The BrainFood Show

The BrainFood Show

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The BrainFood Show episodes

  • The Saga of the First Major Car Race

    As the official name of Paris–Bordeaux–Paris Trail suggests, the idea of this particular event was to see who could drive from Paris to Bordeaux and back again in the quickest possible time. For reference, this was a distance of 1,178 km or 732 miles on the roads of the day. So what was so special about this particular race? Well, for the first time in history, a large group of automobiles would be pitted against one another in a first to finish-style event, with said race kicking off on June 11, 1895.

    The brainchild of a group of automobile enthusiasts and journalists keen to promote the then fledgling French automobile industry, the race was seen as a way to both test the limits of cars at the time as well as test the commercial viability of motor racing as a spectator sport.
    Although, as we’ve previously noted, this was only a couple decades after an era in which competitive walking was one of the world’s most popular spectator sports, so the competition was pretty light. And, to be perfectly clear- we’re not talking speed walking- just regular leisurely walking for hours and hours on end… In fact, certain walking matches were known to draw tens of thousands of spectators. Yes, before YouTube, our forebears found watching people casually walking in circles for sometimes days on end without stopping great entertainment, though to be fair this was...
    Author: Karl Smallwood
    Host: Simon Whistler
    Producer: Samuel Avila
    Editor: Daven Hiskey

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    16 min
  • Incredible Engineering- The Rise of the Ballpoint Pen

    Ever wonder who invented the ballpoint pen? Well strap in, as we do a deep dive into the progression of writing, and the incredible engineering behind the surprisingly revolutionary ballpoint pen.

    Author: Gilles Messier
    Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey
    Producer: Samuel Avila

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    29 min
  • The Real Life Sea Monster That Has a Doughnut for a Brain

    ⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at the massive creature that has a doughnut shaped brain with its esophagus running right through the middle.

    Next up we begin by looking at the fascinating reason Dung Beetles do a little happy dance after they find and roll up some poop. We then move on to a myriad of fascinating facts about various ants, including their absolutely remarkable ability to find the most efficient route to something, which has in recent years been used by humans to come up with more efficient algorithms for a variety of applications. We follow all that up discussing a rather unique and hilarious way school swimming herring talk to each other.

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    53 min
  • WTF is Up with Dr. Pepper?

    In the epsidoe today, we're looking at the twisting, turning, tale of Dr.

    Pepper and the real story behind it and what's in it. Next up, who
    invented toast, whether sodium actually raises blood pressure, why
    cashews are not sold to consumers in their shells and a variety of other
    interesting food related facts and stories. For the full list, check
    out the chapter markers below:
    0:00 Who Invented Dr. Pepper?
    25:31 Who Invented Toast
    33:16 Fact or Myth: Sodium Raises Blood Pressure
    41:59 Why Cashews are Not Sold to Consumers in Their Shells and Why Pistachios Used to Be Dyed Red
    43:13 The Accidental Discovery of Saccharin, and the Truth About Whether Saccharin is Bad for You
    50:06 The Origin of Competitive Eating Contests
    1:05:11 Why Teachers are Associated with and Traditionally Given Apples
    1:10:07 What Makes Peanut Butter Sticky?
    1:13:23 The Difference Between Fruits and Vegetables
    1:17:13 Why Salt Preserves Meat
    1:20:59 Why Buffalo Wings Are Called That
    1:25:53 Ketchup or Catsup?
    1:30:23 The Difference Between Green and Black Tea
    1:32:32 Why is Cottage Cheese Called That?
    1:37:37 The Original Uber Eats India’s Amazing Near Century and a Half Old Dabbawala
    1:48:16 Why One Bad Apple Spoils a Bunch
    1:51:17 Graham Crackers Were Originally Meant to Be Part of a Diet Thought to Curb Sexual Urges
    1:56:59 Grape-Nuts Contain Neither Grapes Nor Nuts
    2:01:36 Why Seaweed is Sometimes Used in the Making of Ice Cream
    2:06:14 The Fruit That Tastes Like Chocolate Pudding
    2:12:43 Why Does the Yolk of an Overcooked Hard-Boiled Egg Turn Green?

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    2 hr 22 min
  • A Tale of Two Brothers- The Devil and the Absolute Legend

    Hermann Göring was second only to Hitler in the hierarchy of the Third

    Reich. Commander of the Luftwaffe, acting Prime Minister of Prussia,
    President of the Reichstag, and Hitler’s designated successor – Göring’s
    Nazi resume was almost unparalleled, as were the atrocities he took
    part in. His brother, Albert, however, could not have been more the
    opposite- an unsung forgotten hero of the war, saving countless lives
    through his work to undermine his brother and Hitler. This is the story
    of Hermann and Albert Göring.
    Host: Simon Whistler
    Producer: Samuel Avila
    Editor: Daven Hiskey
    0:00 The Devil- Hermann Goring
    5:09 The Unsung Hero and Badass that was Albert Goring
    9:18 "No"

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    17 min
  • The Extremely Weird, Drug-Filled, Forgotten History of 7UP

    Food in the past could be horrifying. Prior to the introduction of

    regulations like the United States Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, it
    was disturbingly common for manufacturers to add all sorts of inedible
    or even genuinely toxic substances to food to make it last longer, make
    it look more appetizing, or cut down on expensive ingredients and
    maximize profits. Boric acid and formaldehyde in milk. Brick dust in
    cinnamon. Bone meal or plaster of Paris in flour and bread. Lead-based
    dyes in jelly and jam. At one point, S.E. Massengill Company even added
    diethylene glycol to a common medicine to help make it taste sweeter and
    more easy to consume… For the uninitiated, diethylene glycol, commonly
    used today in antifreeze and as a solvent, is highly poisonous, and was
    known to be so at the time as well. Yet the substance was nonetheless
    added to the medicine targeted at children anyway, with about 100 deaths
    resulting before they recalled the medicine. Although noteworthy even
    with the recall, didn’t bother to tell the doctors prescribing it that
    there was any urgency in that, nor the danger their existing stocks of
    the medicine posed if they didn’t return them, and instead, continued to
    sell it.
    The owner of the company, Dr. Samuel Evans Massengill, responded to the
    outrage over the deaths by simply stating, “My chemists and I deeply
    regret the fatal results, but there was no error in the manufacture of
    the product. We have been supplying a legitimate professional demand… I
    do not feel that there was any responsibility on our part.”
    Much more on this story and how it finally got the government to step in
    and start regulating consumable products later in the Bonus Facts, and
    how this all led to Kinder Surprise Eggs being illegal in the United
    States. Which, yes, they still are. Watch to the end before commenting
    I’m wrong, and you’ll save yourself having to edit your comment.
    But for now, other questionable substances were part of the appeal of
    the product itself - most infamously the cocaine in Coca-Cola. Paired
    with caffeine from the Kola nut, this ingredient was originally chosen
    by the drink’s inventor, pharmacist John Pemberton, as a treatment for
    morphine addiction and a stimulating alternative to alcohol. Cocaine was
    not fully eliminated from the official formula until 1929, though the
    Coca-Cola company continues to use processed coca leaves in the drink’s
    manufacture, being the largest consumer of that plant outside of the
    illegal drug trade. But while it is the most famous example, Coca-Cola
    was not the only classic soft drink to contain psychoactive drugs, with
    another iconic brew originally including a mood-altering medication
    still taken by millions of people to this day.
    This is the weird forgotten history of 7UP.
    Author: Gilles Messier
    Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey
    Producer: Samuel Avila
    0:00 Intro
    2:37 Why People Started Drinking Carbonated Water, and Discovering Lithium
    4:55 The Origins of 7Up and Why the Drugs?
    16:22 What Does Lithium Actually Do to You?
    18:55 The Elixir Sulfanilamide Incident and Why Kinder Surprise Eggs are Still Illegal in the United States

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    34 min
  • The Ad Campaign That Gave Us Breakfast as We Know It, How Baby Carrots are Made and Much More

    In the video today, we're looking at a variety of food facts including- How Two Guys are the Reason We Eat What We Eat for Breakfast, How are Baby Carrots Made, Is Pet Food Safe for Humans to Eat, The Bizarre Story of the Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb Triangle, That Time Quaker Oats Fed Orphans Radioactive Oatmeal for Reasons…, How To Make a Proper Cup of Tea According to Famed English Author George Orwell, Why are Potatoes Called “Spuds”, Peeling Back the Foil: The Origin of the TV Dinner, The History of Spoons, Forks, and Knives, and the The Surprisingly Short History of the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich

    Host: Simon Whistler
    Producer: Caden Nielsen

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    1 hr 26 min
  • The Real Story of Jack the Ripper

    He is one of the most famous serial killers of all time, but who actually was Jack the Ripper and what actually happened during his reign of terror.

    Just before 4 am on August 31, 1888, on London’s seedy Buck’s Row, a cart driver named Charles Cross saw the body of a woman lying on the ground. In the early morning gloom, it was initially impossible to tell if she was drunk or dead. Cross was soon joined by another carter, Robert Paul. The two men saw the woman’s skirts were pulled above her waist. They smoothed them back over her knees and went searching for a policeman.
    What the two carters didn’t notice in the shifting shadows was the woman’s throat had been cut so brutally that her head had almost been decapitated. Beat officer John Neil discovered that gruesome fact on closer inspection of the body. (He later testified at the inquest that when he had passed that way just 30 minutes earlier, “there was not a soul about.”)
    P.C. Neil sent another colleague to fetch a local medic and soon Dr. Rees Ralph Llewellyn arrived on the scene. He quickly examined the body and found that the arms and legs were still warm. Llewellyn believed the woman had been dead for less than 30 minutes. Her killer may have still been lurking nearby when Cross and Paul came upon the body....
    Host: Simon Whistler
    Editor: Daven Hiskey
    Producer: Samuel Avila

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    16 min
  • Who ACTUALLY Invented the Telephone?

    Did Alexander Graham Bell actually invent the telephone? How about Elisha Gray? Or what about Antonio Meucci who both Italy and even U.S. Congress at one point acknowledged as the true inventor of the telephone... But is there any actual truth to his story, or was it a major flub by Congress? And what about the oft' forgotten Johann Philip Reis who there was even a bonafide conspiracy to suppress his part. Well sit back and relax as we dive into sorting through this mess and determine who actually invented the telephone.

    “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”
    Along with “What Hath God Wrought?”, the first U.S. telegraph message sent by Samuel Morse on May 24, 1844; and the letter S, the first transatlantic radio signal sent by Guglielmo Marconi on December 12, 1901, these are perhaps the most consequential words in the history of modern communications. Spoken by Scottish-American inventor Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant Thomas Watson on March 10, 1876, they are widely believed to constitute history’s first ever telephone call. Bell had patented his “speaking telegraph” just three days prior, and, following this historic demonstration, events moved quickly. On June 25 of that same year, Bell demonstrated the telephone before stunned crowds at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, while on October 9 he and Watson succeeded in holding a conversation over a two mile telephone line strung between Boston and Cambridgeport, Massachusetts. In 1877, Bell formed the Bell Telephone Company - today AT&T - while in 1878 the first commercial telephone exchange was installed in New Haven, Connecticut. The new technology quickly spread around the world, shrinking the globe, making Bell and Watson, very wealthy men, and cementing their place in history as the fathers of modern telecommunications.
    …at least, that’s the version of events we’re all taught in school. But like with basically every invention ever made by humans, Bell and Watson were far from alone in their pursuit of telephony, with many of their rivals being hot on their heels. So hot, in fact, that some have argued that the dynamic duo were not, in fact, the true inventors of the telephone, and that their place in history was the result not of superior brains and grit or even sheer dumb luck, but rather underhanded legal and political chicanery - a conspiracy that has lain forgotten in the annals of history for 150 years.
    But is any of it actually true? Here now is the true story of the invention of the telephone.
    Author: Gilles Messier
    Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey
    Producer: Samuel Avila

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    1 hr 3 min
  • Did John F Kennedy Really Say He was a Jelly Filled Doughnut in His Most Famous Speech?

    On June 26, 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy stood on the steps of the Rathaus Schöneburg in West Berlin and delivered one of the most famous - and infamous - speeches of his presidency. Before a gathered crowd of 450,000 people, Kennedy railed against East Germany’s construction of the Berlin Wall two months before, extolled the virtues of democracy and self-government, and pledged his unwavering support for the people of West Berlin:

    “I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for 18 years that still lives with the vitality and the force, and the hope and the determination of the city of West Berlin…
    Lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice.
    You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main…Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.”
    Then, in a final, powerful statement of solidarity, he closed his speech with the iconic words:
    “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner”.
    If you have ever heard of this speech, then you probably know what happened next: instead of cheering, the crowd broke into mocking laughter. Thanks to an unfortunate combination of bad grammar and cultural ignorance, the President had just declared himself to be not a fellow resident of Berlin but rather a “Berliner”, a type of jelly-filled doughnut. Whoopsy doodle.
    …only no, he didn’t. While this story has been repeated countless times over the past six decades and become a popular and quirky bit of JFK lore, there is little evidence that any German listening to Kennedy’s speech that day would have understood his final words as meaning “I am a jelly doughnut.” So how, then, did this amusing - if ultimately false - urban legend get started? It all has to do with the intricacies of German grammar, lazy journalism, and our age-old tendency to not let the truth get in the way of a good story. This is the story of one of the most misunderstood speeches of the Cold War....
    Author: Gilles Messier
    Host: Simon Whistler
    Editor: Daven Hiskey
    Producer: Samuel Avila

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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.