The BrainFood Show

The BrainFood Show

By Cloud10EducationHistory
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The BrainFood Show episodes

  • Real Life Space DJs and the Pillownaughts

    ⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we kick off a series on space related facts. Before we get started in that, however, we do some follow up answering the question of whether the Allies in WWII used prisoners of war as slave labor.  We then jump into the topic of the real life job of Space DJ, then the saga of the Pillownaughts.


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    1 hr 8 min
  • Making Children Cry for Fun and Profit

    If you’ve spent any time whatsoever on the internet you’re probably already quite familiar with how attached people are capable of getting to their favourite fictional characters. While this invariably manifests as arguments, because internet, it is by no means a new or novel phenomenon. For example, consider what happened when the powers that be decided to kill Optimus Prime in the 1986 feature, The Transformers: The Movie, and indeed at one point planned to kill literally all the main characters, all so that they could boost toy sales by introducing an entirely new set of characters children would now need to buy. A decision that resulted in untold masses of crying children in theaters, upset that Hasbro had killed their robotic dad. Not hyperbole. We’ll get into it.

    Now your first instinct might be to scoff at the idea of people giving this huge of a crap en masse about a talking truck, but we’d like you to keep two things in mind, we’re talking about children and there’s no doubt a fictional character out there that you would be, at the very least, a little upset to see shot in the back by a car-sized laser gun. How that would manifest would invariably, well, vary, but the fact you’d have some kind of reaction is the point we’re trying to make.
    But, we’re just saying, if you didn’t tear up at Iron Man’s death, you are a soulless monster.
    Author: Karl Smallwood
    Editor: Daven Hiskey
    Host: Simon Whistler
    Producer: Samuel Avila


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    20 min
  • WTF is Up with the Bermuda Triangle?

    For those who didn’t grow up in the late 20th century, it may seem strange to learn that for a time many people genuinely believed things like that humans randomly burst into flames for no apparent reason, with the occasional speculative news report or Unsolved Mysteries episode highlighting the latest instance, as well as that there was an area dubbed the Bermuda Triangle where almost certainly aliens were snapping up ships and planes for, we can only assume, maximal probage. This all brings us to the topic of today- how did the idea of the Bermuda Triangle first become ingrained in public consciousness, and was there ever actually any evidence of weird things happening there, or is it just yet another instance of the truism that humans will believe anything if a human in a suit says it on TV or it’s otherwise published in book form?

    To begin with, let’s start with what exactly constitutes the Bermuda Triangle. While there is some disagreement among Bermuda Triangle truthers, the commonly accepted boundaries of the Triangle are the area formed if you drew direct lines on an oceanic map between the ports of Bermuda, Miami and Puerto Rico where allegedly a lot of weird stuff happens.
    What kind of weird stuff? Well, legend holds that ships and planes passing through the Triangle occasionally just up and disappear like your dad when he went out for milk that one time.
    Now, the skeptics among you may hear that and think, “Well, the ocean is pretty big and a generally dangerous place to exist, especially back before GPS and awesome satellite weather, so maybe a handful of the planes and ship traffic in that region just sank or something? I mean, it is a super high trafficked part of the ocean.”
    Now, this is a very reasonable explanation.
    But hear us out- what about if instead it was actually aliens?
    This level of reasoning is essentially how the idea of the Bermuda Triangle took hold.
    More specifically, the first to speculate towards this very reasonable and in all ways rational idea can be traced to an article written in 1964, titled, appropriately enough, The Deadly Bermuda Triangle.
    Authors: Karl Smallwood and Daven Hiskey
    Producer: Samuel Avila
    Host: Daven Hiskey


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    30 min
  • The Forgotten Gun That Changed Everything

    When the Great War broke out in August 1914, the soldiers of the belligerent nations marched into battle carrying broadly similar weapons: modern bolt-action, magazine-fed rifles firing full-powered cartridges. British Empire troops carried the 1903 Rifle No.1 Mk.III AKA the Short Magazine Lee Enfield or SMLE; the Germans the Gewehr 1898, the Austro-Hungarians the Mannlicher M95, the Russians the 1891 Mosin-Nagant, and so on. Yet when it came to infantry weapons, one nation stood out…and not in a good way: despite having one of the largest and most modern armies in the world, the French armed its soldiers with a long, heavy, and awkward-to-use rifle some three decades out of date. Ironically, when first introduced, this rifle was state-of-the-art, a groundbreaking piece of military technology that launched a revolution in firearms design. But like many technological pioneers, the French military fell victim to its own ingenuity, its innovative weapon being swiftly copied and vastly improved upon by rival nations until its original developers found themselves hopelessly left behind. This is the story of the Model 1886 Lebel, the forgotten rifle that changed warfare forever.

    Since their introduction around the 13th Century C.E., for nearly a millennium firearms - whether in the form of cannons, mortars, or half-portable muskets and pistols - were exclusively powered by a single substance: black gunpowder. Developed around the 9th Century in China, black gunpowder is composed of just three ingredients: charcoal, sulphur, and sodium or potassium nitrate - the latter traditionally known as “saltpetre.” When heated, saltpetre decomposes to produce oxygen, which catalyzes the combustion of the charcoal and sulphur to produce deflagration, a rapid burning that produces a large volume of hot, high-pressure gas that, if adequately contained, can be used to propel a projectile down a gun barrel or to burst artillery shells, grenades, mines, and other explosive weapons.
    Yet despite being the only practical propellant and explosive known to humanity for over a thousand years, gunpowder suffered from a number of serious drawbacks. For one thing, for many centuries one of its key ingredients, saltpetre, was relatively rare and difficult to obtain. In nature, saltpetre mainly occurs in the form of Nitratine, a mineral deposit formed by the evaporation of ancient lakes and found in arid regions such as Egypt, South Africa, Peru, and Chile. Prized not only as an ingredient in gunpowder but also a potent agricultural fertilizer, Nitratine has long been a highly coveted strategic resource, with two large-scale military conflicts - the 1480-1510 Saltpetre War and the 1879-1884 War of the Pacific - even being fought over large Nitratine deposits in Central and South America.
    The only other economical source of saltpetre was from certain caves as well as barns and stables, where the compound naturally crystallized from the manure or urine of farm animals like cows and sheep and the droppings of birds and bats AKA guano.
    Author: Gilles Messier
    Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey


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    42 min
  • Who Invented the Egg McMuffin?

    Breakfast truly is the monarch of meals, that time of the day when one is allowed to gorge on a cornucopia of nonchalantly combined delicacies ranging across the sweet and savoury spectrums, all washed down with streams of the world’s favorite drug in caffeine, as well as the white liquid excretions of cow’s, and/or the juices from the mangled, crushed bodies of our fellow living entities on this earth of the fruiting variety.


    Besides, one can happily plow through such a caloric smorgasbord with the reassuring knowledge that our bodies may need huge amounts of energy before tackling another day of heavy toil, depending on what exactly your exact profession is. For example, skipping breakfast is attributed to costing the Roman Republic a massive defeat at the Battle of the Trebia River in December of 218 BC.


    On that occasion, brilliant Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca unleashed his elite Numidian cavalry against the Roman camp at daybreak, to provoke them into an early battle. Ancient historian Polybius clearly stated that ‘His object [was] to get at the enemy before they had had their breakfast, or made any preparations for the day.’ Dehydrated, calorie starved soldiers in the end performing worse than their better nutritioned counterparts.


    Host: Simon Whistler

    Author: Arnaldo Teodorani


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    29 min
  • The Very Real Bear Soldier Who Fought in WWII

    ⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, which is partially a continuation of the last, we discuss the bear that was officially a member of the Polish army, how he came to be such and what became of him after WWII ended. We follow this up by discussing the interesting origin of the Live Long and Prosper Vulcan salute.

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    40 min
  • The Hero Who Infiltrated Auschwitz

    In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by announcing our current contest winners as well as launch a new contest.  Next up we get into the meat of the episode discussing the remarkable individual who volunteered to be sent to Auschwitz, why he wanted to go, and what happened next. We finish off by discussing an interesting bonus fact about the company Bayer.

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    1 hr 7 min
  • The Incredible Biology of Sickle Cell

    Chronic fatigue and weakness. Dizziness. Swollen limbs. Sudden, excruciating pain in the chest, back, legs, and arms. Uncontrollable, painful erections or priapism. Tissue necrosis. Organ damage. Increased susceptibility to bacterial infection. Death at a young age from stroke, heart attack, or organ failure. These are but a few of the awful symptoms of Sickle Cell Disease, also known as Sickle Cell Anaemia. Resulting from a defective gene that causes sufferers’ blood cells to collapse into a distinctive crescent shape, this inherited disorder afflicts nearly 8 million people worldwide and kills over 34,000 every year, with most sufferers hailing from - or tracing their ancestry to - tropical regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, Sickle-Cell Anaemia is often seen as a predominantly “Black disease”, tragically affecting access to care for millions of sufferers. But while this affliction causes untold suffering worldwide, condemning millions to a lifetime of pain - and, in many cases, an early grave - there is a silver lining: an unexpected evolutionary advantage that has allowed Sickle Cell Anaemia to persist for thousands of years. Join us as we take a deep dive into one of the world’s most fascinating yet overlooked diseases.

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    32 min
  • The First Road Trip Part 2: In Which We Discuss All Things Tangentially Related

    In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we discuss the interesting story of who came up with the unit of measurement called horsepower and why it got applied to engines. We also discuss the late 19th century dominance of the electric car and why and when that changed. Next up we look at the mildly humorous story of who got the first known speeding ticket, as well as the much less humorous story of the first person killed in a car accident. Finally we finish up by talking about a little-known fascinating fact about James Doohan (Scotty from Star Trek).

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    54 min
  • The First Road Trip Part 1: The Gumption of Bertha Benz

    In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we discuss the surprisingly long history of the automobile, then move on to discussing what is generally considered the first “modern” car, the Model 3, made by Karl Benz, and how is amazing wife ultimately saved him and the vehicle from obscurity through her extreme audacity and faith in his invention.

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    51 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.