The BrainFood Show

By Cloud10Education History

The BrainFood Show episodes

April 28 The Weapons of World War 2 (Part 2)
In the video today we're looking at World War 2's slightly absurd secret
weapons and the Japanese battleship with guns that weighed more than
entire American battleships. Moving on from there we cover the Russian
KV Tanks that were so tough they literally would take out anti-tank guns
by driving over them. Next up we do a dive into the German space
shuttle, that time Germany teamed up with IBM for mass murder, the
insane way British pilots would take out one of Germany's greatest
weapons, the German designed, one man spherical tank, the Russian flying
tank, the sad story of the exploding anti-tank dogs, the forgotten
metal can that made Blitzkrieg possible and ultimately won WWII for the
Allies when they stole it, the tiny submarine that changed the course of
WWII, and the bizarre fake army that defeated the Axis. Next up a
flying adventure looking at the insanely amazing story of the Night
Witches, followed up by another flying adventure looking at if planes
actually scream when they dive. Finally, we look at the pivotal WWII gun
that you'd never want to put down... Because of its propensity to
accidentally fire when you did so.
0:00 WWII’s Most Absurd ‘Secret Weapons’
16:37 The Japanese Battleship with Guns that Weighed More than Entire American Battleships...
25:43 Driving Over Anti Tank Guns: The Remarkable Russian KV Tanks
31:34 The Nazi Space Shuttle
45:38 How the Nazis Teamed Up with IBM for Mass Murder (And How the First Ethical Hacker Fought Back)
1:01:57 A Wingtip and a Prayer: the Insane Way British Pilots Defeated Germany’s Secret Weapon
1:19:47 The Mysterious Kugelpanzer: The German Designed, One Man Spherical Tank
1:25:26 That Time the Russians Built a Literal Flying Tank
1:29:10 The Exploding Anti-Tank Dogs of World War II
1:34:56 The Forgotten Metal Can That Made Blitzkrieg Possible and Ultimately Won WWII When Allies Stole It
1:42:00 The Midget Submarine That Changed the Course of WWII
2:00:16 The Bizarre Story of the Massive Fake Army That Defeated the Nazis and Helped End WWII
2:23:42 With a Pistol and a Prayer- The Incredible Story of The Night Witches
2:37:21 Do Airplanes Actually “Scream” as They Dive as Commonly Depicted in Hollywood Films?
2:51:11 The Pivotal WWII Gun That Nobody Wanted to Put Down: The Plumber's Nightmare

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3 hr 3 min
April 27 Tesla vs Edison- Debunking the Myth of the War of the Currents
Popular history gets the War of the Currents wrong pretty fundamentally. This is the real story.

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1 hr 46 min
April 24 What was Being a Ninja Really Like
A relatively common trope today is that of the noble and honorable
Samurai warrior opposed by their shadowy brother from another mother,
the mystical and morally corrupt, black garbed assassin warrior known as
the ninja.
These fabled shadow warriors of Japanese history have been a staple of
modern pop culture since around the 1960s when super-spy James Bond
encountered them on a trip to Japan in You Only Live Twice. Prior to
this, ninjas were something few people outside of their homeland were
aware of. This has contributed to the real-world history of the ninja
and their origins being rather chock full of admittedly awesome myths
and legends, all surrounding them like a thick, shadowy fog.
Something we feel the ninjas of history would feel proud of. Afterall,
hiding and remaining unseen is sort of their whole deal… And, indeed,
even in their time, they seemed to like to play up some of the stories
that arose around what they were capable of and how they did what they
did.
This all brings us to the topic of today- just who were the ninja and
what did they actually get up to in reality?
To begin with, in a nutshell the ninja were elite, mercenary spies that
also doubled as a type of swiss army knife of special forces, skilled in
everything from sabotage, espionage, ambush, arson, assasination, to
there is even evidence that they were highly trained in first aid and
use of various medicines.
As historian Yamada Yüji notes, “You need to know the topography of the
enemy’s position, the condition of his food supplies, the structure of
his castle. It was the job of the shinobi [ninja] to obtain this kind of
crucial information. They would infiltrate the enemy domain and
ascertain the lay of the land…and create chaos through acts of sabotage
and arson.”
On that note, debunking our first ninja myth, there’s no historical
record of them dressing in the stereotypical ninja outfits we all know
and love today. Because the thing was, wearing such garb would be one
heck of a way for them to stand out in many types of missions.
As such, ninjas mostly seem to have worn the garb of everything from
monk to farmer to servant- whatever a particular mission required,
rather than any set uniform.
We’ll have some examples of them doing just this later on, but for now,
ninjas so commonly wearing the clothing of farmers and the like even
gave rise to the idea for a time that they were mostly simple farmers
who simply took money for spying. While there certainly were individuals
who did just that, when talking actual ninjas as we think of them, they
were anything but simple, and there are even nobles who were samurai
who are known to have been trained up in ninjitsu. More on this later.
But for now, let’s look at the origin of the ninja.
Authors: Karl Smallwood and Daven Hiskey
Host: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Caden Nielsen

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30 min
April 23 The Stories of WWII (Part 2)
In the video today we're looking at a variety of interesting stories
from WWII from the man who fought in WWII with a sword and bow, to the
kids who led the resistance movement in Germany, to how flatulence
decided the outcome of WWII.
0:00 Why Did Japan Join the Nazis? (Given, You Know, the Nazis Explicitly Hated Non-Aryans)
40:09 The Women Who were Used for Breeding by the Nazis
57:25 How Do German Schools Teach About WWII?
1:07:21 The Man Who Fought in WWII With a Sword and Bow:
1:12:32 What were Hitler's Relatives Up to During and After WWII?
1:42:31 The Kids Who Led the Resistance Movements Against the Nazis
2:13:48 Why Did So Many Nazis Choose Argentina to Flee to After WWII?
2:49:22 The Forgotten Armed Nazi Operation Carried Out on North American Soil During WWII
2:58:22 The Forgotten Nazi Holocaust Plan Before They Decided On the Holocaust
3:09:39 How Hitler's Flatulence Defeated Nazi Germany

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3 hr 26 min
April 22 The Truth About Land Mines
It is a classic war movie trope: a squad of soldiers are marching
through the jungle when, suddenly, they hear an ominous click. One of
the soldiers freezes and, glancing down, spots a telltale metal disk
under his foot. His heart begins to beat furiously: he has just stepped
on a landmine. His comrades urge him to stay perfectly still, for if he
moves even an inch the mine will explode, blowing off his leg and very
likely killing him. The seconds and minutes tick by in unbearable
suspense as the soldiers scramble to come up with some way - any way -
of getting their squadmate out of this sticky situation alive, despite
how relatively easy it would be in that scenario to solve the problem by
simply keeping downward pressure on the person’s shoe, then taking
their foot out and putting a rock or something on the shoe after.
Nevertheless, a highly-effective means of introducing tension, this
scenario has appeared in dozens of films including 2014’s The Monuments
Men, 2017’s Kingsman: the Golden Circle, and the appropriately-titled
2015 Georgian exploitation film Landmine Goes Click.
But does it have any basis in reality?
Author: Gilles Messier
Editor/Host: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Caden Nielsen

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24 min
April 21 The Real Life Expendables
The years 2010 to 2014, saw the release of the three Expendables films,
throwback action romps starring a roster of aging 1980s action stars
including Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis, Chuck
Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as retired
mercenaries back for one final job - and, presumably, easy
nostalgia-fuelled paycheques. While the notion of assembling a team of
60-year-olds to carry out a dangerous mission might seem like pure
Hollywood nonsense, it is not as outlandish as it might appear. Faced
with a potential diplomatic crisis, during the Second World War British
Intelligence called upon a team of real-life Expendables to carry out a
daring commando raid in neutral Portuguese India. This is the incredible
story of Operation Creek, the last ride of the Calcutta Light Horse.
The Battle of the Atlantic, which raged from the very first day of WWII
to the very last, has been covered extensively on this channel. But the
desperate struggle between Allied shipping and German U-boats was not
confined to the frigid waters of the North Atlantic. U-boat operations
ranged as far afield as the Indian Ocean, where the marauding submarines
wreaked havoc on ships sailing in and out of British India. And this
deadliness only increased thanks to an unexpected helping hand.
Author: Gilles Messier
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Host: Simon Whistler
Producer: Samuel Avila

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16 min
April 20 The Truth About Thomas Edison's Adulthood and Inventions
History remembers Thomas Edison as one of the greatest inventors of all time. The Internet thinks he was a fraud. Which is true?

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1 hr 38 min
April 17 Is Nuclear Winter Actually a Possibility or Just Pseudoscience?
As horrific as a nuclear war would be in the immediate, a common idea is
that the real troubles for humanity, and the world, would actually
occur in the long aftermath, triggering what is now commonly known as
nuclear winter- a nightmarish scenario in which atmospheric temperatures
would drop dramatically, crops would fail, and widespread famine,
disease, and unrest would follow, leading to a catastrophic reduction in
the global population, or even the end of human civilization. But just
what is ‘nuclear winter’ anyway? Who came up with it, and is it actually
a real possibility, or just some scientists with way too much time on
their hands and a news media who loves them some good doomsday
scenarios, whether they are valid possibilities or not.
Well, put on your gas mask and lead-lined underwear as we dive into the
controversial history and science of one of the most frightening
doomsday scenarios ever conceived.
Surprisingly, the first published suggestion that a nuclear war could
alter the global climate appeared not in an official scientific
publication, but rather in fiction. In the post-apocalyptic short story
Tomorrow’s Children by American science fiction writer Poul Anderson,
first published in the March 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, a
team of scientists hunt down mutated humans in the wake of a nuclear
war. At one point, the story’s protagonist High Drummond observes that:
“Winter lay heavily on the north, a vast grey sky seeming frozen solid
over the rolling white plains. The last three winters had come early and
stayed long. Dust, colloidal dust of the bombs, suspended in the
atmosphere and cutting down the solar constant by a deadly percent or
two. There had even been a few earthquakes, se off in geologically
unstable parts of the world by bombs planted right. Half of California
had been ruined when a sabotage bomb started the San Andreas Fault on a
major slip. And that kicked up still more dust. Fimbulwinter, thought
Drummond bleakly. The doom of the prophecy.”
Anderson later adapted this story into a full-length novel titled
Twilight World, first published in 1961. The same phenomenon also
appears in Christopher Anvil’s short story Torch, published in the April
1957 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. In this story, a Soviet
nuclear ballistic missile test in Siberia accidentally sets fire to an
oil field, releasing large amounts of oily soot into the atmosphere that
blots out the sun and triggers a global ice age.
The term Fimbulwinter or “mighty winter” in Anderson’s original 1947
story is drawn from Norse Mythology, and refers to a series of three
particularly harsh winters preceding Ragnarök, the apocalyptic battle of
the Gods that will destroy and cleanse the world. While the origins of
any mythological concept are hard to pin down, it has been speculated
that Fimbulwinter may have been inspired by the Volcanic Winter of 536,
in which a series of simultaneous volcanic eruptions ejected vast
amounts of particulates - especially sulfur dioxide - into the upper
atmosphere. They lingered there for years, blocking out the sun’s rays
and causing global temperatures to drop by as much as 2.5 degrees
Celsius or 4.5 degrees. As Roman historian Precopius recorded:
“And it came about during this year that a most dread portent took
place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the
moon, during this whole year, and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in
eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such as it is
accustomed to shed. And from the time when this thing happened men were
free neither from war nor pestilence nor any other thing leading to
death.”
Author: Gilles Messier
Host / Editor: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila

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49 min
April 16 The Stories of WWII
In the video today, we're looking at a variety of fascinating stories
from WWII, everything from what the German public actually knew about
the holocaust during WWII to the biggest POW camp breakout, to that time
the U.S. government teamed up with the mafia against the Germans, to
the young war gamers who changed the course of the war with their games
and much, much more.
0:00 What Did the German Public Know About the Holocaust During WWII?
53:37 How Do the Japanese Teach About WWII?
1:05:53 The Wild Story of the Biggest POW Camp Breakout of World War II
1:19:45 A Dinner Jacket, the Nazis, the “British” Accent, and What This All Has to Do With the BBC News
1:26:13 How a WWII Famine Helped Solve a 2,000 Year Old Major Medical Mystery
1:35:10 That Time the US Government Teamed Up with the Mafia to Defeat the Nazis
1:47:26 That Time the British Pitted a Few Canoeing Commandos against a Fleet of Nazi Ships... And Won
2:01:13 Argentina's Secret Nazi Fusion Lab
2:16:46 The Forgotten Nazi Holocaust Plan Before They Decided On the Holocaust
2:28:02 The Young War Gamers Who Changed the Course of WWII
2:40:24 That Time British Witches Tried to Stop a Nazi Invasion Using Magic
2:49:57 The Nazi Interrogator Who Killed Them with Kindness

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3 hr 4 min
April 15 The Quest for the Recoilless Gun
If you’ve ever shot a gun, then you will have quickly learned the first
fundamental rule of shooting: recoil sucks. Depending on the calibre,
weight of the firearm, and your technique, just a few minutes of
shooting something like a hunting rifle can quickly leave your shoulder
bruised and sore. And the bigger the firearm, the worse the problem
becomes, with large-calibre military artillery pieces requiring
elaborate systems of hydraulic cylinders to absorb their prodigious
recoil. This, in turn, makes these weapons extremely heavy and difficult
to move around the battlefield. There are two basic solutions to this
problem: mount the artillery on heavy armoured vehicles… or somehow
eliminate the recoil itself. Over the last century, engineers around the
world have devised dozens of ingenious methods to achieve just that,
creating weapons that are simultaneously powerful and long-ranged while
being light and compact enough to be moved around the battlefield by
regular troops or light vehicles. This is the fascinating technology
behind recoilless weapons.
To begin with, let’s first examine the physics behind recoil. One way to
understand this phenomenon is via Newton’s Third Law - that is, “For
every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” A more useful
principle, however, is conservation of momentum. Momentum, defined as an
object’s ability to resist changes in motion, is given by the simple
formula mass times velocity. When an object is split into pieces and
those pieces propelled in different directions - such as in the case of a
bomb exploding or, more relevant to our discussion, a firearm shooting a
projectile - the momentum of the overall system is conserved. In other
words, if you add up the momentum - mass times velocity - of every
individual piece, they will sum up to the original momentum - in the
case of a stationary object, zero. Most firearms shoot a projectile
significantly lighter than themselves; however, as this projectile is
travelling at a very high velocity, its momentum equals that of the
firearm, which, being much heavier, will recoil at a significantly lower
velocity. The heavier the firearm, the slower it recoils and
vice-versa. This, along with surface area in contact with your shoulder,
is why, despite sometimes being quite painful, the recoil of most
firearms is nowhere near strong enough to actually rip your shoulder off
- unlike the projectile being fired downrange.
Based on this physical analysis, it stands to reason that if you placed
two identical firearms back-to-back and fired them in opposite
directions, their recoil would cancel out and the whole assembly would
remain stationary. This is known as the counter-shot or counter-weight
principle, and was the operating principle of the first recoilless
firearm to see combat: the Davis Gun. Patented by U.S. Navy Commander
Cleland Davis in 1914, the Davis gun was specifically intended for use
aboard aircraft.
During the First World War more conventional small-calibre cannons were
experimentally fitted to various aircraft for use against balloons,
zeppelins, ships, submarines, ammunition dumps, and other specialized
targets; however, aircraft of the period were rather flimsy
constructions of wood, wire, and canvas, and were easily damaged by the
recoil of such weapons. Thus, by the end of the war both the American
and British navies and flying services showed great interest in Davis’s
design. The Davis Gun effectively comprised two gun barrels mounted
back-to-back and fired a special double-ended cartridge. On firing, a
conventional shell was propelled out the forward barrel towards the
target, while an equivalent mass of lead shot and grease was expelled
out the rear, the recoil of the two barrels cancelling each other out.
Of course, standing directly behind what is effectively a gigantic
shotgun is a good way to have a very bad day, meaning the Davis gun had
to be rather awkwardly mounted at the very front of the aircraft with
its barrel pointing downward at a steep angle so that the counter-shot
was propelled safely up and over the top wing. There were other problems
as well. Since the gun had to propel two projectiles at equal velocity,
the propellant charge - and thus the cartridge - was much larger than
usual, making it awkward to handle.
Author: Gilles Messier
Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila

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42 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.