Wednesday, 1 December, 2021
Water, water everywhere!; Brazil’s surfing dogs; Squiz Kids bonus school holiday content; and Midas the four-eared kitten.
LINKS
Swysh: personalised video messages from your favourite sports stars
Use the code SQUIZ10 to get 10 percent off.
Brazil’s surfing dogs
Midas: the four-eared kitten
https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2021/11/22/four-eared-kitten-midas-lon-orig-mrg.cnn
How To Become A Squiz Kids Correspondent
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FH2HA28InnLU6UxE91wrLBAbCMT40Mua/view
Squiz Kids Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/squizkids/?hl=en
Got a birthday coming up and you want a shout-out? Send us an email at [email protected]
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
THE LOWDOWN
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Ah Queensland … beautiful one day, soggy the next. The Sunshine State has not been living up to its name this past week with record rainfalls and severe flood warnings issued yesterday with the threat of days more rain to come.
Queensland’s Early Warning Network flood threat level was lifted to amber yesterday as Brisbane recorded its wettest spring in 11 years. Towns in central and western Queensland, including Maryborough and Mackay resembled muddy swimming pools, as emergency service personnel were called to Goondiwindi in the south west of the state to rescue a driver whose truck had become trapped in fast moving flood waters. There’s more rain forecast for the Not Nearly Enough Sunshine State.
Meanwhile, the regional NSW centres of the Hunter, Gunnedah and Narrabri were bracing themselves for flooding as heavy rains there have caused rivers to break their banks. Emergency services rescued eight people who had attempted to drive through floodwaters – and yesterday alone had almost 150 calls for help.
Yesterday, there were more than 20 flood warnings in place across NSW – as the Namoi, Lachlan, Murray and Warrego Rivers all swelled to overflowing.
Stay safe out there people.
SPIN THE GLOBE
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Each day we give the world globe a spin, and find a news story from wherever it stops. And today we’ve landed in Brazil … where the surfs up and the dogs are hanging ten.
Wait, what? Dogs are surfing? You betcha. It’s all part of the annual Brazilian Surf Dog Festival in the coastal city of Natal – where owners ride the waves with their four legged friends aboard their boards.
The dogs all have to wear life-jackets – because have you ever tried to dog paddle in a six foot swell? – and from the look of their faces in the video, it’s fair to say – with the exception of the white one at the end – the dogs don’t seem to be loving it as much as their owners..
My dog Louis doesn’t much like the surfboard .. he’s much more of a dig holes in the sand and chase frisbees sort of beach goer. Woof!
BONUS SCHOOL HOLIDAY CONTENT
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Hey team … so you know how the school holidays are so close now you can almost taste them .. or how for some of you, they’re already here? Well just a reminder that we’ll have a whole bunch of super fun school holiday content dropping over the summer holidays – which you’re not going to want to miss out on.
Starting this week – and continuing every week throughout the hols – there’ll be a super fun kids v adult quiz – to prove once and for all who’s smarter: kids or adults. Plus there’ll be two excellent shortcuts – deep dives into cool topics guaranteed to get you thinking and talking.
This week’s first Kids v Adult quiz – testing how well you’ve paid attention to 2021 – dropped on Monday – today, a shortcut on Clever Critters is ready to land, and on Friday, it’s a super cool Shortcut on Earthquakes and Volcanoes.
So don’t just stand there: prep yourself with some quality holiday content – perfect for a road trip or those lazy days at home – by visiting Apple Podcasts, searching for Squiz Kids and hitting the FREE TRIAL button on our subscriber special.
NEWSHOUNDS
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Each week, Squiz-E the Newshound sniffs out a fishy story on the Internet and shares his tips to make sure WE don’t fall for it. Today, he wants you to put yourself in the shoes of Myriam Bourla. Who’s that, you ask? She’s the wife of the head of Pfizer, the company that manufactures one of the COVID-19 vaccines. And not long ago, a website in Canada reported that poor Mrs Bourla had died from a severe reaction to the very vaccine her husband’s company made.
Which was an interesting experience for Mrs Bourla. Not least because she’s alive and well. I suppose the family could have received some nice sympathy flowers and meals before the misunderstanding was cleared up… but this was more than a misunderstanding, according to Squiz-E and Pfizer officials. It was disinformation—false news intentionally distributed to make people lose confidence in the vaccine. What does Squiz E say whenever you come across information on the internet that’s not from a reputable source? Stop. Think and Check. A quick internet search of trustworthy news sites – like BBC or CNN or ABC – would reveal the story is not true. As Sqiuz E says: don’t believe everything you read on the internet; only trust reliable news sources – and if it looks fishy and sounds fishy – chances are it is fishy.
ANIMAL KINGDOM
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What’s cuter than a kitten with one set of ears? A kitten with two sets of ears — that’s what.
And that’s what Midas the Turkish kitten is … and thanks to his extra set of ears, he’s become an internet sensation: with an instagram following of over 100,000.
Midas lives with his owners in Turkey. He was born with two sets of ears – which, as you’ll see from the video I’ve stuck in today’s episode notes – only makes him twice as cute.
According to a local vet, the extra set of ears don’t impact Midas’ hearing at all … it’s not as if he hears twice as well as any other cat – and are the result of a genetic mutation – which is a scientific way of saying Midas’s genes just decided to do their own thing … creating a one in a million. And how good is it to have variety in the world?
THE S’QUIZ
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This is the part of the podcast where you get to test how well you’ve been listening …
- What’s the name of the four-eared kitten from Turkey?
- In which country is the annual Surf Dog festival?
- Thanks to it’s usually sunny weather, Queensland is often also referred to as the ‘what’ state?
SHOUT OUTS
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It’s December 1 … Pinch and a punch …on this day 92 years ago, Bingo was invented as a game .. it’s also the day, 66 years ago, that a black woman in the United States called Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger – which was the law at the time. Rosa went on to become a hero of the civil rights movement in the United States. Her small but significant act of defiance on that day helped change laws that discriminated against black people.
It’s also a special day for these Squiz Kids celebrating a birthday today…
Brigette from Skye, Amanda from Carlingford, Holly from Coogee and Hayden from Chatswood.
Belated birthday wishes go to Millie from Paddington.
Classroom shout outs today go to…6M and Miss Mullen at Croydon Park Public School, Grade 6D and Miss Myers at Pearcedale Primary School and class 5B and Mr Bofinger at Hilder Road State School, The Gap. Also to 5/6P and 5/6N at Redfern Public School and to class 3H at Middleton Public School in Parkes. One last shout out to the kids in class 2/3 at Murrurundi Public School – your teacher says you are awesome students who love learning!
The S’Quiz Answers:
- Midas
- Brazil
- Sunshine