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 143 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 143 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

  The job market is ghosting people / Nearly one in ten Gen Zers has no human contact / New music is killing people on the road

  Aug 19, 202610 min

  Employer ghosting of job applicants just hit a three-year high — and companies are now pulling offers from people who already quit their other jobs and told their families they'd found something. Also: nearly one in ten Gen Zers reports zero face-to-face human contact on a typical day, and the number hasn't come back down since COVID the way most people assumed it would. And Harvard researchers confirmed that on the days the biggest albums drop — Taylor Swift, Drake, Kendrick Lamar — fatal car crashes spike 15%, because people are navigating Spotify in traffic instead of waiting until they're parked. Plus a squid spill that blocked a Rhode Island road for eight hours, a wildfire couple told to pay their cable cancellation fee, 200 lizards in 22 pairs of socks, and the national debt hitting $40 trillion. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  News Sidequest

  Memories survive even when the brain nearly shuts off / Doctors need sacred moments — and so do you / The woman who hired a flirting coach and found her husband in 90 days

  Aug 18, 202612 min

  A landmark paper in Science finds that mice retained memories after artificial hibernation eliminated more than half their hippocampal synapses and reduced neuronal activity by 70% — suggesting memories are stored in patterns of neural architecture rather than individual synaptic connections, and may be far more resilient than anyone realized. Also: a multi-institution study from the University of Michigan, Lawson Research Institute, and others finds that "sacred moments" — brief periods of transcendence and deep connection at work — protect against burnout, but fewer than 5% of physicians who've experienced one have ever mentioned it to a colleague. And Elizabeth Laing, 49, from Greenwich, spent decades on dating apps, hired a flirting coach who sent her to ask men about their carrots in the grocery store, and found her husband in three months. Plus a megalodon tooth on the Jersey Shore, influencers attacked by sharks while taking selfies, NASA keeping Voyager 2 alive, and the woman who died, came back, and got a parking ticket. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  News Sidequest

  86% of young people want to get married and almost none of them are dating / An AI just fired someone — sort of / 52% of Gen Z is betting their retirement savings

  Aug 17, 202613 min

  A nationally representative survey of 5,275 unmarried adults ages 22-35 by the Wheatley and Institute for Family Studies finds only 31% are actively dating — with 74% of women and 64% of men having had zero or almost no dates in the past year — despite 86% wanting to marry someday. The biggest barrier isn't fear of commitment. It's a collapse in self-confidence and social skills. Also: an AI agent named Luna, running a real retail store in San Francisco and built on Claude, fired a real human employee last month for being late to 17 of 23 shifts — but only after being nudged by humans to check its own forgotten attendance policy, and only after a human reviewed and delivered the decision. And Betterment's 2026 Retail Investor Survey of 1,000 investors finds 52% of Gen Z redirected money earmarked for investing into sports betting in the past year, with 26% calling sports betting a deliberate part of their long-term financial strategy — while 96% of sports bettors lose money over time. Plus the stolen Picasso left in an apartment, construction workers finding $10 million in gold, the Shake Shack self-robbery, and the python that caused a school fire. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  News Sidequest

  Couples who walk together stay together / AI just took your whole course for you / There might be something inside psychopaths running the show

  Aug 14, 202613 min

  A BYU study of nearly 1,700 married couples finds that those who exercise together report stronger communication, better conflict resolution, and lower marital stress — and walking was the most commonly reported form. Only about a third of couples who exercise do so together. Also: the New York Times reports that AI agents are now logging directly into Canvas and Blackboard, watching lecture videos, completing quizzes, writing discussion posts, and posing as students — and 73% of faculty say they have personally dealt with an AI academic integrity issue. And a new paper in Translational Psychiatry finds that people with stronger psychopathic personality traits have significantly higher levels of three specific gut bacteria — Allisonella, Prevotella, and Cloacibacillus evryensis — and the researchers suggest the gut-brain axis may be influencing behavior in ways previously unrecognized. Plus octopus fight club, a tortoise found 12 miles from home, the polar bear foghorn fine, and tomb raiders stealing from the dead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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  News Sidequest

  What are you cutting back on — and what won't you touch / Improv class is doing what therapy can't / 260 days at sea with no end date

  Aug 13, 202614 min

  The Washington Post reports that as the Iran war approaches the six-month mark and inflation hits 3.8%, Americans are cutting corners on groceries, entertainment, and clothing — with Dollar General's CEO noting that core customers are cutting food purchases due to rising gas prices. Also: a new UNIGE study published in Social and Emotional Learning finds that improv theater outperforms mindfulness meditation and emotion-focused board games for improving cognitive empathy and willingness to collaborate in anxious teens specifically — and the mechanism explains why. And the USS Abraham Lincoln has now been at sea for 260 days, extended twice past its expected May return with no end date announced, with multiple sailors having attempted to go overboard, one wife describing her husband's 13-year career potentially ending "just because he was burnt out," and 200 families confronting Navy leadership in San Diego. Plus the demon cavefish, the ancient wrestler's tomb, the Dobby grave pipeline diversion, and the Mini-Mozart heist. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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