A Little Bit Of Science

Supply chain logistics is one of the fastest growing and most innovative industries in the world. In shipping companies around the world scientists and engineers are working on robot factories and drone delivery and ways to get your packages to you faster and faster. And the drug industry is keen on this too! Rod tells Will about the innovative ways drug barons are shipping drugs around the world....

In the late 19th century Marie and Pierre Curie conducted some groundbreaking work on radioactivity. Their results were exciting - so exciting, we went around putting radioactive ingredients in everything! Will tells Rod the story of radioactive snake oil! The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of S...

What even is money? Is it even really real? Money, as all you wise Wholesome Show listeners know, is a social construct. We made it up and we believe in it because it's useful. And so we know making fake money is naughty... But what if you fake it as an art project? Rod tells Will the story of JSG Boggs and his fake money! The Wholesome Show is Will Grant and Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you b...

The idea of studying the bumps on people's heads to understand their personality is often held up as one of the dumbest mistakes ever made in science... But the story of phrenology is a little more complicated than that. Will tells Rod why! The Wholesome Show is Rod Lamberts and Will Grant, proudly brought to you by the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science! See omnystudio...

The first vaccination was invented in 1796 by Edward Jenner. The first anti-vaccination movement was invented mere moments later - and their ideas then parallel strongly with the ideas you see pushed now. Rod tells Will their story! The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science! See omnystudio.c...

How did wolves turn into dogs? Dmitri Belyaev wanted to find out, so he launched a secret experiment in the middle of Stalinist Soviet Union to domesticate the fox! The Wholesome Show is Rod Lamberts and Will Grant, joined today by Hannah Carle! Normally brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, today we're also brought to you by the Research School of B...

PornHub is one of the biggest porn sites on the planet - and every year they release a data dump of what the world watches! Rod tells Will all about it! The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the beginning of the 20th Century the French colonisers in Hanoi had a problem with rats. Sure, rats had always been out there in the streets and the Vietnamese neighbourhoods... But something new was happening... The rats were poking their furry noses up in the toilets of the rich and powerful. Ugh! Will tells Rod and Kim Ballestrin how they tried to solve the problem! The Wholesome Show is Dr...

In the early 19th Century medical schools in England and Scotland were in a bit of a pickle. They needed a regular supply of bodies to demonstrate anatomy lessons on, but there just weren't enough being produced via 'offical' means... So they turned to some 'grey area' associates to help them out. Will tells Rod their story! The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly brought...

Iwao Hakamada was sentenced to death on September 11, 1968, for a 1966 quadruple murder. On March 10, 2011, Guinness World Records certified Hakamada as the world's longest-held death row inmate. Cool record huh! (Very very not cool). Today we explore his story with Mai Sato, from the ANU School of Regulation and Global Governance! The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudly b...

Isaac Newton had an amazing career as a scientist. But did you know he also had a secret follow up career as an undercover detective chasing bad guys around London? Rod tells Will the story! The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For nearly 50 years the Stanford Prison Experiment has been held up as the most famous experiment in psychology. Ethically flawed, sure, but at least it told us a whole lot about how bad situations make bad people... But it was bullshit. Will tells Rod why! The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of...

Edgar Allan Poe once declared that 'all we see or seem is but a dream within a dream'. Poetic thoughts, sure. But what if they're true? What if we're actually living in a simulation? I hate to break it to you, but some people think it's more likely than not - and they're trying to break out! Rod tells Will all about it! The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to yo...

You know dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid - but did you know how horrible it was? Spoiler alert, it was very horrible! Anyway, neither of us want to die that way, so we explored what science is doing to stop it! The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science! See omnystudio.com/listener for p...

A drag racer can accelerate from a dead stop to 160 km/h in 0.86 seconds. That's a horizontal acceleration of 5.3 g. For most of us that would mush our brains to the backs of our skulls and leave us in a state of piddling confusion. But to John Paul Stapp that's baby steps. Rod tells Will about John Paul Stapp's mission to see just how fast the human body can start and stop! The Wholesome Show is...

Have you ever tried to bring together a grand unified theory of character development, proletarian revolution, alien invasion and orgasms? Well, Wilhelm Reich certainly tried, and this is his story! The Wholesome Show is Rod Lamberts and Will Grant, joined today by Sam Vilkins! Proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science! See omnystudio.com/listener...

I hate to break it to you, but the highest mountain in the world is no longer a wilderness. Far from the distant unclimbable of Mallory and Hillary, Mt Everest is now a heaving festival of the best and worst of humanity, and an oversize garbage dump with its own nightclub. Rod tells Will all about it! The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian...

Between the 1870s and the 1930s hundreds of zoos in Europe and America included people - yes human people - as part of their display collections. Will tells Rod all about it! The Wholesome Show is Will Grant and Rod Lamberts, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I don't want to - ahem - blow smoke up your arse, but tobacco is not 100% satanically evil. Wait wait, before you shoot us, yes - tobacco is 99.9999% satanically evil, and has caused untold cancers and deaths and other bad things. But... there might be a tiny sliver of a silver lining? We explore! The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian Nat...

In the 1960s and 70s the United States and the Soviet Union had a shitload of nuclear weapons... and when all you have is a hammer, the whole world is a nail. So they started using their nuclear hammers to solve other... civilian problems! The Wholesome Show is Rod Lamberts and Will Grant, joined today by Sam Vilkins! Proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awarenes...

Political polls... aren't having a good run. After spectacular failures of polling in the UK in the Brexit vote and the US in the 2016 election, the malaise has come to Australia - the recent election was specatularly poorly called. We sit down with poll analyst Dr Kevin Bonham to explore why! The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, joined today by Sam Vilkins! Proudly brought to...

On May 14, 1945, Albert Stevens was injected with 131 kBq (3.55 µCi) of plutonium - the highest known radiation dose in any human - without his knowledge or informed consent. This is his story. The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Statistics, you might be surprised to learn, is the science of the state. At heart the whole discipline was born from an effort to count how many people your country had, so you could know how many taxes you could collect / armies you could raise / pyramids you could build. But the business of counting people has never been... straight forward. Sam Vilkins tells Rod and Will all about it! The Whol...

In our galaxy there are billions of stars like our Sun, many of them probably billions of years older. In all likelihood, many of these stars will have Earth-like planets, and if the Earth is typical, at last some may have developed intelligent life - perhaps even billions of years more advanced than us. It's just simple probability! But... why is the galaxy so... quiet? Today, we explore the worl...

Between 1946 and 1993 a bunch of countries dumped 85 PBq* of radioactive waste into the ocean. Slurries, solids, reactors - you know, the stuff you find lying around and just want to put in the ocean.** It was terrible, and it seems we've mostly stopped it. But that shit is still down there... So we explore! * I don't really know how much a PBq is, but it's a lot more than 'nothing', and 'nothing'...