The BrainFood Show

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.

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⁠⁠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.

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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.

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⁠⁠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.

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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.

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⁠⁠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!

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⁠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.

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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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.

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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.

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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

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