1
00:00:00,020 --> 00:00:04,940
The comedy4cast Network. Let's dog-ear that for now.

2
00:00:07,080 --> 00:00:12,860
It's time once again for the Dog Days of Podcasting, a call for podcasters to

3
00:00:12,860 --> 00:00:15,980
try to put out a podcast every day in August.

4
00:00:16,060 --> 00:00:20,980
For more information, go to dogdaysofpodcasting.com.

5
00:00:21,140 --> 00:00:24,720
We always take this month to provide you with some interesting,

6
00:00:25,120 --> 00:00:27,580
yet totally useless, odd news.

7
00:00:28,280 --> 00:00:32,820
And this year, to celebrate the platinum anniversary of comedy4cast,

8
00:00:33,020 --> 00:00:40,479
or PAC for short, we'll end each Dog Day episode with part of a classic comedy4cast episode.

9
00:00:40,760 --> 00:00:45,200
So, let's get started with Odd News PAC.

10
00:00:46,260 --> 00:00:49,860
It's always important to make a packing list before you take a trip.

11
00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:52,780
And an itinerary. And a detailed spreadsheet.

12
00:00:53,040 --> 00:00:56,360
And a to-do list. And a checklist of all the lists you need to create.

13
00:00:56,360 --> 00:01:00,620
But all of that is of no use if you forget to look at your lists,

14
00:01:00,820 --> 00:01:04,440
which is something a Parisian man should have done on a recent family car trip

15
00:01:04,440 --> 00:01:11,240
between Paris and Morocco, a distance of about 2,000 kilometers or just a little over 1,200 miles.

16
00:01:11,580 --> 00:01:16,020
Traveling with his wife and 22-year-old daughter, the man was making good time

17
00:01:16,020 --> 00:01:19,760
on his trip, aside from several stops at service stations along the way.

18
00:01:20,380 --> 00:01:22,880
Sometimes the stops were even to get gasoline.

19
00:01:23,520 --> 00:01:27,080
However, about three and a half hours after one of the stops,

20
00:01:27,260 --> 00:01:28,780
he had a sudden realization.

21
00:01:29,099 --> 00:01:34,099
His daughter was in the car, but his wife was not. It was then that he realized

22
00:01:34,099 --> 00:01:36,940
what had happened. She had been abducted by aliens.

23
00:01:39,680 --> 00:01:45,220
Oh, sorry, that's my headcanon. He realized that he had accidentally left her

24
00:01:45,220 --> 00:01:47,440
behind at one of the service station stops.

25
00:01:48,220 --> 00:01:53,580
But which one? Which one? Son, how many stops did this guy make?

26
00:01:54,120 --> 00:01:57,740
Apparently enough to know he was going to need some help. He called the authorities

27
00:01:57,740 --> 00:02:00,460
around 8.30 a.m. to explain the situation.

28
00:02:00,800 --> 00:02:05,780
The gendarmerie were sympathetic to his story and also a little suspicious.

29
00:02:06,200 --> 00:02:08,840
The man said he no longer remembered where he had stopped.

30
00:02:09,380 --> 00:02:14,360
Or when. But did mention that he recalled stopping for a break near Orleans, France.

31
00:02:14,699 --> 00:02:18,500
Local authorities were dispatched, but they could find no indication of the

32
00:02:18,500 --> 00:02:20,100
wife at any of the rest areas.

33
00:02:20,419 --> 00:02:23,660
They widened their search to multiple locations along the motorway,

34
00:02:23,860 --> 00:02:26,260
but still, no sign of the missing woman.

35
00:02:26,620 --> 00:02:33,220
Police were growing increasingly suspicious that the 62-year-old man had forgotten his wife on purpose.

36
00:02:33,480 --> 00:02:36,540
By now you might be thinking, wait, what about the daughter?

37
00:02:37,060 --> 00:02:40,600
She was in the car. She must know when they stopped, and you would be right.

38
00:02:40,740 --> 00:02:46,139
Except she had been asleep, possibly dreaming of taking a motor trip somewhere without her parents.

39
00:02:46,400 --> 00:02:49,860
Regardless, she had no idea where her mother might have been left behind.

40
00:02:50,139 --> 00:02:54,660
Luckily, the police were able to locate the missing woman with the help of a

41
00:02:54,660 --> 00:02:57,320
mobile network operator by tracking her phone.

42
00:02:57,520 --> 00:03:02,320
She was at a service station near Deux-Sèvres, about 300 miles from where her husband

43
00:03:02,320 --> 00:03:06,780
had realized she was missing. That had happened at 4.30 a.m.,

44
00:03:06,780 --> 00:03:10,420
and the woman hadn't moved from the spot in over five hours,

45
00:03:10,680 --> 00:03:12,460
waiting for her family to return.

46
00:03:12,760 --> 00:03:16,240
And now I know you're wondering, wait, if the woman had a phone,

47
00:03:16,480 --> 00:03:20,900
why didn't she just call her husband or her daughter? I don't know for sure.

48
00:03:21,080 --> 00:03:28,900
But I think that after she was mistakenly left behind at a service station at 4.30 a.m.,

49
00:03:28,900 --> 00:03:34,800
with nothing to do but sit and wait, Her mind was preoccupied with what she

50
00:03:34,800 --> 00:03:37,900
was going to say to her husband when he came back.

51
00:03:38,080 --> 00:03:43,480
Meanwhile, their daughter was probably thinking, Next summer, I'm going solo.

52
00:03:44,660 --> 00:03:50,580
And now, let's celebrate 20 years of comedy forecast with this classic clip.

53
00:03:50,880 --> 00:03:57,040
In this clip from February of 2011, Derek is downloading an app on his new Android phone.

54
00:03:57,240 --> 00:04:02,660
And Rory has questions. We join the confusion already in progress.

55
00:04:03,340 --> 00:04:07,300
Now, the newest version of Android is Honeycomb.

56
00:04:07,600 --> 00:04:14,600
Uh, that means either it's full of holes or it stays crispy in milk. Neither.

57
00:04:16,000 --> 00:04:20,520
Neither. It's optimized for use on tablets.

58
00:04:20,820 --> 00:04:26,600
That's funny. I pronounce it tableau. No, I mean tablet computers.

59
00:04:27,200 --> 00:04:33,920
And? A tablet computer is a device that falls somewhere between a laptop computer and a smartphone.

60
00:04:34,399 --> 00:04:38,260
Well, what falls between a smartphone and a tablet computer?

61
00:04:38,580 --> 00:04:45,060
I don't know. Ooh, I think I found a niche, and it needs to be scratched.

62
00:04:45,640 --> 00:04:50,080
Looks like my app has finished downloading it. And what is this app of which

63
00:04:50,080 --> 00:04:52,680
you speak? Is it short for Appetite?

64
00:04:53,279 --> 00:04:57,060
For FroYo? No, that's short for application.

65
00:04:57,640 --> 00:05:03,180
So they're applications that fall a bit short? They're small applications.

66
00:05:03,740 --> 00:05:10,080
Like widgets? Sort of, but bigger. So they fall between widgets and applications, huh?

67
00:05:10,399 --> 00:05:14,120
Boy, there sure are a lot of high-tech things that fall between other things.

68
00:05:14,300 --> 00:05:19,240
It's like the space between the cushions on the big comfy couch of consumerism. Loose change!

69
00:05:19,500 --> 00:05:23,480
Dust bunnies! It doesn't sound like you're too thrilled with Android phones.

70
00:05:23,839 --> 00:05:28,540
Well, that depends. I mean, do they obey Asimov's three laws of robotics?

71
00:05:28,880 --> 00:05:32,839
I don't know. Well, there you go. I'm not going to wake up dead one morning

72
00:05:32,839 --> 00:05:36,580
in the middle of the night because my phone thought its self-preservation was

73
00:05:36,580 --> 00:05:37,880
more important than mine.

74
00:05:39,760 --> 00:05:45,820
Well, that's too bad. They were having a two-for-one sale, so I picked one up for you.

75
00:05:46,000 --> 00:05:52,060
Oh, cool. But what about all that talk? Well, listen, if worse comes to worse

76
00:05:52,060 --> 00:05:57,500
and this thing attacks me, at least I know I have a smartphone right there so I can dial for help.

77
00:05:57,800 --> 00:06:01,980
As always, your logic is impeccable, Captain.

78
00:06:03,540 --> 00:06:06,660
That about wraps it up for today's Odd News Pack.

79
00:06:06,860 --> 00:06:10,500
But first, a shout out to the comedy4cast Patreon patrons,

80
00:06:10,860 --> 00:06:15,560
including our producer-level patrons, Paul Barrie from the A Window to the Magic

81
00:06:15,560 --> 00:06:20,740
podcast and Kirby Bartlett-Sloan from the 20-megabyte Doctor Who podcast.

82
00:06:21,260 --> 00:06:22,880
You too can support comedy4cast

83
00:06:23,440 --> 00:06:28,040
and get episodes before everyone else for as little as $2 a month.

84
00:06:28,280 --> 00:06:34,520
Just search for comedy4cast, all one word with the number 4, on Patreon.com.

85
00:06:35,840 --> 00:06:43,480
Script, voices, and original music by me, Clinton Alvord. Copyright 2025. All rights reserved.

86
00:06:44,140 --> 00:06:48,220
Talk to you again next time. But for now, that's it. We're done,

87
00:06:48,300 --> 00:06:49,960
done, done, done, done. Bye-bye.

88
00:06:50,160 --> 00:07:00,000
Music.