The BrainFood Show

By Cloud10Education History

The BrainFood Show episodes

March 21 What Really Causes Spontaneous Human Combustion?
For those of us of the slightly more seasoned vintage growing up in or
living in the late 20th century, which was totally only a decade ago and
I’ll take no further input on this matter, spontaneous Human Combustion
ranks alongside the likes of quicksand, the Bermuda triangle. and rain
that melts your skin off as one of those things that everyone from the
news to popular social consciousness taught us was going to be something
we’d simply have to deal with in our day to day lives for some reason.
And then, just as suddenly as a person randomly turning into ash,
everyone just moved on and stopped talking about it…
Which leads us to the subject of today’s video- what ever happened to
everyone spontaneously combusting? Where did the idea come from, how did
it proliferate public consciousness, and what’s up with all the people
who did burst into flames and turned to ash, generally leaving only
things like arms and legs behind? Can awesome science explain what
happened to them?
Authors: Karl Smallwood and Daven Hiskey
Host: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Caden Nielsen

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43 min
March 20 How Ancient Romans Made Perfectly Straight & Durable Roads, Concrete Better Than Ours, & Much More
In the video today we're looking at how the Ancient Romans made
incredibly long, perfectly straight and incredibly durable roads, what
it was like being a slave in ancient rome, how they made concrete better
than ours, were they really as wild as we sometimes think today or more
prudes, did gladiators really live or die based on thumbs up or thumbs
down by the audience, that time a farmer was given ultimate power twice
and changed the world by walking away both times after he'd done what
Rome asked of him, what really happened on the ides of march, and the
chickens that shaped world history.
Host: Simon Whistler
Producer: Pacience Hiskey
0:00 How Did the Ancient Romans Manage to Build Perfectly Straight, Ultra Durable Roads?
17:35 What was It Really Like to Be a Slave in Ancient Rome?
31:14 How Did the Ancient Romans Make Concrete So Much Better Than Ours?
41:42 Were the Ancient Romans Really Wildly Debauched or Actually Prudes
53:45 Did Gladiators Really Live or Die Based on Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down by the Audience?
1:04:24 That Time a Farmer was Given Ultimate Power Twice and Changed the World By Walking Away Both
1:14:55 Fact From Fiction: What Really Happened on the Ides of March?
1:37:03 The Chickens That Decided Ancient Rome’s Major Events and Shaped World History

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1 hr 52 min
March 19 Was Keelhauling Actually a Thing?
Running the gauntlet. Starting. Flogging with the cat ‘o 9 nine tails.
Gagging. Clapping in irons. Hanging from the yardarm. While this all
might sound like a super fun Saturday night with the misses when the
grandparents are watching your kiddos for you, it turns out these are
actually just a few of the dizzying array of corporal and capital
punishments inflicted upon sailors of old - both navy men and pirates -
to enforce discipline and punish a wide variety of crimes. But while
most of these punishments are fairly well-known, you may have noticed
two notable practices missing from the list: that old staple of pirate
movies, “walking the plank”… and keel-hauling. Perhaps the most infamous
of all nautical punishments, keel-hauling struck such fear into the
hearts of sailors over the centuries that the term survives to this day
as a byword for particularly harsh discipline. But what was
keel-hauling? How did it work, who invented it, and was it actually a
real thing? Or, like so much popular seamen lore, was it just the
product of some adventure writer’s imagination? Well, put on your
eyepatch and tricorn hat, strap on your peg-leg, as we dive into the
reality of one of the Age of Sail’s most barbaric practices.
Author: Gilles Messier
Producer: Caden Nielsen
Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey

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23 min
March 18 Conspiracy: The Stories Behind Flat Earth, All Seeing Eye, Little Green Men Fake Moon Landing & More
In today's video, we're looking at What's Up with the All Seeing Eye on
the Dollar Bill? Who Started the Flat Earth Conspiracy Theory, How Many
Believe This, and What Do They Believe? Why is the Stereotypical Image
of Aliens Green or Grey Bald Humanoids? How Do We Actually Know We
Landed on the Moon? What Really Causes Chemtrails? The Truth About the
Freemasons: The Not-So-Secret Society Did Any Musicians Actually Put
Backwards Satanic Messages in Their Songs? and Why Do People Think There
are Aliens in Area 51?
Chapters:
0:00 What's Up with the All Seeing Eye on the Dollar Bill
14:52 Who Started the Flat Earth Conspiracy Theory, How Many Believe This, and What Do They Believe?
35:37 Why is the Stereotypical Image of Aliens Green or Grey Bald Humanoids?
54:33 How Do We Actually Know We Landed on the Moon?
1:28:12 What Really Causes Chemtrails?
1:35:49 The Truth About the Freemasons: The Not-So-Secret Society
1:48:12 Did Any Musicians Actually Put Backwards Satanic Messages in Their Songs?
2:03:04 Why Do People Think There are Aliens in Area 51?

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2 hr 14 min
March 17 Is It Really Possible for a Nuke to Ignite the Atmosphere?
At exactly 5:30 AM on July 16, 1945, the world’s first atomic bomb,
codenamed Trinity, detonated over the desert in New Mexico, unleashing
in an instant the power of 18,000 tons of TNT. The atomic age had begun.
As night turned to day and a fireball 200 metres across rose into the
sky, the scientists of the Manhattan Project who had built the bomb
reacted in different ways. Some were jubilant, others more somber. J.
Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the project, famously
recalled a line from the Hindu scripture (ba-ga-vad gee-ta) Baghavad
Gita: “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds”; while Kenneth
Bainbridge, director of the Trinity test, was more blunt, stating: “Now
we’re all sons of bitches.” Elsewhere around the test site, money
frantically changed hands as scientists settled a series of private
bets. Some had wagered that the test would be a dud, or that it would
reach just a fraction of its predicted yield. But others, including
Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, had wagered on a more disturbing
outcome: that the intense heat of the bomb would ignite the atmosphere,
setting off an unstoppable chain reaction that would wipe out all life
on earth. This apocalyptic bet has since become an infamous part of
nuclear lore, but does it have any basis in reality? Could the Trinity
test - or any nuclear weapon, for that matter - actually have set
earth’s atmosphere ablaze?
Well, let’s dive into it, shall we?
Author: Gilles Messier
Host: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila

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16 min
March 16 The Weapons of WWII
From the terrifyingly effective De-bollocker to the ugly little boat
that won WWII to the German fighter that dissolved its pilots alive,
this is the story of several of the more interesting weapons utilized in
the world's most terrifying war.
Hosts: Simon Whistler and Daven Hiskey
Authors: Daven Hiskey, Gilles Messier, Karl Smallwood
Producers: Samuel Avila and Pacience Hiskey

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3 hr 1 min
March 04 The Most Bizarre Substance Known to Science and What It Can Do
If ever there was a criminally underrated natural resource, it would
have to be Helium. Though most commonly associated with party balloons
and making one’s voice sound like a cartoon, Helium’s most important
application is in cooling the magnets of Magnetic Resonance Imaging or
MRI machines. While the finite and ever-dwindling global supply of this
vitally important gas is a topic worthy of its own video, perhaps even
more fascinating is just how bizarre an element Helium truly is. For if
Helium is liquefied and cooled to a low enough temperature, it begins to
behave like no other liquid on earth, seemingly violating the laws of
gravity, thermodynamics, and even logic itself. This is the story of
superfluid Helium II, the weirdest substance known to science.
In order for Helium to be liquefied, it must be cooled to a temperature
of -268.8 degrees Celsius or 4.2 Kelvin – that is, only 4.2 degrees
above Absolute Zero, the coldest temperature theoretically possible. By
contrast, Nitrogen liquefies at a relatively balmy 77 Kelvin, Oxygen at
54 Kelvin, and Hydrogen at 33 Kelvin. The reason Helium is so difficult
to liquefy lies in its electron orbitals being completely filled, making
it – like the other noble gases Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, and Radon –
electrically neutral and chemically inert. This means that the only
force which can pull Helium atoms together is the so-called Van de Waals
Force, which is caused by electrons shifting from one side of an atom
to the other and creating a momentary electrostatic charge. This force
is incredibly weak, meaning that Helium must be cooled to extremely low
temperatures in order for the Van de Waals forces to overcome the energy
of the moving atoms and pull them close enough together for the gas to
liquefy. Solidifying Helium is even more difficult – so difficult, in
fact, that it cannot be done at regular atmospheric pressures. Only at
pressures of 25 atmospheres and above can solid Helium be created.

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17 min
March 03 How the Hell Did Winston Churchill Lose the Election Right After Defeating Germany?
Nazi Germany officially surrendered on May 7, 1945. With the war still
raging in the Pacific against Japan and sporting a popularity rate at
around 83%, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill seemed a shoe-in to
maintain his position as Prime Minister of the British Empire. Just
before the announcement of the results of the election, Churchill had
been at the Potsdam Conference with U.S. President Truman and Joseph
Stalin, only intending to travel home briefly to accept his victory, and
then back to the conference. Yet a funny thing happened on July 26,
1945, the voting populace of the UK, which had turned out in record
numbers of 73%, had decided to collectively say “Thanks for your
service, Winston, but we’ve decided to go in a different direction,” in a
landslide defeat that shocked the world.
While in more modern times you might think some sort of scandalous
affair or offensive comment may have whipped up the mob on the interwebs
precipitating such a massive electoral fall in the span of just a
couple months, there was no such issue here either. So what happened?
How did this wildly successful politician, frequently named among the
top Prime Ministers ever in the nation, at the height of his popularity
no less, and who had just helped successfully guide Britain through one
of its most harrowing periods of its storied history, not just lose, but
lose in a landslide?
And not only this, making the whole thing even more inexplicable, he
lost to a man who one of said man’s own party members, Aneurin Bevan,
stated “seems determined to make a trumpet sound like a tin whistle.” Or
as chairman of the Daily Mirror, Cecil King, would remark in 1940, he
was “of very limited intelligence and no personality. If one heard he
was getting £6 a week in the service of the East Ham Corporation, one
would be surprised he was earning so much.” Or, let’s not stop there, as
famed social reformer Beatrice Webb would remark, “He looked and spoke
like an insignificant elderly clerk, without distinction in the voice,
manner or substance of his discourse. To realize that this little
non-entity is… presumably the future Prime Minister, is pitiable.” Or
how about as Churchill himself would allegedly quip about his opponent,
he is "a modest man, but then, he has so much to be modest about."
The demeaning quotes about the man Churchill lost to go on and on and
on, and his own party before, during, and after the election likewise
tried to oust him as their leader…. Only to see this quiet, oft’
forgotten individual who rapidly rose from a middle class background to
the heights of power, defy them all and go on to become one of the
greatest Prime Ministers in the history of the nation, often even ranked
above Churchill himself, despite only serving in the position for a
handful of years.
As ever, of course, the devil is in the fascinating details, so let’s
dive into it, and what specifically happened to see a titan of history
defeated by a man likely no one outside of the UK even knows the name
of, yet shaped the Britain we have today arguably more significantly
than Churchill ever did.

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26 min
March 02 The Real Color of the Sun, How Many Nuclear Bomb Powered Rockets It Would Take to Stop the Earth Orbiting the Sun and Much, Much More
⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we begin by discussing the clandestine way Niel Armstrong managed to get his application to the astronaut program in despite submitting it past the deadline. We then look at why he got to be first to walk on the moon when precedent should have had it been Buzz Aldrin. Next up we look at the oft’ forgotten second thing Armstrong said when stepping out onto the moon.
Moving swiftly on we do a rapid fire of a variety of space related bonus facts including, but not limited to, the real color of the Sun, how much energy it would take to cause the Earth to stop orbiting the Sun, how old the Sun is in Sun years, how many Sun rises and sunsets astronauts aboard the International Space Station see every day, etc.
And for those curious on Simon and my treatise on the proper order of watching Star Trek series and other such thoughts, ⁠the mentioned forum post is here.

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1 hr 4 min
March 01 The Most Badass U.S. President and His Many Insane Exploits
If you've followed this website, our YouTube channel, or BrainFood Show
podcast very long, you know one of our favorite historic individuals is
Theodore Roosevelt- among countless other reasons to be admired, a man
who enjoys a reputation as one of the most terrifyingly badass
individuals to ever hold the office of leader of a nation, with
countless stories detailing his cartoonishly manly exploits. For just a
small sample to start, at one point while he was living as a rancher,
some thieves stole his boat in the middle of an ice storm. Given the
rather dangerous weather conditions, you might think he'd just let them
go. But this was Teddy Roosevelt and it was the principal of the thing.
He states, "In any wild country where the power of law is little felt or
heeded, and where every one has to rely upon himself for protection,
men soon get to feel that it is in the highest degree unwise to submit
to any wrong…no matter what cost of risk or trouble. To submit tamely
and meekly to theft or to any other injury is to invite almost certain
repetition of the offense, in a place where self-reliant hardihood and
the ability to hold one’s own under all circumstances rank as the first
of virtues."
Thus, he spent the next three days building another boat so he could
track the thieves down and take his original boat back. Once done, it
took him a few days of searching, but using his prodigious skills as a
master tracker, he managed to find and capture the men. However,
ultimately the river became too frozen over to continue to the nearest
town that way, so instead he sent his ranch hand companions home and
marched the thieves on foot, alone for 40 hours straight to town. During
this trek, he did not bind the thieves' in any way as he felt sure
they'd suffer from frostbite if he did so. To keep them from
overpowering him while they trudged along through the frozen wasteland,
he simply kept a gun trained on them and, while they slept during rest
periods, he kept himself awake by reading Tolstoy's then relatively
recently published Anna Karenina.
It's also noteworthy here that because of the weather conditions, the
fact that he was in hostile territory in the middle of nowhere, and
escorting a trio of criminals who would have killed him without
hesitation if he'd given them the chance, he was within his rights to
simply execute them on the spot and go home, something the vast majority
of lawmen of his era would have done. Roosevelt, however, felt they
deserved a trial...

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19 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.