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Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today: London announces traffic ban on stretch of iconic Oxford Street; why smiling is a super power; and polar bear sees the good in this disqualified giant pumpkin.

Let’s get into it!

Oxford Street was once the beating heart of London’s shopping district, like a mix of 5th Avenue and Times Square, Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, and Toronto’s Dundas Square.

While it remains an incredibly busy area of the bustling city, many believe it’s lost its charm in recent years, and is now lined with superficial souvenir shops and candy carts, rather than high fashion and culture.

In an effort to revitalize it, city officials revealed a one-kilometre stretch of Oxford between Orchard Street and Great Portland Street will be closed to automobiles, allowing for exclusively pedestrian traffic.

For those looking to spend time in the area, it’s a welcome initiative, and one that’s been in the works for over a decade. Like many such projects, this one faced opposition from residents concerned the diversion of traffic onto surrounding streets would make commuting more miserable.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said the creation of the Oxford Street Development Corporation allowed for the project to finally proceed, with a public consultation finding it would inevitably revitalize and bring new life to an “iconic destination.”

Did you know that simply putting on a smile can lead to the same mental outcomes as being made to smile involuntarily?

Called the “facial feedback hypothesis,” one study tested it by having participants hold a pencil between their lips and either smile or frown while watching a fun cartoon.

Some of those who smiled reported feeling the sensation that comes with a real one, and that they actually ended up feeling amused.

“When we’ve done that demonstration in classes, it works,” said Jeanne Tsai, a psychology professor at Stanford University who runs the Culture and Emotion Lab.

“When you’re doing it in a room by yourself, you’re not doing it in a social interaction, maybe it’s making you remember, or it’s an effect of remembering some good thing that happened and that would put you in a better mood.”

According to Dr. Judy Ho, a Los Angeles clinical and forensic neuropsychologist who also teaches at Pepperdine University, smiling can lower cortisol, and boost endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin.

“People who smile during stressful tasks generally demonstrated lower heart rates during recovery than those maintaining neutral expressions,” Ho said. “Smiling also reduced aspects of the body’s physiological stress response.”

Port Elgin sits on Lake Huron in southwest Ontario, and each year it hosts Pumpkinfest, a festival that features enormous pumpkins competing for the top prize as the annual harvest’s largest.

This year, a 1,700-pound squash was well on its way but an unfortunate soft spot got the big guy disqualified and discarded. However, one town’s trash is another town’s treasure.

Soon thereafter this pumpkin became a polar bear’s treasure, when Aidie Creek Gardens donated it to the Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat in Cochrane, Ont., about an eight-hour drive north of Toronto.

Featured in the photo above, you can see the pumpkin and Ganuk the polar bear are a perfect match.

“I would have just chopped it up into pieces in my field and let it rot, whereas this polar bear can have a great time in the habitat here and have some fun with it, too,” said Jeff Warner, owner of Aidie Creek Gardens.

Vince Neil gets a lot of flak for his live performance, and while he’s never been the best singer, Motley Crue’s most recent tour was a chance for him to rewrite some of that narrative after suffering his fourth stroke, according to Nikki Sixx.

Neil announced in 2024 that he’d suffered a stroke, but it was a year later that he revealed it was his fourth, and it knocked him down to size. Confined to a wheelchair at one point, he needed to relearn how to walk, let alone be the lead singer of one of rock music’s most high octane live acts.

"Vince doesn't want to pull any punches and we didn't want to do any songs that maybe were too much on him,” Sixx told USA Today. “But he was like, 'I'm in. I want to do Red Hot. I love these songs.'

“He's taken a lot of bricks in the face over the years for his vocals live, and he doesn't like seeing that kind of stuff. So he really wanted to come in and not only prove to himself but to the fans that he's vocally totally capable."

Spooktacular

With Halloween closing in fast, we’re doubling down on the spookies, beginning with today’s trivia—all about supernatural shows!