The BrainFood Show

By Cloud10Education History

The BrainFood Show episodes

June 11 The Real Story of Jack the Ripper
He is one of the most famous serial killers of all time, but who actually was Jack the Ripper and what actually happened during his reign of terror.
Just before 4 am on August 31, 1888, on London’s seedy Buck’s Row, a cart driver named Charles Cross saw the body of a woman lying on the ground. In the early morning gloom, it was initially impossible to tell if she was drunk or dead. Cross was soon joined by another carter, Robert Paul. The two men saw the woman’s skirts were pulled above her waist. They smoothed them back over her knees and went searching for a policeman.
What the two carters didn’t notice in the shifting shadows was the woman’s throat had been cut so brutally that her head had almost been decapitated. Beat officer John Neil discovered that gruesome fact on closer inspection of the body. (He later testified at the inquest that when he had passed that way just 30 minutes earlier, “there was not a soul about.”)
P.C. Neil sent another colleague to fetch a local medic and soon Dr. Rees Ralph Llewellyn arrived on the scene. He quickly examined the body and found that the arms and legs were still warm. Llewellyn believed the woman had been dead for less than 30 minutes. Her killer may have still been lurking nearby when Cross and Paul came upon the body....
Host: Simon Whistler
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila

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16 min
June 10 What Actually Were "Foo Fighters"?
Everlong. Learn to Fly. Best of You. All My Life. The Pretender. These are but a few of the top-charting songs by American rock band The Foo Fighters, founded in 1994 by legendary former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl. But what actually is a Foo Fighter? Well, it turns out the band’s name is not just merely a random string of nonsense words, but rather refers to strange phenomenon observed by pilots over Europe and the Pacific during the Second World War, one of a string of such weird occurrences throughout history through today that have caused some to point to the classic explanation when anything weird appears in the sky- aliens.
But what’s actually going on here? Well, today we’ll be looking at everything from tales of ancient aliens, to what actually were the Foo Fighters of WWII and where the name came from, to that time the U.S. Military finally buckled down to take a deep look into it all to see if the Earth was in any danger from extraterrestrials, and what they determined, as well as why we are all pronouncing UFO wrong, and how the coiner of the term explicitly stated it should be said.
Author: Gilles Messier
Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Daven Hiskey
0:00 Intro
2:37 Ancient Aliens?
10:44 The 19th Century UFO Craze
15:20 WWI UFO Encounters
16:57 WWII's Mysterious Foo Fighters
27:10 Why are They Called Foo Fighters?
30:30 What Were Foo Fighters?
40:14 The U.S. Military Gets Serious About the Search for Aliens
43:26 What the Military Discovered About UFOs

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50 min
June 09 The Mysterious Disappearance of One of the Most Successful Recording Artists of All Time
Glenn Miller was on the top of his game in 1944. He led the most popular recording group in the world. His only rival for king of Big Band music was the great Benny Goodman. During World War II, 40-year-old Miller was serving as a major in the United States Army Air Force while performing for the troops.
On December 15, 1944, he boarded a small plane for the short flight across the English Channel to do a show in Paris for American troops that had just helped liberate France. Miller and the two other men on the aircraft never made it to their destination. No trace of the wreckage or any of the passengers was ever found, and Glenn Miller is still listed as missing in action.
Of course, as with any accidental celebrity death, speculation about the circumstances began almost immediately...
Host: Simon Whistler
Producer: Samuel Avila

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18 min
June 08Why is the Keyboard Layout What It Is and Is There a Better Version?
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.
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:
⁠The Mother of All Demos (1968)⁠

⁠Remington #2⁠

⁠Canadian First Mouse⁠

⁠First Handheld Mouse⁠

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1 hr 21 min
June 05 Why Doesn't the U.S. Use the Metric System, Why Fingernails on Chalkboards Make Us Cringe & More
In today's compilation episode, we're covering a myriad of Whys, from Why the United States doesn't use the metric system, why fingernails on chalkboards make us cringe, why we have moles on our bodies, why doesn't the heart get tired like other muscles, and much, much more.
0:00 Why Doesn’t the United States Use the Metric System?
20:55 Why Does the Sound of Fingernails on a Chalkboard or Scraping a Plate Make Us Cringe?
35:09 Why Do We Have Moles All Over Our Bodies and What Do They Do?
42:55 Why Doesn’t the Heart Get Tired and Need to Rest Like Other Muscles?
54:25 Why Do Some People Think the Human Soul Weighs 21 Grams?
1:06:14 Why Do the Eyes in Some Paintings Follow You Around the Room?
1:11:17 Why Does Soda Taste Significantly Better When Carbonated vs. Flat?
1:14:01 Why Do We Get Allergies?
1:27:33 Why You Sometimes Get a Lump in the Back of Your Throat When Sad and Why We Cry
1:32:44 Why Coffee Makes You Poop
1:40:14 Why Can’t People Smell Themselves?

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1 hr 52 min
June 04 The Forbidden Ancient Roman Scrolls That Shaped History
When we think of the most influential books in history, we often think of books that have a wide readership. Something that if not most literate people read, surely, many of the elite did. But it turns out, some of the most influential books in ancient history were only read by, quite literally, a handful of people. You see, Rome had a set of holy books, divinely revealed to a mysterious prophetess, that were kept under lock and key by a college of Roman priests never numbering more than 15 at a time. These books were only read by this select few, and were used by the Roman Senate to help decide all manner of things important to the management of Rome. This is the story of the mysterious Sibylline Books, the books not even the Roman senate were allowed to read.
The Sibylline Books were three volumes of Greek hexameter poems, the same meter used in the Greek epics of Homer. We don’t actually know where the Sibylline Books came from other than the Romans' own mythology about them. The story goes that the last of Rome’s seven kings, Tarquinius Superbus who died in 495 BCE, was approached by an old woman with nine books written in Greek that told Rome’s future. She offered these books at an exorbitant price, so Tarquinius refused. The old woman then burned three of the books and offered the remaining books at the same price. Tarquinius, who is portrayed as arrogant in Roman literature, refused her a second time. The old woman burned three more books and offered the remaining three at again the same price. It was at this point that Tarquinius approached his priests to figure out if any of this was a sign from the gods. The priests advised him to buy the remaining books at whatever price the old woman named. Upon purchasing the books from the woman, she disappeared, never to be seen again. The name Sibylline refers to the woman in question, as she is thought of as a Sibyl, or a prophetess in the Greek tradition.
Author: Yehia Amen
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Host: Simon Whistler
Producer: Samuel Avila

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14 min
June 03 Why the Heck Couldn't Doc Brown Have Just Made Gasoline in Back to the Future III?
In the 1990 sci-fi comedy sequel Back to the Future Part III, intrepid time travelling late 20th century duo Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett Brown find themselves trapped in Hill Valley, California, back in the year 1885. With their DeLorean time machine out of gas and it being, well, 1885, Doc and Marty are forced to take creative measures to accelerate their ride up to the required 88 miles per hour and get back to the future.
Doc Brown’s solution for this? An elaborate plan involving hijacking a moving train, pushing its boiler to the absolute limit and beyond of its structural capabilities as it careened towards a ravine, and then if it happened to all go well, the car would get up to 88 mph, thereby sending it back to the future. If not, well… the pair’s futures would officially be something neither would ever need to worry about again after they plummeted to their deaths.
But while this certainly makes for an awesome climax to one of the greatest trilogies of all time, 1885 was not that far removed from the age of the automobile; indeed, that very same year German inventor Karl Benz unveiled his Patent Motorwagen, widely considered history’s first practical, mass-produced car. Or, at least the Model 3 version was when 3 years later his wife Bertha Benz snuck out of the house before her husband got up, stole the car, and took the world’s first road trip- all to save her husband’s company, and rid him of his incessant self doubt. Along the way, she even invented the world’s first brake pad, among other tweaks she came up with along the way that were needed to improve the design for long distance travel. Much more on the genuinely incredible story of the world’s first road trip and the extreme gumption and ingenuity of Bertha Benz in the Bonus Facts later.
But back to Doc Brown- surely a man of his intellect and resourcefulness, a self proclaimed “student of all sciences” to the extent that when recruited to the Manhattan Project, the General who did so questioned why Doc Brown had a book on needlepoint, to which Doc replied he didn’t like to dismiss anything, as any bit of knowledge could lead to a breakthrough… sure this man of all men could simply have made his own gasoline and gotten back to 1985 the regular way… right?
Well, put on your life preserver and crank up the Power of Love as we go Back to the…origins of the petroleum industry, the first usable gas for automobiles, and figure out whether doc brown should have been able to figure all this one out in the few days he had to work with.
Author: Gilles Messier
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Host: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Daven Hiskey
0:00 Intro
4:10 Origins of the Petroleum Industry
8:38 A World Changing Breakthrough
12:08 The Fuel Doc Brown Had Access to in 1885 Hill Valley
13:17 The Octane Issue
15:19 Could Doc Brown Have Solved the Octane Issue?
20:37 The Easiest Octane Solution of All
22:30 Summing Up Whether Doc Brown Could Have Just Made Usable Gasoline
23:41 The OG Car and the First Road Trip That Saved It

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35 min
June 02 How Did J.R.R. Tolkien Die?
J.R.R. Tolkien created one of the greatest and most influential works of fiction in history. But how did he come up with it, what was his life like, and how did it end? This is the story of the man behind the Lord of the Rings.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892, in South Africa. His family returned to their native England when he was a small child. Tolkien’s parents had died by the time he was 12, so he and his younger brother Hilary were raised by their family’s priest, Father Francis Morgen.
Ronald, as he was called, remained a devout Catholic his entire life. Tolkien was gifted with an exceptional knack for linguistics. While attending King Edward’s School in Birmingham, he was adept at Latin and Greek, and later learned Anglo-Saxon and Finnish.
He also developed his own languages, complete with grammar rules and guidelines for usage. During his studies, he became enchanted with the old stories of ancient races with their awesome gods and fated heroes on epic adventures. While he was in school, he also met a young lady named Edith Bratt...

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15 min
June 02 Introducing: Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bhat | The Mary Celeste: The Ghost Ship of the Atlantic
Dr. Harini Bhat is a clinical pharmacist and storyteller obsessed with the moments in history that still can't be fully explained. Every week she investigates real events that defy easy explanation. Mass hysterias. Vanished civilizations. Medical oddities. Strange signals. Unexplained phenomena that keep repeating across centuries, as if history is trying to tell us something.
Hidden History doesn't dismiss ancient events as myth or superstition. It treats them as open case files, shaped by the limits of knowledge, technology, and record-keeping. Because the unknown isn't a failure of explanation. It's a constant in human experience, one that evolves, repeats, and sometimes deepens the more we learn.
Follow Hidden History with Dr. Harini Bhat now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or watch on YouTube @hiddenhistorypod. Listen here: https://pod.link/1895066656

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10 min
June 01A Vampire and a Real Life Truly Horrific Love Story
In today's episode, 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:
⁠Dear sweet Alive Helen⁠

⁠Helen’s Crypt⁠

⁠Helen’s Spaceship⁠

⁠Helen really let herself go after she died apparently…⁠
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!

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45 min

About The BrainFood Show

From the publisher's feed

In this show, the team behind the wildly popular TodayIFoundOut YouTube channel do deep dives into a variety of fascinating topics to help you feed your brain with interesting knowledge.