is for a limited menu, so it’s pulling power from a generator, and might have a low food supply. Red means closed, which is a sign of unsafe operating conditions and severe destruction to the restaurant or nearby communities. 

RYAN: It was a huge week in the wide world of sports <SFX Soccer Ball Kick, then Baseball Bat Crack, then Basketball Net Swish and a Stadium Crowd Roar> Starting with basketball, The New York Liberty are now the WNBA champions! On Sunday, the Liberty defeated the Minnesota Lynx in game 5 of the finals, winning 67 to 62. It’s the first championship title for the New York Liberty after 28 years and 5 previous Finals appearances. 

And that wasn’t the only excitement in New York. In baseball, the New York Yankees won the American League Championship Series, defeating the Cleveland Guardians, 4 games to 1. The Yanks will now face the Los Angeles Dodgers, who defeated the New York Mets in the National League Championship Series, 4 games to 2. This will be the 12th time the Yankees and Dodgers have faced off in the World Series, the most in MLB history. The World Series begins on Friday, October 25th at 8:08pm Eastern time. 

PAM: Ry, I know you’re excited about the World Series, but today is a special and slightly ridiculous day. It’s National Bologna Day! Every year on October 24th, people across America can celebrate the familiar lunch meat that is as tasty as it is difficult to spell. The spelling, bologna, is because it comes from the city of Bologna, Italy, although the American and Italian versions of Bologna are pretty different. In fact, there are bolognas around the world, including German Bologna, Kosher or halal bologna, Lebanon bologna, Tennessee-specific Rag bologna, South African polony, or the Finnish bologna, Lauantaimakkara.

RYAN: That…is a whole bunch of bologna. 

But you know what’s not a bunch of bologna? Our next story, which we’ll get to right after the break!

Hey Ten’ers! One of our upcoming Election Special minisodes is all about YOU. And we need to hear from you! We wanna know: What issues do you care about the most? Who do you want to win the presidential election? If you got to meet a presidential candidate, what would you tell or ask them? Check out the link in our show notes where you can send us a voice note. We might just have you on the show! Speaking of the show, back to it! 

RYAN: Welcome back, Ten’ners, and we have a New Museum Alert! <SFX some ancient Egyptian music maybe?> The Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Egypt has 12 halls with exhibits highlighting ancient Egypt, and is now open in a trial run ahead of its official opening, which has yet to be announced. The mega-project is near the pyramids of Giza, cost over $1 billion, has been under construction for more than 10 years, and is expected to see 4,000 visitors per day. It features more than 100,000 artifacts of Egyptian ancient treasures, and there’s a grand staircase six stories high with a view of the pyramids! The museum will have multimedia presentations explaining life in ancient Egypt, including royalty, and use virtual reality to explain the history of burial. Warning, it may make you want to go as a mummy for Halloween.

PAM: Speaking of preserved bodies, listeners beware - there was a creepy discovery on Everest recently. A century after Andrew Irvine lost his life attempting to climb Mount Everest in 1924, a team of National Geographic mountaineers might have found some partial remains. The crew saw a worn leather boot, with a socked foot still inside, sticking out of a chunk of ice. It's being sent off for testing, but the sock had a red label that said “A.C. IRVINE” stitched in. Irvine was a 22-year-old student, who went with his partner, 37-year-old George Mallory, to try to climb Everest, the world’s tallest mountain. They disappeared, so the question still remains if they actually reached the summit. The first people confirmed to have reached the top of Everest were Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953, almost thirty years later. 

RYAN: Climbing Everest already seems pretty impossible, but what if I told you that it’s actually getting even taller? Oh my gosh that's like math class - starts out hard and somehow gets harder?!  Everest is already almo st 30,000 feet above sea level, hundreds of feet taller than its neighboring mountains, but the peak may be getting even higher.

PAM: This is partially because the two nearby river systems merged, tens of thousands of years ago. Researchers say that when the Kosi River took over the Arun River just 89,000 years ago, the combined river was so powerful that it eroded a lot of rock and soil from the Himalayan base. Because this erosion reduces the region’s weight, it allows land masses on earth’s crust to rise up. Kind of like when you take a lot of weight off of a boat that’s a little sunken into the water. The mountain has been steadily gaining height, along with the rest of the Himalayas, for the 45 million years since they were originally formed. But Ten'ers, it's only growing by millimeters per year, so remember that you are growing way faster than the world's tallest mountain!

RYAN: You know what’s almost as impressive as the world’s tallest mountain? The fact that I beat the Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom this weekend. <SFX Applause> Thank you! And I quickly moved on so I could give you a quick review of Nintendo’s latest game, Mario Party Jamboree. This is GGs <SFX GGs INTRO> 

Jamboree is the third Mario Party entry on the Switch, and I think it might be the BEST. If you’ve never played Mario Party, it’s basically a board game where 4 players face off, roll the dice and each turn has a mini game that everyone participates in. It’s incredibly fun to play with friends and family, but I gotta warn you, it can get a little heated. Kap, how was your playthrough this weekend?

KAP: I did get a little worked up, but I did not throw a controller! Owen and Naomi crushed me, I’m going to have to practice while they’re at school…

RYAN: Practice all you want, but you’ll never beat ME! Jamboree has 22 playable characters, seven different game boards, and over 122 mini games. One part I really enjoyed was the online play. The Koopathlon mode is a 20 person race where you collect coins through the mini games and the Bowser Kaboom Squad is a co-op battle for up to 8 players. Mario Party Jamboree is available now and a very strong followup to last month’s Echoes of Wisdom. It’s shaping up to be a pretty sweet holiday season for the Nintendo Switch.

PAM: And for the last thing you need to know, let’s go to our Trivia Master, Owen. 

<SFX Trivia Theme song> 

OWEN: There’s a neighborhood under construction outside of Austin, Texas that’s very special - do you know why that is?

1. It’s the world’s largest 3D-printed neighborhood

2. There are more Starbucks than houses

3. It’s home to the largest concentration of pink-tailed squirrels in North America

   <SFX 5 second clock tick>

OWEN: Did ya get it? The answer is A! The world’s largest 3D-printed neighborhood is currently under construction outside of Austin, Texas. 3D-printing has been used to build a ton of stuff - toys, bridges, mosques - one non-profit is even working on printing schools in a war zone! 

RYAN: And on the other side of the world, Dubai is also getting down with the 3D printing and holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s biggest 3D-printed structure, and they have a goal to have 25% new buildings constructed with 3D printing technology by 2030. I feel so behind on my 3D printing. Owen, can I borrow yours? I wanna print myself a go-kart!

OWEN: I don’t think that’s how it works. Maybe stick to Mario Kart, Ry.

PAM: And that’s Ten Things You Need to Know! Ryan, what do you say we clean up your Waffle House and get going? 

RYAN: I’ve actually already eaten all the waffles in said house, I just have to finish licking up all the syrup off the walls and floor–

PAM: NO NO NO! Ryan no! That’s disgusting. Use the mop, not your tongue.

RYAN: Okay, we also gotta do Ten News Snaps! 

PAM: But first, here’s a quick note for the grownups.

[Ad Break]

RYAN:

Time for Ten News Snaps! <Grand fanfare SFX>

PAM: A Ten’er named “Louisville Genevieve” left us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts and left us a ‘spot the difference challenge.’ Ooooh, in the first, there’s one emoji with smaller eyes than the others… Yeah that was easy. And this one’s hard… Oh I got it! One of the flags has a different symbol on the right side! 

 RYAN: Oooooooh! My turn my turn! Ummm, you said this one with the globe emojis is impossible…ALMOST NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE IF YOU PUT YOUR MIND TO IT! Okay, yeah this one’s pretty hard–wait no! One of the globes shows a different side of planet earth! GOT ‘EM!  

PAM: FYI, Ten Things You Need to Know drops on Thursdays, and our deep dive episodes drop once a month. If you want some bonus content, you could join the Ten’ers Club on our website. And to our grownups, if you want to help support the Ten News, you can make a tax-deductible donation at the link in our show notes. The whole team thanks you for your support!

RYAN: “The Ten News” is a co-production of Small But Mighty Media and Next Chapter Podcasts, and part of the Airwave Podcast Network.

PAM: The Ten News creative team is busy eating bologna sandwiches and includes Tracey “Not a” Crooks, Adam “The Great Bambino” Bernard, “Captain” Kyle Murdock, Hebba “The Big Cheese” Gouda and Carson “Pitter Patter” Potter. Big thanks to Owen for contributing to this episode.. 

RYAN: Our Production Director is Jeremiah “On Fyaah” Tittle, and our Executive Producers are Donald “Not Dim but” Albright and show creator Tracy “Takes the” Leeds Kaplan. I’m Ryan Willard.

PAM: And I’m Pamela Kirkland, thanks for listening to the Ten News.