The BrainFood Show

⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at a Christmas gift that resulted in one of the more celebrated books of all time. Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at a rather humorous Christmas riot at West Point and then another that had nothing to do with Christmas at Oxford. We follow this up with a myriad of rapid fire Christmas Bonus Facts. Learn more about yo...

In the fall of 1778, things weren’t looking good for the traitors to King and country in the British American colonies. In the early going the American Revolutionary forces under George Washington had suffered defeat after resounding defeat, including Washington very nearly losing around half his army in the first major battle of the war, only saved by a providential fog and General William Howe d...

⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at a couple rather bizarre Spanish Christmas traditions involving holiday defecating… Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at why we kiss under the mistletoe, the Demon of Christmas, and the constant battle to keep a giant goat from being burned down every year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoice...

On November 28, 1787, His Majesty’s Armed Vessel Bounty set sail from England with 46 men aboard, bound for the island of Tahiti in the South Pacific. Commanded by Lieutenant William Bligh, her mission was to collect and deliver breadfruit plants to the West Indies, where they would serve as cheap food for slaves on British plantations. After a long and gruelling journey in which Bligh attempted u...

⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at the rather humorous original name for the song Silver Bells. Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at the truth about the origin of the song “The 12 Days of Christmas” and what’s the deal with the weird lyrics. After that, we look at the truth about the origin of the Candy Cane and then a rather surprising fact about the...

When one pictures the first British settlers coming to what would become the United States, it’s generally of a group of religiously oppressed, rigidly pious individuals, such as the famed now named “Pilgrims” separatist group in their black and white clothing and top hats featuring giant buckles- a group who the Native Americans saved by sharing food and teaching them how to farm certain things i...

⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at whether poinsettias are actually poisonous or not. Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at one of the more remarkable things ever to happen in modern warfare- a completely impromptu Christmas truce, in which both sides in WWI randomly got up out of their trenches up and down the line and threw a party together. We follo...

⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we look at one of my favorite stories I’ve ever researched. But before that, we begin by looking at what could have been wrong with Tiny Tim that simply throwing money at the problem could have fixed given 19th century medicine. Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at what Charles Dickens’ called his “Sledgehammer for the poor man’s child” and...

Nature abounds with weird and wonderful defence mechanisms, evolved over millions of years to protect their owners from predators and allow them to live - and breed - another day. Some organisms like crabs, turtles, and armadillos, are clad in tough suits of armour; while others, like rosebushes and acacia trees, porcupines and hedgehogs, and lion and stonefish, ward off attackers with an array of...

When thinking about the various elements that went into the United States declaring Independence, we tend to think of things like the Stamp Act, The Boston Massacre, and the Tea tax that led to the Boston Tea Party, but these were things that were more in the vein of “this is the last straw” and all a symptom of the real problem. As the colonies started to grow and prosper, Parliament across the p...

On the morning of November 30, 1989, a trio black Mercedes-Benz sedans pulled away from a house in the quiet Frankfurt suburb of Bad Homburg vor Der Höhe and turned down a shady, tree-lined lane called Seedamweg [“zay-dam-vehg”]. They had taken this route many times before, and it seemed like just any other morning. Slowing down to pass a school crossing, the drivers may have spotted a man in a jo...

Agencies like the CIA and MI6 are tasked with collecting and processing data deemed potentially vital to their respective counties’ national interests, and then, in an ideal world, making sure those who need to know this information to inform their decisions and plans know it. In order to do this, they need people on the ground, so to speak. So how do these agencies actually recruit those who work...

History books often remember underground political groups like the Communist party or the Social Democrats, espionage groups like the Red Orchestra, or militaries from America and Britain as the primary resistance against Nazi forces. But you may be surprised to learn that, in fact, the most vocal and visible resistance came from young people, mainly teens and those in their early 20s, with the fo...

Modern entertainment such as movies, fictional books, and TV shows aren’t exactly known for accurately depicting how things may or may not go or have gone in the real life scenarios that they depict. From injecting substances directly into your heart a-la Pulp Fiction or The Rock, to Yarr’ing pirates, let’s just say there’s a lot they get wrong. On the former, ya, don’t poke a hole in your heart....

Countless films produced in the United States feature use of rather expensive military equipment, and often also real world military personnel. Given the extreme expense of all of this using things paid for by the U.S. taxpayer to benefit for profit companies, how is this allowed? Further, how are projects that the military will support selected? Can just any U.S. citizen apply for use of such equ...

While something like the holocaust isn’t exactly unprecedented in history, with mass genocide popping up an unnerving number of times the world over throughout our time humaning, perhaps no other instance of this has shocked the modern world more than the Nazis systematically murdering somewhere in the ballpark of 5 or 6 million Jewish people along with another 5 or 6 million people of other backg...

In the episode today, Simon discusses who invented the potato chip, nachos, whether the green part of a potato is poisonous, and much, much more in this ode to potato chip episode. Sponsor note: Go to ⁠HelloFresh.com/BRAINFOOD10FM⁠ now to Get 10 Free Meals + a Free breakfast for Life! Host: Simon Whistler Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is a scene out of countless romance novels and prestige period pieces: an elegantly-dressed Victorian lady, laced too tightly into her corset, is suddenly overcome by a case of “the vapours” and swoons - collapsing into a convenient “fainting couch” designed for just this purpose. Immediately a servant or dashing doctor rushes to her side, uncorks a small bottle of smelling salts, and holds it...

In today’s age of relatively stable international relations, it is hard to imagine the impact of something like the Mongol invasions. Starting in 1206, It was a trying time for those who initially witnessed them: mountains of skulls, burning cities, murder and pillaging on a wide scale. Even if Genghis Khan’ descendants became more urbane and grew closer to their conquered peoples, the initial sho...

Picture, if you will, a desert. Chances are, the picture you now have in your head probably looks a lot like Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia, southwest Africa. Among the oldest deserts in the world, this park features a spectacular erg or sand sea of towering, golden-red sand dunes rolling off as far as the eye can see, one of which, known as Dune 7, is the largest in the world at a whoppi...

Discover the origins and sinister evolution of the Schutzstaffel (SS), the infamous paramilitary unit of the Nazi Party, and how it grew to become one of the most powerful forces in Germany. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Finish the following sentence: “I am stuck on Band-Aid…” If you immediately sang: “…cuz Band-Aid’s stuck on me!”, congratulations: you have a 50-year-old ad campaign living rent-free in your head. A staple of every first aid kit, Band-Aids are a quick and convenient solution to all the minor cuts, scrapes, burns and other boo-boos life can dish out. Indeed, so fully have these little sticking-plas...

The eyes, they say, are the windows to the soul. More practically, they are our windows to the world, humans being one of many visually-dependent species on the planet. But they are also fragile windows, susceptible to all sorts of injuries, diseases, and disorders. Worldwide, over 2 billion people - nearly a third of the world’s population - suffer from some sort of visual impairment, ranging fro...

In 1993, legendary director Steven Spielberg released two groundbreaking films, which could not have been more different from one another. The first was Jurassic Park, a thrilling summer blockbuster and special effects landmark about bringing dinosaurs back from extinction. The other…was Schindler’s List. Widely considered one of the most heart wrenching films ever made, Schindler’s List tells the...

Among the many box office bombs of the 2024 movie season was The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Starring Superman himself - Henry Cavill - and directed by Guy Ritchie of Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels fame, the film tells the story of a ragtag team of saboteurs tasked with raiding a Nazi naval base off the African coast during the Second World War. Though highly fictionalized...