The BrainFood Show

On July 6, 2022 around 4 AM, a loud explosion rocked a remote corner of Elbert County, Georgia. Later that morning, the sun rose to reveal the shattered remains of America’s most mysterious and controversial public monument: the Georgia Guidestones. From the moment they were unveiled in 1980, these six massive granite slabs covered in inscriptions became a magnet for criticism and conspiracy theor...

In the 2013 video game The Last of Us and its 2023 TV adaptation, humanity is overrun by a mutant parasitic fungus called Cordyceps, which disfigures its victims and takes over their minds, turning them into violent, unthinking walking mushrooms called clickers. But this horrifying premise is hardly unique; indeed, the motif of infection and assimilation by an alien parasite crops up time and time...

“Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a Main B Bus undervolt.” These words, spoken by astronaut Jim Lovell on April 13, 1970, signalled the start of one of NASA’s greatest crises. Apollo 13, the third American lunar landing mission, had suffered an onboard explosion, knocking out vital systems and placing the lives of the three astronauts aboard - Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert - in g...

At 9:00 in the morning on July 1, 1946, Major Harold Wood, bombardier of the B-29 Superfortress Dave’s Dream, peered through his bombsight at a massive fleet of warships gathered below. As the crosshairs fell over his target, he released his weapon, and the pilot, Major Woodrow Swancutt, pulled the aircraft into a sharp turn. Seconds later a blinding flash filled the air as history’s fourth atomic...

Selfie stick. Electrical banana. Pocket pleaser. Magic wand. Divorce maker. Buzz Nightgear. Battery Operated Boyfriend. These are but a few colourful euphemisms for womankind’s best friend, found in millions of nightstand drawers across the globe: the vibrator. If you are a connoisseur of strange product origins then you’ve likely heard the quirky and unlikely story of the vibrator’s creation, whi...

It is among the most feared and reviled symbols in the world, the very sight of which instantly evokes thoughts of hatred, mass murder, and the worst traits of humanity. It is so repugnant as to be outright banned in many parts of the world. It is, of course, the swastika, a symmetric cross with short lines protruding at right angles from the end of its arms. Infamously adopted by Adolf Hitler and...

In the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only, Roger Moore’s Bond and Bond girl Melina Havelock - played by Carole Bouquet - dive to the bottom of the Ionian Sea to recover a top-secret code machine from the wreck of a sunken British spy ship. There, they are suddenly attacked by one of the villain’s goons wearing what looks like a nightmarish combination of a medieval suit of armour and a giant...

During WWI, the senior members of the British Royal family kept awfully busy. One of them shattered his pelvis when a near thousand pound horse decided to ride him instead of the other way around, another one enjoyed some time in the trenches and examining early tanks, his brother came under fire from German warships, and their sister distributed nicotine and ‘acid tablets’ to soldiers and sailors...

For those of us born relatively deep into the before times of the 20th century, it may come as a rather shocking realization that WWI occurred now over a century ago, playing as the backdrop on the positive side of astonishingly rapid progress in the fields of medicine, science, technology, literature, and the arts, along with on the downside the past, as ever being the worst, such as the Spanish...

Discover the untold story of Hitler’s Jewish poster children, Hessy Levinsons and Werner Goldberg—icons of Nazi propaganda hiding shocking secrets. A compelling tale of irony, danger, and defiance. Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Simon Whistler Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On July 20, 1969, the whole world gathered around their flickering television sets and watched in awe as astronaut Neil Armstrong who, if not for someone secretly slipping his very late application to the astronaut program into the pile wouldn’t have even been there (more on this in the Bonus Facts later), climbed down the leg of a strange, spidery vehicle, stepped onto the surface of the moon, an...

If your parents ever took you to a science museum or planetarium as a child, you likely spent much of your visit in the gift shop, begging them to buy you one of the hundreds of shiny – and purportedly “educational” – items on offer. And most irresistible of all was undoubtedly “astronaut food”: shiny foil packets of freeze-dried strawberries or ice cream sandwiches. Sure, they had the texture of...

The shadows go in different directions! The flag is waving in a vacuum! The lander didn’t dig a crater! You can’t see any stars! It was all filmed on a soundstage by Stanley Kubrick! If any of these statements sound familiar, then odds are you’ve spent way too much time online and need to touch some grass. Ever since Bill Kaysing published his “We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion D...

While just about everyone is abundantly familiar with Adolf Hitler’s exploits in the latter half of his life, an often missed part of the once proclaimed “German Messiah’s” history is that of his childhood. So just how did this “boy like any other” grow into arguably one of the most reviled individuals in the history of humanity? Well, put on your lederhosen and grab your machete and time machine,...

When the sun scorches the earth, when incandescent air burns your lungs, and especially when that glucose curve dips at 10, 2 and 4 in the afternoon … well, there is nothing better than grabbing an ice cold bottle of a very special soft drink- its purple-ish label covered in beads of cooling moisture. I am, of course, talking about the first major soft drink to be invented in America: Dr Pepper, b...

Winning a big ticket lottery very often isn’t all that it cracked up to be and despite a windfall of cash, a surprising number of winners have gone on record as saying winning the lottery was the worst thing that ever happened to them. And some could never end up saying it because of the surprising amount of murder that occasionally happens after, as we’ll get into. But as to the more normal non-m...

As anyone who’s perused the internet knows, arguably the most bizarre mating practices of all can be found among humans, with Rule 34 being a rather immutable law of nature. But it turns out, other animal mating practices can be just as interesting, so today we’re going to be looking at the Wild and Wacky World of Animal Mating, from the bizarre, to the humorous, to the downright disgusting. So, f...

When one thinks of nuclear nations, the United Kingdom usually doesn’t spring to mind. But Old Blighty has a long and impressive record of nuclear accomplishments dating back to the very origins of the field. British scientists like William Penney, Rudolf Peierls, and John Cockcroft were instrumental in kickstarting the Manhattan Project, while on October 3, 1952 Britain became the third nation af...

“You always remember the bad guy.” These were the words of the late David Prowse, the man who physically portrayed Darth Vader in the original trilogy and it’s kind of ridiculous just how right he was. Almost 50 years later Darth Vader is just as iconic and instantly recognisable as he was when he first power-walked into frame to his own theme song. Since then a mind-boggling amount of content has...

team-powered, gunned-up, and utterly cursed—cruiser submarines were meant to revolutionize naval warfare. Instead, they sank their own crews more often than the enemy. Here’s the story of history’s worst sub design. Sponsor note:  Our listeners get 10% off their first month at ⁠betterhelp.com/BrainFoodShow⁠. Go to  hellofresh.com/brainfood10fm to get 10 free meals plus a free item for life.   Lear...

When thinking about the middle ages, chances are that among the many images popping into your mind there stands a noble knight. Now, there are a variety of myths about what it was like to be a knight during medieval times, not just spread by Hollywood, but even by the contemporary legends during medieval times themselves- in both featuring widespread depictions of the chivalric knight rushing to t...

“[T]here would not be I believe, a happier being in the United States… [c]ould I have just enough business to support my expences, so as to relieve me from the mortification of being at my time of life, a burden to my Parents…” -John Quincy Adams (December 14, 1790) These were the words of the 23 year old John Quincy Adams, tirelessly working in a profession he seemingly didn’t particularly enjoy,...

Much like is the case with some adult humans, in the morning our miniature Sapiens often have a preference for expressing themselves in low-pitched, unintelligible grunts, mumbled from within the cavernous darkness of their bedrooms as you try to wake them up. The words might be jumbled, but the meaning is rather clear: ‘It’s too early. I want to sleep. Leave me alone.’ And yet, the adults in char...

Unsurprisingly to anyone who’s historied, Hitler was a man who promoted a hateful ideology, had millions murdered, crippled a generation, and plunged an entire continent into ruin. What’s maybe slightly less known is that before he did all this, he was a lazy layabout, ultimately squandering his inheritance culminating in him becoming homeless for a few years. To say Hitler avoided anything even r...

“What are the Qualifications of a Secretary of State? He ought to be a Man of universal Reading in Laws, Governments, History. Our whole terrestrial Universe ought to be summarily comprehended in his Mind.” -John Adams July 5, 1811 The speed at which the United States’ rose from birth to prominence on the world stage has rarely been matched in history. From first casting off a king and parliament...