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

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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

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

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?

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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. :-)

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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

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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.”

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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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