The BrainFood Show

The Weapons of World War 2 (Part 2)

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

In the video today we're looking at World War 2's slightly absurd secret weapons and the Japanese battleship with guns that weighed more than entire American battleships. Moving on from there we cover the Russian KV Tanks that were so tough they literally would take out anti-tank guns by driving over them. Next up we do a dive into the German space shuttle, that time Germany teamed up with IBM for mass murder, the insane way British pilots would take out one of Germany's greatest weapons, the German designed, one man spherical tank, the Russian flying tank, the sad story of the exploding anti-tank dogs, the forgotten metal can that made Blitzkrieg possible and ultimately won WWII for the Allies when they stole it, the tiny submarine that changed the course of WWII, and the bizarre fake army that defeated the Axis. Next up a flying adventure looking at the insanely amazing story of the Night Witches, followed up by another flying adventure looking at if planes actually scream when they dive. Finally, we look at the pivotal WWII gun that you'd never want to put down... Because of its propensity to accidentally fire when you did so. 0:00 WWII’s Most Absurd ‘Secret Weapons’ 16:37 The Japanese Battleship with Guns that Weighed More than Entire American Battleships... 25:43 Driving Over Anti Tank Guns: The Remarkable Russian KV Tanks 31:34 The Nazi Space Shuttle 45:38 How the Nazis Teamed Up with IBM for Mass Murder (And How the First Ethical Hacker Fought Back) 1:01:57 A Wingtip and a Prayer: the Insane Way British Pilots Defeated Germany’s Secret Weapon 1:19:47 The Mysterious Kugelpanzer: The German Designed, One Man Spherical Tank 1:25:26 That Time the Russians Built a Literal Flying Tank 1:29:10 The Exploding Anti-Tank Dogs of World War II 1:34:56 The Forgotten Metal Can That Made Blitzkrieg Possible and Ultimately Won WWII When Allies Stole It 1:42:00 The Midget Submarine That Changed the Course of WWII 2:00:16 The Bizarre Story of the Massive Fake Army That Defeated the Nazis and Helped End WWII 2:23:42 With a Pistol and a Prayer- The Incredible Story of The Night Witches 2:37:21 Do Airplanes Actually “Scream” as They Dive as Commonly Depicted in Hollywood Films? 2:51:11 The Pivotal WWII Gun That Nobody Wanted to Put Down: The Plumber's Nightmare

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tesla vs Edison- Debunking the Myth of the War of the Currents

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

Popular history gets the War of the Currents wrong pretty fundamentally. This is the real story.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What was Being a Ninja Really Like

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

A relatively common trope today is that of the noble and honorable Samurai warrior opposed by their shadowy brother from another mother, the mystical and morally corrupt, black garbed assassin warrior known as the ninja. These fabled shadow warriors of Japanese history have been a staple of modern pop culture since around the 1960s when super-spy James Bond encountered them on a trip to Japan in You Only Live Twice. Prior to this, ninjas were something few people outside of their homeland were aware of. This has contributed to the real-world history of the ninja and their origins being rather chock full of admittedly awesome myths and legends, all surrounding them like a thick, shadowy fog. Something we feel the ninjas of history would feel proud of. Afterall, hiding and remaining unseen is sort of their whole deal… And, indeed, even in their time, they seemed to like to play up some of the stories that arose around what they were capable of and how they did what they did. This all brings us to the topic of today- just who were the ninja and what did they actually get up to in reality? To begin with, in a nutshell the ninja were elite, mercenary spies that also doubled as a type of swiss army knife of special forces, skilled in everything from sabotage, espionage, ambush, arson, assasination, to there is even evidence that they were highly trained in first aid and use of various medicines. As historian Yamada Yüji notes, “You need to know the topography of the enemy’s position, the condition of his food supplies, the structure of his castle. It was the job of the shinobi [ninja] to obtain this kind of crucial information. They would infiltrate the enemy domain and ascertain the lay of the land…and create chaos through acts of sabotage and arson.” On that note, debunking our first ninja myth, there’s no historical record of them dressing in the stereotypical ninja outfits we all know and love today. Because the thing was, wearing such garb would be one heck of a way for them to stand out in many types of missions. As such, ninjas mostly seem to have worn the garb of everything from monk to farmer to servant- whatever a particular mission required, rather than any set uniform. We’ll have some examples of them doing just this later on, but for now, ninjas so commonly wearing the clothing of farmers and the like even gave rise to the idea for a time that they were mostly simple farmers who simply took money for spying. While there certainly were individuals who did just that, when talking actual ninjas as we think of them, they were anything but simple, and there are even nobles who were samurai who are known to have been trained up in ninjitsu. More on this later. But for now, let’s look at the origin of the ninja. Authors: Karl Smallwood and Daven Hiskey Host: Daven Hiskey Producer: Caden Nielsen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Stories of WWII (Part 2)

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

In the video today we're looking at a variety of interesting stories from WWII from the man who fought in WWII with a sword and bow, to the kids who led the resistance movement in Germany, to how flatulence decided the outcome of WWII. 0:00 Why Did Japan Join the Nazis? (Given, You Know, the Nazis Explicitly Hated Non-Aryans) 40:09 The Women Who were Used for Breeding by the Nazis 57:25 How Do German Schools Teach About WWII? 1:07:21 The Man Who Fought in WWII With a Sword and Bow: 1:12:32 What were Hitler's Relatives Up to During and After WWII? 1:42:31 The Kids Who Led the Resistance Movements Against the Nazis 2:13:48 Why Did So Many Nazis Choose Argentina to Flee to After WWII? 2:49:22 The Forgotten Armed Nazi Operation Carried Out on North American Soil During WWII 2:58:22 The Forgotten Nazi Holocaust Plan Before They Decided On the Holocaust 3:09:39 How Hitler's Flatulence Defeated Nazi Germany

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Truth About Land Mines

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

It is a classic war movie trope: a squad of soldiers are marching through the jungle when, suddenly, they hear an ominous click. One of the soldiers freezes and, glancing down, spots a telltale metal disk under his foot. His heart begins to beat furiously: he has just stepped on a landmine. His comrades urge him to stay perfectly still, for if he moves even an inch the mine will explode, blowing off his leg and very likely killing him. The seconds and minutes tick by in unbearable suspense as the soldiers scramble to come up with some way - any way - of getting their squadmate out of this sticky situation alive, despite how relatively easy it would be in that scenario to solve the problem by simply keeping downward pressure on the person’s shoe, then taking their foot out and putting a rock or something on the shoe after. Nevertheless, a highly-effective means of introducing tension, this scenario has appeared in dozens of films including 2014’s The Monuments Men, 2017’s Kingsman: the Golden Circle, and the appropriately-titled 2015 Georgian exploitation film Landmine Goes Click. But does it have any basis in reality? Author: Gilles Messier Editor/Host: Daven Hiskey Producer: Caden Nielsen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Real Life Expendables

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

The years 2010 to 2014, saw the release of the three Expendables films, throwback action romps starring a roster of aging 1980s action stars including Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as retired mercenaries back for one final job - and, presumably, easy nostalgia-fuelled paycheques. While the notion of assembling a team of 60-year-olds to carry out a dangerous mission might seem like pure Hollywood nonsense, it is not as outlandish as it might appear. Faced with a potential diplomatic crisis, during the Second World War British Intelligence called upon a team of real-life Expendables to carry out a daring commando raid in neutral Portuguese India. This is the incredible story of Operation Creek, the last ride of the Calcutta Light Horse. The Battle of the Atlantic, which raged from the very first day of WWII to the very last, has been covered extensively on this channel. But the desperate struggle between Allied shipping and German U-boats was not confined to the frigid waters of the North Atlantic. U-boat operations ranged as far afield as the Indian Ocean, where the marauding submarines wreaked havoc on ships sailing in and out of British India. And this deadliness only increased thanks to an unexpected helping hand. Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Simon Whistler Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Truth About Thomas Edison's Adulthood and Inventions

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

History remembers Thomas Edison as one of the greatest inventors of all time. The Internet thinks he was a fraud. Which is true?

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is Nuclear Winter Actually a Possibility or Just Pseudoscience?

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

As horrific as a nuclear war would be in the immediate, a common idea is that the real troubles for humanity, and the world, would actually occur in the long aftermath, triggering what is now commonly known as nuclear winter- a nightmarish scenario in which atmospheric temperatures would drop dramatically, crops would fail, and widespread famine, disease, and unrest would follow, leading to a catastrophic reduction in the global population, or even the end of human civilization. But just what is ‘nuclear winter’ anyway? Who came up with it, and is it actually a real possibility, or just some scientists with way too much time on their hands and a news media who loves them some good doomsday scenarios, whether they are valid possibilities or not. Well, put on your gas mask and lead-lined underwear as we dive into the controversial history and science of one of the most frightening doomsday scenarios ever conceived. Surprisingly, the first published suggestion that a nuclear war could alter the global climate appeared not in an official scientific publication, but rather in fiction. In the post-apocalyptic short story Tomorrow’s Children by American science fiction writer Poul Anderson, first published in the March 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, a team of scientists hunt down mutated humans in the wake of a nuclear war. At one point, the story’s protagonist High Drummond observes that: “Winter lay heavily on the north, a vast grey sky seeming frozen solid over the rolling white plains. The last three winters had come early and stayed long. Dust, colloidal dust of the bombs, suspended in the atmosphere and cutting down the solar constant by a deadly percent or two. There had even been a few earthquakes, se off in geologically unstable parts of the world by bombs planted right. Half of California had been ruined when a sabotage bomb started the San Andreas Fault on a major slip. And that kicked up still more dust. Fimbulwinter, thought Drummond bleakly. The doom of the prophecy.” Anderson later adapted this story into a full-length novel titled Twilight World, first published in 1961. The same phenomenon also appears in Christopher Anvil’s short story Torch, published in the April 1957 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. In this story, a Soviet nuclear ballistic missile test in Siberia accidentally sets fire to an oil field, releasing large amounts of oily soot into the atmosphere that blots out the sun and triggers a global ice age. The term Fimbulwinter or “mighty winter” in Anderson’s original 1947 story is drawn from Norse Mythology, and refers to a series of three particularly harsh winters preceding Ragnarök, the apocalyptic battle of the Gods that will destroy and cleanse the world. While the origins of any mythological concept are hard to pin down, it has been speculated that Fimbulwinter may have been inspired by the Volcanic Winter of 536, in which a series of simultaneous volcanic eruptions ejected vast amounts of particulates - especially sulfur dioxide - into the upper atmosphere. They lingered there for years, blocking out the sun’s rays and causing global temperatures to drop by as much as 2.5 degrees Celsius or 4.5 degrees. As Roman historian Precopius recorded: “And it came about during this year that a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year, and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such as it is accustomed to shed. And from the time when this thing happened men were free neither from war nor pestilence nor any other thing leading to death.” Author: Gilles Messier Host / Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Stories of WWII

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

In the video today, we're looking at a variety of fascinating stories from WWII, everything from what the German public actually knew about the holocaust during WWII to the biggest POW camp breakout, to that time the U.S. government teamed up with the mafia against the Germans, to the young war gamers who changed the course of the war with their games and much, much more. 0:00 What Did the German Public Know About the Holocaust During WWII? 53:37 How Do the Japanese Teach About WWII? 1:05:53 The Wild Story of the Biggest POW Camp Breakout of World War II 1:19:45 A Dinner Jacket, the Nazis, the “British” Accent, and What This All Has to Do With the BBC News 1:26:13 How a WWII Famine Helped Solve a 2,000 Year Old Major Medical Mystery 1:35:10 That Time the US Government Teamed Up with the Mafia to Defeat the Nazis 1:47:26 That Time the British Pitted a Few Canoeing Commandos against a Fleet of Nazi Ships... And Won 2:01:13 Argentina's Secret Nazi Fusion Lab 2:16:46 The Forgotten Nazi Holocaust Plan Before They Decided On the Holocaust 2:28:02 The Young War Gamers Who Changed the Course of WWII 2:40:24 That Time British Witches Tried to Stop a Nazi Invasion Using Magic 2:49:57 The Nazi Interrogator Who Killed Them with Kindness

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Quest for the Recoilless Gun

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

If you’ve ever shot a gun, then you will have quickly learned the first fundamental rule of shooting: recoil sucks. Depending on the calibre, weight of the firearm, and your technique, just a few minutes of shooting something like a hunting rifle can quickly leave your shoulder bruised and sore. And the bigger the firearm, the worse the problem becomes, with large-calibre military artillery pieces requiring elaborate systems of hydraulic cylinders to absorb their prodigious recoil. This, in turn, makes these weapons extremely heavy and difficult to move around the battlefield. There are two basic solutions to this problem: mount the artillery on heavy armoured vehicles… or somehow eliminate the recoil itself. Over the last century, engineers around the world have devised dozens of ingenious methods to achieve just that, creating weapons that are simultaneously powerful and long-ranged while being light and compact enough to be moved around the battlefield by regular troops or light vehicles. This is the fascinating technology behind recoilless weapons. To begin with, let’s first examine the physics behind recoil. One way to understand this phenomenon is via Newton’s Third Law - that is, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” A more useful principle, however, is conservation of momentum. Momentum, defined as an object’s ability to resist changes in motion, is given by the simple formula mass times velocity. When an object is split into pieces and those pieces propelled in different directions - such as in the case of a bomb exploding or, more relevant to our discussion, a firearm shooting a projectile - the momentum of the overall system is conserved. In other words, if you add up the momentum - mass times velocity - of every individual piece, they will sum up to the original momentum - in the case of a stationary object, zero. Most firearms shoot a projectile significantly lighter than themselves; however, as this projectile is travelling at a very high velocity, its momentum equals that of the firearm, which, being much heavier, will recoil at a significantly lower velocity. The heavier the firearm, the slower it recoils and vice-versa. This, along with surface area in contact with your shoulder, is why, despite sometimes being quite painful, the recoil of most firearms is nowhere near strong enough to actually rip your shoulder off - unlike the projectile being fired downrange. Based on this physical analysis, it stands to reason that if you placed two identical firearms back-to-back and fired them in opposite directions, their recoil would cancel out and the whole assembly would remain stationary. This is known as the counter-shot or counter-weight principle, and was the operating principle of the first recoilless firearm to see combat: the Davis Gun. Patented by U.S. Navy Commander Cleland Davis in 1914, the Davis gun was specifically intended for use aboard aircraft. During the First World War more conventional small-calibre cannons were experimentally fitted to various aircraft for use against balloons, zeppelins, ships, submarines, ammunition dumps, and other specialized targets; however, aircraft of the period were rather flimsy constructions of wood, wire, and canvas, and were easily damaged by the recoil of such weapons. Thus, by the end of the war both the American and British navies and flying services showed great interest in Davis’s design. The Davis Gun effectively comprised two gun barrels mounted back-to-back and fired a special double-ended cartridge. On firing, a conventional shell was propelled out the forward barrel towards the target, while an equivalent mass of lead shot and grease was expelled out the rear, the recoil of the two barrels cancelling each other out. Of course, standing directly behind what is effectively a gigantic shotgun is a good way to have a very bad day, meaning the Davis gun had to be rather awkwardly mounted at the very front of the aircraft with its barrel pointing downward at a steep angle so that the counter-shot was propelled safely up and over the top wing. There were other problems as well. Since the gun had to propel two projectiles at equal velocity, the propellant charge - and thus the cartridge - was much larger than usual, making it awkward to handle. Author: Gilles Messier Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Creating the Terminator

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

“They could have fired me on the spot. But you know, they’re idiots” That’s a quote from James Cameron about the reaction of gathered executives to the first screening of The Terminator, which according to the director, really didn’t go all that well. However, largely due to Cameron’s background working on cheesy B-Movies, there was nobody else in Hollywood the studio could bring in to finish the movie. In fact, the success of Terminator and by extension the career of James Cameron owes a lot to the director’s B-movie chops, connections and experience. Oh, and a vicious bout of food poisoning that left him delirious and on the verge of shitting himself for like 5 whole days. On this, there is a long-standing industry legend that the genesis of The Terminator was a nightmare Cameron had whilst working on the cinematic turd that is, Piranha II: The Spawning, a film about genetically engineered flying piranha that is largely only noteworthy for being the directorial debut of Cameron, outside of a little film he made funded by his dentist. The legend posits that Cameron had to take a break from tossing rubber piranha at his actors when he came down with food poisoning. Whilst recovering in a cheap Italian hotel, Cameron is said to have had a nightmare about a chrome skeleton attempting to stab him with a kitchen knife and that that image was so terrifying he was convinced it could be a great hook for a film. Cameron then immediately sketched out the basic design of what would become the Terminator. Which is a great story, but it’s not the whole story and there are several details James Cameron himself has dismissed or clarified over the years. Author: Karl Smallwood Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Truth About the Incredible Childhood of Thomas Edison

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

In this episode, Gilles and Daven are doing a deep dive into the childhood of one of the greatest inventors in history, Thomas Edison.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Actual Most Painful Sting and How Did They Figure That Out?

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

Who among us hasn’t had this experience? You are eating a lovely outdoor meal or working peacefully in the garden when unexpected guests arrive. Dressed in menacing yellow and black, they buzz annoyingly around you, coming between you and your juicy steak or prized roses. You try to gently shoo them away, but they just grow more and more aggravated until, suddenly, you feel it: that sharp, searing pain, flashing up your hand, as if you’ve just been stabbed with red-hot poker. If you’re lucky, your finger will swell up and you will have to endure that throbbing agony for an hour or two. If, however, you happen to be among the unlucky 0.5-7% of the general population that is allergic to insect stings, you can look forward to the delights of anaphylactic shock: a sudden drop in blood pressure, itchy hives, and difficulty breathing which, in severe cases, can lead to death without immediate medical intervention. Whether we like it or not, venomous creatures like bees, wasps, scorpions, spiders, snakes, and jellyfish are a part of everyday life for nearly every human on earth, with hundreds of thousands of species worldwide being capable of delivering some kind of painful or toxic bite or sting. Thankfully, however, as is often the case in nature, most of these organisms will not attack unless directly provoked. And, if you happen to live in a part of the world where the worst stings you have to face are those of bees, paper wasps, and yellowjackets, consider yourself very, very lucky, for mother nature holds far greater horrors in her arsenal, from ants with bites so painful they are used as tests of manhood, to wasps whose stings have been likened to being thrown into a live volcano, and fish with venom so excruciating it can literally stop your heart. But which bite or sting is the absolute worst? Which organism on this planet is, as the English rock band The Police might have put it, the “King of Pain”? Well, let’s find out as we dive into the agonizing world of the worst bites and stings in nature. Author: Gilles Messier Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila 0:00 Intro 6:00 Schmidt Theory and His Wine Lover-esk Index 17:20 The Starr Sting Pain Scale 20:00 Nathaniel "Coyote" Peterson's BSI and Looking Beyond Insects 25:30 The Ultimate Stings- The Platypus and Stonefish

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What was It Actually Like to be a Gladiator, History's Literal Deadliest Fart Killing 1000s, & More

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

In the podcast today, we're looking at what it was really like to be a gladiator in Ancient Rome, how corrupt the roman senate was, what's the deal with roman gods and much, much more. 0:00 What was It Like to Be a Gladiator in Ancient Rome? 18:13 How Corrupt was the Roman Senate Really? 32:50 What's the Deal with the Roman Gods? 46:51 The Roman Emperor Who Tried to Make His Horse Consul 59:46 Julius Caesar and His Pirate Adventure 1:06:22 History's Literal Deadliest Fart and the Origin of Mooning 1:20:49 Intentionally Removing People From History (Damnatio Memoriae) 1:24:45 Did Nero Really Fiddle When Rome Burned? 1:32:23 That Time the Title 'Emperor of Rome' was Up for Auction (and the Sorry Soul Who Won) 1:43:42 The Colosseum's Big Brother, The Circus Maximus 1:49:35 Are C-Sections Really Named After Julius Caesar? 2:00:12 Where Did Goth Teen Subculture Come From and Why is it Associated With Roman Invaders?

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Rock WWII Turned On

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

At the southern tip of Spain, jutting out into the Mediterranean Sea, lies Gibraltar, a narrow peninsula measuring only 6.8 square kilometres or 2.6 square miles in area and dominated by a 426 metre or 1,298 foot high limestone monolith: the legendary Rock of Gibraltar. A British overseas territory and naval base since 1713, Gibraltar has long been of vital strategic importance, controlling the narrow passage between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. And at no time was this truer than during the Second World War, when the Axis powers plotted to capture Gibraltar in a bid to cut Britain off from its overseas Empire and starve her into submission. And though the heavily-defended enclave would be a tough nut to crack, the very real threat of invasion led British military planners to take elaborate precautions should the“Rock” ever fall. And perhaps the most extreme of these contingencies was an utterly bonkers plan to seal six men into a secret network of tunnels and chambers carved into the Rock of Gibraltar. Provided with several years’ worth of food and water, these volunteers were to spy on the occupying Axis forces and report their movements back to Britain, secretly keeping Gibraltar in the fight. This is the bizarre tale of Operation Tracer. What is now known as the Rock of Gibraltar was formed during the early Pliocene Epoch around 5 million years ago, when the collision of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates lifted up and inverted a large slab of the Eurasian plate, composed of the 200-million-year-old Catalan Bay Shale, Gibraltar Limestone, Little Bay Shale, and Dockyard Shale formations. The ongoing movement of these plates continues to push the Rock of Gibraltar steadily skyward, with the monolith growing in height at a rate of around 0.05 millimetres or 0.002 inches per year. The area has been inhabited for at least 125,000 years, with the bones, tools, and other remnants of both neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens being found in numerous caves dotting the peninsula. In antiquity the Rock of Gibraltar, then known as Mons Calpe, was frequently visited by Phoenician, Greek, and Roman mariners, with the Greeks recognizing the mountain as one of the two “Pillars of Heracles.” According to Greek mythology, while trying to obtain the Cattle of Geryon - the 10th of his 12 Labours - the legendary hero smashed his way through the Atlas Mountains, forming the Straits of Gibraltar and connecting the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. The identity of the other pillar has been lost to history and is heavily debated among classicists, though it is now widely believed to be either Monte Hacho or Jebel Musa in Morocco.... Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Billionaire Build a Car- The Insane Car Brand Where Every One is Literally One of a Kind

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

Few brands are as closely associated with the idea of “luxury” as Rolls-Royce, a car manufacturer so fancy schmancy that the company's official website doesn’t even bother to list how much the things it sells are. Rolls-Royce knows that for anyone serious about buying one of their automobiles, price is not a concern. And to be clear, what you can get for said insane amount of money is likewise insane in customization, which we’re going to now talk about because it’s a lot more interesting, and occasionally bizarre, than even we originally thought when dreaming up this topic. But in any event, to this end, Rolls-Royce, who as a company can be fairly certain that the average person strolling into one of their showrooms likely has a credit card with a limit rivalling the GDP of a small nation, offers clients a level of customisation and self-expression seldom seen outside of old episodes of Pimp My Ride or the Need For Speed games to the point that literally every every car they sell is one of a kind. Or as we like to call the brand- Billionaire Build a Bear. One thing we should clarify first though is that even with a luxury brand like Rolls-Royce there are levels to the fanciness on offer with the price increasing accordingly. Now, we know we said in the introduction that Rolls-Royce themselves don’t list how much their cars cost because that would be tacky and only for plebians, but it’s not hard to find out how much they sell for by consulting things like trade magazines or browsing the secondary market. With this in mind the least you’d be looking to spend on a new Rolls-Royce is about £250,000 (about $310,000) for a stock Rolls-Royce Ghost which online auction site Auto Trader describes as the brand's “entry level model”. Meanwhile a Rolls-Royce Phantom will set you back a cool £350,000 (about $450,000). If this is too rich for your blood, older models, like from the 70’s, sometimes pop up for sale for as little as £10,000 (about $12,000). As good a deal as this may sound be warned, older models of many luxury cars are very often a huge pain in the butt to fix and maintain, with collectors frequently bemoaning that you can easily spend more than a car’s listed value, just to get it to run... Author: Karl Smallwood Host: Simon Whistler Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Truth About Tesla's "Inventions" (Daven and Gilles)

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

Tesla is often cited to have been a genius ahead of his time and held back by finances. But what did he ACTUALLY invent, and is it true that most of his inventions only existed in his head because that is the only place they could possibly work? Well, let's dive into it all shall we?

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Incredible Soviet Probe Space Heist

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

Anyone interested in the shirt can find it here: https://store.todayifoundout.com/products/beep-beep-sputnik-2

On October 4, 1957 at 7:28 PM Greenwich Mean Time, a massive R7 Semyorka rocket roared off the launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and soared into the night sky. The following morning, the world awoke to the stunning news: the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite, into earth orbit. In Washington, DC, American politicians and military officials flew into a panic. Not only had the supposedly backwards Soviets achieved spaceflight years ahead of Western predictions, but the same R7 rocket which had placed Sputnik in orbit could also place a nuclear warhead anywhere in the Continental United States with less than 30 minutes’ warning. Worse still, unlike a manned strategic bomber, such intercontinental ballistic missiles could not be intercepted or shot down. Overnight, outer space became a new battlefield in the escalating Cold War. As the American government and aerospace industry geared up to compete in this newly-declared Space Race, intelligence agencies like the CIA sought to learn all they could about Soviet space technology. This proved a daunting task, for the closed nature of Soviet society made it all but impossible to infiltrate using human agents. As a result, analysts were forced to glean what little they could from grainy spy plane and satellite photographs and intercepted telemetry signals. But then, in late 1959, an unlikely opportunity suddenly presented itself: a chance to “kidnap” and examine a genuine Soviet space probe. This is the audacious story of the Great Lunik Heist. Author: Gilles Messier Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Caden Nielsen 0:00 Shirt 0:13 Intro 7:14 Planning the Luna Space Heist 8:46 Kidnapping the Spacecraft 13:32 The Results of the Heist

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Does Absinthe Really Make You Hallucinate, The Wine Lover's Meltdown, Inventing Bloody Mary & More

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

In the episode today, we're looking at whether absinthe actually makes you hallucinate or not. Next up the hilarious story of the wine lover's meltdown, and then the popular cocktail that includes a dehydrated human toe. Finally whether or not tapping a shaken can of soda actually reduces foam. Who invented the bloody mary drink. Where does the practice of pouring one out for your homies come from. Why alcohol content is referred to as a proof. How much it would cost to fill a swimming pool with booze. And why wine is almost always drunk in wine glasses instead of regular glasses. 0:00 Does absinthe actually make you hallucinate? 14:27 The wine lover meltdown 21:55 The popular cocktail that includes a dehydrated human toe 33:48 Does tapping a shaken can of soda actually reduce foam 45:32 Who invented the bloody mary drink 1:01:48 Where does the practice of pouring one out for your homies comes from 1:08:49 Why is alcohol content referred to a proof 1:12:24 How much would it cost to fill a swimming pool with booze 1:25:08 Why is wine almost always drunk in wine glasses instead of regular glasses

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Dark Origins of the Treadmill and Why Oscar Wild was the Worst

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 07:00:00 -0000

“We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones, We turned the dusty drill: We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns, And sweated on the mill: But in the heart of every man Terror was lying still.” These are the words of famed master of the pen, Oscar Wilde, in his Ballad of Reading Gaol, referencing his time spent at Pentonville Prison for, ironically, mastering working with a different type of pen… As a brief aside, while many lament the initial thing that set forth a chain of events that saw Wilde imprisoned today, specifically his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas, very surprisingly, unlike with the likes of the great Alan Turing and countless thousands others who were unjustly punished for their sexuality, it turns out there is a LOT more to the story of Wilde’s conviction that many a biographer skirts over, though to be fair this is in part because some elements of the original transcript from the original trial were only discovered in the year 2000. Reading through those, however, even in modern times and through a modern lens and sensibilities, Wilde would have almost certainly found himself behind bars, disgraced, and absolutely vilified pretty well universally on the interwebs. But we’re not here to discuss Oscar Wilde, the full story of his conviction was simply a rabbit hole we were previously woefully ignorant of, and will share more on later in the Bonus Facts if you’re interested as well- though fair warning, it’s quite dark and, oof. Never look too deeply into your heroes, especially when they are from the past, which was of course, the worst. But in any event, embedded in Wilde’s aforementioned poem, he references sweating on the mill. This was a device created by famed engineer Sir William Cubitt in the early days of Cubitt’s career, with the primary purpose of the surprisingly feature rich machine being both to punish prisoners in an excruciating way for upwards of 10 hours per day, while also isolating them in that task so that they could properly think about what they’d done wrong. While Wilde may have abhorred the machine, having been forced to march on it for a couple years, another famous master wordsmith, Charles Dickens, would praise it, writing, "It is a satisfaction to me to see that determined thief, swindler, or vagrant sweating profusely at the treadmill... [knowing] he is doing nothing all the time but undergoing punishment." Here now is the story of when humans first started exercising for fitness’ sake, as well as the rather torturous invention of the treadmill, which saw prison death rates ramp up considerably once implemented, but paradoxically also seemed to be a major health boon to those that survived their monotonous march. Author / Host: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila 0:00 Intro 3:13 When Humans Started Purposefully Exercising 6:47 Prison Reform and Inventing the "Treadmill" 22:02 Inventing the Modern Treadmill 29:02 Cooking with Dogs 32:14 Oscar Wilde was the Worst

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What Really Causes Spontaneous Human Combustion?

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 07:00:00 -0000

For those of us of the slightly more seasoned vintage growing up in or living in the late 20th century, which was totally only a decade ago and I’ll take no further input on this matter, spontaneous Human Combustion ranks alongside the likes of quicksand, the Bermuda triangle. and rain that melts your skin off as one of those things that everyone from the news to popular social consciousness taught us was going to be something we’d simply have to deal with in our day to day lives for some reason. And then, just as suddenly as a person randomly turning into ash, everyone just moved on and stopped talking about it… Which leads us to the subject of today’s video- what ever happened to everyone spontaneously combusting? Where did the idea come from, how did it proliferate public consciousness, and what’s up with all the people who did burst into flames and turned to ash, generally leaving only things like arms and legs behind? Can awesome science explain what happened to them? Authors: Karl Smallwood and Daven Hiskey Host: Daven Hiskey Producer: Caden Nielsen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Ancient Romans Made Perfectly Straight & Durable Roads, Concrete Better Than Ours, & Much More

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 07:00:00 -0000

In the video today we're looking at how the Ancient Romans made incredibly long, perfectly straight and incredibly durable roads, what it was like being a slave in ancient rome, how they made concrete better than ours, were they really as wild as we sometimes think today or more prudes, did gladiators really live or die based on thumbs up or thumbs down by the audience, that time a farmer was given ultimate power twice and changed the world by walking away both times after he'd done what Rome asked of him, what really happened on the ides of march, and the chickens that shaped world history. Host: Simon Whistler Producer: Pacience Hiskey 0:00 How Did the Ancient Romans Manage to Build Perfectly Straight, Ultra Durable Roads? 17:35 What was It Really Like to Be a Slave in Ancient Rome? 31:14 How Did the Ancient Romans Make Concrete So Much Better Than Ours? 41:42 Were the Ancient Romans Really Wildly Debauched or Actually Prudes 53:45 Did Gladiators Really Live or Die Based on Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down by the Audience? 1:04:24 That Time a Farmer was Given Ultimate Power Twice and Changed the World By Walking Away Both 1:14:55 Fact From Fiction: What Really Happened on the Ides of March? 1:37:03 The Chickens That Decided Ancient Rome’s Major Events and Shaped World History

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Was Keelhauling Actually a Thing?

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 07:00:00 -0000

Running the gauntlet. Starting. Flogging with the cat ‘o 9 nine tails. Gagging. Clapping in irons. Hanging from the yardarm. While this all might sound like a super fun Saturday night with the misses when the grandparents are watching your kiddos for you, it turns out these are actually just a few of the dizzying array of corporal and capital punishments inflicted upon sailors of old - both navy men and pirates - to enforce discipline and punish a wide variety of crimes. But while most of these punishments are fairly well-known, you may have noticed two notable practices missing from the list: that old staple of pirate movies, “walking the plank”… and keel-hauling. Perhaps the most infamous of all nautical punishments, keel-hauling struck such fear into the hearts of sailors over the centuries that the term survives to this day as a byword for particularly harsh discipline. But what was keel-hauling? How did it work, who invented it, and was it actually a real thing? Or, like so much popular seamen lore, was it just the product of some adventure writer’s imagination? Well, put on your eyepatch and tricorn hat, strap on your peg-leg, as we dive into the reality of one of the Age of Sail’s most barbaric practices. Author: Gilles Messier Producer: Caden Nielsen Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conspiracy: The Stories Behind Flat Earth, All Seeing Eye, Little Green Men Fake Moon Landing & More

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 07:00:00 -0000

In today's video, we're looking at What's Up with the All Seeing Eye on the Dollar Bill? Who Started the Flat Earth Conspiracy Theory, How Many Believe This, and What Do They Believe? Why is the Stereotypical Image of Aliens Green or Grey Bald Humanoids? How Do We Actually Know We Landed on the Moon? What Really Causes Chemtrails? The Truth About the Freemasons: The Not-So-Secret Society Did Any Musicians Actually Put Backwards Satanic Messages in Their Songs? and Why Do People Think There are Aliens in Area 51? Chapters: 0:00 What's Up with the All Seeing Eye on the Dollar Bill 14:52 Who Started the Flat Earth Conspiracy Theory, How Many Believe This, and What Do They Believe? 35:37 Why is the Stereotypical Image of Aliens Green or Grey Bald Humanoids? 54:33 How Do We Actually Know We Landed on the Moon? 1:28:12 What Really Causes Chemtrails? 1:35:49 The Truth About the Freemasons: The Not-So-Secret Society 1:48:12 Did Any Musicians Actually Put Backwards Satanic Messages in Their Songs? 2:03:04 Why Do People Think There are Aliens in Area 51?

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is It Really Possible for a Nuke to Ignite the Atmosphere?

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 07:00:00 -0000

At exactly 5:30 AM on July 16, 1945, the world’s first atomic bomb, codenamed Trinity, detonated over the desert in New Mexico, unleashing in an instant the power of 18,000 tons of TNT. The atomic age had begun. As night turned to day and a fireball 200 metres across rose into the sky, the scientists of the Manhattan Project who had built the bomb reacted in different ways. Some were jubilant, others more somber. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the project, famously recalled a line from the Hindu scripture (ba-ga-vad gee-ta) Baghavad Gita: “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds”; while Kenneth Bainbridge, director of the Trinity test, was more blunt, stating: “Now we’re all sons of bitches.” Elsewhere around the test site, money frantically changed hands as scientists settled a series of private bets. Some had wagered that the test would be a dud, or that it would reach just a fraction of its predicted yield. But others, including Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, had wagered on a more disturbing outcome: that the intense heat of the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, setting off an unstoppable chain reaction that would wipe out all life on earth. This apocalyptic bet has since become an infamous part of nuclear lore, but does it have any basis in reality? Could the Trinity test - or any nuclear weapon, for that matter - actually have set earth’s atmosphere ablaze? Well, let’s dive into it, shall we? Author: Gilles Messier Host: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Weapons of WWII

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 06:26:00 -0000

From the terrifyingly effective De-bollocker to the ugly little boat that won WWII to the German fighter that dissolved its pilots alive, this is the story of several of the more interesting weapons utilized in the world's most terrifying war. Hosts: Simon Whistler and Daven Hiskey Authors: Daven Hiskey, Gilles Messier, Karl Smallwood Producers: Samuel Avila and Pacience Hiskey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Most Bizarre Substance Known to Science and What It Can Do

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 08:00:00 -0000

If ever there was a criminally underrated natural resource, it would have to be Helium. Though most commonly associated with party balloons and making one’s voice sound like a cartoon, Helium’s most important application is in cooling the magnets of Magnetic Resonance Imaging or MRI machines. While the finite and ever-dwindling global supply of this vitally important gas is a topic worthy of its own video, perhaps even more fascinating is just how bizarre an element Helium truly is. For if Helium is liquefied and cooled to a low enough temperature, it begins to behave like no other liquid on earth, seemingly violating the laws of gravity, thermodynamics, and even logic itself. This is the story of superfluid Helium II, the weirdest substance known to science. In order for Helium to be liquefied, it must be cooled to a temperature of -268.8 degrees Celsius or 4.2 Kelvin – that is, only 4.2 degrees above Absolute Zero, the coldest temperature theoretically possible. By contrast, Nitrogen liquefies at a relatively balmy 77 Kelvin, Oxygen at 54 Kelvin, and Hydrogen at 33 Kelvin. The reason Helium is so difficult to liquefy lies in its electron orbitals being completely filled, making it – like the other noble gases Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, and Radon – electrically neutral and chemically inert. This means that the only force which can pull Helium atoms together is the so-called Van de Waals Force, which is caused by electrons shifting from one side of an atom to the other and creating a momentary electrostatic charge. This force is incredibly weak, meaning that Helium must be cooled to extremely low temperatures in order for the Van de Waals forces to overcome the energy of the moving atoms and pull them close enough together for the gas to liquefy. Solidifying Helium is even more difficult – so difficult, in fact, that it cannot be done at regular atmospheric pressures. Only at pressures of 25 atmospheres and above can solid Helium be created.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How the Hell Did Winston Churchill Lose the Election Right After Defeating Germany?

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Nazi Germany officially surrendered on May 7, 1945. With the war still raging in the Pacific against Japan and sporting a popularity rate at around 83%, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill seemed a shoe-in to maintain his position as Prime Minister of the British Empire. Just before the announcement of the results of the election, Churchill had been at the Potsdam Conference with U.S. President Truman and Joseph Stalin, only intending to travel home briefly to accept his victory, and then back to the conference. Yet a funny thing happened on July 26, 1945, the voting populace of the UK, which had turned out in record numbers of 73%, had decided to collectively say “Thanks for your service, Winston, but we’ve decided to go in a different direction,” in a landslide defeat that shocked the world. While in more modern times you might think some sort of scandalous affair or offensive comment may have whipped up the mob on the interwebs precipitating such a massive electoral fall in the span of just a couple months, there was no such issue here either. So what happened? How did this wildly successful politician, frequently named among the top Prime Ministers ever in the nation, at the height of his popularity no less, and who had just helped successfully guide Britain through one of its most harrowing periods of its storied history, not just lose, but lose in a landslide? And not only this, making the whole thing even more inexplicable, he lost to a man who one of said man’s own party members, Aneurin Bevan, stated “seems determined to make a trumpet sound like a tin whistle.” Or as chairman of the Daily Mirror, Cecil King, would remark in 1940, he was “of very limited intelligence and no personality. If one heard he was getting £6 a week in the service of the East Ham Corporation, one would be surprised he was earning so much.” Or, let’s not stop there, as famed social reformer Beatrice Webb would remark, “He looked and spoke like an insignificant elderly clerk, without distinction in the voice, manner or substance of his discourse. To realize that this little non-entity is… presumably the future Prime Minister, is pitiable.” Or how about as Churchill himself would allegedly quip about his opponent, he is "a modest man, but then, he has so much to be modest about." The demeaning quotes about the man Churchill lost to go on and on and on, and his own party before, during, and after the election likewise tried to oust him as their leader…. Only to see this quiet, oft’ forgotten individual who rapidly rose from a middle class background to the heights of power, defy them all and go on to become one of the greatest Prime Ministers in the history of the nation, often even ranked above Churchill himself, despite only serving in the position for a handful of years. As ever, of course, the devil is in the fascinating details, so let’s dive into it, and what specifically happened to see a titan of history defeated by a man likely no one outside of the UK even knows the name of, yet shaped the Britain we have today arguably more significantly than Churchill ever did.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Real Color of the Sun, How Many Nuclear Bomb Powered Rockets It Would Take to Stop the Earth Orbiting the Sun and Much, Much More

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 08:00:00 -0000

⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we begin by discussing the clandestine way Niel Armstrong managed to get his application to the astronaut program in despite submitting it past the deadline. We then look at why he got to be first to walk on the moon when precedent should have had it been Buzz Aldrin. Next up we look at the oft’ forgotten second thing Armstrong said when stepping out onto the moon.

Moving swiftly on we do a rapid fire of a variety of space related bonus facts including, but not limited to, the real color of the Sun, how much energy it would take to cause the Earth to stop orbiting the Sun, how old the Sun is in Sun years, how many Sun rises and sunsets astronauts aboard the International Space Station see every day, etc.

And for those curious on Simon and my treatise on the proper order of watching Star Trek series and other such thoughts, ⁠the mentioned forum post is here.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Most Badass U.S. President and His Many Insane Exploits

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 08:00:00 -0000

If you've followed this website, our YouTube channel, or BrainFood Show podcast very long, you know one of our favorite historic individuals is Theodore Roosevelt- among countless other reasons to be admired, a man who enjoys a reputation as one of the most terrifyingly badass individuals to ever hold the office of leader of a nation, with countless stories detailing his cartoonishly manly exploits. For just a small sample to start, at one point while he was living as a rancher, some thieves stole his boat in the middle of an ice storm. Given the rather dangerous weather conditions, you might think he'd just let them go. But this was Teddy Roosevelt and it was the principal of the thing. He states, "In any wild country where the power of law is little felt or heeded, and where every one has to rely upon himself for protection, men soon get to feel that it is in the highest degree unwise to submit to any wrong…no matter what cost of risk or trouble. To submit tamely and meekly to theft or to any other injury is to invite almost certain repetition of the offense, in a place where self-reliant hardihood and the ability to hold one’s own under all circumstances rank as the first of virtues." Thus, he spent the next three days building another boat so he could track the thieves down and take his original boat back. Once done, it took him a few days of searching, but using his prodigious skills as a master tracker, he managed to find and capture the men. However, ultimately the river became too frozen over to continue to the nearest town that way, so instead he sent his ranch hand companions home and marched the thieves on foot, alone for 40 hours straight to town. During this trek, he did not bind the thieves' in any way as he felt sure they'd suffer from frostbite if he did so. To keep them from overpowering him while they trudged along through the frozen wasteland, he simply kept a gun trained on them and, while they slept during rest periods, he kept himself awake by reading Tolstoy's then relatively recently published Anna Karenina. It's also noteworthy here that because of the weather conditions, the fact that he was in hostile territory in the middle of nowhere, and escorting a trio of criminals who would have killed him without hesitation if he'd given them the chance, he was within his rights to simply execute them on the spot and go home, something the vast majority of lawmen of his era would have done. Roosevelt, however, felt they deserved a trial...

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WTF is Up with the McDonald's McRib?

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The McRib is a food with both a devout following and many detractors. But what is the genesis of the world’s most popular fast food chain’s most mysterious menu item? And why, oh why, is it not available all the time like the majority of the rest of the McDonald’s menu? Cooking ribs in the Americas predates the colonial period. But the earliest records of Europeans cooking foods near what we would call barbeque were in colonial Virginia. Settlers observed a native way to cook meat, and they adapted it to their tastes. Later, as slaves were brought in from Caribbean plantations, the food genre we know as barbeque developed. In fact, the word barbeque is a loan word from the Taino language of the Caribbean. It was originally called barbacoa. It is unclear whether the name comes from the native islander's method of cutting the meat or the wooden frame on which the food was smoked. In any case, after it arrived in the North American colonies, it spread wherever pork was plentiful. Important here to the story of the McRib is that barbeque, in the proper sense, is any meat that is slow-cooked over indirect heat, usually wood, and not merely meat with barbeque sauce on it. It can take up to eighteen hours to turn raw meat into barbeque for it to reach perfection. If brined first, it can take an additional day. That is part of what makes the McRib a surprise. Rib joints usually slow-cook. Many places brine it before smoking. Additionally, cooking with a wood fire is inherently messy. Barbeque meat is also often hand butchered. None of this lends itself to a fast food chain that in 2011 had to abandon the idea of using celery root in one of its food items because to offer the item, McDonald's would have had to buy all of the world’s celery root supply, and there still would not have been enough celery to meet the projected demand. A frequent problem for the restaurant chain that annually serves 1/27th of all restaurant food consumed in the world, and caters to about 1 percent of the world’s population on any given day.

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link ⁠https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are the Odds of Successfully Navigating an Asteroid Field Really Approximately 3,720 to 1?

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we begin by discussing the real origin of Tang and what that has to do with Pop Rocks and how they work. We then move on to the interesting story behind the invention of Velcro and how it works.

Next up we look at whether NASA really spent many millions of dollars developing the famous “space pen” instead of just using a pencil like the Russians.

Moving on from there we discuss the fascinating reason why only one side of the moon faces the Earth and how this happened and is still happening, with the Earth itself slowing down such that in theory at some point only one side of it will face the moon.

Moving on, we look at what the actual odds of navigating a typical asteroid field in space would be and whether the depictions in movies here are actually accurate.

Finally, we respond to some user feedback, including on initial attempts listeners of the female persuasion have made to pee standing up without peeing all over themselves (which sounds even weirder to write, but is in reference to a previous space episode ;-)), and the interesting phenomenon of people using the show to fall asleep every night and whether we should take that as a good thing or a bad thing…

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link ⁠https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why Don't Plane Windows and Seats Line Up?

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

While airplane manufacturers do design the planes with general row positioning and pitch (the measurement from one seat to the same exact point on the seat in front or behind it) in mind, with the windows often lining up with the seats, the designers' exact recommended arrangement is rarely, if ever, followed. You see, the final placement of seats is left up to the individual airlines that purchase the plane. To make the seating arrangement as flexible as possible for airlines, there are multiple tracks on the floors that the seats are mounted on. This allows the seats to easily be moved closer together or farther apart. The airlines can even switch the aisle arrangement via moving a line of seats to a completely different track. For example, on some versions of the Boeing 777, Boeing recommends a layout of 3+3+3 with a 32 inch (81.2 cm) pitch for economy passengers. In this layout, you need a passenger density of 67% before a passenger may be required to sit next to someone else. And if some passengers choose to sit next to one another, the percentage is even higher before other passengers must sit next to someone. Boeing recommends this layout because, in internal studies they've conducted, they claim that one of the biggest factors in passenger perception of comfort on a flight is whether there is someone directly next to them or not. Nevertheless, disregarding the manufacturer recommendation, pitch on a...

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link ⁠https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What was It Really Like to Be a Gladiator?

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Gladiatorial combat may seem outdated and barbaric, but it is, at its heart, a combat sport like mixed martial arts, boxing, and even professional wrestling, with very similar appeal. There were clearly defined rules, a sense of dramatic flair with costumes, and even character archetypes. It was indeed bloody, but not as nearly as fatal as many think today. Not every gladiator died in the arena, and those who made it past their first handful of matches even less so beyond. That isn’t to say that gladiator fights didn’t also come with many deaths. For example, gladiator combat was usually accompanied by other events such as parades, animal hunts, glorified prisoner executions dressed up as combat practice for gladiators, and even occasional audience fatalities. But how did the games get started, what was life actually like for a typical gladiator, and how did these ubiquitous games rather suddenly cease to be a thing after so many centuries of widespread extreme popularity?

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WTF is Up with Breathable Liquids?

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

At the end of James Cameron’s 1989 underwater thriller The Abyss, oil rig diver Bud Brigman, played by Ed Harris, dons an experimental diving suit in which instead of air he breathes a special oxygenated liquid. This allows him to avoid the lethal effects of extreme water pressure and descend to the bottom of a deep ocean trench to defuse a nuclear warhead. While certainly a memorable plot device, surely such a technology is pure science fiction, right? Well, not as much as you might think. The breathing fluid depicted in the film, oxygenated perfluorocarbon, actually exists, and while scenes with the diving suit were filmed with Ed Harris holding his breath, an earlier scene in which a rat is immersed in breathing fluid was filmed for real. While The Abyss is certainly the most famous depiction of liquid breathing, the technology has been experimented with for over a century, and while it might not be quite ready for use in deep-sea diving, it may have lifesaving applications in the field of medicine.

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link ⁠https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The U.S. Plan to Nuke the Moon, Why People Thought the Moon was Made of Cheese and Much More

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we begin by discussing the first space walk in which the cosmonaut in question very nearly got stuck out there and his adventures thereafter. We then move on to discussing how the idea that the moon is made of green cheese got started.

Next up we discuss the late 1950s plan the United States had to nuke the moon, which interesting enough involved a young Carl Sagan. Failing in that endeavor we then look at that time the U.S. accidentally nuked Britain’s first satellite… That time the U.S. dropped four nuclear bombs on Spain accidentally, and then discuss the best thing that happened to Simon in the last year, which it turns out is not (apparently) getting married a couple weeks ago, but rather something else.

Also for reference, ⁠here is a picture of the Russian spacecraft mentioned in the episode⁠ and ⁠here is a link⁠ to the Tom Kirby song.

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Classiest Plane Hijacking of All Time

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

At 9:15 A.M. on November 10, 1961, a Lockheed Super Constellation of Portugal’s TAP airlines lifted off from Casablanca, Morocco. Aboard were nineteen passengers - mostly American tourists - bound for Lisbon. The skies that day were clear, and the flight looked to be smooth and uneventful. But just 45 minutes after takeoff, the pilot, Captain José Siqueira Marcelin, felt the cold barrel of a gun pressed against the back of his neck. The gun’s owner, a 39-year-old antifascist terrorist named Hermino da Palma Inácio, ordered Captain Marcelin to divert and fly over the cities of Lisbon, Barreiro, Beja, and Faro. Marcelin protested, arguing that the plane did not have enough fuel. But Inácio, a pilot and onetime aircraft mechanic himself, wasn’t fooled, and after glancing at the flight plan determined that the diversion was indeed possible. Out of options, Captain Marcelin had no choice but to obey. While in the early 1960s aerial terrorism was still a relatively new phenomenon, nothing could have prepared Marcelin and his passengers for what happened next. This is the outlandish story of history’s classiest hijacking. Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Daven Hiskey Producer: Caden Nielsen

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link ⁠https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Murphy’s Law in Action

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

It has been called the “silent service.” Since their introduction in the early 20th century, service aboard submarines has been among the deadliest military occupations, with a full 70% of German U-boat crews during WWII never returning from patrol. But the hazards faced by submariners go well beyond enemy guns, depth charges, and torpedoes; submarines are complex machines operating in an extremely hostile environment, and can prove just as deadly in peacetime as in war. So the crew of the British submarine HMS Thetis was to discover in June 1939 when a seemingly routine shakedown cruise ended in tragic accident where Murphy’s Law was proven an immutable rule of the universe. (By the way, if you’ve not seen our video on Who was the Murphy in Murphy’s Law, we strongly suggest you go watch it. Go ahead, we’ll wait. The man behind it, Dr. John Paul Stapp, is the unsung hero and saver of millions of lives since his incredibly badass work and balls of solid steel did what he did to give us Murphy’s Law.)

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How to Scratch an Itch in Space, the Surprisingly Long Time You Can Survive in Space Without a Spacesuit, Why the Apollo 13 Astronauts Got Cold, and Much, Much More

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we begin by following up on a previous discussion on Daimler and what exactly a little girl named Mercedes had to do with things. We then jump into the surprisingly oft’ requested follow up on Simon’s first ranch dressing experience.

Next up we move into the meat of the episode, discussing how astronauts scratch an itch in their space suits, followed by looking at the surprisingly long time you can survive in space without a space suit or any other protection, with no long term damage.

During that discussion we get side tracked talking about why the Apollo 13 crew got so cold on their trip when space is not cold at all, but rather a great insulator, and why they didn’t simply put on their space suits to keep warm.

We then discuss at length the amazingly fascinating way in which airline planes get oxygen to passengers when there is no central oxygen store aboard the plane, outside of the pilot’s emergency supply. Then we look at the equally interesting way in which they get oxygen to passengers when there is a loss of cabin pressure- again, given there is no central oxygen store aboard the plane for passengers.

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Incredible Black Arrow Rocket

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

When it comes to technological achievement and national prestige, few feats can compare to launching a satellite into space. Since the Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite, Sputnik I, on October 4, 1957, 11 other government bodies have developed indigenous orbital launch capability: the United States, France, Japan, China, India, Israel, Ukraine, Iran, North Korea, South Korea, and a group of 22 nations represented by the European Space Agency. Conspicuously absent from the list is the United Kingdom, which in the late 1960s succeeded in developing this capability only to immediately abandon it. This is the story of the tragically brief British space program. At the end of the Second World War, Britain was well-positioned to start its own advanced rocketry program. Like the United States and the Soviet Union, the victorious ally had captured dozens of the German V2 rockets which had rained down on Southern England and Belgium at the end of the war - along with many of the scientists and technicians who had built and fired them. In October 1945, the British Army launched Operation Backfire, in which three captured V2s were assembled, launched, and filmed near Cuxhaven in Northern Germany. These experiments gave the British a wealth of knowledge and experience on the workings of the German terror weapon. One year later, on December 23, 1946, R.A. Smith and H.E. Ross of the British Interplanetary Society submitted to the Ministry of Supply a design for a modified V2 that could carry a man into space. Their concept replaced the rocket’s one-ton explosive warhead with a pressurized capsule that would detach at apogee and parachute to earth. Alas Britain, shattered both physically and financially by the war, could not afford to fund such a project, and all plans for military and civilian rocketry were quietly shelved... Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Simon Whistler Producer: Samuel Avila

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link ⁠https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Junior High Dropout That Created Dunkin' Donuts

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In 1847 at the tender age of 16, seaman Hanson Gregory looked at some frying dough and said, “Everything is better with holes”… except his ship hull probably… and created the staple of breakfasts the diabetes lovin’ world over- the doughnut! Or so the story goes anyway. In truth, Captain Gregory’s account of how and why he supposedly invented the doughnut varied over time, and despite a statue being made of him in Rockport, Maine in 1947 commemorating his fried genius, nobody really knows where the holed doughnut came from. Some, including Captain Gregory, claim putting the hole in it makes it so you don’t get a mouthful of grease when you eat the center, but plenty of doughnuts exist that have no holes with no such issue. And people have been frying up such cakes for millennia with no apparent inclination to take the center out, except for occasionally to replace it with things like fruit and other fillings. Nevertheless, it was in the late 19th and early 20th century that suddenly many decided a hole should be present in such fried dough. As to why, the timing of the change gives arguably the best hypothesis, or at least potentially why it became popular. Around the same time doughnuts with holes first popped up in New York City, bagels were also becoming very popular in the same place and were commonly put on display and sold stacked on wooden dowels. Thus, it is sometimes hypothesized that bakers in New York first got the bright idea to put holes in the dough before frying when one or more of them thought to sell the doughnuts in the same way as bagels- on dowels, which saved display space and, perhaps more significantly, made it easier to sell en masse on street corners. With this hypothesis, making more evenly fried dough may or may not have come into play. Whatever the case, this holey fried dough rapidly gained in popularity in the early 20th century, particularly receiving a huge boost thanks to WWI and soldiers’ love of them in the trenches. This all leads us to the topic of today- that time a Jr High dropout might as well have put a hole in people’s pockets with how fast they started throwing money at him when he created one of the most successful franchise businesses in history- The Open Kettle… Author: Daven Hiskey Host: Simon Whistler Producer: Samuel Avila

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inventing Color in a World That was Black and White

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

When we think of the past prior to the 1960s or so, we tend to picture it in black and white. Much of the visual media of this period - including still photographs to films to television - was rendered in shades of grey, making relatively recent history seem that much more distant and alien. But colour photography did exist in the first half of the 20th Century; just think of classic films like The Wizard of Oz, released in 1939. But if this technology existed, why wasn’t it more common? And who first figured out how to capture the world in full living colour? Well, prepare to go from sepia to technicolour like Dorothy as we dive into the fascinating - and surprisingly long - history of colour photography. Throughout the black-and-white photography era, people added colour to photographs and film by hand-tinting them with paint and ink. However, the development of true colour photography required a scientific understanding of how humans perceive colour. In 1850, German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz developed the trichromatic theory of vision, which postulated that the human eye contained three different kinds of light receptors - today known as cone cells - each sensitive to one of three colours: red, blue, and green. In 1861, English photographer Thomas Sutton, working with Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, applied Helmholtz’s theories to create history’s first colour photograph. Sutton took three separate photographs of a tartan ribbon through a red, blue, and green filter, then converted these photographs into slides and projected them back through their respective filters, the three slides combining to create a full colour photograph. Though this image could not be fixed on a physical medium, Maxwell’s demonstration nonetheless pioneered the additive colour process, which would form the basis of colour photography for the next few decades. Shortly after Sutton’s experiment, French physicist... Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Caden Nielsen Host: Simon Whistler

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Astronauts Go to the Bathroom in Space and How Women Can Safely Pee Standing Up

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we begin by following up on a previous discussion on what the first good movie based on a computer game was. We then jump right into the various ways in which astronauts have managed their necessary expulsions over the years and some hilarious stories and interesting related facts that go along with that, including the teased Apollo 10 incident from The Final Frontier Part 1.

We then discuss the lost skill of women peeing standing up without getting any pee on themselves or their underwear in the process, and how exactly this is done with no equipment required.

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How They Ruined Superhero Movies

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

“In mutant heaven there are no pearly gates, but instead revolving doors.” - Professor X

In the realm of comic books, the rules of the respective universe you’re reading about tend to differ wildly from the rules of our own. Besides the obvious thing of the world of say Marvel or DC being populated with virtual gods, iron plated dictators who sit atop flying laser thrones and a CEO who beats up criminals in a billion-dollar ninja-themed fur suit, problems in these universes sort of seem to just, go away.

Property damage, the judicial process and paper works are just a handful examples of things that don’t particularly seem to matter in comics and as a result, are rarely dwelled upon. There are exceptions of course, but for the most part the stories told by comics are allegorical so such details don’t really matter. Perhaps the most unusual reality of life comics have made a habit of sidestepping though is the idea of death, which is often portrayed as being about as much of an inconvenience to a comic character as an out of office hours work email. A trope so common even the characters in these stories have started to call it out.

Now, to begin with, think of a comic character. Do you have one in mind? Good. Okay so there’s a good chance that, at some point, that character has died, been buried, mourned and memorialised before springing back to life to continue slapping aside criminals and supervillains in form-fitting spandex as if nothing happened. And if they haven’t “died” there’s a good chance they were presumed dead after an explosion or something and then came back as if nothing had happened.

Starting with some of the heavier hitters from the DC side we have Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Martian Manhunter, Green Arrow and Robin. All of whom, at some point in their comic history have “died” and then came back.

Author: Karl Smallwood

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

Host: Simon Whistler

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Britain's Most Disastrous "White Elephant" Airliner

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

On April 27, 2005, the gigantic Airbus A380 airliner took to the skies for the first time, lifting off from Toulouse-Blagnac Airport with test pilot Jacques Rosay at the controls. At that moment the A380, weighing more than 500 tonnes and capable of carrying up to 853 passengers, became the largest commercial airliner ever to fly, dethroning the previous record holder, the venerable Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet. But while such giants might seem like products of the jet age, the dream of enormous ocean liners in the sky has been around for a lot longer. In the years immediately following the Second World War, Britain set out to build a truly gargantuan airliner, with which it hoped to revolutionize air travel and knit its crumbling empire together. Instead, the project turned out to be a technological dead end and a costly white elephant. This is the story of the Bristol Brabazon. In 1942, the British Government began thinking ahead to the future of the British aviation industry. The demands of war had forced the British to cancel pre-war airliner projects and devote its wartime production capacity to building combat aircraft like fighters and bombers. As a result, nearly all transport aircraft used by British forces during the war were American designs like the Douglas DC-3. Even Britain’s national air carrier, the British Overseas Airways Corporation or BOAC, was forced to fill out its fleet with American aircraft like the Boeing 314 flying boat. This state of affairs, the Government realized, would leave British aviation at a serious disadvantage once the war ended - as a December 24, 1942 article in Flight magazine opined: “The whole British Empire at the present time has an operational fleet of transport aircraft, comprising conversions, makeshifts and cast-offs, totally inadequate to represent the Empire in serving the air routes of the world in the peace to come. Have we to rely upon other nations to do it for us? The British aircraft industry is equal to the task. The Government should decide this vital question at once.” Author: Gilles Messier Producer: Samuel Avila Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Simon Whistler

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Real Life Space DJs and the Pillownaughts

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we kick off a series on space related facts. Before we get started in that, however, we do some follow up answering the question of whether the Allies in WWII used prisoners of war as slave labor. We then jump into the topic of the real life job of Space DJ, then the saga of the Pillownaughts.

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Making Children Cry for Fun and Profit

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

If you’ve spent any time whatsoever on the internet you’re probably already quite familiar with how attached people are capable of getting to their favourite fictional characters. While this invariably manifests as arguments, because internet, it is by no means a new or novel phenomenon. For example, consider what happened when the powers that be decided to kill Optimus Prime in the 1986 feature, The Transformers: The Movie, and indeed at one point planned to kill literally all the main characters, all so that they could boost toy sales by introducing an entirely new set of characters children would now need to buy. A decision that resulted in untold masses of crying children in theaters, upset that Hasbro had killed their robotic dad. Not hyperbole. We’ll get into it. Now your first instinct might be to scoff at the idea of people giving this huge of a crap en masse about a talking truck, but we’d like you to keep two things in mind, we’re talking about children and there’s no doubt a fictional character out there that you would be, at the very least, a little upset to see shot in the back by a car-sized laser gun. How that would manifest would invariably, well, vary, but the fact you’d have some kind of reaction is the point we’re trying to make. But, we’re just saying, if you didn’t tear up at Iron Man’s death, you are a soulless monster. Author: Karl Smallwood Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Simon Whistler Producer: Samuel Avila

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WTF is Up with the Bermuda Triangle?

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

For those who didn’t grow up in the late 20th century, it may seem strange to learn that for a time many people genuinely believed things like that humans randomly burst into flames for no apparent reason, with the occasional speculative news report or Unsolved Mysteries episode highlighting the latest instance, as well as that there was an area dubbed the Bermuda Triangle where almost certainly aliens were snapping up ships and planes for, we can only assume, maximal probage. This all brings us to the topic of today- how did the idea of the Bermuda Triangle first become ingrained in public consciousness, and was there ever actually any evidence of weird things happening there, or is it just yet another instance of the truism that humans will believe anything if a human in a suit says it on TV or it’s otherwise published in book form? To begin with, let’s start with what exactly constitutes the Bermuda Triangle. While there is some disagreement among Bermuda Triangle truthers, the commonly accepted boundaries of the Triangle are the area formed if you drew direct lines on an oceanic map between the ports of Bermuda, Miami and Puerto Rico where allegedly a lot of weird stuff happens. What kind of weird stuff? Well, legend holds that ships and planes passing through the Triangle occasionally just up and disappear like your dad when he went out for milk that one time. Now, the skeptics among you may hear that and think, “Well, the ocean is pretty big and a generally dangerous place to exist, especially back before GPS and awesome satellite weather, so maybe a handful of the planes and ship traffic in that region just sank or something? I mean, it is a super high trafficked part of the ocean.” Now, this is a very reasonable explanation. But hear us out- what about if instead it was actually aliens? This level of reasoning is essentially how the idea of the Bermuda Triangle took hold. More specifically, the first to speculate towards this very reasonable and in all ways rational idea can be traced to an article written in 1964, titled, appropriately enough, The Deadly Bermuda Triangle. Authors: Karl Smallwood and Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila Host: Daven Hiskey

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link ⁠https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Forgotten Gun That Changed Everything

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

When the Great War broke out in August 1914, the soldiers of the belligerent nations marched into battle carrying broadly similar weapons: modern bolt-action, magazine-fed rifles firing full-powered cartridges. British Empire troops carried the 1903 Rifle No.1 Mk.III AKA the Short Magazine Lee Enfield or SMLE; the Germans the Gewehr 1898, the Austro-Hungarians the Mannlicher M95, the Russians the 1891 Mosin-Nagant, and so on. Yet when it came to infantry weapons, one nation stood out…and not in a good way: despite having one of the largest and most modern armies in the world, the French armed its soldiers with a long, heavy, and awkward-to-use rifle some three decades out of date. Ironically, when first introduced, this rifle was state-of-the-art, a groundbreaking piece of military technology that launched a revolution in firearms design. But like many technological pioneers, the French military fell victim to its own ingenuity, its innovative weapon being swiftly copied and vastly improved upon by rival nations until its original developers found themselves hopelessly left behind. This is the story of the Model 1886 Lebel, the forgotten rifle that changed warfare forever. Since their introduction around the 13th Century C.E., for nearly a millennium firearms - whether in the form of cannons, mortars, or half-portable muskets and pistols - were exclusively powered by a single substance: black gunpowder. Developed around the 9th Century in China, black gunpowder is composed of just three ingredients: charcoal, sulphur, and sodium or potassium nitrate - the latter traditionally known as “saltpetre.” When heated, saltpetre decomposes to produce oxygen, which catalyzes the combustion of the charcoal and sulphur to produce deflagration, a rapid burning that produces a large volume of hot, high-pressure gas that, if adequately contained, can be used to propel a projectile down a gun barrel or to burst artillery shells, grenades, mines, and other explosive weapons. Yet despite being the only practical propellant and explosive known to humanity for over a thousand years, gunpowder suffered from a number of serious drawbacks. For one thing, for many centuries one of its key ingredients, saltpetre, was relatively rare and difficult to obtain. In nature, saltpetre mainly occurs in the form of Nitratine, a mineral deposit formed by the evaporation of ancient lakes and found in arid regions such as Egypt, South Africa, Peru, and Chile. Prized not only as an ingredient in gunpowder but also a potent agricultural fertilizer, Nitratine has long been a highly coveted strategic resource, with two large-scale military conflicts - the 1480-1510 Saltpetre War and the 1879-1884 War of the Pacific - even being fought over large Nitratine deposits in Central and South America. The only other economical source of saltpetre was from certain caves as well as barns and stables, where the compound naturally crystallized from the manure or urine of farm animals like cows and sheep and the droppings of birds and bats AKA guano. Author: Gilles Messier Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link ⁠https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who Invented the Egg McMuffin?

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 14:40:00 -0000

Breakfast truly is the monarch of meals, that time of the day when one is allowed to gorge on a cornucopia of nonchalantly combined delicacies ranging across the sweet and savoury spectrums, all washed down with streams of the world’s favorite drug in caffeine, as well as the white liquid excretions of cow’s, and/or the juices from the mangled, crushed bodies of our fellow living entities on this earth of the fruiting variety.

Besides, one can happily plow through such a caloric smorgasbord with the reassuring knowledge that our bodies may need huge amounts of energy before tackling another day of heavy toil, depending on what exactly your exact profession is. For example, skipping breakfast is attributed to costing the Roman Republic a massive defeat at the Battle of the Trebia River in December of 218 BC.

On that occasion, brilliant Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca unleashed his elite Numidian cavalry against the Roman camp at daybreak, to provoke them into an early battle. Ancient historian Polybius clearly stated that ‘His object [was] to get at the enemy before they had had their breakfast, or made any preparations for the day.’ Dehydrated, calorie starved soldiers in the end performing worse than their better nutritioned counterparts.

Host: Simon Whistler

Author: Arnaldo Teodorani

Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link https://incogni.com/brainfood

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Very Real Bear Soldier Who Fought in WWII

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 23:00:00 -0000

⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, which is partially a continuation of the last, we discuss the bear that was officially a member of the Polish army, how he came to be such and what became of him after WWII ended. We follow this up by discussing the interesting origin of the Live Long and Prosper Vulcan salute.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Hero Who Infiltrated Auschwitz

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 07:51:00 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by announcing our current contest winners as well as launch a new contest. Next up we get into the meat of the episode discussing the remarkable individual who volunteered to be sent to Auschwitz, why he wanted to go, and what happened next. We finish off by discussing an interesting bonus fact about the company Bayer.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Incredible Biology of Sickle Cell

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Chronic fatigue and weakness. Dizziness. Swollen limbs. Sudden, excruciating pain in the chest, back, legs, and arms. Uncontrollable, painful erections or priapism. Tissue necrosis. Organ damage. Increased susceptibility to bacterial infection. Death at a young age from stroke, heart attack, or organ failure. These are but a few of the awful symptoms of Sickle Cell Disease, also known as Sickle Cell Anaemia. Resulting from a defective gene that causes sufferers’ blood cells to collapse into a distinctive crescent shape, this inherited disorder afflicts nearly 8 million people worldwide and kills over 34,000 every year, with most sufferers hailing from - or tracing their ancestry to - tropical regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, Sickle-Cell Anaemia is often seen as a predominantly “Black disease”, tragically affecting access to care for millions of sufferers. But while this affliction causes untold suffering worldwide, condemning millions to a lifetime of pain - and, in many cases, an early grave - there is a silver lining: an unexpected evolutionary advantage that has allowed Sickle Cell Anaemia to persist for thousands of years. Join us as we take a deep dive into one of the world’s most fascinating yet overlooked diseases.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The First Road Trip Part 2: In Which We Discuss All Things Tangentially Related

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we discuss the interesting story of who came up with the unit of measurement called horsepower and why it got applied to engines. We also discuss the late 19th century dominance of the electric car and why and when that changed. Next up we look at the mildly humorous story of who got the first known speeding ticket, as well as the much less humorous story of the first person killed in a car accident. Finally we finish up by talking about a little-known fascinating fact about James Doohan (Scotty from Star Trek).

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The First Road Trip Part 1: The Gumption of Bertha Benz

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we discuss the surprisingly long history of the automobile, then move on to discussing what is generally considered the first “modern” car, the Model 3, made by Karl Benz, and how is amazing wife ultimately saved him and the vehicle from obscurity through her extreme audacity and faith in his invention.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Greatest Feat of Piloting in Space

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

On April 9, 1959, the newly-formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, introduced the world to a new breed of heroes: the Mercury Seven, America’s first astronauts. Selected from a pool of over 500 military test pilots, these men represented the best the nation had to offer, and its best hope in the intensifying Space Race against the Soviets. Almost immediately, the Mercury Seven became national heroes: on May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard would became the first American in space, while on February 20, 1962, John Glenn would become the first American to orbit the earth, a feat which catapulted him to superstardom. But among these early pioneers was an astronaut who, while less well-known to the public, would become a legend in the aviation community. His name was Gordo Cooper. Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr. is probably best remembered for his portrayal by actor Dennis Quaid in the 1983 film The Right Stuff. In the film, Cooper is portrayed as a cocky fighter jock with an easy smile and the catchphrase “Who’s the best pilot you ever saw? Well, you’re looking at him.” However, the real Coope was considerably more soft-spoken and taciturn than his Hollywood counterpart. Born on March 6, 1927, in Shawnee, Oklahoma, Cooper first learned to fly in his father’s biplane, soloing at age 12 and earning his pilot’s license at 16. As the Army and Navy flying schools were no longer taking candidates, Cooper instead joined the Marine Corps, but WWII ended before he could see active service. After living in Hawaii where he met his first wife Trudy Olson, Cooper finally received military flight training at Williams Air Fire Base in Arizona and in 1950 was posted to Landstuhl Air Base, West Germany. In 1956, Cooper attended the US Air Force Experimental Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California and spent the next three years test-flying high-performance jet aircraft. Author: Gilles Messier Host: Simon Whistler Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Swept Under the Rug: The Truth About the Japanese Holocaust

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Humans being horrible to other humans is nothing new. Think of the most brutal thing you can possibly imagine, and it’s almost certain not only has some human done that to another human, but probably some nation did it as a general policy to other humans. Possibly even for the amusement of the masses. And as ever, one of the few universal truths, beyond that Star Trek the Next Generation is the greatest thing humans have ever produced, is that the past was the worst. Nowhere is this perhaps better illustrated than what we are going to do an extremely deep dive into today because it’s an often forgotten bit of history, and even those who know something about it generally haven’t heard of many facets. This is despite the whole thing being central to one of the greatest and most studied conflicts in human history.

Sponsor note: Go to ⁠surfshark.com/BRAINFOOD⁠ or use code BRAINFOOD at checkout to get four extra months of Surf Shark VPN There's a 30 day money back guarantee, so you can try it risk free.

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That Time Ben Franklin and John Adams Slept Together and the Hilarity That Ensued

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

While Ben Franklin was remarkably successful in keeping elements of his private life very private to the point that historians can only speculate about much of it, despite having a common law marriage, he was, shall we say, noted for his overt and unabashed love of women and their company, particularly if they were educated- something he even used in argument for why women should be encouraged in education, not restricted as was so often the case in his time. In his view, women were simply even more fun to talk to and spend time with this way. Unshy about any of this, he even once penned an exceptionally detailed letter outlining why older women are much more preferable to sleep with than their younger counterparts. And that any young man seeking a lover to help with difficult to deal with urges before marriage would be wise to find himself an elderly woman to help meet these needs. Much more on this and Franklin’s rather humorous and well thought out reasoning in the Bonus Facts later. Brilliant, charming, funny, extremely sociable, Franklin was beloved by most who met him, knew how to have a good time, and seemed inclined to cast off his puritan upbringing and enjoy life to its fullest… despite also occasionally penning wise proverbs on how to live a good life that seemed to starkly contrast with some of his actual behaviors. British politician William Corbett would sum up that Franklin was “A crafty and lecherous old hypocrite whose very statue seems to gloat on the wenches as they walk the State House Yard.”

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Could the Tyrannosaurus Rex Really Not See You If You Didn’t Move?

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start out with a follow up to a previous episode in which we mentioned Teddy Roosevelt likely helped delay the start of WWI, but then never actually said in that episode how.

Next up we discuss whether the Tyrannosaurus Rex could really not see you if you didn’t move as depicted in Jurassic Park, as well as a few other interesting Jurassic Park factoids.

Then we get into a little podcast feedback and finish up by discussing the interesting thing that would have actually happened in Finding Nemo when Nemo’s mother died had it been more accurate.

Sponsor note: Go to surfshark.com/BRAINFOOD or use code BRAINFOOD at checkout to get four extra months of Surf Shark VPN There's a 30 day money back guarantee, so you can try it risk free.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caesar Part 4: In Which We Discuss All Things Tangentially Related

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start out by discussing the fascinating story about how the statue of Shakespeare in Central Park, New York, got there, what John Wilkes Booth’s Brother did for Abraham Lincoln’s son, the real story about why Caesar dressing is called that, and a bunch of other interesting stuff!

This is part 4 of our 4 part series on Julius Caesar. Stay tuned next time for when we talk about something completely different!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Incredible Story of U-47 and “The Bull of Scapa Flow”

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Scapa Flow lies barely seven degrees below the Arctic Circle, in the cold, windswept Orkney Islands at the northern tip of Scotland. Measuring 10 kilometres wide by 8 kilometres long with an average depth of 30 metres, this natural anchorage is bounded to the north by the mainland, to the east by the islands of Burray and South Ronaldsay, and to the west by the island of Hoy. In 1904, Scapa Flow was chosen as the home base for the British Grand Fleet, allowing the Royal Navy and German Imperial Navy to glower at each other across the North Sea. It was from here that the Grand Fleet sailed to the historic 1916 Battle of Jutland, and to here that the German High Seas Fleet sailed to surrender in 1918. In the years leading up to the Second World War, Scapa Flow was thought to be impregnable, and came to symbolize the supposed invincibility of the Royal Navy itself. But in the early morning hours of October 14, 1939, a lone German U-boat succeeded in doing the impossible, penetrating the harbour’s defences, sinking a 30,000-ton battleship, and slipping away undetected. It was one of the most daring feats of the war, and one which shattered the Royal Navy’s illusion of invulnerability. This is the incredible story of the U-47 and Captain Günther Prien, “The Bull of Scapa Flow.” Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Simon Whistler Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Nazi Kamikaze Squadron

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

On the first of April, 1945, a combined American and British Empire fleet appeared off Okinawa, the southernmost of the Japanese Home Islands. Operation Iceberg, the final naval battle of the Second World War, was about to begin. As hundreds of aircraft roared overhead and enormous shells fired from battleships pounded the shore, landing craft streamed ashore carrying tens of thousands of troops into battle. The battle for Okinawa is remembered as among the most savage of the Pacific Campaign, marked by extreme resistance by Japanese soldiers and civilians alike. Equally savage was the aerial battle which raged over the invasion fleet, as pilots of the Japanese Special Attack Units - better known as the kamikaze - brought their bomb-laden aircraft screaming down into the Allied ships. While by this time Allied sailors had weathered kamikaze attacks for nearly six months, the Battle of Okinawa brought with it a terrifying new threat. Just after 7:00 PM on April 1, the crew of the Colorado-class battleship USS West Virginia - a veteran of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - saw a tiny white aircraft screaming towards them at terrifying speed, a fountain of flames streaming from its tail. Though West Virginia’s gunners quickly filled the sky with a wall of tracers, the aircraft rocketed through the defensive screen and slammed into the battleship just forward of her No.2 gun director, setting off a massive explosion that killed four sailors and wounded seven. West Virginia had been struck by a Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka. Effectively a manned, rocket-propelled bomb designed for a single, one-way mission, the Ohka was one of the most ghoulish weapons of war ever devised and a perfect distillation of the sheer desperation which fuelled late-war Japan. But while the kamikazes have become infamous, less-well known is that halfway across the world, the Allied fleet which invaded Normandy in June 1944 nearly suffered a similar fate at the hands of Imperial Japan’s Axis ally, Nazi Germany. In the desperate, dying days of the Third Reich, the Nazis attempted to assemble its own kamikaze squadron, whose pilots, like modern-day viking berserkers, were to ram their jet-powered flying bombs into enemy ships and bombers, inflicting - it was hoped - such horrific casualties that the Allies would be forced to sue for peace. Thankfully, however, lack of resources and ideological differences among the German high command prevented this insane plan from being carried out. This is the story of Leonidas Squadron, the forgotten Nazi kamikazes. Author: Gilles Messier Host: Simon Whistler Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The 1990s were Weird

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Anybody reading remember the film Jingle All The Way, you know the one where Arnold Schwarzenegger body checks his way through a crowd of harried single mums, is an accessory to a bomb threat and physically assaults like 4 retail workers, all for the chance to get his hands on that year's hottest toy? Of course you do. That film is great. Okay so let’s talk about the time all of that happened for real, here in our world. Only instead of a turbo-tastic action figure with Booster accessory (don’t worry, there’s always plenty of Boosters left) we’re talking about a foot tall vibrating Elmo plush. This is the story of Tickle Me Elmo and how the cutesy red muppet indirectly caused a whole heap of problems including, as alluded to, a bomb threat, irate mob bosses and even an Elmo-knapping. Author: Karl Smallwood Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Simon Whistler Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caesar Part 3: The Real Story of the Ides of March

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start out by discussing in more detail the events surrounding Caesar’s momentous decision to cross the Rubicon, then jump into the real story of what happened on the Ides of March which isn’t exactly the one popular history remembers largely thanks to the notable play by Shakespeare.

Over the course of the episode we also discuss why likely most every quote you’ve ever read from Socrates was not actually something Socrates said, among other tangents.

And just a small correction: “Sherlock” not “Shakespeare” (You’ll know when you get there.)

This is part 3 of our 4 part series on Julius Caesar. Stay tuned next time for when we look at a variety of interesting facts related to what we’ve discussed in parts 1-3.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caesar Part 2: Julius Caesar’s Pirate Adventure and the Long Lost Location of the Rubicon

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start out by discussing how a teenage Julius Caesar became the head of his rather prominent family. We then move on to his little month-long or so pirate adventure and finally discuss where exactly the Rubicon was, which interestingly enough is only something that has been relatively recently discovered.

This is part 2 of what will be a 4 part series on Julius Caesar. Stay tuned next time for when we look more deeply into why Caesar chose to cross the Rubicon and his rather unorthodox and bold strategy in doing so, as well as look at the true story of the Ides of March.

Sponsor Note: Go to surfshark.com/brainfood or use code brainfood at checkout to get four extra months of Surf Shark VPN. There's a 30 day money back guarantee, so you can try it risk free!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who Started the Lizard People Conspiracy Theory?

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

People have been referencing sentient reptilian entities, sometimes humanoid, sometimes not, going back to some of the earliest written works and legends known to man. In more modern times, according to a survey done by the firm Public Policy Polling approximately 4% of Americans queried claimed they believe Lizard People are influencing world politics, with an additional 7% on the fence on this question. So how did the idea of Lizard People ruling the world start? To begin with, for those unfamiliar with our Lizard overlords, while there are a variety of versions of this conspiracy theory, the general notion is that a few different types of reptilian humanoids walk among us. Chief among these creatures are a type speculated to come from the Draco constellation, because apparently the Lizard People knew their little corner of the galaxy would look vaguely like a serpent from Earth when connecting the dots during a certain part of Earth's history, and so went ahead and spent millions of years evolving appropriately on their home planet to match. The Draconians are apparently tall, winged, reptilian humanoids who not only secretly rule over humans, but more overtly rule over other types of lizard people as well. As for those others, the second most prominent group widely held among adherents to this conspiracy are the shape shifting human/reptilian hybrids.

Sponsor Note: Go to ⁠surfshark.com/brainfood⁠ or use code brainfood at checkout to get four extra months of Surf Shark VPN. There's a 30 day money back guarantee, so you can try it risk free!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who Started the Flat Earth Conspiracy Theory, How Many Believe This, and What Do They Believe?

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Contrary to popular belief, a decent percentage of the human population has known definitely the Earth was roughly spherical for over two thousand years. Hardly impressive, as noted in our BrainFood Show podcast, bees also use this fact in their own absurdly fascinating navigation and in communicating directions to other bees.

As for humans, we took a little longer to realize this, with Pythagoras (6th century B.C.) generally credited with being the first known person to have suggested a spherical Earth, though the idea didn’t exactly catch on at this point. Aristotle (4th century B.C.) agreed and supported the hypothesis with observations such as that the southern constellations rise higher in the sky when a person travels south. He also noted that during a lunar eclipse the Earth’s shadow is round. Much more definitively, the 3rd century BC head librarian at the Library of Alexandria, Eratosthenes, built on their ideas and managed to calculate the circumference of the Earth with remarkable accuracy. How? ...

Sponsor Note: Go to ⁠surfshark.com/brainfood⁠ or use code brainfood at checkout to get four extra months of Surf Shark VPN. There's a 30 day money back guarantee, so you can try it risk free!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Did the Trump Family First Make Their Fortune?

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Regardless of your politics, I think we can all agree that Donald Trump is by no means a humble man, and he’d be the first to admit that the Trump Family comprises something of a rich and powerful dynasty. As it turns out though, Trump’s wealth and influence can all be traced back to a bizarre confluence of good fortune that befell, ironically, an unemployed barber who immigrant to the United States to find work- his grandfather, Frederick Trump.

Born in 1869 in a small village located in what was then the Kingdom of Bavaria called, Kallstadt, Frederick (who went by the decidedly more German sounding “Friedrich” prior to moving to the states) had a fairly humble upbringing. One of 6 children, he was the son of not terribly well off grape growers in the region. Matters got worse for the family in 1877 when Fred’s father, Johannes, died at the age of 48, leaving a wife, 6 children, and quite a bit of debt.

Sponsor Note: Go to ⁠surfshark.com/brainfood⁠ or use code brainfood at checkout to get four extra months of Surf Shark VPN. There's a 30 day money back guarantee, so you can try it risk free!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caesar Part 1: Caesarean and the Fascinating Story of Dr. James Barry (a.k.a. Margaret Bulkley)

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start out by discussing the fact that, contrary to what we speculated in a previous episode, World’s Fairs are actually still a thing. We then jump into the meat of the show, discussing whether Julius Caesar was actually born via a Caesarean operation and then look at the remarkable story of Margaret Bulkley, who is better known in history as Dr. James Barry- one of the first people to perform a Caesarean operation in which both the woman and baby survived.

This is part 1 of what will be a 4 part series on Julius Caesar. Stay tuned next time for when we jump into his life more directly by discussing a rather hilarious pirate adventure he had as a young man.

Sponsor Note: Go to ⁠surfshark.com/brainfood⁠ or use code brainfood at checkout to get four extra months of Surf Shark VPN. There's a 30 day money back guarantee, so you can try it risk free!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Bull Moose (Part 2)

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show podcast, we wrap up our discussion (for now) on one of the more remarkable individuals in modern history- Theodore Roosevelt. In particular we look at the truth about how and why the Teddy Bear was named after him and a boatload of fascinating Teddy Roosevelt facts conclusively demonstrating he was more awesome than we could ever hope to be. And as a little bonus to the Bonus Facts at the end, we discuss what the famous song The Rose has to do with the undisputed greatest show of all time- Star Trek the Next Generation.

(Also we very casually allude to the fact that Teddy Roosevelt probably helped delay WWI by several years, but then completely forget to mention HOW he did it later on. We’ll remedy this in an upcoming episode. And let’s be honest, there’s always more interesting stuff to talk about concerning Teddy Roosevelt, so I’m sure we’ll come back to him for more episodes at some point in the future as well.)

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Legendary Legends: The Greatest Adventurer and the Voyage of the Nautilus

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

At 11:15 PM on August 3, 1958, United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower received a historic radio message: “Nautilus 90 North.” U.S.S. Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, had just reached the North Pole while sailing beneath the Arctic ice cap. Known as Project Sunshine, this submerged voyage to the top of the world was designed to show off the superiority of nuclear power for naval propulsion and salvage American pride following the Soviets’ launch of Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite, the year before. It was also the triumphant culmination of a decades-long dream. For while Nautilus’s atomic power plant ultimately allowed her to succeed in her mission, she was not the first submarine - or even the first vessel named Nautilus - to attempt an Arctic voyage. Nearly three decades earlier a maverick Australian explorer, sailing in a far cruder war-surplus submarine, also set out to conquer the Pole from beneath. But while this now-forgotten expedition was beset with misfortunes and ultimately met with failure, its mission was bold and visionary and set the stage for a century of Polar exploration. And the man behind it all? Few humans in history can match his exploits in adventure. This is the incredible story of a man whose life was like something out of a movie, Sir Hubert Wilkins, and the doomed voyage of the Nautilus. Though largely forgotten today, Sir George Hubert Wilkins was an extraordinary figure straight out of an adventure novel, packing several normal lifetimes of experiences and accomplishments into an eventful 70 years. Born on October 31, 1888 in Mount Bryan East, South Australia, the thirteenth child of sheep farmer Henry Wilkins and his wife Louise, young George lived and worked on his family’s sheep station until the age of 15, when he left home to study mechanical and electrical engineering at the Adelaide School of Mines. In his spare time, he immersed himself in the relatively young arts of photography and cinematography. In 1908 at the age of 20, Wilkins left Australia as a stowaway aboard a ship bound for Africa, kickstarting his life of adventure. Author: Gilles Messier Host: Daven Hiskey Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Bonkers Atomic Car with 5,000 Miles Range

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In February of 1958, the Ford Motor Company unveiled an extraordinary concept for the automobile of the future. Dubbed the Nucleon, the vehicle was a showcase of mid-century styling and technology, featuring sleek, futuristic lines, optional tail fins, one-piece wrap-around front and rear windscreens, electric torque converters, proximity sensors, and automatic climate control for the cabin. Oh, and for those who care about such things was powered by a miniature nuclear reactor… As Ford’s ad copy breathlessly proclaimed: “A glimpse into an atomic powered future when car drivers might select their own horsepower is proceeded by the Nucleon…developed by advanced stylists in the Ford Motor Company Styling office to probe possible styling influences of atomic power in automobiles. The model features a power capsule, suspended between twin booms at the rear, which would contain a radioactive core providing motive power…. Power output of the car could be controlled at the driver’s option, much as the intensity of the reaction in a nuclear pile is controlled. Cars like the Nucleon might be able to travel 5,000 miles or more, depending on the size of the core, without recharging. At that time, they would be taken to a recharging station, which advanced stylists envision as largely replacing the present-day service station.” This is the story of the brief and bonkers rise and fall of the atomic car. Author: Gilles Messier Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Nukes of the North- Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

At 10 PM on New Year’s Eve, 1963, a U.S. Air Force C-124 Globemaster transport aircraft touched down on a runway in North Bay, Ontario. Under the cover of darkness, seven large metal canisters were unloaded from the aircraft and placed aboard a truck marked EXPLOSIVES. This truck then spirited the canisters through the security gate to the nearby Royal Canadian Air Force Base, where they were securely locked away in a thick concrete bunker. Inside were W40 atomic warheads, each with a yield of 10 kilotons of TNT - the first nuclear weapons to be delivered to Canada. But wait, I hear you say: Canada? The land of hockey, maple syrup, and Mounties with their silly red uniforms? Surely they can’t have been a nuclear power? Well, yes they were…sort of. Between 1963 and 1984, the Canadian Armed Forces deployed an estimated 450 nuclear weapons of six different types as part of their commitment to NATO and NORAD. However, these weapons were neither owned nor fully controlled by the Canadian government, officially remaining in U.S. custody until needed in time of war. Nor was their presence particularly popular with the Canadian people, ultimately leading Canada to become the first nuclear-armed nation to voluntarily give up its weapons. This is the surprising and forgotten story of how Canada learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. Author: Gilles Messier Host: Simon Whistler Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Bull Moose (Part 1)

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show podcast, we discuss one of the more remarkable individuals in modern history- Theodore Roosevelt. In particular we look at that time he risked life and limb on what amounted to a “principal of the thing” matter, and another time he quite literally shrugged off a bullet to the chest to immediately after give an hour and a half long speech…

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Many Ways Studios Try to Get You to Watch More Ads

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 04:09:00 -0000

“Come on, Daddy needs a liveable planet he can rule with an iron fist.” - Sheldon Cooper This is a quote from a season 9 episode of The Big Bang Theory released in 2016 called The Sales Call Sublimation. An episode that is largely noteworthy, at least for the purposes of discussing studios and advertising, for being about 18 minutes long despite being a show that was specifically made to fill a half hour time slot. A timeslot that quite literally had, over the years, slowly become about half ads.

More specifically, The Sales Call Sublimation clocked in at exactly 18 minutes and 34 seconds long. When you take into account the length of the title sequence, about 22 seconds, and also the credits, which tend to be about 30 seconds, the episode actually clocks in at about 17 and a half minutes of actual content, which for an episode of The Big Bang Theory is just enough time to get close to their maximum quota of one joke that vaguely hints at being funny per episode.

For comparison's sake, the first episode of the show clocked in at 21 minutes and 56 seconds long. This means that between 2007 when the show premiered and 2016 when the 9th season was underway, episodes of The Big Bang Theory got about 3-4 minutes shorter. All so that the network could run more ads against it.

Noteworthy in all this, networks ALSO tend to run ads during credits as well as often making use of things like banner ads during content, so calculating the exact amount of time a viewer was having their eyeballs bombarded by advertisements is difficult.

Now, it’s easy to dismiss this because, well, it’s The Big Bang Theory, and who really cares about that show? But this has been an observable trend for decades with basically every major network staple getting ever so slightly shorter with each passing year. For example, newer episodes of The Simpsons are routinely 2-3 minutes shorter than they were back in the 1990’s, meanwhile newer episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, AKA, One Piece for Soccer Moms, similarly run about a minute or two shorter than they did when the show first aired in 2005. Which seems kind of odd given audiences in the 1990s were much more captive to what was currently being shown, and on the whole had longer attention spans than today.

Of course there can be legitimate, creatively justified reasons for an episode to run slightly longer or shorter than its normal average runtime, like ending on a cliffhanger or the like, but as noted this is a readily observed industry wide phenomenon that is generally blamed on advertisements. Not to mention that when shows do run over or under time, it tends to be by a few seconds and in those cases shows have numerous tricks they can use to pad or cut the runtime to reach the required length...

Author: Karl Smallwood and Daven Hiskey

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Host: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Britain's Disastrous WWII Fighter Plane

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0000

What was the worst military aircraft of the Second World War? Given the sheer number of designs fielded by all sides throughout the conflict there is no shortage of candidates - many of which we have already covered on this channel. There was the Messerschmitt Me-163 Komet, a German rocket-powered fighter whose engine had a nasty habit of blowing up or dissolving the pilots alive. And the Messerschmitt Me-132 Gigant, a giant assault glider designed for an abortive German invasion of the British isles but pressed into service as a ponderously slow and horrendously vulnerable cargo transport. On the Allied side there was the Brewster F2A Buffalo and Douglas TBD Devastator, hopelessly outdated U.S. Naval aircraft that were brutally cut down by superior Japanese fighters the moment they first saw combat. And then there was the Fisher P-75 Eagle, a Frankenstein’s monster of a fighter cobbled together from parts of existing aircraft and deliberately designed to save its manufacturer from taking on more wartime production contracts. But when it comes to questionable design concepts, few aircraft can compete with the Boulton-Paul Defiant, a British fighter aircraft that sported a powered, four-gun turret like a bomber but no forward-firing armament. Designed around combat doctrines dating from the First World War, the Defiant enjoyed some early successes before suffering horrendous losses at the hands of more modern German fighters. As a result, it was swiftly withdrawn from day fighter duties, serving with greater success as a night fighter before being relegated to training and rescue duties and quietly retired. Yet while the flawed Defiant never earned the glory of its more illustrious stablemates, the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane, it nonetheless played a small but important role in the war and deserves to be better remembered. This is the story of Britain’s strange and forgotten WWII “turret fighter.” Author: Gilles Messier Host: Simon Whistler Editor: Daven Hiskey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Accidentally Nuking a Country

Sun, 28 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0000

At 10:30 AM on January 17, 1966, an enormous explosion shattered the silence over the small farming village Palomares in Spain. An enormous fireball erupted in the sky overhead, and pieces of flaming debris began raining down over the surrounding countryside. Two U.S. Air Force aircraft had collided during a routine aerial refuelling operation, killing all but four of the eleven men aboard. Within hours, the Spanish province of Almeria was crawling with U.S. military personnel. One of the two aircraft, a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress strategic bomber, had been carrying four hydrogen bombs with a yield of 1.1 million tons of TNT each. One of the bombs landed intact in a riverbed, while the conventional explosives aboard two others detonated on impact, contaminating large areas of Spanish countryside with toxic plutonium. The fourth bomb, however, was nowhere to be found. What followed was one of the largest peacetime naval operations in history as a fleet of U.S. Navy vessels scoured the deep waters of the Mediterranean for the missing bomb. This is the forgotten story of the 1966 Palomares Incident. Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why Do You Forget Everything When You Enter a New Room?

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0000

There you are. Sitting on your couch, watching a movie, when suddenly you decide you want popcorn. So you get up and cross the room to the kitchen. But the moment you cross the threshold between the two rooms: bam! you suddenly stop in your tracks. You glance about the kitchen in confusion like Gandalf in the Mines of Moria, unable to remember why you came here in the first place. Your mind is blank, wiped clean. You return to the living room, resume your movie, and bam! it all comes back to you as if nothing happened. You get up again, and the whole cycle begins anew. If so, then don’t worry: you aren’t going crazy or suffering from early-onset dementia - or, I mean, if you are. Don’t worry about it. Soon you won’t remember you can’t remember anyway… But what is happening here? What is it about walking through a doorway that prompts our brains to suddenly erase our short-term memory? Well, sit back, keep your grey matter focussed, and let’s dive into the fascinating science behind the Doorway Effect. Author: Gilles Messier Host: Daven Hiskey Editor: Daven Hiskey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Incredible Engineering- The Man Who Froze Time

Wed, 24 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0000

A speeding bullet ripping through an apple, a split second before the fruit disintegrates. A drop of milk splashing off a red plate, forming a perfect miniature coronet. An atomic bomb frozen just after detonation, the fireball like a giant, surreal jellyfish. The movement of a golfer captured at split-second intervals, revealing the practiced elegance of his stroke. You have probably seen these iconic images dozens of times, reproduced on postcards, in coffee table books and science textbooks, and even on art gallery walls. They are perhaps the best-known works of Doctor Harold Edgerton, an American inventor who pioneered ultra-high-speed photography and helped uncover the secret world hidden in the moments too brief for the eye to see. But Edgerton’s work went far beyond just making pretty pictures, his many inventions helping to revolutionize fields as diverse as manufacturing, biology, and ocean exploration. This is the forgotten and incredible story of ‘Doc’ Edgerton - AKA “Papa Flash” - the man who made time stand still. Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Hilarious Christmas Riot

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0000

⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at a Christmas gift that resulted in one of the more celebrated books of all time. Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at a rather humorous Christmas riot at West Point and then another that had nothing to do with Christmas at Oxford. We follow this up with a myriad of rapid fire Christmas Bonus Facts.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Perilous Journey- John Adams Goes to France

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0000

In the fall of 1778, things weren’t looking good for the traitors to King and country in the British American colonies. In the early going the American Revolutionary forces under George Washington had suffered defeat after resounding defeat, including Washington very nearly losing around half his army in the first major battle of the war, only saved by a providential fog and General William Howe deciding inexplicably not to press the attack when Washington’s forces were surrounded before this. This event occurred in New York in August of 1776 in what was then the largest known battle ever fought in North America, involving close to 40,000 troops including naval forces. Many losses for the Revolutionary forces later, Howe made a similar blunder in November and December of 1776. After yet another near catastrophic defeat for the rebels, when nearly 3,000 American troops were captured at Fort Washington, General Washington limped the 4,000 or so remnants of his army south to Delaware. Howe and his vastly larger, better equipped, and better trained army were nearby and could have crushed the Continental Army and either captured or killed Washington. But once again, for what reasons aren’t fully clear today, Howe chose not to press on, and instead began the process of setting up a winter camp with no further offensives planned until spring. Something needed to change if the upstart rebels were to succeed in breaking away from Britain. And so it was that Congress turned their sites on Britain’s longtime on and off again enemy in France. At the time it was exceedingly dangerous to transport diplomats from the United States to France given the British more or less completely controlled the sea in between, but Congress nonetheless had previously managed to successfully send Silas Deane, and not long after in December of 1776, Ben Franklin and Arthur Lee, to see about getting desperately needed aid from France. However, while the trio were in France working towards this, Lee accused Deane of financial impropriety, and Deane was recalled to answer the charges. Thus, Congress decided to send the tenacious John Adams to replace Deane and assist Franklin and Lee. Adams’ specific mission- negotiate a treaty with France to hopefully get desperately needed supplies and money to the rebellion, as well as direct naval and army aid against the British. There was an issue, however. It turns out there exists a giant ocean in between the United States and France, and, as alluded to, that ocean at the time was heavily populated in part by British ships with captains who would like nothing better than to arrest and hang for treason one of the principal architects of the revolution in John Adams. Author: Daven Hiskey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Crapper, The Poop Log, the Parasitic Poop Twigs, and Much, Much More

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0000

⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at a couple rather bizarre Spanish Christmas traditions involving holiday defecating… Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at why we kiss under the mistletoe, the Demon of Christmas, and the constant battle to keep a giant goat from being burned down every year.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What Really Happened After the Mutiny on the Bounty?

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0000

On November 28, 1787, His Majesty’s Armed Vessel Bounty set sail from England with 46 men aboard, bound for the island of Tahiti in the South Pacific. Commanded by Lieutenant William Bligh, her mission was to collect and deliver breadfruit plants to the West Indies, where they would serve as cheap food for slaves on British plantations. After a long and gruelling journey in which Bligh attempted unsuccessfully to round the storm-lashed Cape Horn at the tip of South America, Bounty finally arrived in Tahiti on 26 October, 1788. But the voyage - and the hedonistic temptations of this tropical paradise - soon began to take their toll, and over the five months Bounty spent in Tahiti morale and discipline among the crew steadily broke down. These tensions finally boiled over on April 28, 1789 when, three weeks after leaving Tahiti, the crew, led by acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, mutinied against Bligh, setting him him and eighteen loyalists adrift in an open boat. The mutiny on the Bounty has since become the stuff of legend, told and retold in dozens of books, plays, and films. It is history’s most famous mutiny, a classic tale of a beleaguered crew rising up against their tyrannical and abusive captain. But as with many such stories, the narrative has become progressively distorted with each retelling, such that the most common versions of the story differ significantly from the actual events. Popular retellings also tend to leave out what happened after the mutiny, which is in many ways an even more fascinating story - and one which had consequences which continue to resonate to the present day. Author: Gilles Messier Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Truth About the 12 Days of Christmas

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0000

⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at the rather humorous original name for the song Silver Bells.

Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at the truth about the origin of the song “The 12 Days of Christmas” and what’s the deal with the weird lyrics.

After that, we look at the truth about the origin of the Candy Cane and then a rather surprising fact about the song Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Lord of Misrule and the First Book Banned in America

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0000

When one pictures the first British settlers coming to what would become the United States, it’s generally of a group of religiously oppressed, rigidly pious individuals, such as the famed now named “Pilgrims” separatist group in their black and white clothing and top hats featuring giant buckles- a group who the Native Americans saved by sharing food and teaching them how to farm certain things in the region in their first year in Massachusetts, all culminating in the first Thanksgiving in America. But, in truth, the clothing style often depicted in paintings of the Pilgrims bore little resemblance to what the Pilgrims actually seemed to wear. For example, we know from ship manifests that the Pilgrim’s garb was extremely colorful, and buckles were both expensive and not yet fully in fashion as they would become later in the 17th century when paintings of the Pilgrims started to be made, leading us all astray on what they typically wore. Further, while the Pilgrims did receive a measure of aid in the early going from the native americans in the region, they did not celebrate the first Thanksgiving in America and the event today the modern holiday is supposedly based on wasn’t even the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving day in America, Nor did they initially think to invite the Native Americans to the event in question, though a group of them, probably attracted by all the noisy games like shooting contests, did ultimately join the party. Even popular perception of what they supposedly ate during said event is less based in history and more mostly thanks to Sarah Josepha Hale, author of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and one of the most influential women in American history who, through her highly circulated editorials laid out a partially mythical and romanticized version of the events most know today and popularized it. She also is a huge reason Thanksgiving is a national holiday in the U.S. in the first place from her decades long efforts to make it so. But we’re not here to discuss Sara Hale and her massive influence on United States culture that still echoes through today. Nor even the separatist group now called the Pilgrims per se, though William Bradford and his cohorts, along with the non-separatist Puritans later do come into play. No, today we are going to discuss someone who came over to the future United States around the same time as these groups and had a rather different view of the world than his puritanical compatriots. And presents yet another poignant example in several ways of the fact that how we view these early settlers in popular history is riddled with myths, misconceptions, and a whole lot of nuance thrown in. As ever, the devil is in the details, so let’s dive into it all, shall we? Author: Daven Hiskey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are Poinsettias Poisonous and the Truce

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0000

⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at whether poinsettias are actually poisonous or not. Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at one of the more remarkable things ever to happen in modern warfare- a completely impromptu Christmas truce, in which both sides in WWI randomly got up out of their trenches up and down the line and threw a party together.

We follow that up with some interesting bonus facts including a rather bizarre requirement the British military had for their soldiers for about a half century, among other things.

On another note, if you could do us a huge favor and rate and review this show in whatever podcasting platform you’re using (including hopefully giving us some feedback related to the new format), we would be extremely grateful. Thanks!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Amazing Story Behind The Christmas Carol

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0000

⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we look at one of my favorite stories I’ve ever researched. But before that, we begin by looking at what could have been wrong with Tiny Tim that simply throwing money at the problem could have fixed given 19th century medicine.

Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at what Charles Dickens’ called his “Sledgehammer for the poor man’s child” and the backstory that led up to a six week stint furiously writing of one of his most famous works, as well as some interesting references within it that modern readers may have missed, but those in his time would have implicitly understood.

We follow that up with some interesting bonus facts related to the story at hand, including why it’s “Dead as a door nail” and not something like “dead as a coffin nail” as Dickens himself mused.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Incredible Flame Thrower Packing Insect

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0000

Nature abounds with weird and wonderful defence mechanisms, evolved over millions of years to protect their owners from predators and allow them to live - and breed - another day. Some organisms like crabs, turtles, and armadillos, are clad in tough suits of armour; while others, like rosebushes and acacia trees, porcupines and hedgehogs, and lion and stonefish, ward off attackers with an array of sharp - and sometimes venomous - spines. Other defences are more active, like the clouds of ink released by squid and octopus, the stinky musk sprayed by skunks, or the sticky, choking mucus secreted by hagfish. But all these formidable defences pale next to those of a small, humble-looking insect. Armed with the biological equivalent of a rocket engine, when threatened these creatures unleash a burst of caustic, boiling-hot steam from their abdomens, blinding, wounding, or at least convincing would-be attackers to think twice. It is an ability so extreme and unlikely that it is often cited by creationists as evidence against the theory of evolution. But how does this tiny insect flamethrower work, and how did it actually come to be? Let’s find out as we dive into the fascinating world of the Bombardier Beetle. Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fires of Industry, Witchcraft, and the First Spark of the Revolution

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0000

When thinking about the various elements that went into the United States declaring Independence, we tend to think of things like the Stamp Act, The Boston Massacre, and the Tea tax that led to the Boston Tea Party, but these were things that were more in the vein of “this is the last straw” and all a symptom of the real problem. As the colonies started to grow and prosper, Parliament across the pond in the homeland both began wanting to take advantage of this in generating revenues for Britain, as well as to try to suppress some of this in other areas where the British American colonies were now threatening the parent nation’s own industries- a remarkable feat for settlements so relatively new on the world stage. This brings us to the story of today- John Winthrop Jr. and the first known operational iron works in America, The Braintree Furnace, which spawned an industry that within a century saw the colonies supplying 1/7th of the world’s supply of iron and iron based product, surpassing Britain’s own production. This all led to Britain passing one of the early acts that helped spark the revolution, the Iron Act of 1750 intended to severely suppress American iron manufacturing. Now, if the name John Winthrop sounds familiar, it’s perhaps because of the more famous John Winthrop today, one of the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, governor, and one of the most influential men in the early colonization of the region. But his son, John Winthrop Jr, while less remembered today was arguably just as influential in not only helping to establish the Connecticut colony, but more important helping the colonies go from fledgling groups scraping by, to leveraging the region's natural resources and encouraging highly skilled scientists and workers to come to America, all helping to put the colonies on the world stage of industry. As we’ll get into in the Bonus Facts later, he also tirelessly worked to make sure no accused witch in Connecticut would ever be executed, and ultimately put an end to witchcraft trials in that colony. Author: Daven Hiskey Host: Daven Hiskey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Denazification and the Unsolved High Tech Murder That Reshaped Post-Cold War Europe

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 08:00:00 -0000

On the morning of November 30, 1989, a trio black Mercedes-Benz sedans pulled away from a house in the quiet Frankfurt suburb of Bad Homburg vor Der Höhe and turned down a shady, tree-lined lane called Seedamweg [“zay-dam-vehg”]. They had taken this route many times before, and it seemed like just any other morning. Slowing down to pass a school crossing, the drivers may have spotted a man in a jogging outfit standing behind some bushes, adjusting his walkman and headphones. Or they may have noticed a child’s bicycle chained to one of the white bollards separating the street from the sidewalk, a small package strapped to its rear rack. Nothing out of the ordinary. But at 8:34 AM, just as the lead car began turning onto Kaiser Friedrich Promenade, the early morning quiet was shattered by a powerful explosion. The blast engulfed the middle car in the convoy, launching it 25 metres across the road. When police arrived on the scene and pulled open the charred smoking vehicle, they found its passenger, 59-year-old Alfred Herrhausen, dead in the back seat. Herrhausen was no random victim. As the head of the Deutsches Bank, the largest bank in Europe, he was one of the most powerful and influential men in West Germany - and a prime target for political violence. Indeed, as police searched the crime scene, they soon found the bomb’s detonator hidden behind some bushes. And beneath this they found a piece of paper in a protective plastic cover, on which was printed an ominous symbol: a red five-pointed star overlaid with a Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun. It was the logo of the Red Army Faction or RAF, a notorious left-wing guerrilla group which had terrorized West Germany for nearly three decades. Coming just three weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the assassination of Alfred Herrhausen marked the culmination of a unique period of political tensions in German history, one that would soon give way to new tensions as the long-divided country attempted to unify. Yet despite the high profile of the victim and the RAF claiming full responsibility, the actual perpetrators of this act have never been caught, and thirty five years later questions continue to surround just who killed Alfred Herrhausen - and why. This is the story of the mysterious and surprisingly sophisticated assassination of Germany’s top banker.

Author: Gilles Messier

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Do Spy Agencies Actually Recruit Spies in Real Life?

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0000

Agencies like the CIA and MI6 are tasked with collecting and processing data deemed potentially vital to their respective counties’ national interests, and then, in an ideal world, making sure those who need to know this information to inform their decisions and plans know it. In order to do this, they need people on the ground, so to speak. So how do these agencies actually recruit those who work for them both domestically and in more clandestine roles abroad?

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Kids Who Led the Resistance Movements Against the Nazis

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0000

History books often remember underground political groups like the Communist party or the Social Democrats, espionage groups like the Red Orchestra, or militaries from America and Britain as the primary resistance against Nazi forces. But you may be surprised to learn that, in fact, the most vocal and visible resistance came from young people, mainly teens and those in their early 20s, with the four largest and most prominent of these youths being The White Rose, the Edelweiss Pirates, the Swing Youth, and the Zazous. So let’s dive into their respective rather inspiring stories, shall we?

To begin with, The White Rose: “We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!" These are just a few of the powerful words published and distributed throughout Germany by a group of students at the University of Munich in an effort to incite their fellow countrymen to rebel against Nazi forces throughout 1942 and 1943.

As for notable figures in this group, perhaps the most famous of all were siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl. So what inspired them to rebel in this way?

Authors: Arnaldo Teodorani and Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Did People in Medieval Times Actually Siege a Castle in Reality

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0000

Modern entertainment such as movies, fictional books, and TV shows aren’t exactly known for accurately depicting how things may or may not go or have gone in the real life scenarios that they depict. From injecting substances directly into your heart a-la Pulp Fiction or The Rock, to Yarr’ing pirates, let’s just say there’s a lot they get wrong. On the former, ya, don’t poke a hole in your heart. That’s not helpful to, you know, not dying. See our video on the subject before you start arguing in the comments. And on the latter, one actor set the standard there for pirate speak in the 1950s and everyone has just sort of run with it as if it had a basis in reality for how pirates talked instead of just something he came up with for various reasons.

Moving on to Medieval times, don’t even get us started on things like medieval chastity belts or the supposed ideal of the Chivalrous Knight protecting damsels in distress… Far more likely the knights were the ones causing the damsels to be in distress in reality and said damsels would have traded their left butt cheeks for a device like a chastity belt for some level of protection, as we have covered in excruciatingly facepalming detail before. But we’re not here to talk about the fact that real life knights were mostly- and we cannot stress this enough- just massive dicks to women and like, honestly, almost everyone, even each other. No, we’re here today to talk about what they and their cohorts actually got up to on the battlefield when deciding to siege a castle as a means to conquer, rape, and pillage for fun and profit.

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Much Did Top Gun: Maverick Cost the U.S. Taxpayer?

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0000

Countless films produced in the United States feature use of rather expensive military equipment, and often also real world military personnel. Given the extreme expense of all of this using things paid for by the U.S. taxpayer to benefit for profit companies, how is this allowed? Further, how are projects that the military will support selected? Can just any U.S. citizen apply for use of such equipment and personnel for their particular project to make it fair to all? Just how much does this cost the U.S. taxpayer in cases like, for example, the recent wildly profitable Top Gun: Maverick? And why and how did all of this get started?

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What Did the German Public Know About the Holocaust During WWII?

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0000

While something like the holocaust isn’t exactly unprecedented in history, with mass genocide popping up an unnerving number of times the world over throughout our time humaning, perhaps no other instance of this has shocked the modern world more than the Nazis systematically murdering somewhere in the ballpark of 5 or 6 million Jewish people along with another 5 or 6 million people of other backgrounds, such as the lesser talked about Romani genocide. In this one, the Nazis murdered upwards of a million Romani, which was about half the entire Romani population of Europe at the time. That any civilized people could allow something like this to go on seems unthinkable to our modern selves, but the question becomes from this- how much did the general public actually know about what was going on at the time it was happening?

It turns out, contrary to what is often stated, quite a lot actually both on the global scale, and even within Germany itself evidence pointing to at least the idea that it was happening being relatively common knowledge, as we’ll get into shortly. But also, paradoxically, by accounts from many people directly after the war, they didn’t really know at all…

So which is true?

To really get to the bottom of this, we must discuss events leading up to the holocaust and how much of these the German people and wider world knew about.

Sponsor note: Go to ⁠HelloFresh.com/BRAINFOOD10FM⁠ now to Get 10 Free Meals + a Free breakfast for Life!

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who Invented Nachos and the Potato Chip? Is the Green Part of the Potato Bad for You? And Much, Much More

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0000

In the episode today, Simon discusses who invented the potato chip, nachos, whether the green part of a potato is poisonous, and much, much more in this ode to potato chip episode.

Sponsor note: Go to ⁠HelloFresh.com/BRAINFOOD10FM⁠ now to Get 10 Free Meals + a Free breakfast for Life!

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WTF are Smelling Salts?

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0000

It is a scene out of countless romance novels and prestige period pieces: an elegantly-dressed Victorian lady, laced too tightly into her corset, is suddenly overcome by a case of “the vapours” and swoons - collapsing into a convenient “fainting couch” designed for just this purpose. Immediately a servant or dashing doctor rushes to her side, uncorks a small bottle of smelling salts, and holds it under her nose. She gasps, springs back to consciousness, and all is well.

Of course, most of this scenario is pure fiction. Contrary to popular depictions, the corsets was not some diabolical, patriarchal torture device that caused women to faint constantly - indeed, working women regularly wore them in the fields and factories - while so-called “fainting couches” were nothing of the sort - merely ordinary day beds for lounging. But smelling salts were a real thing, used for centuries to rouse both men and women from fainting spells; indeed, they remain popular today among many professional athletes. But just what are smelling salts? Who invented them, how do they work, and are they safe to use? Well, lace up your corset, position your couch accordingly, and prepare to be shocked into unconsciousness as we dive into what exactly are smelling salts and how exactly they work.

Sponsor note: Go to HelloFresh.com/BRAINFOOD10FM now to Get 10 Free Meals + a Free breakfast for Life!

Author: Gilles Messier

Editor/Host: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Time a King Let the Leader of a Cult Become King to See if the World Would End

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0000

In today’s age of relatively stable international relations, it is hard to imagine the impact of something like the Mongol invasions. Starting in 1206, It was a trying time for those who initially witnessed them: mountains of skulls, burning cities, murder and pillaging on a wide scale. Even if Genghis Khan’

descendants became more urbane and grew closer to their conquered peoples, the initial shock of it all was massive. The conquered people struggled to make sense of the carnage and their new reality. New religious movements that promised a bright future rose to meet the new age. Some of these movements were as apocalyptic as the events recently witnessed. Out of the ashes of the old political order, new states were formed that looked to the Mongols for legitimacy, just as new religious reactions to the carnage looked to instill hope and resistance in the conquered people. A chain of events that could only arise from these conditions led to a very bizarre story of how a Persian king let a leader of a cult take the throne so apocalyptic prophecies could be fulfilled.

Author: Yehia Amen

Host: Simon Whistler

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Crazy Cool Science- What Causes This Sand to Sing?

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0000

Picture, if you will, a desert. Chances are, the picture you now have in your head probably looks a lot like Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia, southwest Africa. Among the oldest deserts in the world, this park features a spectacular erg or sand sea of towering, golden-red sand dunes rolling off as far as the eye can see, one of which, known as Dune 7, is the largest in the world at a whopping 380 metres or 245.25 Ariana Grandes tall. Standing amid this desolate, sunbaked landscape, you would expect to be confronted by a profound silence, broken only by the soft whistling of the wind. But this is no ordinary desert, for every so often, the silence will be shattered by a deep, powerful roaring sound, variously likened to thunder, distant drums, or the drone of a low-flying propeller aircraft. But alas for all you Dune fans out there, this ominous sound does not herald the approach of the giant sandworm Shai-Hulud (shy-huh-lood) bless the Maker and his water), but is instead produced by the sand itself. Such “singing” sands are surprisingly common, appearing in deserts and on beaches around the world from Morocco to Kazakhstan, Scotland, Canada, and Hawaii, and have been the subject of myth and folklore for centuries. Yet despite decades of scientific investigation, to this day no-one is quite sure what causes these sands to sing. This is the story of one of the last great mysteries of the natural world.

Author: Gilles Messier

Editor/Host: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who Started the SS and How Did They Rise from a Handful of Men to Such Extreme Power?

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0000

Discover the origins and sinister evolution of the Schutzstaffel (SS), the infamous paramilitary unit of the Nazi Party, and how it grew to become one of the most powerful forces in Germany.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who Invented the Band-Aid?

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0000

Finish the following sentence: “I am stuck on Band-Aid…” If you immediately sang: “…cuz Band-Aid’s stuck on me!”, congratulations: you have a 50-year-old ad campaign living rent-free in your head. A staple of every first aid kit, Band-Aids are a quick and convenient solution to all the minor cuts, scrapes, burns and other boo-boos life can dish out. Indeed, so fully have these little sticking-plasters permeated popular culture that the brand lent its name to the 1984 charity supergroup behind the hit song “Do They Know it’s Christmas?” while the term “band-aid solution” has entered the lexicon as a byword for temporary, often slapdash repairs. But while the idea of a gauze pad attached to a strip of adhesive tape might seem so basic that it must have existed forever, as we covered in our previous video Who Invented Duct Tape?, even the simplest inventions have to come from somewhere, and surprisingly the idea of the self-adhesive bandage is only a little over a century old. The story of how this simple idea went from home remedy to household name is one of a klutzy housewife, a devoted husband, tireless innovation, and clever marketing. This is the fascinating story of the Band-Aid.

Author: Gilles Messier

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Host: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Caden Nielsen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Crazy Carnival Ride Soviet Turntable Procedure That Gave Us the First Corrective Eye Surgery

Sat, 08 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0000

The eyes, they say, are the windows to the soul. More practically, they are our windows to the world, humans being one of many visually-dependent species on the planet. But they are also fragile windows, susceptible to all sorts of injuries, diseases, and disorders. Worldwide, over 2 billion people - nearly a third of the world’s population - suffer from some sort of visual impairment, ranging from mild glaucoma and cataracts to complete blindness. Of these, 88.4 million suffer from mild, easily correctable refractive errors such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism. For much of history, the only solution to such impairments was corrective lenses, but more recent years have seen the rise of advanced surgical corrective technology such as LASIK. Thanks to such safe, quick, and relatively painless and inexpensive procedures, thousands of people are able to enjoy perfect vision without the hassle of glasses or contact lenses. But no technology appears fully-formed overnight, and LASIK and its relatives owe their existence to a bizarre procedure developed in 1970s Soviet Russia which involved an assembly-line team of surgeons, diamond scalpels, and a rotating operating table that looked more like a carnival ride than a piece of medical equipment. This is the story of Radial Keratotomy, the world’s first successful corrective eye surgery.

Author: Gilles Messier

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forgotten Hero- The Other Oskar Schindler

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0000

In 1993, legendary director Steven Spielberg released two groundbreaking films, which could not have been more different from one another. The first was Jurassic Park, a thrilling summer blockbuster and special effects landmark about bringing dinosaurs back from extinction. The other…was Schindler’s List. Widely considered one of the most heart wrenching films ever made, Schindler’s List tells the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who, through his enamelware and ammunition factories in occupied Poland and Czechoslovakia, succeeded in saving over a thousand Jewish workers’s lives. Thanks to Spielberg’s film, Schindler is today perhaps the best known of the so-called “Righteous Among the Nations” - individuals recognized by the Yad Vashem memorial institution for assisting Jews and other victims of the Holocaust. But Schindler was far from alone, and his story bears a striking resemblance to that of another, more obscure figure: a fellow German businessman named Otto Weidt. While Weidt only managed to save the lives of around 30 employees, the sheer heroic lengths he went to to ensure their survival and defy the Nazi authorities makes his a story one well worth telling. This is the story of Nazi Germany’s forgotten “other” Oskar Schindler.

Author: Gilles Messier

Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who Were the Real Life "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” and What Did they Actually Do?

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 08:00:00 -0000

Among the many box office bombs of the 2024 movie season was The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Starring Superman himself - Henry Cavill - and directed by Guy Ritchie of Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels fame, the film tells the story of a ragtag team of saboteurs tasked with raiding a Nazi naval base off the African coast during the Second World War. Though highly fictionalized and over-the-top as only a Guy Ritchie film can be, the story is very loosely based on a real, daring raid that took place on January 14, 1942, which helped establish the reputation of one of the most infamous clandestine organizations in the war. This is the incredible forgotten story of Operation Postmaster.

Author: Gilles Messier

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rebuilding Civilization, America's Most Mysterious Monument, and Blowing It Up

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 07:00:00 -0000

On July 6, 2022 around 4 AM, a loud explosion rocked a remote corner of Elbert County, Georgia. Later that morning, the sun rose to reveal the shattered remains of America’s most mysterious and controversial public monument: the Georgia Guidestones. From the moment they were unveiled in 1980, these six massive granite slabs covered in inscriptions became a magnet for criticism and conspiracy theories, with many detractors accusing the monument of promoting satanism. As a result, the Georgia Guidestones became a target for numerous vandals, culminating in its bombing and demolition 42 years later. But what were the Georgia Guidestones, really? Who designed them, what was their purpose, and why did they attract so much fear and hate? Let’s find out as we dive into the fascinating and controversial history of “America’s Stonehenge.”

Author: Gilles Messier

Editor / Host: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Horrifying World of Mind-Control Creatures

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0000

In the 2013 video game The Last of Us and its 2023 TV adaptation, humanity is overrun by a mutant parasitic fungus called Cordyceps, which disfigures its victims and takes over their minds, turning them into violent, unthinking walking mushrooms called clickers. But this horrifying premise is hardly unique; indeed, the motif of infection and assimilation by an alien parasite crops up time and time again in popular fiction, from the 1950s novels The Puppet Masters and The Body Snatchers by Robert Heinlein and Jack Finney and their numerous screen adaptations to the 1998 film The Faculty and classic episodes of The X-Files, Star Trek: the Next Generation, The Outer Limits, and Futurama. And no wonder: horror fiction often reflects universal anxieties, and parasites have been an unwelcome part of the human experience since the dawn of time. From the tapeworms and hookworms that infect our guts to the filarial worms that cause elephantiasis to the single-celled protozoa that cause malaria, sleeping sickness, river blindness and other horrible diseases, these biological infiltrators have been - and still are - responsible for a great deal of human suffering the world over. And while the mind-hijacking parasites of popular fiction may seem like gross exaggerations created for the sake of chills and thrills, this is not the case, for such creatures are horrifyingly real. For example, Cordyceps from The Last of Us is based on an actual parasitic fungus of the same name that infects ants and other small insects, hijacking their minds and bodies and turning them into mindless slaves with one single purpose: to spread their new master’s spores far and wide. Indeed, such devious puppet masters are remarkably common in the natural world, being found in nearly every habitat and family of life - including our very own bodies. This is the story of the real-life zombie makers, the most horrifying - and fascinating - creatures on earth.

Author: Gilles Messier

Host: Simon Whistler

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hollywood vs Reality: What Actually Happened During Apollo 13?

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0000

“Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a Main B Bus undervolt.” These words, spoken by astronaut Jim Lovell on April 13, 1970, signalled the start of one of NASA’s greatest crises. Apollo 13, the third American lunar landing mission, had suffered an onboard explosion, knocking out vital systems and placing the lives of the three astronauts aboard - Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert - in grave danger. Over the next four and a half days, thousands of engineers and technicians back on earth battled one crisis after another to keep the crippled spacecraft running and bring the astronauts safely back home. Their heroic efforts paid off when, on April 17, the Command Module Aquarius splashed down in the South Pacific Ocean and astronauts Lovell, Haise, and Swigert were brought aboard the aircraft carrier USS Iwo Jima - safe and sound. The saga of Apollo 13 has been described as a “successful failure” and “NASA’s finest hour”, and was famously dramatized in the acclaimed 1995 film starring Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, and Kevin Bacon. But while the film is praised for its historic and technical accuracy, it by necessity takes certain liberties for the sake of drama - for example, shortening Lovell’s rather passive real-life declaration to the far more urgent “Houston, we have a problem.” But what else did the film get right and wrong, and what actually caused the Apollo 13 disaster? Let’s find out as we take a deep dive into one of the greatest dramas in the history of manned spaceflight.

Author: Gilles Messier

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire: The Extraordinary Saga of the Unsinkable Nevada

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0000

At 9:00 in the morning on July 1, 1946, Major Harold Wood, bombardier of the B-29 Superfortress Dave’s Dream, peered through his bombsight at a massive fleet of warships gathered below. As the crosshairs fell over his target, he released his weapon, and the pilot, Major Woodrow Swancutt, pulled the aircraft into a sharp turn. Seconds later a blinding flash filled the air as history’s fourth atomic bomb detonated over the turquoise waters of the Pacific. But this was not some alternate timeline where the nascent Cold War suddenly went hot, but rather an elaborate test dubbed Able, part of a larger series of nuclear experiments called Operation Crossroads carried out at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. And while the target fleet included several former Axis ships including the Japanese battleship Nagato and the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, the vast majority were American, a motley array of obsolete battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, landing craft, and various auxiliary vessels. And at the very centre of the assembly, painted bright orange to serve as an aiming point, was a truly remarkable vessel: the battleship USS Nevada. A revolutionary design when she entered service in 1916, Nevada was present at Pearl Harbour on the morning of December 7, 1941 when the surprise attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy marked the ascendancy of the aircraft carrier over the battleship. And now, at the end of her career, she bore witness to another technological revolution: the dawning of the atomic age. This is the remarkable story of the USS Nevada, a ship that served through one of the most eventful periods in the history of naval warfare.

Author: Gilles Messier

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Host: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Great Vibrator Myth

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0000

Selfie stick. Electrical banana. Pocket pleaser. Magic wand. Divorce maker. Buzz Nightgear. Battery Operated Boyfriend. These are but a few colourful euphemisms for womankind’s best friend, found in millions of nightstand drawers across the globe: the vibrator. If you are a connoisseur of strange product origins then you’ve likely heard the quirky and unlikely story of the vibrator’s creation, which goes something like this: during the Victorian era, women were regularly diagnosed with female hysteria, a catch-all condition covering everything from fainting, insomnia, irritability, nervousness, or excessive sexual desire - really, any inconvenient symptom a woman could exhibit. The most popular treatment for female hysteria was the pelvic or clitoral massage, performed by a doctor in a clinical setting. Being completely ignorant of the female orgasm, doctors dismissed the resulting shudders and moans of ecstasy as mere “paroxysms”, maintaining that as no vaginal penetration was involved, pelvic massage had nothing to do with sex.

As the popularity of this treatment exploded, doctors devised various mechanical vibrating machines to relieve their aching fingers and wrists, speed up the massage process, and allow them to service many more patients per day. And thus, an iconic sex toy was accidentally born.

It’s an entertaining story, one which has been told and retold in countless books, documentaries, and even scientific papers, and inspired several works of popular entertainment including Sarah Ruhl’s award-winning 2009 stage play In the Next Room and the 2011 film Hysteria starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jonathan Pryce.

It is also completely false without a shred of evidence backing any of it. Something only extremely recently revealed.

That’s right: despite being widely reported as historical truth, the popular account of the vibrator’s creation is, in fact, a fantasy, concocted by a single historian based on dubious interpretations of historical records. Yet this narrative has remained largely unchallenged for more than two decades since, exposing worrying truths about how falsehoods can spread through popular culture and how academic research is fact-checked and published.

This is the scandalous story of the great vibrator myth.

Author: Gilles Messier

Host: Simon Whistler

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WTF is Up with the Swastika?

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0000

It is among the most feared and reviled symbols in the world, the very sight of which instantly evokes thoughts of hatred, mass murder, and the worst traits of humanity. It is so repugnant as to be outright banned in many parts of the world. It is, of course, the swastika, a symmetric cross with short lines protruding at right angles from the end of its arms. Infamously adopted by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party to represent their dream of a Thousand-Year Third Reich, 80 years after the end of the Second World War the symbol continues to be used by Neo-Nazis and other far-right groups to symbolize antisemitism, white supremacy, and other hateful ideologies. Yet the Nazis did not invent the swastika; the symbol had existed for thousands of years before Adolf Hitler was even born, representing nothing more nefarious than good luck or fortune. Indeed, up until the 1930s it was ubiquitous in western culture, appearing on jewelry, buildings, sports jerseys, and even in the names of towns. And even today in many eastern countries it continues to be widely used, carrying none of the stigma it has acquired elsewhere in the world. So what happened? Where did the swastika come from, and how did it go from a beloved good luck charm to a loathed symbol of hate and oppression in less than two decades? Let’s find out as we dive into the fascinating and controversial history of the swastika.

Author: Gilles Messier

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Host: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Insane Engineering of Atmospheric Diving Suits

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0000

In the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only, Roger Moore’s Bond and Bond girl Melina Havelock - played by Carole Bouquet - dive to the bottom of the Ionian Sea to recover a top-secret code machine from the wreck of a sunken British spy ship. There, they are suddenly attacked by one of the villain’s goons wearing what looks like a nightmarish combination of a medieval suit of armour and a giant insect exoskeleton, with a bulbous helmet, multiple round portholes, segmented limbs, and menacing mechanical claws. A similar suit also shows up in the 1989 underwater monster movie Deepstar Six. But while this contraption may look like it came from the fevered imagination of a Hollywood production designer, it is, in fact, a real piece of deep diving equipment known as an Atmospheric Diving Suit or ADS. Effectively wearable, articulated personal submarines, ADSs alleviate many of the limitations of traditional diving techniques, allowing humans to work at previously unheard-of depths. But achieving this capability has come at the cost of daunting engineering challenges, with the surprisingly long history of atmospheric diving suits being one of ingenuity, dogged trial-and-error, and incremental improvements in technology. This is the fascinating story of mankind’s quest to conquer the deep in a suit of armour.

Author: Gilles Messier

Host: Simon Whistler

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What Did the British Royals Get Up to During WWII?

Sat, 18 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0000

During WWI, the senior members of the British Royal family kept awfully busy. One of them shattered his pelvis when a near thousand pound horse decided to ride him instead of the other way around, another one enjoyed some time in the trenches and examining early tanks, his brother came under fire from German warships, and their sister distributed nicotine and ‘acid tablets’ to soldiers and sailors in gift boxes.

If you want to learn more about their adventures, and misadventures - including whether or not they should be held responsible for the execution of the Russian royal family, as suggested by a certain Netflix crowning achievement of streaming entertainment- well, take a look at our video here on YouTube What Did the British Royals Get Up to During WWI? if you haven’t already. Among other things that video also includes a great The Road Not Taken tie in and why almost everyone universally gets that poem’s meaning quite incorrect in rather ironic ways, as well as how the man it was written about also initially misinterpreted Frosts’ intent, which was mostly just to tease him, and how that all partially helped lead to that man’s death in WWI as a result.

But that was WWI. What about the story of the world’s most famous royals during WWII?

Well, in what follows we will discover how a sailor Prince saved his entire crew from almost certain death via a rather spur of the moment scheme, which Monarch would be best suited to fix your carburettor, how many secret plans a King can set in motion without his nation finding out, whether the former King of England, as is often stated, really tried to buddy up to Hitler to help get his throne back after being forced to abdicate a few years earlier, and why his other brother is at the centre of a similar major conspiracy theory involving no less than Winston Churchill himself ordering his death…

So, strap on your royal cape, grab your shrubbery and holy hand grenades, and let’s dive into what the British royals got up to during WWII.

Authors: Arnaldo Teodorani and Daven Hiskey

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Host: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

0:00 Intro

3:20 The King is Killed and the Troublesome Heir

16:18 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth

20:57 The King’s Secret Plan

23:48 ‘Lilibet’ and ‘Margot’

25:31 Philip of Mountbatten's Badassery

30:46 The Duke of Windsor's Virtual Exile and the Nazi Plan to Make Him King of England Again

56:14 The Duke of Gloucester

58:18 The Duke of Kent, A Plane Crash, and a Conspiracy

1:14:04 King George’s Secret Missions

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What Did the British Royals Get Up to During WWI?

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0000

For those of us born relatively deep into the before times of the 20th century, it may come as a rather shocking realization that WWI occurred now over a century ago, playing as the backdrop on the positive side of astonishingly rapid progress in the fields of medicine, science, technology, literature, and the arts, along with on the downside the past, as ever being the worst, such as the Spanish Flu pandemic which while WWI was raging killing about 20 million, that Spanish flu was outdoing the humans in a much shorter span killing between 50-100 million people and infected around a half a billion around the globe between 1918 and 1920.

That’s not even to mention just after the Encephalitis Lethargica which swept across the world killing over a million people while affecting numerous others, before suddenly disappearing, leaving the finest scientific minds of the age absolutely stumped, though today it’s thought to have been caused by a rare type of strep throat, which concerningly enough is still around today, and a subsequent immune response gone awry. That one was particularly horrifying as if it didn’t kill you, this illness could instead potentially trap you inside your body, stopping you from having the will to move or speak, though you’d otherwise seem perfectly healthy. A few decades after the outbreak, a treatment was found that would, for lack of a better phrase, “wake up” the patients, though within weeks they’d slip back into their trance. If that all sounds like a familiar plotline, it’s perhaps because it was the inspiration for the Robin Williams’ fronted film Awakenings.

But, we’re not here to talk about all the ways the past was the worst, else this video would end up being the longest ever posted on YouTube, even if we restricted ourselves to just the first 25 years of the 20th century. But rather, we’re going to zero in on a specific piece of that era, which will always be remembered as the century in which many of the most prominent nations on this planet decided to plunge our species into the most lethal, devastating, traumatic conflict since our ancestors had first pierced someone’s guts with the sharpened end of a stick. Not happy with just one such conflict, we went and did it twice, in the first place in The Great War, also known as ‘the war to end all of war’, and later simply as World War I when everyone realized that humans will seemingly never end warring until we have one so devastating that there are no humans left to war with. ...

Author: Arnaldo Teodorani and Daven Hiskey

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

0:00 The Past was the Worst

7:45 The Truth About What Really Started WWI

14:05 King George V and Queen Mary

19:01 The Romanovs and The Windsors

22:40 Princess Mary

25:21 ‘David’, the Prince of Wales

29:01 Prince Albert

32:43 From WWI to WWII

35:38 How Everyone Gets "The Road Not Taken" Wrong and How It Helped End the Life it was Written About

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hitler’s “Ideal Aryans” Who Were Actually Jewish Ad Campaign

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0000

Discover the untold story of Hitler’s Jewish poster children, Hessy Levinsons and Werner Goldberg—icons of Nazi propaganda hiding shocking secrets. A compelling tale of irony, danger, and defiance.

Author: Gilles Messier

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How NASA Learned to Land on the Moon

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0000

On July 20, 1969, the whole world gathered around their flickering television sets and watched in awe as astronaut Neil Armstrong who, if not for someone secretly slipping his very late application to the astronaut program into the pile wouldn’t have even been there (more on this in the Bonus Facts later), climbed down the leg of a strange, spidery vehicle, stepped onto the surface of the moon, and spoke the immortal words: “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” …Followed by the much less memorable second words, “I can – I can pick it up loosely with my toe. It does adhere in fine layers like powdered charcoal to the sole and sides of my boots. I only go in a small fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch, but I can see the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles.”

But for the first time in history, a human being had set foot on another world. The historic flight of Apollo 11 was the culmination of a massive eight-year effort to realize President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth by the end of the decade. But the road from the earth to the moon was far from a smooth one, beset by numerous hurdles and setbacks. For example, the deaths of the Apollo 1 crew in a launch pad fire on January 27, 1967 prompted a complete redesign of the Apollo spacecraft, while ongoing problems with the Saturn V rocket’s massive F-1 rocket engines nearly resulted in the cancellation of the entire Apollo programme. But perhaps the greatest challenge of all was deciding how to land on the moon in the first place. Solving this seemingly trivial question proved far more difficult than expected, requiring years of careful study and the heroic persistence of an obscure but determined engineer. This is the story of how we learned to land on the moon only a little over a half century after humans were still hitching up covered wagons to go places.

Host: Simon Whistler

Author: Gilles Messier

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's Up with Space Food?

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 22:00:00 -0000

If your parents ever took you to a science museum or planetarium as a child, you likely spent much of your visit in the gift shop, begging them to buy you one of the hundreds of shiny – and purportedly “educational” – items on offer. And most irresistible of all was undoubtedly “astronaut food”: shiny foil packets of freeze-dried strawberries or ice cream sandwiches. Sure, they had the texture of florist’s foam, crumbled into sticky dust, and tasted like sugary chalk, but that didn’t matter: you were eating the same food as actual astronauts!

…well, sorry to ruin your cherished childhood memories, but sadly no, you weren’t. For while the freeze-drying process used to make these novel treats was originally developed for the space program, no astronaut has ever eaten gift shop “astronaut” strawberries or ice cream during a mission – for the simple reason that the crumbs would float away and wreak havoc in the spacecraft. So what do astronauts actually eat in orbit? Well, put on your spacesuit and pack your Tang as we blast off into the long, complicated, and fascinating story of space food.

Author: Gilles Messier

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is Up with the Van Allen Belts and How Did Astronauts Survive Flying Through Them?

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0000

The shadows go in different directions! The flag is waving in a vacuum! The lander didn’t dig a crater! You can’t see any stars! It was all filmed on a soundstage by Stanley Kubrick! If any of these statements sound familiar, then odds are you’ve spent way too much time online and need to touch some grass. Ever since Bill Kaysing published his “We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle in 1976, a small but growing number of dissenters have vehemently argued that neither Neil Armstrong, nor anyone else ever stepped foot on the moon. Rather, they argue, the whole Apollo programme was nothing more than an elaborate Cold War hoax, meant to demonstrate America’s technological superiority over the Soviet Union.

But as we’ve already covered in exhaustive detail in our previous video How Do We Actually Know We Landed on the Moon? every single one of the popular arguments put forward by Kaysing and individuals in the aftermath has been thoroughly debunked. For example, looking at the examples we’ve just listed extremely briefly: the shadows are deflected by terrain; the flag had a metal rod along its top edge to keep it deployed; due to the moon’s low gravity the Lunar Module descent engine did not need to be powerful enough to dig a crater; and the exposure on the astronauts' cameras was set to photograph the bright lunar surface, meaning the faint stars didn’t register on the film, something you can try out for yourself with your own camera here on Earth if you like.

And while yes, Stanley Kubrick did direct the moon landings, as everyone knows he was such a perfectionist that he insisted on filming on location(!). Yet among all the arguments against the feasibility of manned lunar landings, one stands out among the rest - even among regular, non-terminally-online people- the van Allen Radiation Belts. These regions, located between 640 and 58,000 kilometres or 400 and 36,000 miles above the earth’s surface, are filled with high-energy electrons, protons, and other subatomic particles emitted by the sun and trapped by the earth’s magnetic field. According to conspiracy theorists, the radiation in these belts is too intense for humans to survive, making space travel outside of Low Earth Orbit impossible. But is this true? Have the Moon Landing Conspiracy people finally scored a fatal blow against NASA and the 400,000 people who worked on the Apollo Missions? Does this one, single data point, negate the literally hundreds of thousands of other confirmations we have during the Apollo Missions and countless more since? Well, no. But this wouldn’t be a very convincing or interesting video if we stopped there. And, in truth, it’s a great question. And has a super interesting answer with a lot of interesting things to learn along the way.

So how did the Apollo astronauts survive crossing such a dangerous region of outer space?

Well, slip into your space suit- pull on your lead-lined underwear -... maybe not in that order unless you want to look like Superman… as we blast off in search of answer to how the brilliant engineers and scientists working on all this solved this problem.

Author: Gilles Messier

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Host: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What was Hitler Like as a Child? And was His Grandfather Really Jewish?

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0000

While just about everyone is abundantly familiar with Adolf Hitler’s exploits in the latter half of his life, an often missed part of the once proclaimed “German Messiah’s” history is that of his childhood. So just how did this “boy like any other” grow into arguably one of the most reviled individuals in the history of humanity? Well, put on your lederhosen and grab your machete and time machine, because we are going to be talking about baby hitler, who his parents were, whether he was actually Jewish, the exploits of his youth, what he was like as a child, his creepy high school crush, and much. much more. Let’s dive into it all shall we?

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Twisting, Turning Tale of the Invention of Dr Pepper

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0000

When the sun scorches the earth, when incandescent air burns your lungs, and especially when that glucose curve dips at 10, 2 and 4 in the afternoon … well, there is nothing better than grabbing an ice cold bottle of a very special soft drink- its purple-ish label covered in beads of cooling moisture. I am, of course, talking about the first major soft drink to be invented in America: Dr Pepper, beating Coca Cola by one year and Pepsi by eight, all the way back in 1885! Coincidence that this was the same year Doctor Emmet Brown and Marty McFly were having their little adventure? We’ll leave it to you to decide.

Non-Americans may have only a very vague idea of what Dr Pepper is, considering that it is not as ubiquitous as Coke or Pepsi. And we can even exclusively say that our glorious and unheralded third partner in our endeavors here on TodayIFoundOut in a phenomenal human by the name of Dhruv Sapra only recently tried Dr. Pepper for the first time on August 3 of 2023. But our viewers in the US are surely very familiar with its distinctive packaging and taste. Our friends in Texas in particular share a special bond with Dr Pepper, as they can revel in pride knowing that the drink was invented in their very own Waco.

Or can they? The fact is that the origin story of Dr Pepper is steeped in lore and legend, marked by contradicting versions and no conclusively confirmed facts, and may not have been invented in Texas at all. What follows is going to be us attempting to sort out that mess, while also in the process, for reasons that will soon make sense, diving into the fascinating reasons why 18 is considered the age we become adults, whether two people really are the only individuals who know the full recipe for Coca-Cola, and much, much more! So let’s dive into it, shall we?

Author: Arnaldo Teodorani

Host: Simon Whistler

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So What Happens Exactly When Someone Wins the Lottery?

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 07:00:00 -0000

Winning a big ticket lottery very often isn’t all that it cracked up to be and despite a windfall of cash, a surprising number of winners have gone on record as saying winning the lottery was the worst thing that ever happened to them. And some could never end up saying it because of the surprising amount of murder that occasionally happens after, as we’ll get into. But as to the more normal non-murderous awful, this is something that might have a lot to do with the fact that lottery winners (at least in the US) often receive little to no advice on how to adjust to their newfound wealth, which may sound obvious and easy to some, but there are a number of pitfalls we’re guessing most have not considered that have nothing to do with having well managed investment accounts.

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Sponsor note: Our listeners get 10% off their first month at ⁠⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠⁠.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Weird, Wacky, and Hilarious World of Animal Mating

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 05:02:00 -0000

As anyone who’s perused the internet knows, arguably the most bizarre mating practices of all can be found among humans, with Rule 34 being a rather immutable law of nature. But it turns out, other animal mating practices can be just as interesting, so today we’re going to be looking at the Wild and Wacky World of Animal Mating, from the bizarre, to the humorous, to the downright disgusting. So, for example, if you’ve ever wondered how porcupines mate given their quill covered bodies, want to know which animal literally helicopters their poop and pee at their mate to attract them… besides my college girlfriend that is… how Finding Nemo would have been VERY different if actually accurate to the species, the intricacies of lobster lovin’, the fascinating and rather humorous world of giraffe mating, the momentous mating that led to the darkly humorous Dead Duck Day, and much, much more, well, stick around because this one just might give you and your partner some ideas…

Authors: Daven Hiskey, Karl Smallwood, Melissa Blevins, Emily Upton

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Host: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Caden Nielsen

0:00 Intro

2:35 Porcupine Porking

5:05 Disturbing Ducks and Dead Duck Day

12:51 Hyena Lady Bits

14:08 Exploding Bees

17:50 Bees are so Freaking Cool

22:42 Honeybees are Better at Math Than You

25:04 Clownfish and Why Finding Nemo is All Wrong

30:26 The Bizarre World of Giraffe Mating

32:59 Helicoptering Hippos

33:50 White Fronted Parrot Date Night

34:27 Make Love Not War- The Bonobo

35:47 What a Way to Go

36:33 To Die For- The Black Widow and Mantis Myths

38:17 Lobster Lovin' and Popular Myths

41:50 Arabian Camel's are So Gross

43:05 Sword Fight and Nomming Man Bits

45:00 Life... uh... Finds a Way

45:43 Angler Fish Weirdness

46:30 The Romantic Mating of Seahorses

48:50 The Mating Cycle of Nightmares

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Forgotten First Major Public Nuclear Disaster

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0000

When one thinks of nuclear nations, the United Kingdom usually doesn’t spring to mind. But Old Blighty has a long and impressive record of nuclear accomplishments dating back to the very origins of the field. British scientists like William Penney, Rudolf Peierls, and John Cockcroft were instrumental in kickstarting the Manhattan Project, while on October 3, 1952 Britain became the third nation after the United States and Soviet Union to build and test its own atomic bomb. Throughout the Cold War, squadrons of Royal Air Force V-Bombers armed stood ready to counter any Soviet attack, while today the Royal Navy’s four Vanguard-class submarines, armed with up to 16 Trident II ballistic missiles each, prowl the world’s oceans on vital deterrence patrols. And on October 10, 1957, decades before better-known disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, the UK became the site of one of the Nuclear Age’s first major accidents. On that day, a reactor at Cumbria accidentally caught fire, threatening to contaminate hundreds of square kilometres of English countryside with deadly radioactive fallout. This is the story of the Windscale Fire, the UK’s forgotten nuclear disaster.

Sponsor note: Our listeners get 10% off their first month at ⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Does Darth Vader Poop?

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0000

“You always remember the bad guy.” These were the words of the late David Prowse, the man who physically portrayed Darth Vader in the original trilogy and it’s kind of ridiculous just how right he was. Almost 50 years later Darth Vader is just as iconic and instantly recognisable as he was when he first power-walked into frame to his own theme song. Since then a mind-boggling amount of content has been created featuring the Dark Lord of the Sith explaining near enough everything about him. On that note, let's talk about how Anakin Skywalker takes a dump and all manner of other fascinating things about his suit the films fail to mention, shall we? Author: Karl Smallwood Host: Daven Hiskey Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

Sponsor note: Our listeners get 10% off their first month at ⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the Most Disastrous Naval Experiements of All Time

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 22:00:00 -0000

team-powered, gunned-up, and utterly cursed—cruiser submarines were meant to revolutionize naval warfare. Instead, they sank their own crews more often than the enemy. Here’s the story of history’s worst sub design.

Sponsor note: Our listeners get 10% off their first month at ⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠.

Go to hellofresh.com/brainfood10fm to get 10 free meals plus a free item for life.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Did the Crusades Actually Work?

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0000

When thinking about the middle ages, chances are that among the many images popping into your mind there stands a noble knight. Now, there are a variety of myths about what it was like to be a knight during medieval times, not just spread by Hollywood, but even by the contemporary legends during medieval times themselves- in both featuring widespread depictions of the chivalric knight rushing to the aid of damsels in distress and generally spending their time being bastions of all that is good and the very definition of "noble". We’ll get into a lot of these myths throughout this video, but within this mythology we have the white clad Christian knight, his shield or surcoat adorned with a cross. And on the other side an equally imposing Muslim horseman, peppering said knight with dozens of arrows. But behind the epic facade of titanic clashes in the Holy Land, lurk the mundane realities of Mediaeval era warfare. For example: that brave warrior signed by the Cross, was statistically less likely to fall in combat, than to die pants down, squatting behind a bush and emptying his bloody bowels. But who would have been responsible to feed and water that knight? Who would have paid for his weapons, horses, supplies? Who organised transport for Crusaders troops, and how? Who led them into combat? And going further up the chain: how did Crusades actually start in the first place? In short, how did the crusades actually work from a practical standpoint from start to finish? If these questions keep you up at night, as they do us, well, you’re in luck. For today we will be diving into all this, as well as a whole lot of knightly myth debunking along the way, including whether any supposedly chivalrous knight in history actually ever rescued a damsel in distress. So strapon your spaulders and gardbraces, and don your noble helm, and let’s dive into it all, shall we? Author: Arnaldo Teodorani Host: Simon Whistler Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

Sponsor note: Our listeners get 10% off their first month at ⁠⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠⁠.

Go to ⁠hellofresh.com/brainfood10fm⁠ to get 10 free meals plus a free item for life.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Secretary: Great Expectations

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0000

“[T]here would not be I believe, a happier being in the United States… [c]ould I have just enough business to support my expences, so as to relieve me from the mortification of being at my time of life, a burden to my Parents…” -John Quincy Adams (December 14, 1790) These were the words of the 23 year old John Quincy Adams, tirelessly working in a profession he seemingly didn’t particularly enjoy, but making very little headway in it and dependent upon money from his parents to live. Four years after this, he was now a 27 year old who had not made a ton of outward progress despite an extreme amount of effort in between. As we teased in our last video: The Secretary: Training for Greatness, this period of one of the greatest men in U.S. history’s life was filled with bouts of depression, anxiety, countless sleepless nights, and a whole lot of hopelessness. Trained from birth to become that great man, and with it drilled into him he must become so, after he graduated college, he found achieving this seemingly an impossible task no matter how hard he worked. His aunt Elizabeth Shaw, who John Quincy would live with for a little while during one of his deepest bouts of depression shortly after graduating college, would write of this period of her nephew’s life, “Perhaps, no one, knew better than myself, the strong emotions which tore, & agitated your Mind— I could have sat by your side & counted out Tear, for Tear…” And this was more or less the state of his life from about 20 to 27. Needless to say, his first true steps into one of the greatest men of his era were slightly stumbling. But rather than break under the pressure, John Quincy merely bent for a time, unlike others in his family. On that, as John Quincy Adams' son, Charles Francis Adams, who himself led a rather distinguished life, among many other things including serving as the U.S. Minister to the UK during the American Civil War and being a key figure in keeping Europe mostly out of that war, would sum up, “The history of my family is not a pleasant one to remember. It is one of great triumphs in the world but of deep groans within, one of extraordinary brilliancy and deep corroding mortification—The misery of children falling as much below the ordinary ....

Sponsor note: Our listeners get 10% off their first month at ⁠⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠⁠.

Go to ⁠hellofresh.com/brainfood10fm⁠ to get 10 free meals plus a free item for life.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When is the Optimal School Start Time?

Sat, 20 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0000

Much like is the case with some adult humans, in the morning our miniature Sapiens often have a preference for expressing themselves in low-pitched, unintelligible grunts, mumbled from within the cavernous darkness of their bedrooms as you try to wake them up. The words might be jumbled, but the meaning is rather clear: ‘It’s too early. I want to sleep. Leave me alone.’ And yet, the adults in charge within the pack have to drag them out of their torpor, stuff their food holes with some semblance of organic nutrition, ensure their body odour is not too pungent so that they aren’t the class smelly kid, and then cart them off to school. From there, their days are filled to the brim with mentally and physically demanding activities, whose timing and frequency are at odds with the kids’ own biology. No surprise then, if they may appear chronically tired, grumpy and irrational. And yet, there is one simple, scientifically proven change that parents, teachers, and society at large could enact to greatly improve their well-being, lower mental health issues, increase their overall physical health metrics, and even help keep more of them alive to reach adulthood- move the time of the start of school slightly later in the morning. Why does this work? What does science specifically say? What are the exact benefits? And what is the optimal school start time according to science? Well, let’s dive into it all shall we? Author: Arnaldo Teodorani Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila 0:00 Intro 3:38 School Start Times 5:00 But Why? 6:41 An Epidemic 8:30 A Bad Solution 10:20 The Best Solution 11:36 The Data 16:14 A Huge Ancillary Benefit 19:16 Graduation Rates 20:01 Yet More Data Beating Us Over the Head 21:38 Physical Health 21:57 Complications? 23:08 Automobile Accidents 24:39 Mental Health 25:54 Seriously, Stop It 26:20 Optimal Start Time 27:56 Practical Problems?

Sponsor note: Our listeners get 10% off their first month at ⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hitler's Many Women and Their Often Unfortunate Ends

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0000

Unsurprisingly to anyone who’s historied, Hitler was a man who promoted a hateful ideology, had millions murdered, crippled a generation, and plunged an entire continent into ruin. What’s maybe slightly less known is that before he did all this, he was a lazy layabout, ultimately squandering his inheritance culminating in him becoming homeless for a few years. To say Hitler avoided anything even remotely resembling work, except for the work he put into not doing any work, or responsibility leading up to his rise would be a gross understatement. On top of that, his first dalliances into love were about as creepy as you can come by, including at one point devising a plan to murder the object of his love because she wasn’t into him. If he couldn’t have her, he simply planned to Romeo and Juliet himself and her. It should also be noted he never actually bothered to talk to her even once in his life before planning this all out, only stalking her from afar for years… When you combine all that with his silly moustache, you’d think Hitler wouldn’t exactly be the kind of guy who could pull in the ladies… And, actually, that was very true for most of his life. But after his rise to power… Well, Hitler didn’t change, but many women’s attraction to him seemingly did right quick. Despite his extreme mood swings, narcissistic tendencies, odd behavior, propensity to run the women down mentally, control them in every possible way, and the mein furry he kept under his nose, the Fuhrer of the III Reich could, and did, seem to have a rather long string of female conquests. Many of which mysteriously decided to stop living, or otherwise suffered from extreme depression, after their time with the so-called German Messiah. But who were these women, did he actually have any of them killed as some say? And in all of it, were there ever any little baby Fuhrer’s? Well, slip on your lederhosen, and let’s dive into it all shall we? Author: Arnaldo Teodorani, Teri Zambigli, and Daven Hiskey Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila Host: Simon Whistler

Sponsor note: Our listeners get 10% off their first month at ⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Secretary- Training for Greatness

Tue, 16 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0000

“What are the Qualifications of a Secretary of State? He ought to be a Man of universal Reading in Laws, Governments, History. Our whole terrestrial Universe ought to be summarily comprehended in his Mind.” -John Adams July 5, 1811 The speed at which the United States’ rose from birth to prominence on the world stage has rarely been matched in history. From first casting off a king and parliament that no longer served them to unequivocally telling the rest of the world that the new nation would no longer allow any state from the Old World to continue directly interfering with budding nations on the American side of the pond took only 47 years. In all this, some of the most significant advancements in modern international politics, and the United States’ role in it, came in part thanks to one man and the eight years he spent as the U.S. Secretary of State. Trained from birth to serve his nation, you’d be hard pressed to find any individual in U.S. History more well prepared for the role he was eventually chosen for. And the results, well, they showed. This future President of the United States and, as noted by one time governor of Virginia Henry Wise, “the acutest, the astutest, the archest enemy of Southern slavery that ever existed”, is still today generally considered the greatest Secretary of State in United States history. For instance, in one pole conducted by Dr. David L Porter of William Penn College asking 50 of the leading diplomatic historians in the United States who they felt the best Secretary of States were, a whopping 80% of them chose as number one our man of the hour- John Quincy Adams, with a distant second place going to William H. Seward, Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. So, without further ado, here now is the remarkable story of John Quincy Adam’s rise to one of the most powerful offices’ in the nation, and how he irrevocably changed world history in countless ways, leveraging all the training his life, and parents, had provided him to do it. Author: Daven Hiskey Host: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

Sponsor note: Our listeners get 10% off their first month at ⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That Time the USA Tried to Make Hippo Farming a Thing

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0000

If you were to travel down the Rio Magdalena just north of the Columbian capital of Bogotá, you might just come across some rather out-of-place wildlife: a herd of African Hippopotamuses. The herd, which now numbers nearly 100, is descended from four individuals imported in the 1980s by notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar, and kept in a private zoo on his estate in Puerto Triunfo. When Escobar was killed in 1993, the hippos escaped into the surrounding rivers and multiplied…and multiplied, and multiplied. The enormous invasive species then proceeded to wreak havoc on the local ecosystem, destroying local plant life, disrupting the habitat of native animals like crocodiles and manatees, and killing fish with copious amounts of noxious faeces. If left unchecked, biologists fear the population could reach 1,000 by 2035, causing untold environmental damage. But as bizarre as this environmental crisis might seem, the exact same scenario might very well have played out in the United States more than 100 years ago, thanks to one of the strangest bills in U.S. congressional history. This is the wild and unlikely story of how the U.S. government tried to introduce hippo ranching to America. Host: Simon Whistler Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

Sponsor note: Our listeners get 10% off their first month at ⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fascinating Saga of History’s Largest Diamond

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0000

“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.” So wrote Samuel Johnson, the famed 18th Century polymath and founder of the modern English dictionary. And indeed, London offers many delights for the discerning traveller, from the iconic Houses of Parliament and St. Paul’s Cathedral to the theatres of the West End, the fashionable shops of Soho, and the countless world-class museums covering every subject imaginable. But no sojourn to the UK capital is complete without a visit to the Tower of London, the 11th century fortress and palace that has served many functions over the centuries, most infamously as a prison for some of British history’s greatest villains. It is also famously the home of the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom. Among the centrepieces of this storied collection are the Imperial State Crown and the Sovereign’s Sceptre With Cross, worn by British sovereigns during coronations and state openings of parliament. But in addition to their historic symbolic importance and sublime craftsmanship, these pieces have another claim to fame: they are both set with stones cut from the largest gem-quality diamond ever discovered: the Cullinan, unearthed in South Africa in 1905. The story of how this massive stone came to reside among the Crown Jewels is a fascinating one, a tale of luck, subterfuge, and Colonial politics at the turn of the 20th Century. Author: Gilles Messier Host: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

Sponsor note: Our listeners get 10% off their first month at ⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

ENOUGH! The First Astronaut Strike In Space... Allegedly

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0000

People being unhappy with their job is not a rare occurrence. It is almost a given that, assuming you don’t work for me, there are many people in your office who want an exit as soon as possible, maybe even you. At some point, maybe you’ve even snapped and rebelled against your company overlords in some fashion. But as cool as you might have felt passive aggressively sending that urgent email three days late on purpose, you will never be as cool as those men who thumbed their noses at the $4 million (about $25.2 million today) being spent per day on their mission and said “not my problem” while in lower orbit…. Allegedly…

Sponsor note: Our listeners get 10% off their first month at ⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Incredible Real Life Cold War Bond Villain Ice Lair

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0000

Ah, the ice lair! From Superman’s Fortress of Solitude to Ozymandias’s Antarctic headquarters in Watchmen to the Rebel Alliance’s Echo Base on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back, nothing quite exudes sophistication, rugged determination, or - pun intended - sheer cool than a hideout carved out of cold, hard snow and ice. But while certainly stylish and awesome, such sub-zero digs are surely the exclusive preserve of comic book heroes and villains, being too impractical to build in real life, right? Well, actually no! In the late 1950s, the United States Army actually attempted to build a supervillain ice lair of its own, carving an elaborate nuclear-powered base directly into the Greenland ice cap. While sold to the public as a peaceful research outpost, the facility actually had a far more sinister, secret purpose, which had it been completed would have further ratcheted up already high Cold War tensions. This is the forgotten and fascinating story of Project Iceworm. Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Simon Whistler Producer: Samuel Avila

Sponsor note: Our listeners get 10% off their first month at ⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

32 Seconds from Detonation- That Time the U.S. Almost Accidentally Nuked North Carolina... 3 Times

Sat, 06 Sep 2025 07:00:00 -0000

The Cold War, lasting from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, was one of the most dangerous periods in human history. For nearly five decades, the communist East and capitalist West eyed each other suspiciously across the Iron Curtain, precariously balanced on the brink of nuclear Armageddon. Numerous intercontinental ballistic missiles sat ready in their silos, nuke equipped submarines prowled the oceans, while nuclear-armed strategic bombers patrolled the skies, all ready at a moment’s notice to unleash their apocalyptic payloads. With so much nuclear ordnance flying about, accidents could - and did - happen. Many of these near-misses have already been covered in previous videos such as That Time the Moon Nearly Started World War 3 (and Other Silly Cold War Shenanigans), Fire, Ice, and Plutonium, That Time the U.S. Air Force Lost a Nuke in the Mediterranean, and When Dropping a Wrench Almost Caused Armageddon; as well as Did a Scientific Experiment Really Nearly Start WWII in 1995? But none of these close calls were as horrifyingly close as a 1961 accident that nearly turned the entire U.S. state of North Carolina into a radioactive wasteland and the massive loss of life that would have come with that - and was only prevented from doing so by a single, shockingly crude electrical component. This is the disturbing story of the 1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash. Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Daven Hiskey Producer: Daven Hiskey

Sponsor note: Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nikola Tesla's Rather Peculiar Childhood and Oddities (Daven & Gilles)

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 03:38:00 -0000

In today's episode, Gilles Messier and Daven Hiskey do a deep dive into Nikola Tesla's childhood and many of his rather peculiar oddities. In the mid-19th century, the Austrian Empire, which stretched for over a thousand miles (1600 km) from Italy to Ukraine, was a place of contradictions. The ruling patriarch, Minister of the Interior Baron Alexander von Bach, was on the one hand something of a despot, abolishing public trials, reducing the freedom of the press and imprisoning political opponents. Conversely, his rule also saw the relaxing of economic laws, the demise of internal custom duties and peasants freed from their feudal obligations. It was during this time, in the small village of Smiljan, situated within the Empire’s military frontier (now modern-day Croatia) that Nikola Tesla was born on July 9th or 10th (with the confusion owing to the time at around midnight), 1856, the fourth of five children. Tesla’s father, Milutin, was a priest, and the family soon moved to nearby Gospić, where his parish was located. From the beginning, Tesla was seemingly a rather brilliant child, though Tesla claims his father discouraged scientific academic pursuit, hoping Tesla would become a priest himself someday and doggedly stuck to this point. Even, according to Tesla, restricting his study, with Tesla partially attributing this to the death of his apparently brilliant older brother Dane, back when Tesla was 5 years old.... Author: Daven Hiskey Hosts: Gilles Messier and Daven Hiskey Producer: Caden Nielsen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Incredible Tale of Inventing Walmart

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 07:00:00 -0000

With their endless aisles, their bountiful racks chock full of discounted merchandise, Walmart stores have firmly wedged themselves into the hearts and minds of most Americans, especially within those neural circuits in charge of household budgeting. At this point, Walmart may as well be considered one of the great, all-American institutions, an essential fiber within the fabric of Star-Spangled capitalism. Or, on the other side, some might say Walmart is everything wrong with the business world today, ruthlessly dominating anyone who even hints at competing with them, and otherwise strong arming everyone from government officials to manufacturers to get their way. But whether you love to hate it, or hate to love it … you certainly can’t ignore Walmart. But how did the world’s largest retailer, with gross annual sales double that of the next up in amazon, start and grow to the behemoth we have today, let alone so insanely rapidly?

Well, put on some Lynyrd Skynyrd, grab your guns, flannel, and a Budweiser, and let’s dive into the fascinating story of how one man changed how the world shops.

Authors: Arnaldo Teodorani and Daven Hiskey

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Host: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Caden Nielsen

0:00 Intro

2:51 An Incredible Humble Beginning and Sickening Overachiever

6:07 Continuing to Sickeningly Overachieve in College

8:43 After College Scatterbrained Hard Worker

10:24 WWII and a Dream Girl

12:33 A Beginning and Some Key Choices

18:40 A Huge Mistake, Overcoming, and Expansion

22:18 A New Breed of Store to Change the Game

25:40 Going it Alone and Risking It All

28:06 Go Big or Go Home

30:52 The Methods to the Madness

44:12 The Passing of a Titan

45:56 Good or Bad- The Walmart Controversy

Sponsor note: Give online therapy a try at ⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠ and get on your way to being your best and happier self.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why Did Japan Join the Nazis? (Given, You Know, the Nazis Explicitly Hated Non-Aryans)

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 07:00:00 -0000

Discover the complex relationship between Nazi Germany and Japan during World War II. Learn about the Tripartite Pact, their conflicting ideologies, and the consequences of their loose alliance.

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Sponsor note: Give online therapy a try at ⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠ and get on your way to being your best and happier self.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why Wasn't There an Italian "Nuremberg / Tokyo War Crimes" Trial After WWII?

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 07:00:00 -0000

Discover the untold story of Italian war crimes during WWII and why there was never an "Italian Nuremberg" to hold fascist officials accountable for their brutal actions.

Author: Arnaldo Teodorani

Host: Simon Whistler

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Sponsor note: Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow and get on your way to being your best and happier self.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Did the SR-71 Blackbird Get Made and How was It So Fast?

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 07:00:00 -0000

Explore the legendary Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the world's fastest military aircraft. Discover its groundbreaking design, thrilling history, and the incredible feats that made it an aviation icon.

Author: Gilles Messier

Host: Simon Whistler

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Sponsor note: Give online therapy a try at ⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠ and get on your way to being your best and happier self.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WTF is Up with Embalming and Displaying Communists?

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 07:00:00 -0000

In the shadow of Moscow’s Kremlin Walls stands one of the most famous structures in all of Russia: a squat, austere-looking stepped pyramid, built of polished red porphyry. For decades, the balcony or tribune on the pyramid’s roof served as a stage of honour for Soviet and later Russian leaders to observe military parades on Red Square below. But what makes this imposing structure truly special is the macabre relic preserved within: the embalmed corpse of Vladimir Lenin. For over a century the great revolutionary and Soviet leader has remained on near-continuous public display, lying in a glass sarcophagus for all to see and tended by an elite team of specialists who keep him looking just as fresh - more or less - as the day he died. And he is not alone; around the world, other famous communist leaders have been similarly pickled for posterity, including Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh, China’s Mao Zedong, and North Korea’s Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. But why wasn’t Lenin’s body simply entombed in the Kremlin necropolis like other Soviet heroes? How has his corpse been kept so lifelike for over a hundred years? And how did the admittedly bizarre idea of placing these leaders on pickled display spread to other nations?

Well, comrade, line up in front of the firing squad, make sure ample formaldehyde is at hand, and let’s dive into the peculiar and fascinating history, and science, of Communist mummies.

Sponsor:

Betterhelp.com/brainfoodshow - for 10% off your first month of therapy

Author: Gilles Messier

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Host: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Caden Nielsen

0:00 Intro

3:38 The Death (or Murder) of Lenin

7:05 The First Communist Mummy

15:29 Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live!

22:30 Stalin’s Mummy

26:11 Dimitrov’s Mummy

32:39 Gottwald's Mummy

34:57 Choibalsan’s Mummy

37:42 Uncle Ho’s Mummy

41:50 Mao’s Mummy

44:49 Neto and Burnham's Mummies

46:57 Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il’s Still Ruling Mummies

48:01 Evita's Mummy and What in the Actual F-

49:34 Marco's Mummy

50:41 Chavez’s Mummy

51:06 Full Circle to Lenin

53:51 Putin

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's the Deal With Presidential Libraries?

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 07:00:00 -0000

In today's episode of The BrainFood Show, Daven Hiskey dives into the surprisingly cool Presidential Library system, how it came to be and what they are actually for.

This episode is brought to you in part by the City of Quincy. To discover more about Quincy, check out the link - https://discoverquincy.com

Occasionally accused of being “Modern day Pyramids” or “Monuments to someone’s ego”, presidential libraries have long been divisive institutions, especially when first established. However, while some have such perceptions of these libraries, it turns out there is vastly more to them than many people realize, and the more distant we become to the eras these leaders lived in, the more and more valuable the Presidential libraries become to our understanding of history and our own evolution as a society, and as humans because of what they contain in an absolute treasure trove of materials- where it’s not an exaggeration to say that a newly minted college graduate historian could enter a given Presidential Library one day, spend the next five decades of their career inside, and only scratch the surface of what that single library holds that no other institution in the world has. So what exactly are presidential libraries really? What do they contain? And how did this whole Presidential Library thing start in the first place?

Author: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Twisting, Turning Road That Gave Us the Microwave Oven

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 07:00:00 -0000

In this episode of The BrainFood Show, Simon Whistler dives into the surprising origins of the microwave oven, from Maxwell's electromagnetic waves to WWII radar tech. Dive into the science and history behind this kitchen staple’s unlikely invention!

Author: Gilles Messier

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Guide to Building the Pyramids- How Did They Do It?

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 07:00:00 -0000

In today's episode of The BrainFood Show, Daven Hiskey dives into how the pyramids were actually built.

A quick tour on popular online video sharing platforms may convince you that ancient Egyptian builders were either Completely useless, and had to rely on Alien help, or They were incredibly advanced, and used power tools and lasers. Because … Atlantis, Tom Cruise, and Ice Road Truckers… These theories are a fairly recent trend, borne out of a modern mindset of people who don’t know what they are talking about and because they cannot comprehend how stuff could get built without the aid of sophisticated technology that they tend to also not really understand, and seemingly suffering from a false sense of superiority over our past human selves. Which, to be fair, that one is an almost universal idea despite it being objectively untrue. Our millenia past ancestors were just as smart as we are and in some ways far more capable at getting things done with a whole lot less. But going back to making the pyramids, if we look at the writings from people who lived closer in time to when the Pyramids were built, we find no such sense of mystery. To them, building huge monuments was impressive, sure, but did not spark wild speculation. Take Greek historian Herodotus, for example, writing in the 5th Century BC. According to his Egyptian guides, the Great Pyramid at Giza was built by 100,000 men, employed for three months a year, over a period of twenty years. His colleague Diodorus Siculus, active in the 1st Century BC, recounted that: ‘The construction was undertaken with the help of ramps of earth, since at that time cranes had not yet been invented.’ As we shall see later, further studies by contemporaries Egyptologists have partially corrected the accounts of these titans of ancient historiography. Nonetheless, they seem to have gotten the basics right. Building a pyramid was a huge, daunting endeavour, sure, but one that could be achieved by employing resources which the Pharaohs had access to. Not too dissimilar to modern day marvels like humanity going from horse drawn carriages to walking on the moon in only a little over a half century. An immutable fact of humaning- when humans throw practically unlimited funds and large amounts of labor and expertise at a problem, we are extremely good at doing the formerly impossible. And countless examples throughout history prove this fact. Throw enough money and labor at a problem, we humans will figure that crap out right quick. Which kind of makes it a shame we don’t do just that at more problems we humans have today from tuberculosis to cancer to a sequel to one of the greatest sci-fi films of all time, Galaxy Quest. Let’s make it happen no matter the monetary cost. The most important thing humans could ever create- Galaxy Quest 2- The Search for Grabthar’s Hammer. But in a similar vein, the Pharaoh’s formula for building the pyramids was: loads of time, plenty of cash, building techniques which were state-of-the-art at the time, and tens of thousands of skilled labourers. Yes, skilled labourers, not slaves. Time, money and skilled labour were the founding blocks for other ancient construction projects, which Diodorus and Herodotus might have experienced directly, such as great temples, amphitheatres, roads, aqueducts and public baths. Many of which, by the way, were architectural and engineering projects arguably significantly more sophisticated than the Pyramids, and yet no one calls down Aliens from the sky as being behind those projects. Or… at least, not yet. Never underestimate what the History Channel is capable of. Author: Arnaldo Teodorani Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Daven Hiskey Producer: Caden Nielsen

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Did the Wright Brothers Win the Race Into the Air?

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 07:00:00 -0000

In this episode of The BrainFood Show, Simon Whistler dives into the fascinating journey of the Wright Brothers, from failed flight attempts to their groundbreaking success in 1903, reshaping aviation history with persistence, innovation, and a methodical approach.

Author: Gilles Messier

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From 0 to 1000 to 0- What Happened to Howard Johnson's?

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 07:00:00 -0000

In today's episode of The BrainFood Show, Daven Hiskey dives into the incredible rise and fall of Howard Johnson's.

This episode is brought to you by the City of Quincy. To discover more about Quincy, check out the link - https://discoverquincy.com In the modern world, if you step out your door and travel to neighboring cities or even countries, you’ll generally be greeted by a slew of familiar food related franchises for your respective region, with some of the most popular in the world today including McDonald’s, Subway, Starbucks, KFC, Dunkin, and the like. In all of these, with some small variation, you’ll be able to get the staple food and beverage items from those restaurants you can get anywhere else in the world at the same branded establishment. But it was not always this way. In fact, this has been a relatively recent phenomenon in the era of humans humaning. And before all these better known restaurant chains today, there was one that kicked it all off that, for fascinating reasons, managed to go from 1 restaurant to the second largest supplier of meals outside of the home in America behind only the U.S. military, then even more rapidly disappeared from existence. In fact, despite their dominance through most of the 20th century, because of how rapid their fall was, you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone born after around the 1990’s who even remembers them at all, outside of perhaps recognizing the name from a small branch of Wyndham hotels. We are, of course, talking about Howard Johnson’s restaurants which introduced the world to the concept of restaurant franchising, spawning a now staple of the industry world wide. Here now, is the fascinating story of how Howard Johnson’s went from 0 to over 1000 locations and back to 0 in under a century. Host: Daven Hiskey Author: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Did Christianity Go From a Tiny Jewish Cult to Rule the Western World So Quickly?

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 07:00:00 -0000

In this episode of The BrainFood Show, Simon Whistler dives into the fascinating reasons Christianity was able to so rapidly go from a tiny Jewish Cult to rule the Western World despite a whole lot of persecution in the interim of that insanely fast rise.

Various religions have been popping up randomly seemingly as long as humans have been humaning- interestingly, not just with humans but our Neanderthal cousins, with signs of some form of religious practices with those Neanderthals going back at least 150,000 years. But one religion founded about 2,000 years ago triggered a marked shift in the way many in the world view religion and interact with a deity. Starting out as a sect of Judaism, fast-forward just a handful of generations of humans later and Christianity had evolved into its own distinct religion well on its way to dominating the Western world and beyond. And hasn’t really stopped since, statistically the world’s #1 religion with over 2.3 billion adherents in its various branches. So what made Christianity take off to then unprecedented levels, going from 1 person to millions in such a short span, and then billions beyond, where countless thousands of other religions in history don’t or sometimes only briefly rise and then fizzle out? Well, I’m glad you asked, because this is one of the more fascinating topics on so many levels we’ve ever covered here. So, quiet down your children, have a seat in a pew up front, and let’s dive into it all, shall we?

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Marxist Mummies- The Weird Practice of Mummiffying Communists

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 07:00:00 -0000

In today's episode of The BrainFood Show, Daven Hiskey dives into the bizarre tradition of pickling and displaying communists.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's the Difference Between Hardwood and Softwood? (I swear this is more interesting than it sounds :-))

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 07:00:00 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, Simon Whistler and Daven Hiskey are looking at the difference between a number of things, kicking it off with the difference between hardwood and softwood.... which you'd think you already know, but we're guessing for most, you don't actually know the difference. :-) Up next we dive into a bunch of "difference betweens" such as the difference between fruits and vegetables, green and black tea, various types of olive oils, brown and white eggs, etc. as well as a slew of interesting tips on optimizing ripeness schedules on bananas, including a way to keep your bananas at the perfectly ripe stage for approximately a week, instead of the two seconds or so that happens naturally.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

WTF is Vegemite?

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 07:00:00 -0000

In this episode of The BrainFood Show, Simon Whistler dives into what the Aussie staple of Vegemite actually is, and how it came to be, and become a national treasure in the nation.

Author: Gilles Messier

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hancock's Revolution- Birthing the United States

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 07:00:00 -0000

In today's episode of the BrainFood Show, Daven Hiskey does a deep dive into the oft' forgotten founding father, without whom there may have been no revolution and whose life was who Paul Revere was trying to save on his famous ride.

“The troops of George the third have crossed the Atlantic, not to engage an enemy, but to assist a band of traitors in trampling on the rights and liberties of his most loyal subjects… Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government, to a government founded upon the principles of reason and justice; but I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.” These are the words of John Hancock spoken during the 1774 Boston Massacre commemoration at Faneuil Hall. While most today only know John Hancock for his name coming to be an expression when referring to one’s signature, it turns out there was good reason his signature was the most prominent on the Declaration of Independence. Having risen from relatively humble origins to one of the wealthiest men in all of America, with a large part of his fortune depending on trade with Britain, when it was time to take sides, unlike so many of his elite contemporaries in his same boat, he curiously chose to sink his business and side with the rebels. Soon after, he was involved in a massive number of the early efforts against the British, from the Liberty Affair, to the Boston Tea Party, to being the principle reason for Paul Revere’s famous ride. Soon after this he was made President of the Continental Congress with his business and management acumen in that role being a huge reason the rebellion was able to function in the early going. In that role he was also the chief signer of the Declaration of Independence, later nine time governor of Massachusetts, and overall one of the most well known, and popular men in all of America during his lifetime, with at one point his popularity with the masses combined with his extreme wealth seeing the British mockingly nickname him “King Hancock.” Later, this moniker was taken up by the colonists as a term of endearment for the man, and even allegedly a rally cry during the famous battle of Lexington and Concord that kicked off the war. And yet, a funny thing happened after he died. Despite John Hancock being arguably one of the most critical of the revolutionaries in the first half of the affair, and his popularity with the masses of America being almost unparalleled in his lifetime as noted, for a variety of reasons, popular history would very quickly mostly forget the man other than his famous signature. In fact, the first full biography on John Hancock wasn’t even written until the 20th century, and it’s only been in recent decades historians have started to completely re-evaluate his story given the significance of so much that he was involved in, and the rather silly reasons, from a modern perspective, that contributed to him being so quickly dismissed after his death. As one of the greatest Founding Fathers of them all in John Adams would write a few decades after Hancock passed away, “James Otis, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock were the three most essential characters [in the revolution]; and Great Britain knew it, though America does not. Great and important and excellent characters, aroused and excited by these, arose in Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York, South Carolina, and in all the other States, but these three were the first movers, the most constant, steady, persevering springs, agents, and most disinterested sufferers and firmest pillars of the whole Revolution.” With such high praise from a man who himself was arguably in the top 3 of shapers of the budding United States, I think it’s time to get to know the individual he heaped such similar praise on. So without further ado, here now is the largely forgotten story of John Hancock. Author: Daven Hiskey Host: Daven Hiskey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Do We Actually Know We Landed on the Moon?

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 10:00:00 -0000

On July 20, 1969, the world looked on in awe as 39-year-old astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped off a ladder of the Lunar Module Eagle and onto the surface of the moon, becoming the first human to set foot on a natural celestial object. This moment, watched on television by over 650 million people worldwide, has gone down in history as one of mankind’s greatest triumphs, redefining what humanity is capable of achieving. Over the next three years a total of six Apollo missions and twelve astronauts would visit the moon, leaving behind scientific instruments and returning mineral samples that helped expand our understanding of the moon, the earth, and the solar system.

…or so most of us have been led to believe. Despite the Apollo program being one of the largest, most expensive, and most public undertakings in human history, for nearly 60 years a once small but ever growing dedicated group of conspiracy theorists have maintained that the whole endeavour was in fact an elaborate hoax, a piece of Hollywood flimflammery aimed at pumping up America’s self-image and winning a propaganda victory against the Soviet Union. According to this theory, no humans have ever set foot on the moon, and the famous images beamed into millions of households were instead filmed on a soundstage on earth. While anyone with a passing knowledge of history and conspiracies should be able to recognize these claims as total nonsense, they have gained a surprising amount of traction, with a 2005 poll revealing that nearly 25% of Americans aged 18-25 doubt that humans had ever walked on the moon, Yes, 1 in 4, despite living in an era when humans have access to more information than ever showing we did, in fact, land on the moon...

But how did this conspiracy theory come about in the first place, and what hard, observable evidence is there that the Apollo moon landings actually took place?

Author: Gilles Messier

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Heinz 57, The Lord of the Pumps, and a Tasty, Tasty Dunkin' Empire

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 19:54:00 -0000

In today's BrainFood Show episode, we are discussing three rather inspirational business tails, starting with the extremely humble origins of the now many billion dollar behemoth in Heinz, then on to Karl's favorite all time script in the story of soft soap and the brilliant business man that gave it to us, and finally how an 8th grade dropout created one of the tastiest empires on Earth. Hosts: Karl Smallwood and Daven Hiskey Authors: Karl Smallwood and Daven Hiskey Producer: Caden Nielsen

0:00 Intro

3:18 The Rise of Heinz

15:36 The Spiteful Reason McDonald's No Longer Uses Heinz

18:40 The Incredible Story of the Pump Baron

1:01:54 From 8th Grade Dropout to a Tasty, Tasty Billion Dollar Empire

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The True Story of the Amistad

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 10:00:00 -0000

On June 28, 1839, a ship departed Havana, Cuba en route to Puerto Principe. Along with a crew of 7, including two slaves serving as a cabin boy and ship’s cook, the vessel was also packed with cargo worth approximately $60,000, or about $1.7 million today. This included items ranging from wine, saddles, iron castings, mill rollers, fabrics, soap, leather goods, over 600 pounds of rice and many other foodstuffs, and, most important to our story today, some 53 slaves. Among those 53 were 49 adults recently bought by a 24 year old man named Jose Ruiz, with fellow Cuban plantation owner 58 year old Pedro Montes purchasing four children, three girls and one boy as well. All of these slaves, comprising about 1/3 of the total value of cargo on the ship, were slated to go work on plantations in Puerto Principe. However, unfortunately for Ruiz and Montes, thanks to a taunting remark by the ship’s cook, their newly purchased slaves had other ideas. What followed was a two year bid for freedom by the surviving captives of the Amistad. This all culminated in none other than former U.S. President John Quincy Adams’ impassioned defense of the captives’ before the Supreme Court, while then current U.S. President Martin Van Buren’s side pushed hard for their deportation back to Cuba. Here now is the real story of the Amistad and the harrowing bid for freedom of the men and women held captive aboard it.

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Daven Hiskey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Vladimir Putin Came to Power (And How He Has Held on to it for So Long)

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 10:00:00 -0000

When Boris Yeltsin resigned as president of the Russian Federation, it was expected, but sudden. He resigned so his Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin could become president on January 1, 2000 – the start of the new millennium. Since then, Putin has been the most powerful man in Russia and one of the most powerful men in the world. Today that power has been felt worldwide as the war in the Ukraine rages, contributing to gas price hikes, food insecurity in many countries, and not exactly helping the soaring inflation felt around the world. It may surprise many to learn that this man who was only the Russian Federation’s second president is not a career politician and had his position more or less thrust upon him precisely because of this. So how did Vladimir Putin come into power in the first place, and how has he managed to maintain his position as the leader of Russia for so long?

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Does Any Government Have a Plan if Aliens Invade the Earth?

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 10:00:00 -0000

Thanks to Hollywood, as well as words written on the mangled inked corpses of the leafy fellow occupants of our little planet we’ve successfully subjugated, there are a number of common ideas about how an alien invasion of Earth would go. From clandestine infiltration where our celestial enemies walk among us undetected, to these brothers from another primordial goop mother coming with energy weapons a-blazing. But in real life, what would likely happen if aliens did invade? Are aliens currently visiting us? And does any government in the world have a plan to deal with this situation?

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An Ultra Deep Dive Into How to Get the Best Possible Sleep According to Science and Why It's Literally Killing You When You Don't

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 10:00:00 -0000

We don’t mean to alarm you, but it turns out, despite how much we all fight it like a toddler who’s just been told it’s bedtime, sleeping is a basic, and critical human need. All animals known to man sleep. Humans, however, are seemingly the only ones who voluntarily forgo it, outside of cases like if an animal is starving or the like… And to our extreme detriment. We’ll dive into all the ways and why shortly, but we’re guessing even the most astute of you who consider sleep important don’t realize just how much it is. It’s not just about feeling rested or not, it’s about an amazing amount of things that are going on in your body that require proper sleep to remain where they should be for both your short and long term physical and mental health. Skip consistent, sufficient sleep, and you may be able to cope with coffee on the alertness side, but that’s just how you feel. Your body? Let’s just say what’s going on inside chemically is screaming at you to put the coffee down and change, both for your present mental state and health, and because you absolutely are increasing your risk factors for every major way humans commonly die by a huge margin.

But fear not! You are in the right place to learn about all of this. And while this video is extra long because we thought it worthy of doing a super deep dive on given its importance to all of us, might we recommend if you’re otherwise crunched for time putting it on audio only and listening while you drift off to sleep? And then, just, like, do that every night on our channel. We’d really appreciate it.

Either way, in this video we are going to be looking at what’s going on in the body when you sleep. The mind boggling number of ways it’s, quite literally, killing you mentally and physically when you aren’t getting adequate sleep, and why. How much sleep is required for most to be in the optimal health range. And how exactly to ensure you get great sleep every night, and in so doing have better quality of life and make yourself more likely to outlive all the lesser mortals who didn’t watch this video. So get out your PJs and condoms- trust me you’ll need those by the end- and let’s dive into it all, shall we?

Authors: Scott Hiskey and Daven Hiskey

Host: Daven Hiskey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What was it Really Like to Be a Lighthouse Keeper?

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 01:00:00 -0000

For anyone sitting in gridlocked traffic on the way to a soul crushing job surrounded by other humans nattering on all day about their TPS reports as you truly internalize the pointlessness of everything because we’re all going to die and everything we ever said or did will be forgotten someday, you may at some point find yourself daydreaming about the life of a lighthouse keeper- kicking back, enjoying the sounds of the ocean waves, and, similar to with your current job, periodically checking the light is still on. But, you know, the light in the lighthouse, instead of the ever dimming one in your soul… And otherwise enjoying peace and quiet in a stress reducing environment. But does this bear any resemblance to what it is actually like to be a lighthouse keeper? Just what do such individuals get up to throughout their days and nights historically and in more modern times?

Well, put on your galoshes and rain slicker, prepare to go positively straight jacket mad, and let’s dive into it all, shall we?

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Mysterious Death of Yuri Gagarin

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 10:00:00 -0000

On a snowy, blustery morning in March 1968, a two-man MiG-15 UTI jet took off from Chkalov air force base outside Moscow on a routine training flight. Barely ten minutes later, the aircraft’s pilot radioed air traffic control, announcing it was cutting its flight short and requesting permission to land. Then, the transmission went dead. At nearby Kirzhach airfield, a group of cosmonauts undergoing parachute training heard two loud explosions in the distance, and dispatched a flight of six helicopters to investigate. Three hours later, the search team discovered a smoking crater in a birch forest just outside the village of Kirzhach. And though the aircraft had been all but vaporized on impact, it did not take long to identify the pilots. One was Colonel Vladimir Seryogin, an experienced test pilot, flight instructor, and war hero who had flown more than 200 combat missions during the Second World War. The other was possibly the most famous man in the Soviet Union - if not the world: Colonel Yuri Gagarin, who seven years earlier on April 12, 1961 had made history by becoming the first human to travel beyond the atmosphere and orbit the earth. The death of this national hero at the age of only 34 shocked the Soviet people and sent the nation into mourning. It also raised questions as to the exact circumstances of his death - questions that linger to the present day. Was it a simple accident? A case of negligence or pilot error? Or were there more sinister forces at play? This is the story of the mysterious death of the first man in space.

Author: Gilles Messier

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Government Works, When Does the U.S. Government Debt Become Unsustainable, And Much More

Fri, 06 Jun 2025 10:00:00 -0000

We live in, shall we say, politically divisive times… which, contrary to some’s belief, is no different than really any other point since humans started humaning. From Ancient Rome to relatively more modern times in the likes of Thomas Jefferson secretly bankrolling Scottish scandalmonger James Callender to attack Jefferson’s presidential opponent and former best friend, John Adams. And things haven’t exactly improved since, though also contrary to seemingly popular sentiment, as anyone who studies history in any depth will tell you, while the world today is far from perfect and a lot to fix, the best time to be alive for pretty much everyone is quite literally right now for innumerable reasons all summing up to that the past was the worst.

But we’re not here to debate that can of worms with you today, but rather, talk a little bit about how the U.S. government actually functions from a practical, day to day, perspective.

Along the way we’ll be looking at the practical side of the election process; who actually runs everything; how the government pays for things and manages debt; what would happen if a city ran out of money, or if the U.S. federal government could no longer pay on its massive debt and at what point the U.S. national debt becomes unsustainable. We’ll also be looking at how government manages to transcend party politics to actually get things done, including covering the Aunt Sally Effect and why it’s so effective at helping at the level government likely affects you most, and we even look at how one gets a Ted Talk and what the process of doing one is like, which I promise makes sense in context.

And perhaps in all restore your faith in government a little bit along the way. Because while popular political news will likely have you thinking the world is doomed and leave you seriously considering alcohol as a phenomenal life strategy, it turns out, as shocking as this may come to some, governments the world over are run by people. Not a handful of shadowy individuals controlling everything, but in fact lots of people. Literally millions of them. It’s not just the people at the top in leaders of nations, but the people at a much less talked about level that are the ones generally actually doing the things in a much less heralded way to make sure society doesn’t collapse and otherwise runs as well as it can. While no system is perfect, this is a level which is typically far less polarized and, maybe unsurprisingly, is mostly filled with people trying to do the best job they can for the communities, states, and country they live and raise their families in. Because, hey, they live here too.

Now, to dive into all this, we’re going to do something a little different. Instead of me talking at you about it all, we decided to bring in an expert in the field, Eric Mason. Beyond giving a Ted Talk related to this, “If Not Here, Where?” in which he discusses the power of local government to make huge changes at not just the local, but national level. Eric is also the CFO of the City of Presidents- Quincy Massachusetts. When he’s not managing their around a half a billion dollar annual budget, helping to make sure the city he grew up in continues to thrive now and the foreseeable future, Eric also is an occasional keynote speaker on all things finance, government, and world economics, and on the side teaches Microeconomics at West Virginia University.

So, let’s look at how government actually works from a practical standpoint, and see if along the way you don’t have your faith in government restored, and maybe shift your focus a titch from the polarized, and generally highly sensationalized, national level, to where things actually typically are getting done, who is doing them, and how it all works.

Host: Daven Hiskey

Guest: Eric Mason

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's So Special About McDonald's Fries?

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 10:00:00 -0000

Ah, McDonald’s French Fries. According to a poll we recently ran here, 48% of about 42,000 of you prefer this restaurant’s slender tan starch sticks to all the other restaurant tuber cutting offerings, with this percentage more than double the next runner up which was a blanket choice of “Other”- i.e. nearly all other restaurant french fries combined. While many view McDonald’s as a hamburger joint, the truth is, beyond in the present day McDonald’s making about 1/3 of their revenue from their franchises on real estate (all once causing Ray Kroc to quip he wasn’t in the hamburger business, but rather “My business is real estate”), McDonald’s came to dominate the world of fast food for primarily one reason- their french fries, with an astounding 1 out of every 200 potatoes grown in the world today used to make these salty sticks of potato guts. Which is extra good for the company as french fries are also one of the most profitable non-beverage items on the menu. So just how did these french fries come to be? What exactly is in them and how are they made? Why were they the center of a surprisingly bitter and occasionally riotous and deadly fight? And just who invented french fries at all in the first place?

Well, tuck in ladies and gents, and let’s do a deep fried dive into the history of the french fry and its perfected version at McDonald’s, shall we?

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's It Actually Like to Be an Amish Person?

Tue, 03 Jun 2025 03:46:00 -0000

As humans continue to rapidly accelerate to replacing ourselves with robot overlords or otherwise see if we can’t make Wall-E into a prophetic mocumentary, one group of homosapiens refuses to go quietly into the night. And, while it may come as a surprise to you, this group is seemingly set to inherit the Earth, given their population is exploding, whilst birth rates for the rest of us are declining to an extent that most developed nations are already well past the point where their coming generations will be significantly smaller than the current. But not so for our butter churning brethren. We are, of course, speaking of the Amish, who provide for us a stark contrast to our fast-paced, egocentric lives, with their staunch and deliberate refusal to get swept up in any of it. But is Amish life really as idyllic as it appears from the outside? And just what is the reality of life as an Amish person really like? Well, hitch up your buggy, and let’s walk through the valley where they harvest their grain, shall we?

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Who was the Most Prolific Serial Killer of All Time?

Sat, 17 May 2025 11:00:00 -0000

In the pantheon of worst humans to ever human you will find no shortage of bastions of awful. Hitler probably has the most collective conscious panache, but at least he had the decency to bravely, and with no regard for his personal safety, infiltrate the Hitler bunker and then put a bullet through the cranium of Hitler. But individuals like Hitler did their killing via proxy. As for those who were a little more hands on, the Hitler of these was arguably a man by the name of Vasili Blokhin who, as we’ve covered previously in our video Who Has Directly Murdered the Most People By Their Own Hand?, personally killed, one at a time, over 7,000 people in under one month alone, let alone countless others he offed at other points in his career. Vasili and many others like him, however, killed for their respective states. In contrast, within this subset of individuals who killed by their own hand, we have a special class that in recent decades has been given the moniker “serial killer”, which brings us to the macabre topic of today- who was the most prolific serial killer of all time?

Host: Simon Whistler

Author: Daven Hiskey

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That Time the Postal Service Tried Sending Mail Via Missile

Fri, 16 May 2025 02:59:00 -0000

In this episode of The BrainFood Show, we're looking at that time the British tried to replace parachutes with rockets, that time the United States tried sending U.S. Postal Service mail via missiles, and the origins and interesting stories surrounding NASA's Steely Eyed Missile Man expression, and why the rocket launch countdown is stupid. Corrections- Star Spangled Banner was written during the War of 1812. I knew this. I do not know what I was thinking at the time. :-) Hosts: Karl Smallwood and Daven Hiskey Authors: Gilles Messier, Karl Smallwood, and Daven Hiskey Producer: Daven Hiskey Subscribe to the BrainFood Show: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-brainfood-show/id1350586459 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/36xpXQMPVXhWJzMoCHPJKd YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR0XuDegDqP2MW1ZtxnfAIaM1Ax_q1WKm RSS Feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/brainfood Tangential Things Discussed in This Episode: The German Rocket Fighter that Dissolved its Pilots Alive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfAw4YvI_u0 How to Survive Falling from a Plane Without a Parachute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x64DFUo7R The First Man to Walk in Space Almost Got Stuck Out There https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmXdWLWMTkg How Much Did Top Gun: Maverick Cost the U.S. Taxpayer? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w42bQrcu3aY The Tale of the Man Who Nearly Drowned While Falling from the Sky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfUCb4ERxt8 The Mysterious Death of Yuri Gagarin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP_QEmIsnKk Pigeon Guided Missiles and Literal Bat Bombs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbPG8jSud14 The Chicken Heated Nuclear Land Mine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJuxpf-RE7k A Wingtip and a Prayer: the Insane Way British Pilots Defeated Germany’s Secret Weapon https://youtu.be/rb6Xa1acNDE The US Military’s Obsessive World War II Ice Cream Crusade https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOi_--kS4CE Did NASA Spend Millions Developing a Pen When the Russians Used Pencils? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAJpzWUhuqM 0:00 Intro 2:37 That Time the British Navy Tried to Replace Parachutes with Rockets 26:19 Missile Mail 56:06 Steely Eyed Missile Man 1:15:55 Launch Countdown

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lies! The Truth About the Tesla vs Edison Feud

Fri, 09 May 2025 14:00:00 -0000

If there’s two things the internet knows about Nikola Tesla, it’s that he was a genius scientist vastly ahead of his time, and that thanks to a many decades long feud with Thomas Edison which included Edison stealing some of his work and otherwise keeping his former employee on the black balled list, Tesla died in poverty and was largely forgotten by history until relatively recently… The thing is, other than the part about Tesla being a genius, literally none of the rest of what I just said is true. In fact, most of what popular history remembers about Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison both individually and with regards to their relationship is pure myth. Ringing in on this, historian Keith Nier very aptly stated of Thomas Edison, "He is actually one of the least well known of all famous people, and much of what everybody thinks they know about him is no more reliable than a fairy tale." And as for Tesla? That’s even more of the case for him than Edison. To a pretty shocking degree actually. In fact, in the couple decades we’ve been researching and writing to the tune of several thousand videos, we’ve never come across two individuals that popular history gets so incredibly wrong. Unfortunately for us, who were once major Tesla fanboys, this meant facing some rather harsh truths about the man and his work and ideas… which were… ya… we’ll get into it all. But as for Edison, turns out kind of an incredible human when you throw out all the myths that largely came about thanks to becoming the devil to god Tesla in the popular narrative of Tesla’s life. So, without further ado, let’s welcome in my co-host Gilles with his vast engineering knowledge to get to the bottom of it all so that you, too, can now smugly walk around knowing the true story of Tesla and Edison, while fanboys and haters on the interwebs continue to sling their myths and misconceptions.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is There Any Hard Evidence That Jesus Actually Existed?

Wed, 07 May 2025 14:00:00 -0000

In this episode, Simon delves into the historical and archaeological records, exploring theories and debates surrounding one of history's most significant religious figures.

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That Time the U.S. Tried to Build a Massive Military Base on the Moon

Mon, 05 May 2025 14:00:00 -0000

During the Cold War, the U.S. government was hell-bent on one upping the commies in any way possible. In the process, they came up with a number of outlandish plans, such as that time they proposed literally nuking the moon, interestingly enough a project a young Carl Sagan worked on and broke some laws with. More on this later. While it’s probably for the best that that project didn’t ultimately get carried out, there is another that went into history's dustbin that would have been amazing if implemented- the U.S. Army's plan to build a massive military and research installation on the moon. This is the story of Project Horizon, along with a lot of other interesting related tidbits along the way, from what a nuclear explosion would look like on the moon and whether a nuke would actually be a terribly effective weapon in space, to the guns designed for astronauts, to the rather humorous first thing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did on the surface of the moon, to the dick pic that exists in the so-called first museum on the moon and the famous artist who drew it, to the fascinating story of the man who successfully sold the moon and apparently made a fortune in the process. This is going to be a good one. And to talk about all of this today, we’re trying something different by welcoming in our resident genius, engineer, author of the scripts for over 500 videos on TodayIFoundOut, and the owner of the phenomenal channel Our Own Devices, the Professor- Gilles Messier.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Common Things Different in Europe vs. the United States

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 04:16:00 -0000

Ah America, filled with gun toting rednecks wearing their flag as a t-shirt and pondering what Jesus would do while chowing down on Mexican food, greasy burgers, partially hydrogenated corn syrup cubes, and washing it all down with Budweiser, the king of beers… for those who’ve never tasted real beer… And Europe, full of a homogeneous group of people who spend most of their time measuring things in meters instead of Ariana Grandes as every god-fearing individual should, whilst worshiping the British monarchy, rioting about football, mocking Americans and their inferior chocolates and cheeses, and otherwise bent on making sure the entire world becomes socialist… Or, at least, so the interwebs have taught us all. But what are the actual interesting differences between people and things in the surprisingly diverse United States compared with the various individuals in the vastly more diverse countries of Europe? Well, I'm glad you asked, because that's what Simon and I are going to cover today. Let’s dive into it all, shall we?

Hosts: Simon Whistler and Daven Hiskey

0:00 Intro 2:06 HOMES 4:26 Buying a Home 13:21 Locks 18:20: Kitchens and Appliances 24:25: Rooms 25:35: Bathrooms 32:54 Garages 35:00 Misc 37:08 Dining 46:13 Pub Culture and Drinking 59:15 Mexican Food 1:02:35 Meal Deal 1:05:27 WORK 1:21:30 Everyday Things 1:41:43 Dress 1:51:09 Education 2:03:00 Internet 2:05:30 Day Fine System 2:07:32 Foot Goes In, Foot Goes Out 2:08:40 Transportation 2:27:35 General Culture 3:12:25 Healthcare 3:19:50 Misc

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fascinating Origins of Everyday Things (Part 4)

Tue, 01 Dec 2020 22:33:31 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out with an appetizer looking at how chopsticks came to be and why they became so popular in certain parts of the world vs things like spoons and forks.

Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor… Ourselves! Go check out our new-ish channel Highlight History, an upcoming re-launch / re-think of Fact Quickie, a new upcoming one in Ancient Marvels, and Simon’s latest attempt to host all YouTube channels- Side Projects.

Next up, in the main course, we look at who exactly invented the spoon, knife, and fork, how they became popularized and the surprising amount of time it took for two of the three to become a staple of dinner tables the world over.

As for the desert for today, we discuss who actually invented the Fortune Cookie, which pretty much everyone always gets wrong. And, spoiler: no, it wasn’t the Chinese nor Americans.

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Fascinating Origins of Everyday Things (Part 4) appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Medieval Times [Part 5]

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 01:30:47 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out with an appetizer looking at whether chastity belts were ever actually a thing in medieval times or if it is just a Hollywood invention.

Next up, in the main course, we look at whether you could actually be transported back in time to Medieval Times and actually communicate to anyone in English or not as is often depicted in popular entertainment.

As for the desert for today, we discuss what you actually get for being knighted in modern times and what the process is these days for that.

And note, to see that wall of text Simon hard to read there, this is what he was looking at:

INTHEBEGINNINGTHEREWASNOPUNCTUATIONLOWERCASELETTERSOREVENSPACESBETWEENWORDSTHEREALSOWASNOGRAMMATICALWAYOFDISTINGUISHINGWHENANIDEAHADFINISHEDANDANEWONEBEGUNITDIDNTHELPTHATTHEIDEAOFSTANDARDIZEDSPELLINGWASALSONOTATHINGATLEASTNOTASWEWOULDTHINKOFITREADERSWERELEFTTOMUDDLETHEIRWAYTHROUGHANYTEXTASBESTTHEYCOULDUNSURPRISINGLYUNDERSTANDINGWHATAPARTICULARWORKWASACTUALLYSAYINGONTHEFIRSTREADTHROUGHWASPRETTYWELLUNHEARDOFATTHISTIME

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Medieval Times [Part 5] appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Medieval Times [Part 4]

Sun, 01 Nov 2020 21:24:25 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out with an appetizer looking at the film The Knight’s Tale and the very real historic knight Ulrich von Liechtenstein and what the real guy actually got up to.

Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor… Ourselves! Go check out our new-ish channel Highlight History and Simon’s latest attempt to host all YouTube channels- Side Projects.

Next up, in the main course, we look at what it was actually like to be a medieval knight and how one actually became one.

As for the desert for today, we have the absolute best part of today’s episode discussing whether there was ever actually a documented case of a knight rescuing a damsel in distress.

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Medieval Times [Part 4] appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Medieval Times [Part 3]

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 03:25:32 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out with an appetizer looking at how the slipping on a banana peel comedy gag got started.

Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor NordVPN. Get 68% off NordVPN! Only $3.71/mo, plus you get an additional month FREE at https://nordvpn.com/brainfoodshow Or use coupon code: brainfoodshow

Next up, we have the main course discussing what it was actually like to be a court jester and some examples of some rather famous ones, as well as what killed the profession.

As for the desert for today, we look at what it was like to be a medieval executioner and how people got the gig.

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Medieval Times [Part 3] appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Medieval Times [Part 2]

Tue, 20 Oct 2020 04:11:57 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out with an appetizer looking at how soap actually works to get rid of microbes.

Next up, we have the main course discussing whether or not Medieval Europeans actually didn’t bathe that much or not.

As for the desert for today, we look at whether castles in Medieval times actually ever had things like crocodiles in them or not.

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Medieval Times [Part 2] appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Medieval Times [Part 1]

Wed, 30 Sep 2020 09:37:47 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out looking at why the toilet is called the “Crapper” and the “John”.

Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor Skillshare. For a limited time, use the following link to get a free trial of Skillshare Premium Membership: http://skillshare.com/brainfood

Next up, we discuss all about what Medieval Europeans did with all their bodily expulsions and whether they really did just toss it out the window. This all culminates in the Great Stink of 1858 and how that was finally resolved.

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Medieval Times [Part 1] appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Making Diamonds

Sat, 01 Aug 2020 08:37:02 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out looking at the rather interesting way the couple hundred million dollar Hope Diamond has been transported a couple times.

Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor Skillshare for 2 months for free here: http://skillshare.com/brainfood

Next up, we discuss how diamonds went from a mostly worthless item throughout the majority of human history to in very recent times the extremely expensive item we have today. We then dive into the extremely fascinating story of the guy who first managed to figure out how to make diamonds, bypassing the normal couple billion year process to have them form naturally.

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Making Diamonds appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What We’ve Learned This Month

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 18:19:43 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out looking at the rather curious phenomenon of the average of your friends being happier, wealthier, and more successful than you.

Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor Backblaze and unlimited automatic backup service for just $6 a month. Try it for free for 15-days! http://backblaze.com/brainfoodshow

Next up, we discuss how much caffeine it would take to kill you as well as the general healthy upper limit to intake daily. After that we look at the longest burning light bulb, the largest single bet in history, the male version of the word nymphomania, the Olympian who won a match despite being dead at the time of his victory, that time Simon Cowell hijacked a bus, whether blind people really have superior hearing, the horned lizard’s bizarre defense mechanism, Abraham Lincoln’s amazing “wrastling” skills, and a rather adorable fact about ants.

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post What We’ve Learned This Month appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the Love of the Word Nerds… (And Their Rather Unfortunate Nazi Brethren)

Wed, 20 May 2020 06:51:14 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out looking at whether there is actually any difference between various men’s and women’s bathroom products like shaving cream, razors, etc and why women pay more for basically everything.

We also have a brief message from a sponsor, Skillshare. Help support this show and learn a lot of interesting new skills, as well as TWO MONTHS FREE using the following link https://www.skillshare.com/brainfood

Next up, we basically rant for a really long time… Embedded in there is a discussion of a topic that is going to sound really boring, but in fact is actually quite fascinating, looking at such things as what a dictionary actually is, which is very different than what most people think. We also look at what it takes for a word to get put in there, if they ever come out, whether dictionary makers ever make mistakes like spelling errors or the like…. We promise this topic is far more interesting than it sounds.

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post For the Love of the Word Nerds… (And Their Rather Unfortunate Nazi Brethren) appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Difference Between… [Part 2]

Tue, 24 Mar 2020 00:11:53 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are looking at the difference between a number of things, kicking it off with the difference between BCE/CE and BC/AD systems of dating and the rather fascinating story of how those systems came to be.

Up next we dive into a bunch of “difference betweens” American and British English and how the two main versions of English diverged in the first place, which it turns out mostly had to do with just one man and started basically immediately after the American Revolution. Various other things covered include why Americans say Math and the British say Maths, where the word soccer came from and why it’s the correct name for the sport ;-), and more!

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Difference Between… [Part 2] appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Difference Between… [Part 1]

Fri, 28 Feb 2020 23:56:08 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are looking at the difference between a number of things, kicking it off with the difference between hardwood and softwood…. which you’d think you already know, but we’re guessing for most, you don’t actually know the difference.

Up next we dive into a bunch of “difference betweens” such as the difference between fruits and vegetables, green and black tea, various types of olive oils, brown and white eggs, etc. as well as a slew of interesting tips on optimizing ripeness schedules on bananas, including a way to keep your bananas at the perfectly ripe stage for approximately a week, instead of the two seconds or so that happens naturally.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

Image Source

The post The Difference Between… [Part 1] appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Absolutely Badass First Female U.S. Presidential Candidate

Thu, 30 Jan 2020 05:41:02 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at the first woman in the United States to cast a political vote who for reasons we’ll get into did it with her feet…

Up next we get into the meat of the episode about one of the most badass and colorful women in American history who rose from a childhood of poverty to becoming, among other awesome accomplishments, the first female stock broker on Wall Street and most notable to the story at hand today, also the first woman to run for President in the United States.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Absolutely Badass First Female U.S. Presidential Candidate appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s a Wonderful Life [Part 2]

Sun, 22 Dec 2019 09:23:11 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are looking at the man Frank Capra based the character of George Bailey on in It’s a Wonderful Life, and how this rather remarkable individual went on to shape quite a bit of history in a certain region of America, in a very positive way despite that almost nobody has ever heard his name. This is all rather fitting as you might expect for someone George Bailey was patterned after.

Over the course of the episode we also discuss in depth that little known natural disaster that was one of the most devastating in U.S. history and how it helped shaped the fate of California and certain industries there.

We then wrap the whole thing up bringing it back around to It’s a Wonderful Life, as well as some interesting related Bonus Facts.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post It’s a Wonderful Life [Part 2] appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s a Wonderful Life [Part 1]

Fri, 20 Dec 2019 02:04:15 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start off looking at why Fox tried so hard to trick people into thinking Miracle on 34th Street was not a Christmas movie when it came out. We then look at why movie trailers are called that and a bit on the evolution of them, and then look at why Miracle on 34th Street was deemed Morally Objectionable in rating when it debuted.

Next up, we have a brief message from our sponsor, Blinkist, which gives you the key ideas from more than 3,000 bestselling nonfiction books in just 15 minutes instead of having to listen to the full audiobook or read it all. Try it out for free and help support this show by using the following link: http://blinkist.com/brainfood

Moving on to the next section we look at how a short story that an author failed to get published, and thus then sent it out as a Christmas gift to friends and family ended up becoming a major Hollywood film that flopped, only to see it then many years later finally start gaining traction and today considered one of the top movies of all time.

As we’re discussing that, we also do a deep dive into actor Jimmy Stewart and his rather interesting separate life from acting, as well as an interesting transcontinental airway that was developed in the 1920s in the U.S.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post It’s a Wonderful Life [Part 1] appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fascinating Origins of Everyday Foods (Part 1)

Sat, 30 Nov 2019 23:15:23 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start off looking at the interesting reason why milk is white, yet cheddar cheese is yellow/orange.

Moving on to the next section we look at the origin of pizza and the surprisingly recent time in which it actually became popular with the masses. We center the story of pizza around the well known documented history of the invention of Hawaiian Pizza. Finally, we look at some rather interesting facts about pineapples and how they became popular.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Fascinating Origins of Everyday Foods (Part 1) appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fascinating Origins of Everyday Things (Part 3)

Sat, 23 Nov 2019 04:47:26 -0000

*Sorry the audio is a little funky on this one. But don’t skip it, it’s one of our best content-wise, in my opinion. As to the audio, we had multiple technical issues that ended up resulting in us having to use the combined live, streamed audio (rather than our local recordings), which in turn had issues beyond the normal streaming audio across the world and then back across the world again to YouTube. Will be all back to normal for the next episode.

In any event, in this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start off looking at why rubber is typically colored black, even though the nature color of rubber is white, as well as what that has to do with barns stereotypically being red, the origin of crayons, and what all that has to do with Amelia Earhart.

Next up, we have a brief message from a sponsor, Skillshare. Help support this show and learn a lot of interesting new skills, as well as TWO MONTHS FREE using the following link https://www.skillshare.com/brainfood

Moving on to the next section we look at who invented the rubber band and the surprisingly fascinating saga that led to its invention and popularity. We then follow that up with some Bonus Facts on the invention of Silly Putty, and what all of this has to do with the aforementioned Red barns.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Fascinating Origins of Everyday Things (Part 3) appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fascinating Origins of Everyday Things (Part 2)

Thu, 31 Oct 2019 03:46:43 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start off looking at that time the United States government banned pre-sliced bread… Really.

Next up, we have a brief message from a sponsor, Blinkist, which gives you the key ideas from more than 3,000 bestselling nonfiction books in just 15 minutes instead of having to listen to the full audiobook or read it all. Try it out for free and help support this show by using the following link: http://blinkist.com/brainfood

Moving on to the next section we look at who exactly invented what is so often compared to the “best things”- pre-sliced bread and the little saga to him getting bakers to accept his invention.

After that, we look at the surprisingly interesting saga of the invention and popularization of the shopping cart.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Fascinating Origins of Everyday Things (Part 2) appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fascinating Origins of Everyday Things (Part 1)

Wed, 30 Oct 2019 04:39:31 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start off looking at the surprisingly interesting origin of the paperclip and why a person who had nothing to do with its design commonly gets all the credit for it, including having a giant statue of it made in his honor only a couple decades ago.

Next up, we have a brief message from our sponsor Skillshare! Level up your skills and support this show all at the same time by signing up for Skillshare today: https://skillshare.com/brainfood Using that link also gets you a 2-month free trial. Big thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this podcast!

Moving on to the next section of the show we’re looking at one of the most prolific inventors in American history who invented at least one thing (if not a couple) that are currently in your home right now and you probably use frequently, yet for various reasons we’ll get into, nobody remembers this guy at all and he never made much money off any of his hundreds of inventions. (And for those curious about the Lockstitch gif, click here.)

After that we’re looking at the fascinating origin of the ballpoint pen and the shockingly complex way these things are made considering you’ve probably lost 3 of them in your couch cushions today already and don’t care because they are dirt cheap somehow.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Fascinating Origins of Everyday Things (Part 1) appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Greatest Practical Joke and the Last Laugh

Sat, 05 Oct 2019 06:12:10 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start off looking at 19th century practical joke that occurred in London that is arguably the greatest of the century.

Next up, we have a brief message from a new sponsor, Blinkist, which gives you the key ideas from more than 3,000 bestselling nonfiction books in just 15 minutes instead of having to listen to the full audiobook or read it all. Try it out for free and help support this show by using the following link: https://www.blinkist.com/thebrainfoodshow

Moving on to the next section of the show we’re looking at a Canadian man who set the bar even higher on practical jokes, by doing his greatest ones from beyond the grave.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Greatest Practical Joke and the Last Laugh appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lord Minimus- The Renaissance Dueling Dwarf

Wed, 25 Sep 2019 22:51:33 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start off looking at how “Dick” came to be short for “Richard”.

Next up, we have a brief message from one of our favorite and most useful sponsors- Backblaze! Backblaze really is super cheap and takes almost no time or effort to get setup and working. Unlimited automatic backups for your computer for just $6 a month. You never have to worry about losing your photos or files on your computer again. It just works. Get your free trial and help keep this podcast going by using the following link: www.backblaze.com/brainfood

Moving on to the main topic, we are looking at the fascinating story of a 17th century dwarf who would go from humble beginnings to being knighted and becoming a Captain of the Horse and member of the Queen of England’s court.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Lord Minimus- The Renaissance Dueling Dwarf appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That Time a Major Studio Intentionally Made a Crappy “Fantastic Four” Movie and Why Superheroes Wear Their Underwear on the Outside

Mon, 23 Sep 2019 23:42:51 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start off looking at why superheroes wear their underwear on the outside.

Next up, we have a brief message from our sponsor, Jeremy Scott, perhaps best known for his work on CinemaSins, but also the author of the books “The Ables” and the sequel that just came out, “Strings”, both of which you can order here https://cinemasins.com/book

Moving on to the main topic, we are looking at the fascinating story of an instance where a major movie studio intentionally made a horrible Fantastic Four movie and a variety of interesting tangents along the way. In the Bonus Facts, we look at some rather odd characters created by DC Comics and Marvel over the years.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post That Time a Major Studio Intentionally Made a Crappy “Fantastic Four” Movie and Why Superheroes Wear Their Underwear on the Outside appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why Do Some Countries Have People Drive on the Left and Others on the Right? (+Contest Winners)

Wed, 11 Sep 2019 05:22:00 -0000

*Just an addendum to one of the tangents I forgot to mention- pulling up like crazy in a plane while rapidly hurtling towards the ground is a phenomenal way to ensure the wings of the plane cease to remain attached to it.

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start off looking at the little known much more massive big brother to the Roman Colosseum and the astounding number of people it held.

Next up, we have a brief message from our sponsor, Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of amazing classes covering dozens of creative and entrepreneurial skills. You can take classes in everything from photography and creative writing to design, productivity, and more. Join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today, and if you use our link here: https://www.skillshare.com/Brainfood you not only help keep this show going, but also get 2 free months of Premium Membership.

Moving on to the main topic, we are looking at how it came to be that some countries have their populaces drive on the left while others choose the keep right model. In the Bonus Facts, we look at some interesting things about the keep left and keep right rules with regards to boats, airplanes and helicopters.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Why Do Some Countries Have People Drive on the Left and Others on the Right? (+Contest Winners) appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forgotten History Part 2: The First Film and the Murder That Nearly Killed It

Mon, 12 Aug 2019 07:00:55 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start with the rather curious way in which George Eastman, founder of Kodak, died.

Moving on to the main topic, we are looking at the fascinating story behind the first film in history, which was not created to entertain, but rather to learn something that simply wasn’t possible to observe given the limits of human perception. We also delve into how the entire project almost got derailed when the man behind this advancement of technology decided to up and murder someone…

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Forgotten History Part 2: The First Film and the Murder That Nearly Killed It appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Forgotten Plague- DANCE MANIA!!!

Fri, 12 Jul 2019 21:25:34 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we skip the quick fact because this one took forever to research and put together and I ran out of time. Instead we jump right into the main topic which is a very real phenomenon that popped up off and on for several hundred years called Dance Mania or St. Vitus’ Dance. While it might sound like a bit of a joke, it was surprisingly deadly at times and had a fascinating cure.

We then look at the probable cause of this phenomenon, along with many other similar ones, including a couple in modern times, that all seem to have the same root.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Forgotten Plague- DANCE MANIA!!! appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Porcupines Mate, the Bizarre Sex Habits of Giraffes (and Much, Much More)

Tue, 18 Jun 2019 06:34:09 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at whether or not male humans can get pregnant and carry a baby to full term naturally. (Spoiler- yes and yes. And even breastfeed too! It doesn’t even require fancy science or advanced medical techniques.)

Moving on to the meat of today’s episode, we jump into a variety of bizarre animal mating practices, starting with the somewhat humorous mating practices of the giraffe, looking at how porcupines mate without serious injury, banana slugs, the evil that is the male duck, and more!

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post How Porcupines Mate, the Bizarre Sex Habits of Giraffes (and Much, Much More) appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Twice Executed

Thu, 06 Jun 2019 22:19:41 -0000

Sorry for the long gap between episodes. We’ll be getting a bit more regular going forward. Also apologies for my audio quality in this one. Adobe kept crashing on me, so we had to use the audio Simon was receiving which isn’t ideal. Also a bit under the weather and lost my voice before recording, so maybe for the best that I wasn’t coming through in pristine quality. Next episode will sound much, much better!

In any event, in this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at the real story behind the song In the Air Tonight.

Moving on to the meat of today’s episode, we jump into the fascinating story of one Willie Francis, a young man convicted for murder, executed, then executed again about a year later, despite the fact that it would very much seem as if he was innocent the whole time.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Twice Executed appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Taking the Mystery Out of Murder- A Couple of Dumbbells

Fri, 29 Mar 2019 23:05:35 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at how exactly Al Capone got the scars that got him the nickname “Scarface”.

Moving on to the meat of today’s episode, we jump into the rather interesting story behind one of the many so called “trial of the century” of the 20th century. In this case involving a housewife and her lover and their plot to murder her husband. We also discuss the case of the first woman ever to be executed in an electric chair and one of the most iconic journalistic photos ever taken.

In the Bonus Facts today, we look at the first two women ever to be sentenced to death via the electric chair, what they did to get that sentence, and how they both got off.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Taking the Mystery Out of Murder- A Couple of Dumbbells appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Everyone Plays Monopoly Wrong Which Makes It Worse, Where the Game Pieces Came From, Who Really Invented It and Much More

Fri, 08 Mar 2019 00:00:56 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at the interesting story behind where the Monopoly pieces came from.

Next we discuss our sponsor, RetailMeNot. Visit http://bit.ly/2BXvyAk to download the free RetailMeNot Genie browser extension today and start saving the easy way.

Moving on to the meat of today’s episode, we jump into the truth about who actually invented Monopoly, which is not the person who has long been given credit for it. That guy, it turns out, flat out stole it from someone else and then proceeded to get rich off it while the original creator mostly got nothing.

We then move into the many, many ways everyone plays Monopoly wrong which is largely why it takes so long to play and lends itself to why it has a reputation for being a game sure to make everyone angry who plays it. If people would just read the rule book, turns out it’s a lot more fun when played the way it’s supposed to be played.

Finally we discuss Simon and Daven’s favorite movies, as well as get around to answering the question of whether horses actually sleep standing up, or just seem like they do.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post How Everyone Plays Monopoly Wrong Which Makes It Worse, Where the Game Pieces Came From, Who Really Invented It and Much More appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Animal Facts Part 3: A Doughnut Brain, Dung and the Milky Way, Ant Overlords and More

Mon, 11 Feb 2019 23:58:28 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at the massive creature that has a doughnut shaped brain with its esophagus running right through the middle.

Next we discuss Wix! Go to https://www.wix.com/go/brainfood to get started on your website today!
Check out our website at https://brainfood.fm

Next up we begin by looking at the fascinating reason Dung Beetles do a little happy dance after they find and roll up some poop. We then move on to a myriad of fascinating facts about various ants, including their absolutely remarkable ability to find the most efficient route to something, which has in recent years been used by humans to come up with more efficient algorithms for a variety of applications. We follow all that up discussing a rather unique and hilarious way school swimming herring talk to each other.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Animal Facts Part 3: A Doughnut Brain, Dung and the Milky Way, Ant Overlords and More appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Animal Facts Part 2: Melting Caterpillars, Heating Bees, Why Vultures Don’t Get Sick, and More

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 09:19:43 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at the mind blowing things caterpillars get up to while in the chrysalis.

Next we discuss Wix! Go to https://www.wix.com/go/brainfood to get started on your website today!
Check out our website at https://brainfood.fm

Next up we begin by looking at the fascinating way in which honey bees, which are cold blooded, manage to keep their hives warm and the variety of fascinating things they do with their rather unique heating abilities. We then look at the rather amazing vulture and, among other things, why they don’t get sick when they eat dead things and what integral role this plays in keeping humans alive. Finally we look at the mysterious Kentucky meat shower, which unfortunately has nothing to do with KFC.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Animal Facts Part 2: Melting Caterpillars, Heating Bees, Why Vultures Don’t Get Sick, and More appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Animal Facts Part 1: The Blowhole, Cow Tipping and Much, Much More

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 09:03:33 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at a rather fascinating fact about dogs and cats that you probably didn’t know.

Next we discuss Wix! Go to https://www.wix.com/go/brainfood to get started on your website today!
Check out our website at https://brainfood.fm

Next up we begin by debunking a variety of common whale related myths, most notably frequently depicted in movies the world over. Among other things, we then look at what exactly the uvula does (that dangly thing in the back of your throat), whether cats and dogs can actually see color, whether it’s physically possible for a human to tip a cow as is the common drunken game, and why you’d never, ever want to mess with an ostrich.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Animal Facts Part 1: The Blowhole, Cow Tipping and Much, Much More appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Disturbing Tale and the “Trial of the Century” That Led to Women Jumping Out of Cakes

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 08:16:23 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start with a Simon rant, then look at what the M’s stand for in M&Ms.

Next we discuss one of our favorite sponsors, Dashlane! Get 10% off with the coupon code “brainfood”: http://www.dashlane.com/brainfood

Next up we look at when exactly humans started putting living things in food items for the purpose of entertainment, the origin of “That’s What She Said” and “Said the Actress to the Bishop”, and then all leading up to the first “Trial of the (20th) Century” and what exactly that had to do with the curious practice of having women jump out of cakes.

This is the story we discussed in the part we cut out at the end, which was in relation to a rather dark story Simon came across concerning soldiers/drinking, noting he had something “orders of magnitude” more disturbing than Nesbit’s youth, to which I apparently did not have a good enough imagination for, thinking that must be an exaggeration… It was not an exaggeration, and we ultimately decided to cut it out because of it.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post A Disturbing Tale and the “Trial of the Century” That Led to Women Jumping Out of Cakes appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Woman Who was the Most Successful Pirate of All Time

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 08:00:24 -0000

*Apologies for the audio quality on this one, simultaneously our audio editor / producer was on vacation and a certain host was also a great distance away from his acoustically treated studio.

In any event, in this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at what exactly grog is, where it came from, and the origin of the name.

Next up we briefly mention our sponsor- go to https://wix.com/go/brainfood to get started on your Wix website today! And check out our new website for the Brainfood Podcast at https://www.brainfood.fm/

Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at the woman who was arguably the most successful pirate of all time, dominating both land and sea in the vast region she controlled, which all ultimately saw her have one of the most impressive exits to piracy in history as well.

We follow all this up with looking at the origins of a variety of sailor/pirate slang terms.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Woman Who was the Most Successful Pirate of All Time appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Christmas Gift and a Riot

Sat, 22 Dec 2018 22:20:38 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at a Christmas gift that resulted in one of the more celebrated books of all time.

Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at a rather humorous Christmas riot at West Point and then another that had nothing to do with Christmas at Oxford. We follow this up with a myriad of rapid fire Christmas Bonus Facts.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post A Christmas Gift and a Riot appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Christmas Traditions- The Crapper, The Poop Log, the Parasitic Poop Twigs, and Much, Much More

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 00:22:44 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at a couple rather bizarre Spanish Christmas traditions involving holiday defecating…

Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at why we kiss under the mistletoe, the Demon of Christmas, and the constant battle to keep a giant goat from being burned down every year.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Christmas Traditions- The Crapper, The Poop Log, the Parasitic Poop Twigs, and Much, Much More appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

12 Days

Mon, 17 Dec 2018 22:22:18 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at the rather humorous original name for the song Silver Bells.

Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at the truth about the origin of the song “The 12 Days of Christmas” and what’s the deal with the weird lyrics.

After that, we look at the truth about the origin of the Candy Cane and then a rather surprising fact about the song Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post 12 Days appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Truce

Wed, 28 Nov 2018 22:04:13 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at whether poinsettias are actually poisonous or not.

Next we discuss today’s sponsor. If you’re interested, go to https://wix.com/go/brainfood to get started on your Wix website today! And check out our new website for the Brainfood Podcast at https://www.brainfood.fm/.

Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at one of the more remarkable things ever to happen in modern warfare- a completely impromptu Christmas truce, in which both sides in WWI randomly got up out of their trenches up and down the line and threw a party together.

We follow that up with some interesting bonus facts including a rather bizarre requirement the British military had for their soldiers for about a half century, among other things.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Truce appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Sledgehammer for the Poor Man’s Child

Wed, 28 Nov 2018 08:06:46 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we look at one of my favorite stories I’ve ever researched. But before that, we begin by looking at what could have been wrong with Tiny Tim that simply throwing money at the problem could have fixed given 19th century medicine.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Sledgehammer for the Poor Man’s Child appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Remarkable Sarah Hale

Thu, 22 Nov 2018 03:13:13 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at the real reason turkeys are called turkeys.

Next we discuss today’s sponsor, Lumerit education, which is a service to help you figure out the cheapest/fastest/best way to finish college or pick up a degree, and if you like even from the convenience of your own home, with the degrees issued from a variety of top universities. If you’re interested in finding out more on this, please do use this link to go check them out.

Moving on to the main content today we’re discussing one of the most remarkable women of the 19th century- Sarah Josepha Hale went from a recent widow with five children, including one newborn infant, to one of the most influential and successful women of her era, as well as look at her many contributions to American culture at the time.

Next we debunk a variety of pilgrim related myths, and then in the follow up section tell the full story of the plane hijacking attempt referenced in a previous episode where a man attempted to hijack a passenger airplane and fly it into the White House to kill Richard Nixon.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Remarkable Sarah Hale appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tech History Part 3: FIRST!!! + Many, Many Bonus Facts and Contest Winners

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 01:54:40 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at a rather interesting fact about Pulp Fiction and Samuel L Jackson’s character’s most famous lines in the film.

We then move on to briefly mentioning our sponsor for today- Wix.com, where you can go to create awesome looking, exceptionally easy/fast to create websites for free, as we did here at BrainFood.fm. If you’re interested, please go to https://wix.com/go/brainfood to get started on your Wix website today! And check out our new website for the Brainfood Podcast at https://www.brainfood.fm/ Thanks!

Next up, we jump into the main part of the show looking at the surprisingly old first computer and the truth about who really was the first computer programmer. (Note: Not Ada Lovelace, contrary to popular belief.)

Next we jump into a variety of bonus facts including looking at why C is the default hard drive letter on most computers, touch on what this had to do with some rather interesting stuff regarding Microsoft’s early days, the correct way to pronounce “wiki” as in “wikipedia”, what Cunningham’s Law has to do with that, the interesting origin of Tetris, how spam came to mean junk message, and much, much more!

And if you’re interested, here’s the video on Yankee Doodle Dandy we mentioned.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Tech History Part 3: FIRST!!! + Many, Many Bonus Facts and Contest Winners appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Dude Who Burned Down the Greatest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World Because of Reasons

Wed, 07 Nov 2018 00:52:50 -0000

*Note: This is still a little out of order, as we are needing to further delay publishing of the Tech History Part 3 owing to, ironically enough, technical difficulties. We’ll have it up within the week most likely though.

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at what literal battleships had to do with the creation of the Slinky.

Next up, we jump into the main part of the show looking at what is largely considered the greatest of the so-called Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and then look at the guy who burned it down just so history would remember him, as well as what steps the ancients took to try to stop him from achieving that goal.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Dude Who Burned Down the Greatest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World Because of Reasons appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Macabre Part 4: The Vampire of Cinkota and a Truly Horrific Love Story

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 07:07:00 -0000

*Note: This is a little out of order, but we had to delay publishing of the Tech History Part 3 owing to, ironically enough, technical difficulties. We’ll have it up soon enough.

But for now, in this Halloween special of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at whether it’s actually safer to use a crosswalk instead of a just jaywalking as well as the actual origin of the word “jaywalk”.

Next up, we jump into the main part of the show on the horrific tale of the dashingly handsome Bella Kiss, the Vampire of Cinkota, and the many, many women he murdered.

Following that, we move on to a sickly sweet and more than a little morbid love story we’re calling A Rose for Carl.

Relevant Pictures:

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Macabre Part 4: The Vampire of Cinkota and a Truly Horrific Love Story appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tech History Part 2: Who Invented the Internet, Email, and the Web?

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 22:43:57 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at a the absolutely bizarre way bedbugs mate.

Next up, we jump into the main part of the show on who invented the Internet and how it works. We also look at who invented email and the web, and what Al Gore had to do with all this.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Tech History Part 2: Who Invented the Internet, Email, and the Web? appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tech History Part 1: A QWERTY Story and Whether the Dvorak Layout is Actually Superior

Sun, 30 Sep 2018 20:53:00 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at a quick fact surrounding what Elton John, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Genesis had to do with Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Next we discuss our sponsor for this episode, Backblaze. Seriously, one of Simon and I’s favorite services and is ridiculously cheap and easy to setup. Just install and it does the rest making sure all your hard drives and pictures and all that are always automatically backed up in an extremely secure way for about the price of a cup of coffee.

Go check them out: https://www.backblaze.com/brainfood

After the sponsor spot, we then jump into the main part of the show on how the QWERTY keyboard came to be. We also dig into whether the Dvorak keyboard layout is actually superior to QWERTY or if that’s just something people say.

Next up we look at who really invented the mouse and how it languished in obscurity for quite some time before Steve Jobs came along.

A few links for this episode:

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Tech History Part 1: A QWERTY Story and Whether the Dvorak Layout is Actually Superior appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Macabre Part 3: The Nightmare Nurse

Wed, 26 Sep 2018 10:06:12 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we’re looking at the story of an intelligent, sweet little girl who was given up to an orphanage and then grew up to have a rather successful career as a nurse… and just so happens to be one of the most notorious female serial killers in history.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Macabre Part 3: The Nightmare Nurse appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Macabre Part 2: How Shrunken Heads Were Made

Wed, 19 Sep 2018 20:30:14 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we begin by discussing a random quick fact involving the parents of Ferris Bueller on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

We then move on to discussing the show’s sponsor, Dashlane, which is a great free password management service. You can also get a free month of their premium version and then 10% off thereafter by using the coupon code “brainfood”. Either way, please do go check them out using this link. Thanks!

Next we move into the main content for today’s episode which is discussing how exactly people used to get human heads to shrink and why they did this in the first place.

Moving on from that, we look at the fascinating saga of famed philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s head and body.

Finally we move into some feedback and then an interesting Star Trek Fact related to skeletons.

And for those interested:

Picture of Jeremy Bentham’s Head
Our mentioned video on the history of passwords: Who Invented Passwords and the Guy That Made Them Suck
A sampling of Marina Sirtis talking at various conventions:
- Costume Story
- On Deanna Troi’s Accent
The Riker Maneuver
Riker and Picard Badass Walk Loop

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Macabre Part 2: How Shrunken Heads Were Made appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Macabre Part 1: The Gruesome Tale of Burke and Hare

Wed, 12 Sep 2018 22:17:31 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we begin by discussing a random quick fact involving the curious old practice of mailing children.

We then move on to discussing the show’s first sponsor, RXBar. For 25% off your first order, visit https://rxbar.com/brainfood and enter the promo code: brainfood

Next we move into the main content for today’s episode which is the gruesome tale of William Burke and William Hare and their year long murder spree.

Moving on from that, we look at a man who decided to raise his son as a native speaker of Klingon and how that all worked out… Then briefly we touch on whether it’s actually true that kids learn languages faster than adults.

*Note: the clip of Alec singing the Klingon Anthem is no longer available online anymore, but you can hear it sung here if you’re curious.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Macabre Part 1: The Gruesome Tale of Burke and Hare appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Final Final Frontier (Part 6): The Real Color of the Sun, How Many Nuclear Bomb Powered Rockets It Would Take to Stop the Earth Orbiting the Sun and Much, Much More

Wed, 05 Sep 2018 17:41:52 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we begin by discussing the clandestine way Niel Armstrong managed to get his application to the astronaut program in despite submitting it past the deadline. We then look at why he got to be first to walk on the moon when precedent should have had it been Buzz Aldrin. Next up we look at the oft’ forgotten second thing Armstrong said when stepping out onto the moon.

And for those curious on Simon and my treatise on the proper order of watching Star Trek series and other such thoughts, the mentioned forum post is here.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Final Final Frontier (Part 6): The Real Color of the Sun, How Many Nuclear Bomb Powered Rockets It Would Take to Stop the Earth Orbiting the Sun and Much, Much More appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Final Frontier Part 5: Are the Odds of Successfully Navigating an Asteroid Field Really Approximately 3,720 to 1?

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 23:26:04 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we begin by discussing the real origin of Tang and what that has to do with Pop Rocks and how they work. We then move on to the interesting story behind the invention of Velcro and how it works.

Next up we look at whether NASA really spent many millions of dollars developing the famous “space pen” instead of just using a pencil like the Russians.

Moving on, we look at what the actual odds of navigating a typical asteroid field in space would be and whether the depictions in movies here are actually accurate.

Also for reference, here is a picture of the two sides of Velcro under a microscope and another of the burdock plant seeds mentioned.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Final Frontier Part 5: Are the Odds of Successfully Navigating an Asteroid Field Really Approximately 3,720 to 1? appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Final Frontier Part 4: The U.S. Plan to Nuke the Moon, Why People Thought the Moon was Made of Cheese and Much More

Thu, 23 Aug 2018 20:32:35 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we begin by discussing the first space walk in which the cosmonaut in question very nearly got stuck out there and his adventures thereafter. We then move on to discussing how the idea that the moon is made of green cheese got started.

Also for reference, here is a picture of the Russian spacecraft mentioned in the episode and here is a link to the Tom Kirby song.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Final Frontier Part 4: The U.S. Plan to Nuke the Moon, Why People Thought the Moon was Made of Cheese and Much More appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Final Frontier Part 3: How to Scratch an Itch in Space, the Surprisingly Long Time You Can Survive in Space Without a Spacesuit, Why the Apollo 13 Astronauts Got Cold, and Much, Much More

Sun, 12 Aug 2018 00:17:42 -0000

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Final Frontier Part 3: How to Scratch an Itch in Space, the Surprisingly Long Time You Can Survive in Space Without a Spacesuit, Why the Apollo 13 Astronauts Got Cold, and Much, Much More appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Final Frontier Part 2: How Astronauts Go to the Bathroom in Space and How Women Can Safely Pee Standing Up

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 02:50:36 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we begin by following up on a previous discussion on what the first good movie based on a computer game was. We then jump right into the various ways in which astronauts have managed their necessary expulsions over the years and some hilarious stories and interesting related facts that go along with that, including the teased Apollo 10 incident from The Final Frontier Part 1.

We then discuss the lost skill of women peeing standing up without getting any pee on themselves or their underwear in the process, and how exactly this is done with no equipment required.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Final Frontier Part 2: How Astronauts Go to the Bathroom in Space and How Women Can Safely Pee Standing Up appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Final Frontier Part 1: Real Life Space DJs and the Pillownaughts

Mon, 30 Jul 2018 05:14:42 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we kick off a series on space related facts. Before we get started in that, however, we do some follow up answering the question of whether the Allies in WWII used prisoners of war as slave labor. We then jump into the topic of the real life job of Space DJ, then the saga of the Pillownaughts.

On another, if you could do us a huge favor and rate and review this show in whatever podcasting platform you’re using (including hopefully giving us some feedback related to the new format), we would be extremely grateful. Thanks!

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Final Frontier Part 1: Real Life Space DJs and the Pillownaughts appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The War Bear

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 23:31:01 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, which is partially a continuation of the last, we discuss the bear that was officially a member of the Polish army, how he came to be such and what became of him after WWII ended. We follow this up by discussing the interesting origin of the Live Long and Prosper Vulcan salute.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The War Bear appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Prisoner (+Contest Winners)

Tue, 10 Jul 2018 06:23:02 -0000

If you’d like to learn more about Witold Pilecki as well as read in his own words about much of what is discussed in this episode, go check out: The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Prisoner (+Contest Winners) appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The First Road Trip Part 2: In Which We Discuss All Things Tangentially Related

Wed, 27 Jun 2018 07:35:14 -0000

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The First Road Trip Part 2: In Which We Discuss All Things Tangentially Related appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The First Road Trip Part 1: The Gumption of Bertha Benz

Fri, 22 Jun 2018 04:33:07 -0000

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The First Road Trip Part 1: The Gumption of Bertha Benz appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Could the Tyrannosaurus Rex Really Not See You If You Didn’t Move?

Fri, 15 Jun 2018 00:04:18 -0000

Next up we discuss whether the Tyrannosaurus Rex could really not see you if you didn’t move as depicted in Jurassic Park, as well as a few other interesting Jurassic Park factoids.

Then we get into a little podcast feedback and finish up by discussing the interesting thing that would have actually happened in Finding Nemo when Nemo’s mother died had it been more accurate.

And if you’re wondering why we aren’t announcing the winner of the contest in this one, it’s because we recorded this one before the Caesar series over a month ago and simply completely forgot about it… So it’s a little behind the times.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Could the Tyrannosaurus Rex Really Not See You If You Didn’t Move? appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caesar Part 4: In Which We Discuss All Things Tangentially Related

Fri, 08 Jun 2018 01:27:22 -0000

This is part 4 of our 4 part series on Julius Caesar. Stay tuned next time for when we talk about something completely different!

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Caesar Part 4: In Which We Discuss All Things Tangentially Related appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caesar Part 3: The Real Story of the Ides of March

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 21:39:15 -0000

Over the course of the episode we also discuss why likely most every quote you’ve ever read from Socrates was not actually something Socrates said, among other tangents.

And just a small correction: “Sherlock” not “Shakespeare” (You’ll know when you get there.)

This is part 3 of our 4 part series on Julius Caesar. Stay tuned next time for when we look at a variety of interesting facts related to what we’ve discussed in parts 1-3.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Caesar Part 3: The Real Story of the Ides of March appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caesar Part 2: Julius Caesar’s Pirate Adventure and the Long Lost Location of the Rubicon

Wed, 30 May 2018 21:58:33 -0000

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Caesar Part 2: Julius Caesar’s Pirate Adventure and the Long Lost Location of the Rubicon appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caesar Part 1: Caesarean and the Fascinating Story of Dr. James Barry (a.k.a. Margaret Bulkley)

Wed, 23 May 2018 23:14:53 -0000

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Caesar Part 1: Caesarean and the Fascinating Story of Dr. James Barry (a.k.a. Margaret Bulkley) appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An Interview with Audio Production Guru Mike Russell

Fri, 18 May 2018 08:07:46 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we talk to audio production expert and head of Music Radio Creative, Mike Russell. During the interview, we discuss basic audio gear needed to relatively cheaply get started podcasting, doing voice overs, etc., as well as touch on why YouTubers should really be looking into expanding their repertoire beyond YouTube and into the audio space, among other topics.

If you want to learn how to improve your own audio production, we strongly recommend you check out Mike’s YouTube channel here, as well as check out Music Radio Creative, which presently works with clients from over 190 different countries, making jingles, audio books, explainer videos, audio for games, as well as just helping clients in a variety of ways to up their audio game.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post An Interview with Audio Production Guru Mike Russell appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Bull Moose Part 2

Tue, 15 May 2018 01:15:33 -0000

And as mentioned in the episode, here’s the Wikipedia page on various forced sterilization campaigns by nation.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Bull Moose Part 2 appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Growing a YouTube Channel

Wed, 09 May 2018 20:51:28 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we cover a myriad of tips and tricks to help grow a YouTube channel and maximize the odds of being successful in that space, including covering elements of the YouTube algorithm, thumbnail design, etc. Much of this talk was gleaned from interesting things we learned at VidCon Amsterdam, and particularly from the various talks given by Matt and Stephanie Patrick from the hugely popular Game Theorists channel.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Growing a YouTube Channel appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Bull Moose Part 1

Wed, 02 May 2018 20:39:03 -0000

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Bull Moose Part 1 appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stealing the Eiffel Tower

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 01:25:34 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show podcast, we discuss that time a man managed to successfully sell the Eiffel Tower… even though he didn’t own it.

We also lament the lack of awesome World’s Fairs in modern times only to subsequently discover they are actually still a thing…

And finally we wrap up discussing the fascinating list known as the “10 Commandments for Con Men”.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Stealing the Eiffel Tower appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Writing and Researching Online- A Chat with Karl Smallwood

Mon, 23 Apr 2018 05:05:24 -0000

In this episode of The Brain Food Show podcast, we interview prolific online writer and researcher Karl Smallwood. Karl’s written for TodayIFoundOut for over five years now, producing hundreds of articles, including many of the most popular on the website and channel. Beyond that, he’s also written for such sites as Cracked, Mental_Floss, TopTenz, Biographics, and many others. In his spare time he also runs the criminally undersubscribed channel FactFiend here, as well as its companion website.

During the interview Karl gives tips on things like how to rapidly become an expert on a given subject you might otherwise start out with little knowledge on, writing online, time management, juggling many writing projects and more.

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Writing and Researching Online- A Chat with Karl Smallwood appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Restaurant for a Beetle and $100 and a Bike- The Fascinating Stories Behind Four Famous Businesses

Tue, 17 Apr 2018 19:26:44 -0000

In this episode of The BrainFood Show, we look at the fascinating and sometimes hilarious origins of four of the biggest companies in the world. We also discuss our new podcast format and wrap up the show discussing the Curse of the Colonel and other related bonus facts.

If you could do us a huge favor and rate and review this show in whatever podcasting platform you’re using (including hopefully giving us some feedback related to the new format), we would be extremely grateful. Thanks!

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

(Image Source)

The post A Restaurant for a Beetle and $100 and a Bike- The Fascinating Stories Behind Four Famous Businesses appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Enlightened Rigging of the Lottery + Wheezy Waiter (The BrainFood Show Episode 5)

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 19:21:35 -0000

In episode 5 of The BrainFood Show podcast, we discuss the shady, but clever, business dealings of famed enlightenment thinker Voltaire that ultimately allowed him to write with the impunity he is so famous for, where most others of his time and region of the world could not.

Next up we talk to famed YouTuber Craig Benzine (better known online by his moniker Wheezy Waiter) about the changes in YouTuber over time, the types of things aspiring YouTubers should do differently today than in the early days of the platform, and just a general interesting chat on his thoughts on a variety of things.

If you would like to follow Craig on the many things he works on, you can check out Story Not Story (a popular bedtime story podcast with his wife, Chyna), his main YouTube channel Wheezy Waiter, and The GoodStuff. You can also catch him on a variety of channels including Crash Course film history and more.

We wrap up the podcast with some Q&A, Feedback, and Bonus Facts, including the origin of the story of Newton having an apple on fall on his head and whether there is any truth behind said story.

Finally, if you could do us a huge favor and rate and review this show in whatever podcasting platform you’re using, we would be extremely grateful. Thanks!

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post Enlightened Rigging of the Lottery + Wheezy Waiter (The BrainFood Show Episode 5) appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Fascinating Origin of Pong and Atari + Interview with the Creators of Quest for Glory and the Upcoming Hero-U (The BrainFood Show Episode 4)

Thu, 15 Mar 2018 23:55:22 -0000

In episode 4 of The BrainFood Show podcast, we discuss the fascinating origin of Atari and the game that more or less gave birth to an industry- Pong. Next up, we talk with award winning computer game designers Lori and Corey Cole, most notably creators of one of the greatest game series in history, the groundbreaking Quest for Glory (which you can find on GOG if you’re wanting to play them), as well as the highly anticipated upcoming Hero-U – Rogue to Redemption.

During the conversation we discuss such things as how to make a good Kickstarter, as well as how to become a computer game developer. They also give a behind the scenes look at developing computer games, talk a little about what it was like working at Sierra in its glory days, give some phenomenal life advice, and much more!

We wrap up the podcast discussing how YouTube should solve the issue of integrated ads being shown to YouTube Red subscribers.

If you’re interested in pre-ordering the Coles’ new game Hero-U or want to learn more about the game, go check it out here.

And if you want to listen to one of the funny things they had John Rhys-Davies saying in Quest for Glory 4, check out the scene with the Rusalka mentioned in the podcast.

Finally, if you could do us a huge favor and rate and review this show in whatever podcasting platform you’re using, we would be extremely grateful. Thanks!

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Fascinating Origin of Pong and Atari + Interview with the Creators of Quest for Glory and the Upcoming Hero-U (The BrainFood Show Episode 4) appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Preposterous Pyramid (The BrainFood Show Episode 3)

Sat, 10 Mar 2018 01:20:19 -0000

In episode 3 of The BrainFood Show podcast, we discuss the fascinating origins of the Food Pyramid and why that is a horribly unhealthy way to eat (and why the USDA made it that way even though they knew well it wasn’t a healthy recommendation at the time). We also discuss whether eating too much salt is actually bad for you or not, what actually is the difference between fruits and vegetables, and what ultra-scientifically grounded nutrition recommendations say we should eat.

Next up, we look at a great productivity tool, why clocks run clockwise, why grandfather clocks are called that, one of the great Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, and much, much more.

For some viewing materials for this one, please check out the Swedish Food Pyramid and the USDA pyramid. You can also view the Harvard Food Plate and the USDA’s Food Plate, as well as read through their general recommendations.

Our book recommendation for the day is either Bigger, Leaner, Stronger (for guys) or Thinner, Leaner, Stronger (for girls) both written by a guy named Michael Matthews and both ultra-science based, easy reads on proper nutrition and exercise and how to do both as easy and enjoyably as possible. Very much cutting through many of the myths and misconceptions out there, generally put forth by fad diet creators and the like. It turns out proper nutrition and efficient exercise really isn’t that complicated.

Finally, if you could do us a huge favor and rate and review this show in whatever podcasting platform you’re using, we would be extremely grateful. Thanks!

(You can also discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.)

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The Preposterous Pyramid (The BrainFood Show Episode 3) appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The White Feather (The BrainFood Show Episode 2)

Wed, 28 Feb 2018 21:55:33 -0000

In episode 2 of The BrainFood Show podcast, we discuss what actually started WWI, with the motivations there not quite what most people think, some rather interesting things the soldiers on both sides got up to in the early days of the war, and the absolutely bizarre, but effective, Order of the White Feather. We wrap up this section discussing the man the almost universally misinterpreted poem The Road Not Taken is based on and the connection between the poem and his ultimate death not long after he read it.

Next up we discuss the pros and cons of niche vs non-niche on YouTube and beyond, our plans for the TodayIFoundOut channel in 2018, and answer some subscriber questions.

And for those interested in reading the full and quite fascinating write-up on the story behind The Road Not Taken, you can find that here.

Discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The White Feather (The BrainFood Show Episode 2) appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The BrainFood Show Episode 1: Throwing Tomatoes

Mon, 19 Feb 2018 22:28:45 -0000

In this debut episode of our new The BrainFood Show podcast, we discuss the surprising similarities between online commenters and audiences throughout history, as well as how the practice of throwing tomatoes at performers got started. We’ll also be looking at the various ways to monetize on youtube and websites and just generally explaining how all that works. Finally, we cover a little Q&A using some of the most commonly asked questions directed at us on YouTube and the website.

Discuss this episode and view references on The BrainFood Show forum here.

Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML

You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show

The post The BrainFood Show Episode 1: Throwing Tomatoes appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices