The BrainFood Show

The BrainFood Show

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The BrainFood Show episodes

  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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

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.