Guinness World Records: Record of the Day

Our final episode sees the GWR team complete a year of record-breaking, with topics ranging from legless rowers and amazing flights by human cannonballs and tornado victims, to a giant structure made from toast and the farthest distance a thing has ever been thrown on Earth.

The record-breaking randomness continues with the challenges of growing a 14-ft-wide moustache, fighting with paper (but not rocks or scissors), richest man Jeff Bezos, female filmmakers at the Oscars, a big beaver collection, insuring your body parts and surfing with dogs!

Pirates, dino poop, ancient elephants, mile-high concerts, holding your breath, Venusian spaceships and the remotest galaxies! It can only mean one thing: GWR Record of the Day!

The toughest stuff in nature, the amazing Josephine Baker and her elderly crocodile, the speediest hearse, the most powerful and useless rocket that failed to put a Russian on the Moon, mass pole-dancing, the most boy-girl-boy-girl births and the most wins of the Best Actor Academy Award - another joyously mixed bag from the team at Guinness World Records.

This week's chat features the incredible OK GO pop video filmed on a vomit comet, the actual oldest vomit on Earth, alphabetizing your soup, a multitude of Valentine's Day treats, the Chelyabinsk meteor strike, a very pregnant goat and the man who ate 2.5 gallons of chilli con carne in 5 minutes.

Topics this week include a bed-sized onion bhaji, the woman with fingernails longer than her forearms, the Mafia, the highest-ever plane crash, the tallest living human and the animal fanatic who's visited over 1,200 zoos. Plus, we wish a happy birthday to the awesome astronaut Peggy Whitson!

On the menu this week: Killer honey bees, the ultimate life-long pub crawl, turning a sheep into a suit, knuckling down with the most celebrated female record-breaker, competitive hole-digging and we taco-bout a superlative Mexican cookery TV show.

Could you spend 101 days rowing an ocean with your mum? What happens when you're smacked in the face by junk from space? What's the heaviest thing ever weighed? Should you be offended if your party invite takes 89 years to be delivered? What's the speed limit on Mars? Remember group hugs!? Who is this Carl Lewis guy anyway?!

With a week to go until Biden and Harris take office, the team look back at other presidential records, probe William Shatner's $25,000 kidney stone, watch a pig performing tricks, meet the bride and groom with the biggest age gap, experience the sharpest fluctuation in temperature, learn nuclear physics from a 12-year-old who built his own nuclear fusion device and marvel at the amazing Sully Sullenberger and his Miracle in the Hudson.

Happy New Year! The book team welcomes 2021 with open arms and tales of high-society Londoners skating on pig fat, the most ginormous giraffes, the perils of travelling on the underground, living in the same house for 100 years, cheating death by having yourself frozen, and the many challenges of pooping in space.

End 2020 (please, 2020, end!) and kickstart your 2021 with a discussion about extreme bee-bearding, the world's loneliest places, the woman who spent the longest time trapped in an elevator, the oldest inseparable (literally) twins, the loftiest building, a multi-million-yen tuna and the most bear cubs born in captivity.

Tis the night before Christmas and all round the podcast, the editors are discussing belly-bursting Christmas dinners, the most successful yuletide movies, hippos running wild in a drugs-baron-themed visitor attraction, why it can take 19 days to climb El Cap, the first movie theatre, and the incredible Aloha Wanderwell - the first woman to drive around the world. Merry Christmas!

The GWR Editors open up their Christmas selection box to find the world's toughest earrings challenge, swimming through icy water and pooping in the nativity. Plus some classic "firsts" such as the first powered flight, the first land-speed record and the first humans in history to lose contact with the Earth. And a gorilla, that likes nipples...

The editors wish a happy birthday to Sultan Kosen, the tallest living man, before riffing on giant ukuleles, the fastest-biting beast, the most soccer goals scored in a match, the conquest of the South Pole, duelling with lightsabers, and heroic, life-saving dogs.

The Editors are back with American's biggest sporting fails, the actor at the centre of the Hollywood universe, running the length of Africa, yet more massive explosions, the beasts with the lengthiest lickers, crafting chocolate logs at speed, and 60 years of Coronation Street.

Up for discussion this week are face transplants, plane crashes caused by dogs (and crocodiles!?), surviving meteor strikes, giant condoms, dismantling cars in record time, and the world's bravest pigeons; plus adjudicator Mark shares his tips on beating a festive Brussels sprouts record.

Shooting giant bullets into space (why??), the first yoyo patent, the 101-year-old divorcee, valuing the Zapruder footage of JFK's assassination, sword-swallowing a jackhammer, crossing Antarctica for the first time, and the single most lucrative media product in history.

What happens when a whale explodes? Can you hide a murder victim using 700,000 rubber bands? What's the most decrepit dog? Has the world's most expensive painting gone missing? Who'd pay a million dollars for some fingernail clippings? And can you drink wine that costs more than your home? All these answers and more from the team at GWR.

The GWR Editors are back with guest Dan Thorne to chat about the trade in celebrity body parts, speedy spaceships, senior citizens with all-over tattoos, racing in bathtubs, pre-teen pirates, moving home (literally, by dragging it!) and taking selfies in space.

Adam, Ben and Craig celebrate Halloween with record-breaking Jack O'Lanterns, the ghost of a dinosaur, the largest investigation into a haunted house and (in theory) the deadliest roller coaster; also up for discussion are gold-leaf sandwiches, Hello Kitty, pushing oranges with your nose and firing dogs into space.

Special guests Orbax & Pepper (The Monsters of Schlock) join us to talk about triggering earthquakes with your car stereo, surviving Niagara Falls in a barrel, the joy of tractors, releasing animal traps on your limbs, being driven over by motorbikes on a bed of nails and how scientists killed the oldest living animal.

The world's longest skidmarks, playing Monopoly on the actual streets of London, a house of cards taller than a giraffe-and-a-half, cycling around the world, the birth of esports, the tiny town with enormous knickknacks, and a bird that can burst your eardrums... [listeners be warned!] With special guest Jane Boatfield (yes, she's real!).

What happens when you combine athletics and full-body burning? Is there really a Window Cleaning World Championships? What was the first meal served on a plane? And what's the most popular James Bond song in the charts?

Craig and Ben are joined by guest presenter Alan Pixsley to discuss, among other things, concerts on the seabed, Oktoberfest, robot dogs, how to duct-tape your Head of Finance to a wall, and multi-million-dollar slot machine winners. What a week!

Up for discussion this week are murderous female nonagenarians, decrepit sloths, the world's luckiest condemned man who refused to die, daredevil steam cyclists, a four-foot-tall movie stuntman, the man who ran 2 miles every hour for 1,000 consecutive hours, and one loved-up couple's show of DEEP commitment (scuba-gear required).

After some initial chat about hot days, pirates and binding books in human skin, the Editors turn to, among other things, electrifying eels, prolific producers of painful kidney stones, sheep counting (more interesting than it sounds) and - unrelated - uncontrolled bouts of yawning, sneezing and hiccuping.

This week, the Guinness World Records editors discuss things left inside surgery patients, terrible soccer teams, the most prolific coffin maker and grave digger, skimming stones on water, women with beards, the first ever around-the-world expedition and a MASSIVE carrot!

Craig, Adam and Ben are in the GWR virtual pub, The Golden Plover, to present the coming week in record-breaking history, including a half-ton woman, a 50-in-long pet cat, the explorer who sawed off his own fingertips, Elvis Presley, a 2020-style geomagnetic storm and the terrifying "sport" of banzai skydiving (no parachutes allowed). Plus, AJ Marks from the youngest rock band joins us for a spot of music.

Welcome to our new weekly "digest" format for RotD, with Craig, Ben and Adam sharing a virtual studio to bring you a selection of records from each of the next seven days. Expect really old moms, fast planes, a knighted penguin and man who's eaten 31,500 Big Macs!

Craig's back with nearly 200 naked poker players, a man who lived with his heart on the OUTSIDE of his chest, and the Powerful Pitmans: a husband and wife team of Taekwondo masters who love smashing things (including our office TV!).

Ben’s back with a mail-order delivery that took two decades to arrive, unorthodox Australian outback sports, a robot that was jailed for hustling on the streets of LA, and a dashing aviator’s Atlantic crossing.

Adam's back from Slovakia's Via Ferrata in time to share the gruesome stories of the first road-traffic victims, the less- (well, thankfully non-) gruesome tale of a bowling-ball juggler, and a couple of pioneering helium hot-air balloon records; he also wishes a happy birthday to the septuagenarian who sailed solo around the world (after breaking her neck and ribs in an accident!).

Now that the humidity's dropped, there's a cool selection of records on offer today, the anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley: the sultriest day, oldest man to negotiate public transport, fastest bus-puller, high-speed stamp printing and the teenage musical-theatre impresario.

Ben’s back with a trio of records that were broken on this day in history. Today’s haul includes a grisly accident involving a 18-inch drill bit and a wobbly ladder, a longbow that could inconvenience even the most heavily armoured knight, and a round-America canoe-trip that took place during the depths of the Great Depression.

After marking Victory in Japan Day, Craig serves up a woman with no pulse, a day-long pool-potting marathon, a giraffe-sized pepper grinder, the most accomplished cow-pat tosser and a model railway that stretches for miles.

As if it's not hot enough already, Craig turns up the temperature to a few trillion degrees before cooling off with the largest chunk of fallen ice, a day-long bagpipe marathon, a death-defying, dangling straitjacket escape at 7,000 ft and a keen cartwheeler.

Craig's surviving his midweek meltdown long enough to wish our founding editors, Ross & Norris McWhirter, a happy birthday, share his favourite landmine-meets-elephant records, meet a bank robber still heisting into his 80s and wonder why the first sculpture on the Moon isn't more famous as a work of art.

Ben has peeled himself off the floor to record another podcast! Today’s subjects are a weirdly long-lived and surprisingly harmless tropical cyclone, a man with the heartbeat of an elephant and a man who can be out of a straitjacket faster than you can say “aaaah, he’s escaped!”.

Craig's here, covering for Adam, so start your week with his grab-bag of records, including the first wedding in space and the most people in a cave wedding, an epic horse race in Mongolia and a planet that's so dark, it's blacker than a lump of coal.

Craig steps away from his new fridge just long enough share superlatives for rice pudding, the man who survived the bombing of Hiroshima AND Nagasaki, a talkative robot companion in space and panda triplets who've just celebrated their sixth birthday.

Ben is melting in the summer heat again today, so he’s bringing you a hastily-cobbled-together assortment of records covering Nepalese contortionists, islands in the middle of nowhere and a crumpled Polish radio mast. Digressions include Sherpa naming conventions, tiny flightless birds and correct national day celebration techniques. 

Craig celebrates International Beer Day by meeting the most prolific labologist, has a pint in the world's longest beer garden, finds out about a cat that gave birth to a kindle of 19 kittens, gets all shook up about Elvis's very expensive peacock-jumpsuit and recounts the tale of the park ranger who survived seven lightning strikes!

Ben’s covering for Craig today, which he’s pleased about because he’s drawn a particularly fine crop of records. Today’s stories include an ancient goldfish, a jazz-age swimming pioneer and a giant robot. There’s also a bonus record involving space-barf.

Craig's got a midweek feast for you: the London Monopoly Board Challenge, a giant car-flinging catapult, a drone of didgeridoo-ers, farting for Jesus, a deep-space spacewalk, a sheepish spit-roast and - mmm - some lab-grown beef burgers.

Ben is resisting the temptations of chocolate-chip cookie day and instead sharing tales of deafening drummers, massed Irish dancers, supersonic supercentenarians and finally, Jeanne Calment, the oldest person to have ever lived.

Start your week with Adam, who encourages you to throw paper airplanes into watermelons (it IS possible!), debate whether or not the soccer player Neymar was really worth over $260 million, listen to a gig in every US state in record time, find out how quickly you can make bread from a field of wheat, and pre-purr to be amazed at the age of the oldest ever cat (in human years, it's about 160!).

Craig's here talking about the most murderous sisters, a wing-walk between London and Paris, the first statuette on the Moon, the actors who've NOT won an Oscar statuette of their own, a 40-hour percussion marathon and the first company to be valued at over $1 trillion!

Ben’s podcast pillow fort has become unbearably hot on this lovely summer’s day, so he’s trying to find records that will keep him cool. As a result we’ve got records for rain, wind and ocean crossings. Also, there’s a bonus national-day quick-fire round.  

It's "Talk in an Elevator Day", so Craig regales you with the tale of the woman stuck in a lift for a long time, as well as his story of adjudicating the deepest concert; afterwards, meet a nonagenarian radio disc jockey, the two climbers who finally conquered the world's second-highest mountain and the first one-legged X Games gold medallist. Plus, savour the largest ever spreading of manure...

Craig wishes a happy birthday to record-breaker Arnold Schwarzenegger and celebrates with a massive cheesecake and ostrich Scotch egg; he witnesses the thickest object being swallowed by sword swallower, meets the man who had the most injections and sashays on over to the longest line of dancing drag queens.