The BrainFood Show

By Cloud10Education History

The BrainFood Show episodes

April 14 Creating the Terminator
“They could have fired me on the spot. But you know, they’re idiots”
That’s a quote from James Cameron about the reaction of gathered
executives to the first screening of The Terminator, which according to
the director, really didn’t go all that well. However, largely due to
Cameron’s background working on cheesy B-Movies, there was nobody else
in Hollywood the studio could bring in to finish the movie. In fact, the
success of Terminator and by extension the career of James Cameron owes
a lot to the director’s B-movie chops, connections and experience. Oh,
and a vicious bout of food poisoning that left him delirious and on the
verge of shitting himself for like 5 whole days.
On this, there is a long-standing industry legend that the genesis of
The Terminator was a nightmare Cameron had whilst working on the
cinematic turd that is, Piranha II: The Spawning, a film about
genetically engineered flying piranha that is largely only noteworthy
for being the directorial debut of Cameron, outside of a little film he
made funded by his dentist. The legend posits that Cameron had to take a
break from tossing rubber piranha at his actors when he came down with
food poisoning. Whilst recovering in a cheap Italian hotel, Cameron is
said to have had a nightmare about a chrome skeleton attempting to stab
him with a kitchen knife and that that image was so terrifying he was
convinced it could be a great hook for a film. Cameron then immediately
sketched out the basic design of what would become the Terminator.
Which is a great story, but it’s not the whole story and there are
several details James Cameron himself has dismissed or clarified over
the years.
Author: Karl Smallwood
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila
Host: Simon Whistler

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29 min
April 13 The Truth About the Incredible Childhood of Thomas Edison
In this episode, Gilles and Daven are doing a deep dive into the childhood of one of the greatest inventors in history, Thomas Edison.

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52 min
April 10 The Actual Most Painful Sting and How Did They Figure That Out?
Who among us hasn’t had this experience? You are eating a lovely outdoor
meal or working peacefully in the garden when unexpected guests arrive.
Dressed in menacing yellow and black, they buzz annoyingly around you,
coming between you and your juicy steak or prized roses. You try to
gently shoo them away, but they just grow more and more aggravated
until, suddenly, you feel it: that sharp, searing pain, flashing up your
hand, as if you’ve just been stabbed with red-hot poker. If you’re
lucky, your finger will swell up and you will have to endure that
throbbing agony for an hour or two. If, however, you happen to be among
the unlucky 0.5-7% of the general population that is allergic to insect
stings, you can look forward to the delights of anaphylactic shock: a
sudden drop in blood pressure, itchy hives, and difficulty breathing
which, in severe cases, can lead to death without immediate medical
intervention. Whether we like it or not, venomous creatures like bees,
wasps, scorpions, spiders, snakes, and jellyfish are a part of everyday
life for nearly every human on earth, with hundreds of thousands of
species worldwide being capable of delivering some kind of painful or
toxic bite or sting. Thankfully, however, as is often the case in
nature, most of these organisms will not attack unless directly
provoked. And, if you happen to live in a part of the world where the
worst stings you have to face are those of bees, paper wasps, and
yellowjackets, consider yourself very, very lucky, for mother nature
holds far greater horrors in her arsenal, from ants with bites so
painful they are used as tests of manhood, to wasps whose stings have
been likened to being thrown into a live volcano, and fish with venom so
excruciating it can literally stop your heart. But which bite or sting
is the absolute worst? Which organism on this planet is, as the English
rock band The Police might have put it, the “King of Pain”? Well, let’s
find out as we dive into the agonizing world of the worst bites and
stings in nature.
Author: Gilles Messier
Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila
0:00 Intro
6:00 Schmidt Theory and His Wine Lover-esk Index
17:20 The Starr Sting Pain Scale
20:00 Nathaniel "Coyote" Peterson's BSI and Looking Beyond Insects
25:30 The Ultimate Stings- The Platypus and Stonefish

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34 min
April 09 What was It Actually Like to be a Gladiator, History's Literal Deadliest Fart Killing 1000s, & More
In the podcast today, we're looking at what it was really like to be a
gladiator in Ancient Rome, how corrupt the roman senate was, what's the
deal with roman gods and much, much more.
0:00 What was It Like to Be a Gladiator in Ancient Rome?
18:13 How Corrupt was the Roman Senate Really?
32:50 What's the Deal with the Roman Gods?
46:51 The Roman Emperor Who Tried to Make His Horse Consul
59:46 Julius Caesar and His Pirate Adventure
1:06:22 History's Literal Deadliest Fart and the Origin of Mooning
1:20:49 Intentionally Removing People From History (Damnatio Memoriae)
1:24:45 Did Nero Really Fiddle When Rome Burned?
1:32:23 That Time the Title 'Emperor of Rome' was Up for Auction (and the Sorry Soul Who Won)
1:43:42 The Colosseum's Big Brother, The Circus Maximus
1:49:35 Are C-Sections Really Named After Julius Caesar?
2:00:12 Where Did Goth Teen Subculture Come From and Why is it Associated With Roman Invaders?

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2 hr 19 min
April 08 The Rock WWII Turned On
At the southern tip of Spain, jutting out into the Mediterranean Sea,
lies Gibraltar, a narrow peninsula measuring only 6.8 square kilometres
or 2.6 square miles in area and dominated by a 426 metre or 1,298 foot
high limestone monolith: the legendary Rock of Gibraltar. A British
overseas territory and naval base since 1713, Gibraltar has long been of
vital strategic importance, controlling the narrow passage between the
Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. And at no time was this truer than
during the Second World War, when the Axis powers plotted to capture
Gibraltar in a bid to cut Britain off from its overseas Empire and
starve her into submission. And though the heavily-defended enclave
would be a tough nut to crack, the very real threat of invasion led
British military planners to take elaborate precautions should the“Rock”
ever fall. And perhaps the most extreme of these contingencies was an
utterly bonkers plan to seal six men into a secret network of tunnels
and chambers carved into the Rock of Gibraltar. Provided with several
years’ worth of food and water, these volunteers were to spy on the
occupying Axis forces and report their movements back to Britain,
secretly keeping Gibraltar in the fight. This is the bizarre tale of
Operation Tracer.
What is now known as the Rock of Gibraltar was formed during the early
Pliocene Epoch around 5 million years ago, when the collision of the
African and Eurasian tectonic plates lifted up and inverted a large slab
of the Eurasian plate, composed of the 200-million-year-old Catalan Bay
Shale, Gibraltar Limestone, Little Bay Shale, and Dockyard Shale
formations. The ongoing movement of these plates continues to push the
Rock of Gibraltar steadily skyward, with the monolith growing in height
at a rate of around 0.05 millimetres or 0.002 inches per year. The area
has been inhabited for at least 125,000 years, with the bones, tools,
and other remnants of both neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens being
found in numerous caves dotting the peninsula. In antiquity the Rock of
Gibraltar, then known as Mons Calpe, was frequently visited by
Phoenician, Greek, and Roman mariners, with the Greeks recognizing the
mountain as one of the two “Pillars of Heracles.” According to Greek
mythology, while trying to obtain the Cattle of Geryon - the 10th of his
12 Labours - the legendary hero smashed his way through the Atlas
Mountains, forming the Straits of Gibraltar and connecting the Atlantic
Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. The identity of the other pillar has been
lost to history and is heavily debated among classicists, though it is
now widely believed to be either Monte Hacho or Jebel Musa in
Morocco....
Author: Gilles Messier
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Host: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila

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37 min
April 07 Billionaire Build a Car- The Insane Car Brand Where Every One is Literally One of a Kind
Few brands are as closely associated with the idea of “luxury” as
Rolls-Royce, a car manufacturer so fancy schmancy that the company's
official website doesn’t even bother to list how much the things it
sells are. Rolls-Royce knows that for anyone serious about buying one of
their automobiles, price is not a concern. And to be clear, what you
can get for said insane amount of money is likewise insane in
customization, which we’re going to now talk about because it’s a lot
more interesting, and occasionally bizarre, than even we originally
thought when dreaming up this topic.
But in any event, to this end, Rolls-Royce, who as a company can be
fairly certain that the average person strolling into one of their
showrooms likely has a credit card with a limit rivalling the GDP of a
small nation, offers clients a level of customisation and
self-expression seldom seen outside of old episodes of Pimp My Ride or
the Need For Speed games to the point that literally every every car
they sell is one of a kind. Or as we like to call the brand- Billionaire
Build a Bear.
One thing we should clarify first though is that even with a luxury
brand like Rolls-Royce there are levels to the fanciness on offer with
the price increasing accordingly. Now, we know we said in the
introduction that Rolls-Royce themselves don’t list how much their cars
cost because that would be tacky and only for plebians, but it’s not
hard to find out how much they sell for by consulting things like trade
magazines or browsing the secondary market.
With this in mind the least you’d be looking to spend on a new
Rolls-Royce is about £250,000 (about $310,000) for a stock Rolls-Royce
Ghost which online auction site Auto Trader describes as the brand's
“entry level model”. Meanwhile a Rolls-Royce Phantom will set you back a
cool £350,000 (about $450,000). If this is too rich for your blood,
older models, like from the 70’s, sometimes pop up for sale for as
little as £10,000 (about $12,000). As good a deal as this may sound be
warned, older models of many luxury cars are very often a huge pain in
the butt to fix and maintain, with collectors frequently bemoaning that
you can easily spend more than a car’s listed value, just to get it to
run...
Author: Karl Smallwood
Host: Simon Whistler
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila

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22 min
April 06 The Truth About Tesla's "Inventions" (Daven and Gilles)
Tesla is often cited to have been a genius ahead of his time and held back by finances. But what did he ACTUALLY invent, and is it true that most of his inventions only existed in his head because that is the only place they could possibly work? Well, let's dive into it all shall we?

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2 hr 32 min
April 03 The Incredible Soviet Probe Space Heist
Anyone interested in the shirt can find it here: https://store.todayifoundout.com/products/beep-beep-sputnik-2

On October 4, 1957 at 7:28 PM Greenwich Mean Time, a massive R7 Semyorka
rocket roared off the launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan
and soared into the night sky. The following morning, the world awoke to
the stunning news: the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik 1, the world’s
first artificial satellite, into earth orbit. In Washington, DC,
American politicians and military officials flew into a panic. Not only
had the supposedly backwards Soviets achieved spaceflight years ahead of
Western predictions, but the same R7 rocket which had placed Sputnik in
orbit could also place a nuclear warhead anywhere in the Continental
United States with less than 30 minutes’ warning. Worse still, unlike a
manned strategic bomber, such intercontinental ballistic missiles could
not be intercepted or shot down. Overnight, outer space became a new
battlefield in the escalating Cold War. As the American government and
aerospace industry geared up to compete in this newly-declared Space
Race, intelligence agencies like the CIA sought to learn all they could
about Soviet space technology. This proved a daunting task, for the
closed nature of Soviet society made it all but impossible to infiltrate
using human agents. As a result, analysts were forced to glean what
little they could from grainy spy plane and satellite photographs and
intercepted telemetry signals. But then, in late 1959, an unlikely
opportunity suddenly presented itself: a chance to “kidnap” and examine a
genuine Soviet space probe. This is the audacious story of the Great
Lunik Heist.
Author: Gilles Messier
Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Caden Nielsen
0:00 Shirt
0:13 Intro
7:14 Planning the Luna Space Heist
8:46 Kidnapping the Spacecraft
13:32 The Results of the Heist

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22 min
April 02 Does Absinthe Really Make You Hallucinate, The Wine Lover's Meltdown, Inventing Bloody Mary & More
In the episode today, we're looking at whether absinthe actually makes you hallucinate or not. Next up the hilarious story of the wine lover's meltdown, and then
the popular cocktail that includes a dehydrated human toe. Finally
whether or not tapping a shaken can of soda actually reduces foam. Who
invented the bloody mary drink. Where does the practice of pouring one
out for your homies come from. Why alcohol content is referred to as a
proof. How much it would cost to fill a swimming pool with booze. And
why wine is almost always drunk in wine glasses instead of regular
glasses.
0:00 Does absinthe actually make you hallucinate?
14:27 The wine lover meltdown
21:55 The popular cocktail that includes a dehydrated human toe
33:48 Does tapping a shaken can of soda actually reduce foam
45:32 Who invented the bloody mary drink
1:01:48 Where does the practice of pouring one out for your homies comes from
1:08:49 Why is alcohol content referred to a proof
1:12:24 How much would it cost to fill a swimming pool with booze
1:25:08 Why is wine almost always drunk in wine glasses instead of regular glasses

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1 hr 44 min
April 01 The Dark Origins of the Treadmill and Why Oscar Wild was the Worst
“We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
We turned the dusty drill:
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And sweated on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still.”
These are the words of famed master of the pen, Oscar Wilde, in his
Ballad of Reading Gaol, referencing his time spent at Pentonville Prison
for, ironically, mastering working with a different type of pen…
As a brief aside, while many lament the initial thing that set forth a
chain of events that saw Wilde imprisoned today, specifically his affair
with Lord Alfred Douglas, very surprisingly, unlike with the likes of
the great Alan Turing and countless thousands others who were unjustly
punished for their sexuality, it turns out there is a LOT more to the
story of Wilde’s conviction that many a biographer skirts over, though
to be fair this is in part because some elements of the original
transcript from the original trial were only discovered in the year
2000. Reading through those, however, even in modern times and through a
modern lens and sensibilities, Wilde would have almost certainly found
himself behind bars, disgraced, and absolutely vilified pretty well
universally on the interwebs.
But we’re not here to discuss Oscar Wilde, the full story of his
conviction was simply a rabbit hole we were previously woefully ignorant
of, and will share more on later in the Bonus Facts if you’re
interested as well- though fair warning, it’s quite dark and, oof. Never
look too deeply into your heroes, especially when they are from the
past, which was of course, the worst.
But in any event, embedded in Wilde’s aforementioned poem, he references
sweating on the mill. This was a device created by famed engineer Sir
William Cubitt in the early days of Cubitt’s career, with the primary
purpose of the surprisingly feature rich machine being both to punish
prisoners in an excruciating way for upwards of 10 hours per day, while
also isolating them in that task so that they could properly think about
what they’d done wrong.
While Wilde may have abhorred the machine, having been forced to march
on it for a couple years, another famous master wordsmith, Charles
Dickens, would praise it, writing, "It is a satisfaction to me to see
that determined thief, swindler, or vagrant sweating profusely at the
treadmill... [knowing] he is doing nothing all the time but undergoing
punishment."
Here now is the story of when humans first started exercising for
fitness’ sake, as well as the rather torturous invention of the
treadmill, which saw prison death rates ramp up considerably once
implemented, but paradoxically also seemed to be a major health boon to
those that survived their monotonous march.
Author / Host: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila
0:00 Intro
3:13 When Humans Started Purposefully Exercising
6:47 Prison Reform and Inventing the "Treadmill"
22:02 Inventing the Modern Treadmill
29:02 Cooking with Dogs
32:14 Oscar Wilde was the Worst

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48 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.