The BrainFood Show

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we skip the quick fact because this one took forever to research and put together and I ran out of time. Instead we jump right into the main topic which is a very real phenomenon that popped up off and on for several hundred years called Dance Mania or St. Vitus’ Dance. While it might sound like a bit of a joke, it was surprisingly deadly at times and had a...

The likes of renowned aerospace engineer Burt Rutan’s Voyager aircraft, which successfully completed the world’s first nonstop, unrefueled aerial circumnavigation of the globe in December of 1986 in flight for a little over 9 days, or Rutan’s Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer which did the same thing in 2005 in just 2 days and 19 hours, are feats that make the news rounds the world over. However, as imp...

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In the 1990 sci-fi comedy sequel Back to the Future Part III, intrepid time travelling 80’s duo Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett Brown find themselves trapped in Hill Valley, California, back in the year 1885. With their DeLorean time machine out of gas and it being, well, 1885, Doc and Marty are forced to take creative measures to accelerate their ride up to the required 88 miles per hour and get back...

In today's compilation episode we're looking at a handful of Hollywood vs Reality topics like the bizarre story behind "The Room", is genuine multiple personality disorder an actual thing or just a hollywood invention. The real life expendables, do blind people actually hear better than sighted people, were nunchucks ever actually used in combat, and the story of the very real knight Ulrich Von Li...

⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at whether or not male humans can get pregnant and carry a baby to full term naturally. (Spoiler- yes and yes. And even breastfeed too! It doesn’t even require fancy science or advanced medical techniques.) Moving on to the meat of today’s episode, we jump into a variety of bizarre animal mating practices, starting with the somewhat hu...

Following December 7, 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, which finally drew the United States into the Second World War, the attack’s architect, Imperial Japanese Navy Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, infamously lamented that: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” While in reality Yamamoto likely never said this, the sentiment proved shockingly p...

According to the Aircraft Crashes Record Office in Geneva, between 1940 and 2008 there were 157 people who fell out of planes without a parachute during a crash and lived to tell about it. A full 42 of those falls occurred at heights over 10,000 feet (above 3,000 meters), such as the tale of 17 year old Juliane Koepcke who not only survived an approximately 10,000 foot free fall, but also a subseq...

It is one of the most iconic cinematic weapons in history, on par with James Bond’s Walther PPK, Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, and Indiana Jones’s bullwhip. Strap it to your back, and you instantly become an unstoppable one-man army, a bullet hose spitting hot lead at 6,000 rounds per minute and turning dense jungle into leaf mulch, cars into twisted scrap metal, and your enemies into piles of hamb...

In today's compilation episode, we're looking at the greatest naval espionage mission in history, that time the moon nearly started World War 3, WTF is up with embalming communists and many other fascinating cold war stories. 0:00 Silent Seas: The Top Secret, Greatest Cold War Naval Espionage Mission 9:54 That Time the Moon Nearly Started World War 3 (and Other Silly Cold War Shenanigans) 19:09 De...

Apologies for my audio quality in this one. Adobe kept crashing on me, so we had to use the audio Simon was receiving which isn’t ideal. Also a bit under the weather and lost my voice before recording, so maybe for the best that I wasn’t coming through in pristine quality. Next episode will sound much, much better! In any event, in this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at the re...

On September 15, 1916, German troops defending towns in France’s Somme Valley heard a strange new sound above the usual boom of artillery and crack of rifle and machine gun fire: a deep, throaty rumbling, accompanied by a high-pitched metallic squeaking. Peering over the parapets of their trenches, they gasped as they beheld a terrifying sight: a line of giant, armour-plated vehicles, rolling on c...

Set it down and it flows like a liquid. Pull it slowly and it stretches like rubber. Hit it with a hammer and it shatters like glass. Throw it on the ground and it bounces higher than a rubber ball. It can help heal injuries, stabilize wobbly furniture, clean up dust and pet hair, and lift newsprint off the page, allowing comic-strip characters to be stretched into amusing shapes. It is on permane...

As most know, on January 27, 1967, the Apollo Program, the United States’ first effort to land a man on the moon, was rocked by a horrific tragedy. During a “plugs-out” ground test of the brand-new Block 1 Apollo spacecraft, an electrical fault sparked a fire in the capsule. Fuelled by the pure oxygen environment in the cabin, the blaze spread rapidly, taking the lives of crew members Virgil I. “G...

In the episode today, we're going over a variety of reasons why the past was the worst and, while the world is far from perfect and MANY things to still improve upon, we are all lucky to be alive right now. And anyone who says otherwise should be smacked upside the head with a history book repeatedly until they see the error in their thinking. ;-) 0:00 That Time the U.S. Government Intentionally P...

⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at how exactly Al Capone got the scars that got him the nickname “Scarface”. Moving on to the meat of today’s episode, we jump into the rather interesting story behind one of the many so called “trial of the century” of the 20th century.  In this case involving a housewife and her lover and their plot to murder her husband. We als...

In October 1910, the city of Paris played host to a historic event: the Second International Aeronautical Exhibition, a grand showcase of the very latest in aviation technology. To the average visitor, the rickety canvas-and-wire flying machines lining the halls of the Grand Palais [“Grahn Pal-ay”] would have seemed exotic and cutting-edge. But one exhibit stood out among the rest. Set aside in a...

As the clocks struck noon on February 18, 1944, the citizens of Amiens, France, heard an ominous rumbling in the air and the crackling of anti-aircraft guns. Suddenly, from a blustery, overcast sky burst a flight of British de Havilland Mosquito light bombers. Roaring along at treetop level, the aircraft followed the long, straight Avenue de la Défence Passive towards their target: the looming bri...

In the climax of the groundbreaking 1968 science fiction film 2001: a Space Odyssey, astronaut Dave Bowman, the sole survivor of an ill-fated mission to Jupiter, finds himself locked out of his spacecraft by the psychotic computer HAL-9000. Though temporarily safe inside his EVA pod, having forgotten to put a helmet on his spacesuit - whoopsie-doodle - Bowman cannot even use the emergency airlock...

In this food themed compilation, we are diving into what Twinkies are actually made of and how long they last before going bad, if there is any cheese in cheeze whiz, is it safe to eat cheese rinds The Cheese in Cheez Whiz, the Difference Between “Regular”, Virgin and Extra Virgin Olive Oils, The Momentous Peanut Butter Hearings, Tapioca and Cyanide, The Truth About the Surprisingly Recent Inventi...

⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at the interesting story behind where the Monopoly pieces came from. Moving on to the meat of today’s episode, we jump into the truth about who actually invented Monopoly, which is not the person who has long been given credit for it. That guy, it turns out, flat out stole it from someone else and then proceeded to get rich off it while...

In the summer and autumn of 1940, the skies above Southern England were filled with tangling white and black contrails, the roar of aero engines, and the rattle of machine guns as the island nation fought desperately for its very survival. Many factors contributed to the Royal Air Force’s legendary victory over the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, from the brave pilots and ground crews of Fight...

Pushing daisies. Kicked the bucket. Bought the farm. Six feet under. Crossed over. Passed away. Shuffled off this mortal coil. It is said that the more important - or taboo - a concept is to a society, the more euphemisms that society will have for it, and death is no exception. Death is central to the human experience, with every culture on earth having developed elaborate rituals to mourn the de...

Ever wonder what the difference between dynamite and TNT is or how they were invented? Well, wonder no more! Despite what the likes of AC/DC and Wile E. Coyote might have you believe, dynamite and TNT are very different substances with distinct properties. So what’s the difference between TNT and Dynamite? And just who invented them? Well, let’s find out as we dive into the fascinating and destruc...

In the episode today, we're looking at the rather disgusting ingredients of Worcestershire sauce and how it's made. Whether honey is vegan. How Cereal became part of a complete breakfast. What started the cops eating doughnuts stereotype. Who invented the Food Pyramid. How Napoleon helped invent margarine. Why Asian nations use chopsticks. The difference between brown and white eggs. How people us...