The BrainFood Show

By Cloud10Education History

The BrainFood Show episodes

June 03, 2025 What's It Actually Like to Be an Amish Person?
As humans continue to rapidly accelerate to replacing ourselves with
robot overlords or otherwise see if we can’t make Wall-E into a
prophetic mocumentary, one group of homosapiens refuses to go quietly
into the night. And, while it may come as a surprise to you, this group
is seemingly set to inherit the Earth, given their population is
exploding, whilst birth rates for the rest of us are declining to an
extent that most developed nations are already well past the point where
their coming generations will be significantly smaller than the
current. But not so for our butter churning brethren. We are, of course,
speaking of the Amish, who provide for us a stark contrast to our
fast-paced, egocentric lives, with their staunch and deliberate refusal
to get swept up in any of it. But is Amish life really as idyllic as it
appears from the outside? And just what is the reality of life as an
Amish person really like? Well, hitch up your buggy, and let’s walk
through the valley where they harvest their grain, shall we?

Author: Daven Hiskey
Host: Simon Whistler

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57 min
May 17, 2025 Who was the Most Prolific Serial Killer of All Time?
In the pantheon of worst humans to ever human you will find no shortage
of bastions of awful. Hitler probably has the most collective conscious
panache, but at least he had the decency to bravely, and with no regard
for his personal safety, infiltrate the Hitler bunker and then put a
bullet through the cranium of Hitler. But individuals like Hitler did
their killing via proxy. As for those who were a little more hands on,
the Hitler of these was arguably a man by the name of Vasili Blokhin
who, as we’ve covered previously in our video Who Has Directly Murdered
the Most People By Their Own Hand?, personally killed, one at a time,
over 7,000 people in under one month alone, let alone countless others
he offed at other points in his career. Vasili and many others like him,
however, killed for their respective states. In contrast, within this
subset of individuals who killed by their own hand, we have a special
class that in recent decades has been given the moniker “serial killer”,
which brings us to the macabre topic of today- who was the most
prolific serial killer of all time?

Host: Simon Whistler
Author: Daven Hiskey

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36 min
May 16, 2025 That Time the Postal Service Tried Sending Mail Via Missile
In this episode of The BrainFood Show, we're looking at that time the
British tried to replace parachutes with rockets, that time the United
States tried sending U.S. Postal Service mail via missiles, and the
origins and interesting stories surrounding NASA's Steely Eyed Missile
Man expression, and why the rocket launch countdown is stupid.
Corrections- Star Spangled Banner was written during the War of 1812. I
knew this. I do not know what I was thinking at the time. :-)
Hosts: Karl Smallwood and Daven Hiskey
Authors: Gilles Messier, Karl Smallwood, and Daven Hiskey
Producer: Daven Hiskey
Subscribe to the BrainFood Show:
Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-brainfood-show/id1350586459
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/36xpXQMPVXhWJzMoCHPJKd
YouTube:
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RSS Feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/brainfood
Tangential Things Discussed in This Episode:
The German Rocket Fighter that Dissolved its Pilots Alive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfAw4YvI_u0
How to Survive Falling from a Plane Without a Parachute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x64DFUo7R
The First Man to Walk in Space Almost Got Stuck Out There
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmXdWLWMTkg
How Much Did Top Gun: Maverick Cost the U.S. Taxpayer?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w42bQrcu3aY
The Tale of the Man Who Nearly Drowned While Falling from the Sky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfUCb4ERxt8
The Mysterious Death of Yuri Gagarin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP_QEmIsnKk
Pigeon Guided Missiles and Literal Bat Bombs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbPG8jSud14
The Chicken Heated Nuclear Land Mine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJuxpf-RE7k
A Wingtip and a Prayer: the Insane Way British Pilots Defeated Germany’s
Secret Weapon https://youtu.be/rb6Xa1acNDE
The US Military’s Obsessive World War II Ice Cream Crusade
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOi_--kS4CE
Did NASA Spend Millions Developing a Pen When the Russians Used Pencils?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAJpzWUhuqM
0:00 Intro
2:37 That Time the British Navy Tried to Replace Parachutes with Rockets
26:19 Missile Mail
56:06 Steely Eyed Missile Man
1:15:55 Launch Countdown

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1 hr 36 min
May 09, 2025 Lies! The Truth About the Tesla vs Edison Feud
If there’s two things the internet knows about Nikola Tesla, it’s that he was a genius scientist vastly ahead of his time, and that thanks to a many decades long feud with Thomas Edison which included Edison stealing some of his work and otherwise keeping his former employee on the black balled list, Tesla died in poverty and was largely forgotten by history until relatively recently…
The thing is, other than the part about Tesla being a genius, literally none of the rest of what I just said is true. In fact, most of what popular history remembers about Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison both individually and with regards to their relationship is pure myth.
Ringing in on this, historian Keith Nier very aptly stated of Thomas Edison, "He is actually one of the least well known of all famous people, and much of what everybody thinks they know about him is no more reliable than a fairy tale."
And as for Tesla? That’s even more of the case for him than Edison. To a pretty shocking degree actually.
In fact, in the couple decades we’ve been researching and writing to the tune of several thousand videos, we’ve never come across two individuals that popular history gets so incredibly wrong. Unfortunately for us, who were once major Tesla fanboys, this meant facing some rather harsh truths about the man and his work and ideas… which were… ya… we’ll get into it all. But as for Edison, turns out kind of an incredible human when you throw out all the myths that largely came about thanks to becoming the devil to god Tesla in the popular narrative of Tesla’s life.
So, without further ado, let’s welcome in my co-host Gilles with his vast engineering knowledge to get to the bottom of it all so that you, too, can now smugly walk around knowing the true story of Tesla and Edison, while fanboys and haters on the interwebs continue to sling their myths and misconceptions.

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1 hr 49 min
May 07, 2025 Is There Any Hard Evidence That Jesus Actually Existed?
In this episode, Simon delves into the historical and archaeological records, exploring theories and debates surrounding one of history's most significant religious figures.

Author: Daven Hiskey
Host: Simon Whistler

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32 min
May 05, 2025 That Time the U.S. Tried to Build a Massive Military Base on the Moon
During the Cold War, the U.S. government was hell-bent on one upping the commies in any way possible. In the process, they came up with a number of outlandish plans, such as that time they proposed literally nuking the moon, interestingly enough a project a young Carl Sagan worked on and broke some laws with. More on this later. While it’s probably for the best that that project didn’t ultimately get carried out, there is another that went into history's dustbin that would have been amazing if implemented- the U.S. Army's plan to build a massive military and research installation on the moon. This is the story of Project Horizon, along with a lot of other interesting related tidbits along the way, from what a nuclear explosion would look like on the moon and whether a nuke would actually be a terribly effective weapon in space, to the guns designed for astronauts, to the rather humorous first thing Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did on the surface of the moon, to the dick pic that exists in the so-called first museum on the moon and the famous artist who drew it, to the fascinating story of the man who successfully sold the moon and apparently made a fortune in the process.
This is going to be a good one. And to talk about all of this today, we’re trying something different by welcoming in our resident genius, engineer, author of the scripts for over 500 videos on TodayIFoundOut, and the owner of the phenomenal channel Our Own Devices, the Professor- Gilles Messier.

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2 hr 3 min
April 29, 2025 Common Things Different in Europe vs. the United States
Ah America, filled with gun toting rednecks wearing their flag as a
t-shirt and pondering what Jesus would do while chowing down on Mexican food, greasy burgers, partially hydrogenated corn syrup cubes, and washing it all down with Budweiser, the king of beers… for those who’ve never tasted real beer… And Europe, full of a homogeneous group of people who spend most of their time measuring things in meters instead of Ariana Grandes as every god-fearing individual should, whilst
worshiping the British monarchy, rioting about football, mocking
Americans and their inferior chocolates and cheeses, and otherwise bent
on making sure the entire world becomes socialist… Or, at least, so the
interwebs have taught us all. But what are the actual interesting
differences between people and things in the surprisingly diverse United
States compared with the various individuals in the vastly more diverse
countries of Europe? Well, I'm glad you asked, because that's what Simon and I are going to cover today. Let’s dive into it all, shall we?

Hosts: Simon Whistler and Daven Hiskey

0:00 Intro
2:06 HOMES
4:26 Buying a Home
13:21 Locks
18:20: Kitchens and Appliances
24:25: Rooms
25:35: Bathrooms
32:54 Garages
35:00 Misc
37:08 Dining
46:13 Pub Culture and Drinking
59:15 Mexican Food
1:02:35 Meal Deal
1:05:27 WORK
1:21:30 Everyday Things
1:41:43 Dress
1:51:09 Education
2:03:00 Internet
2:05:30 Day Fine System
2:07:32 Foot Goes In, Foot Goes Out
2:08:40 Transportation
2:27:35 General Culture
3:12:25 Healthcare
3:19:50 Misc

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3 hr 49 min
December 01, 2020 The Fascinating Origins of Everyday Things (Part 4)
In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out with an appetizer looking at how chopsticks came to be and why they became so popular in certain parts of the world vs things like spoons and forks.
Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor… Ourselves! Go check out our new-ish channel Highlight History, an upcoming re-launch / re-think of Fact Quickie, a new upcoming one in Ancient Marvels, and Simon’s latest attempt to host all YouTube channels- Side Projects.
Next up, in the main course, we look at who exactly invented the spoon, knife, and fork, how they became popularized and the surprising amount of time it took for two of the three to become a staple of dinner tables the world over.
As for the desert for today, we discuss who actually invented the Fortune Cookie, which pretty much everyone always gets wrong. And, spoiler: no, it wasn’t the Chinese nor Americans.
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!
Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML
You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show
The post The Fascinating Origins of Everyday Things (Part 4) appeared first on Today I Found Out.

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58 min
November 25, 2020 Medieval Times [Part 5]
In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out with an appetizer looking at whether chastity belts were ever actually a thing in medieval times or if it is just a Hollywood invention.
Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor… Ourselves! Go check out our new-ish channel Highlight History, an upcoming re-launch / re-think of Fact Quickie, a new upcoming one in Ancient Marvels, and Simon’s latest attempt to host all YouTube channels- Side Projects.
Next up, in the main course, we look at whether you could actually be transported back in time to Medieval Times and actually communicate to anyone in English or not as is often depicted in popular entertainment.
As for the desert for today, we discuss what you actually get for being knighted in modern times and what the process is these days for that.
And note, to see that wall of text Simon hard to read there, this is what he was looking at:
INTHEBEGINNINGTHEREWASNOPUNCTUATIONLOWERCASELETTERSOREVENSPACESBETWEENWORDSTHEREALSOWASNOGRAMMATICALWAYOFDISTINGUISHINGWHENANIDEAHADFINISHEDANDANEWONEBEGUNITDIDNTHELPTHATTHEIDEAOFSTANDARDIZEDSPELLINGWASALSONOTATHINGATLEASTNOTASWEWOULDTHINKOFITREADERSWERELEFTTOMUDDLETHEIRWAYTHROUGHANYTEXTASBESTTHEYCOULDUNSURPRISINGLYUNDERSTANDINGWHATAPARTICULARWORKWASACTUALLYSAYINGONTHEFIRSTREADTHROUGHWASPRETTYWELLUNHEARDOFATTHISTIME
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!
Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML
You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show
The post Medieval Times [Part 5] appeared first on Today I Found Out.

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1 hr 29 min
November 01, 2020 Medieval Times [Part 4]
In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out with an appetizer looking at the film The Knight’s Tale and the very real historic knight Ulrich von Liechtenstein and what the real guy actually got up to.
Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor… Ourselves! Go check out our new-ish channel Highlight History and Simon’s latest attempt to host all YouTube channels- Side Projects.
Next up, in the main course, we look at what it was actually like to be a medieval knight and how one actually became one.
As for the desert for today, we have the absolute best part of today’s episode discussing whether there was ever actually a documented case of a knight rescuing a damsel in distress.
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!
Don’t miss future episodes of this podcast, subscribe here: iTunes | Spotify | Google Play Music | Stitcher | RSS/XML
You can also find more episodes by going here: The BrainFood Show
The post Medieval Times [Part 4] appeared first on Today I Found Out.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1 hr 12 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.