A roundup of this week’s news stories, including the winner of Fat Bear Week, journalist Bob Woodward’s new book and the healing power of raw milk… apparently. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We learned this week who the fattest bear is.
We learned that the votes had been counted in the annual contest to determine the most pleasingly rotund ursine inhabitant of Katmai national park in Alaska.
Did she tell you where it was?
Listeners may be suspicious at this point that we kind of burned all the obvious bear jokes when we did this bit last year, and listeners would be broadly correct.
Anyway, we learned that the time has come.
This year's winner is Grazer.
She is this year's chubby champion.
And for the second year running, Grazer's repeat triumph, possibly at least partially enabled by a sympathy vote attached to the fact that her final rival for this year's title, known as Chunk, had earlier attacked two of her cubs with fatal consequences in one instance.
Tomatoes.
Tomatoes.
Stop it.
Well, quite.
Boo.
Chunk.
Boo.
We also learned that one should always pile in on the prognostications of Monocle's bear desk chief, Laura Kramer, who called this result as long ago as last Friday's Monocle Daily.
I think that 128Grazer, who was last year's Fat Bear Week champion, she's a highly defensive mother.
I think she'll pull really well with the audience because of this fact.
Keen as we always are to share our expertise with listeners, especially if it might lighten the wallets of their bookmakers, we asked Laura if she had any tips for Romford Greyhounds this coming Saturday evening.
My expertise is principally in bears.