The comedy4cast network. Let's dog-ear that for now.
This is comedy4ast, episode 867, Lumbering Forward.
It's time once again for the Dog Days of Podcasting, a call for podcasters to
try to put out a podcast every day in August.
For more information on that and to hear all the shows, go to dogdaysofpodcasting.com.
Here at the lovely comedy4cast studio, I always take this month to provide
you with some interesting, yet totally useless odd news.
And this year, I'm doubling the useless with not just one, but two odd news
stories that I think deserve each other.
So, let's have some fun with odd news times twos.
Rumors have been circulating for years that Jonathan is dead.
♪ DRAMATIC MUSICAL STING ♪
But let's dog-ear that for now and talk about Robin Hood. He robbed from the rich,
and gave to the poor, which kind of sounds like a never-ending cycle to me.
So good on you, Mr. Hood, you wacky entrepreneur, you.
Of course, the stories go that not everyone liked Robin's antics and hijinks
and whatnot, so he often took to Sherwood Forest with his merry men.
You know, Dopey, Sneezy, Harpo, Groucho, John Paul George and Ringo.
The giant oak trees in Sherwood provided plenty of places to hide,
including one special oak tree.
And while that legend may just be a story, there is a giant English oak tree
in Sherwood Forest that people have decided was the hiding place for Robin and
his crew. The tree is known as Major Oak.
Oh, it was never part of the military, that I know of.
It's named after Major Heyman Rook, an enthusiastic antiquarian.
So that's a thing, who published sketches of the forest in his hit 1790 book,
Descriptions and Sketches of Some Remarkable Oaks in the Park at Welbeck.
Be sure to add that to your Summer reading list. Anyway, after that, the tree
became a celebrity in its own right attracting tourists from far and wide. Huzzah!
But as time marched on, like many of us, the tree needed to be held up by a
system of scaffoldings.
And then a fence was put up to keep the constant flow of thrill-seekers from
walking around the tree. You see, their feet were unintentionally compacting
the soil, making it hard for Major Oak's roots to get water out of the ground.
Add to that the effects of climate change, fires, insect infestations,
and it's easy to see why, for decades, rumors have swirled that the tree had died.
But those rumors were false.
Until 2026. Major Oak didn't sprout leaves this year. The Royal Society for the.
Protection of Birds, who manage Sherwood said that they believe the tree has passed on.
I'd say it was pining for the fjords, but, you know, it's an oak tree.
Still, it lived a good life for somewhere between 800 and 1,200 years.
Which brings us back to Jonathan. Jonathan is a Seychelles giant tortoise.
He was a full-grown adult at least 50 years old when he was sent from Seychelles,
an archipelago east of Africa, and arrived at St. Helena, a tropical island west of Africa.
And that was in 1882. In the many, many,
many years that followed, Jonathan, living on the grounds of the governor's
home, received royal visitors, fans, and was even featured in a BBC production.
Unfortunately, as happens to a lot of us, Jonathan eventually lost his eyesight
to cataracts. And he also lost his sense of smell meaning he could no longer find food on
his own. So rumors began to circulate that Jonathan had died.
And in 2026...
♪ DRAMATIC MUSICAL STING ♪
Jonathan is looking forward to celebrating his 194th birthday on December 4th, and he's
been named the world's oldest living land animal and the oldest tortoise ever. Hooray!
You thought we were going to say the... Shame on you.
I'm telling Jonathan. That about wraps it up for today's Odd News Times Twos.
But first, a very special shout-out to the folks who help power comedy4cast,
my Patreon patrons, including producer-level patrons, Paul Barrie from the
A Window to the Magic podcast, Kirby Bartlett-Sloan,
Chuck Tomasi from the Technorama podcast, Kyle Nishioka, Brian Martzoff,
Amy Murphy, and Steve Ng from steveng5.com.
That's S-T-E-V-E-N-G, the number five, dot com.
You too can support comedy4cast. Just search for comedy4cast,
all one word with the number 4, on Patreon.com. Original script,
voices, and original music by me, Clinton Alvord.
Copyright 2026.
All rights reserved. Talk to you again next time. But for now, that's it.
We're done, done, done, done, done. Bye-bye.