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Have you ever been told never to wake a sleepwalker, and just accepted it as fact without ever questioning where that rule came from?

The episode gets into the real sleep science behind sleepwalking, covering what the brain is actually doing during an episode, why sleepwalkers can navigate a room with their eyes open but have no memory of it, and what sleep disorders research actually says about the risks. Spoiler-free version: the folklore and the neuroscience tell very different stories.

What you were warned about as a kid turns out to be one of the most confidently repeated myths in sleep science.

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Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

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- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Enjoying the show? Follow Fool's FAQ and drop a 5-star rating & review - it's hands-down the best way to help other curious people find us.

Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If the universe is expanding, what exactly is it expanding into?

We get into the cosmology behind one of the most searched questions in science, covering Hubble's Law, the Big Bang, dark energy, and what the observable universe actually means. Along the way, the episode unpacks the cosmic microwave background, the Hubble tension, and why the answer to "expanding into what" requires rethinking what the word "into" even means.

The universe isn't doing what you think it's doing, and the real explanation is somehow both simpler and much stranger.

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Enjoying the show? Follow Fool's FAQ and drop a 5-star rating & review - it's hands-down the best way to help other curious people find us.

Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Has one blurry photograph ever done more work to keep a legend alive than it had any right to?

We get into the full story behind the Loch Ness Monster, from the earliest recorded sightings in the Scottish Highlands to the famous 1934 "Surgeon's Photograph," sonar surveys, scientific expeditions, and environmental DNA analysis of the loch itself. You'll learn how a combination of wishful thinking, optical illusions, and one very well-timed hoax turned a quiet Scottish lake into one of the most investigated bodies of water on Earth.

What the evidence actually says about Nessie is not what most people expect, and it might surprise you either way.

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Enjoying the show? Follow Fool's FAQ and drop a 5-star rating & review - it's hands-down the best way to help other curious people find us.

Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Did you know the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, but some enslaved people in Texas didn't hear about it until more than 2 years later?

We get into the history behind Juneteenth, including why the news was so delayed in reaching Texas, the role of General Gordon Granger's General Order No. 3 in June 1865, and how the Thirteenth Amendment finally made freedom the law of the land. You'll also learn how the day evolved from a local Texas observance into a nationally recognized federal holiday, and what it represents as a symbol of resilience in African American history.

The gap between a proclamation and the moment it actually changes someone's life turns out to be a story all its own.

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Enjoying the show? Follow Fool's FAQ and drop a 5-star rating & review - it's hands-down the best way to help other curious people find us.

Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Did a giant explosion in the Siberian sky really come from outer space, or are we just filling in the blanks with the wildest story we can imagine?

You hear about the 1908 Tunguska event as a “mystery blast,” but what actually happened over that remote stretch of Siberian forest? We look at eyewitness accounts of the shockwave, the massive tree fall pattern, and what scientists have pieced together from the site. Along the way, we talk about meteor airbursts, asteroid fragments, atmospheric entry, and why ideas like alien spacecraft or secret weapons keep hanging around in books and forums.

The reason this one has stayed unsolved in so many people’s minds has less to do with what happened, and more to do with what we did not see.

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Enjoying the show? Follow Fool's FAQ and drop a 5-star rating & review - it's hands-down the best way to help other curious people find us.

Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You've definitely yawned today, but do you actually know why?

The episode covers the real science behind yawning and why it spreads so easily, touching on the brain thermoregulation theory, the role of mirror neurons in contagious yawning, and what empathy and social bonding have to do with a reflex you can't control. Research from the University of Nottingham even links yawn contagion to the same neural mechanisms behind conditions like ADHD and autism spectrum disorder.

The reason yawning is contagious has nothing to do with being tired, and everything to do with how your brain reads the people around you.

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Enjoying the show? Follow Fool's FAQ and drop a 5-star rating & review - it's hands-down the best way to help other curious people find us.

Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You've heard the story about George Washington and his wooden teeth, but what if the real story is stranger, more painful, and made of hippopotamus ivory?

This episode digs into Washington's lifelong dental struggles, from his first tooth extraction at age 24 to the full dentures he wore by inauguration day. Key figures include his dentist John Greenwood, and the real materials behind the dentures, hippo ivory, animal teeth, gold wire springs, and human teeth, all come up, alongside the cognitive and historical reasons the wooden teeth myth took hold and never let go.

What's actually in the history books is weirder than anything a myth could make up.

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Enjoying the show? Follow Fool's FAQ and drop a 5-star rating & review - it's hands-down the best way to help other curious people find us.

Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Did you actually remember that wrong, or did everyone just agree to misremember it together?

Hunter gets into the science behind the Mandela Effect, covering reconstructive memory, schema theory, and confabulation, the cognitive quirk the NIH describes as "honest lying." Along the way, the episode fact-checks some of the most confident collective false memories in pop culture, from the Monopoly Man's monocle to Pikachu's tail, and examines why quantum mechanics and the many-worlds interpretation can't actually explain any of it.

The real reason millions of people share the same wrong memory is less mysterious than you'd hope, and more unsettling than you'd expect.

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Enjoying the show? Follow Fool's FAQ and drop a 5-star rating & review - it's hands-down the best way to help other curious people find us.

Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if your dog's bark and your parrot's squawk are part of languages as complex as anything humans speak?

We explore animal communication across species, from the waggle dance honeybees use to share food locations with their hive to the infrasound rumbles elephants send across miles and the sophisticated echolocation clicks dolphins use to navigate and hunt. You'll learn what behavioral scientists have discovered about how animals encode meaning, why some species seem to have dialects, and what we're still getting wrong about the animals we think we understand.

The more we listen, the less certain we become about what counts as language.

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Enjoying the show? Follow Fool's FAQ and drop a 5-star rating & review - it's hands-down the best way to help other curious people find us.

Want to support the show? Toss a few bucks in the tip jar → Buy me a coffee ☕️

Hunter's Socials: X | Letterboxd

Sponsorships, collaborations, or general inquiries → [email protected]

- Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.

Stay curious.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.