The BrainFood Show

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

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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.

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

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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

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When Boris Yeltsin resigned as president of the Russian Federation, it

Author: Daven Hiskey

Host: Simon Whistler

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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