A Little Bit Of Science

Corn flakes are delicious. But did you know they were originally invented to lower sexual desire? (Try it yourself next time you have a bowl, but be careful!) Their invention was part of a quest of John Harvey Kellogg's not only to improve the health of society, but to stop people from a range of other practices, including drinking, smoking, having sex and masturbating. In this episode we explore...

In the dying days of the Second World War, allied troops entering Strasbourg made a grisly discovery - the purpose built beginnings of a skeleton collection. This pseudoscientific collection was an attempt by the Nazis to showcase - in physical form - the alleged racial inferiority of the "Jewish race" in contrast to the German Aryan Übermenschen. It's both disgusting, and very definitely not scie...

Everyone has food they hate eating. For some people it's mushrooms, for others it's onions, for others it's aniseed. (For Will it's watermelon. It's the lamest melon). But if you're starving on a desert island and there's only mushrooms, onions, aniseed or watermelon there, sure, you'll bend your rules. But what about... other humans? How hungry do you have to get to turn to anthropophagy (it mean...

Do you listen to The Wholesome Show in the shower? You can, it's totally fine with us! So... if you're in the shower now, take a look down at the floor. Look at the drain and watch your suds go down... Where do they go? Well, down the pipe, down the river, and all the way down to the very bottom of the Mariana Trench!* So that's fine if your suds are wholesome and non toxic to the environment, but...

Listener I distinctly remember being told, when I was about 4, that even the Queen does poos. (It's true, she does!) Well, there's nothing to be ashamed about, it's all part of life. But about 4.5 billion of us don't have access to safe and hygienic toilets, and that is a shame. So for this episode we explore the history and technology of the toilet! Enjoy! The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts an...

Have you ever wished the made up dinosaurs from the latest Jurassic Park movies were real? Well, you're not the only one! It turns out fossil hunters around the world are ... a little prone to inventing their own dinosaurs! We explore the Piltdown Man and other fossil fakes! Enjoy! The Wholesome Show is Rod Lamberts and Will Grant, proudly brought to you by The Australian National Centre for the P...

Have you ever wanted to be just a little bit smarter? To think a little bit more clearly, to remember better, to have a higher IQ? Well it turns out, people are trying a variety of government approved - and home made - techniques to do just that. But they're not consequence free... We explore Transcranial Electromagnetic Stimulation! The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly...

Earlier this year teenagers around the world began* to receive* sinister text messages... from a half bird half woman half ghoul thing from the depths of despair. The messages instructed* these teenagers to do bad things - to hurt themselves - or the creepy ghoul known as Momo would get them! But - you know the story listener - it was all bullshit. Just a scary image and a made up moral panic, whi...

Human brains are, quite simply, one of the most astounding things in the cosmos. They've written the works of Shakespeare, composed the lyrics to most Tool songs, and put people on the moon! But they've also got... some terrible loopholes. In particular, there's a bizarre loophole in our brains where we can decide if someone we don't like ... isn't really human. And then, we can do awful things to...

Warning - this episode somewhat less safe for work than normal! Azog is an underappreciated cavewoman in her tribe. The cavemen treat her like a piece a meat, and disrespect her at every turn. Azog cannot change this unless she proves herself as a hunter. But when she discovers a clutch of baby velociraptors and decides to kill them and triumphantly bring them back to her tribe, things start to ge...

On first glance, the idea of meritocracy sounds like a pretty sensible way of organising society. Put simply, all the good things - rewards and privileges and crowns and jobs and things - go to the people who work the hardest and are the best at things. Sound pretty fair? Well it probably wouldn't surprise you, intelligent listener, if we told you that the world today isn't 100% meritocratic. We s...

An adult - if they've been good and brushed their teeth properly and haven't had any removed - can have 32 teeth in their mouth. That's right, 32 teeth in their mouth... We say 'in their mouth', because if they've been good and brushed their teeth *and they're lucky* they can have a fair few more in other parts of their body! We explore! The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, joi...

What do you do if you have an itch? You scratch it! Of course you do, you're only human. But what if the itch is on a limb YOU NO LONGER HAVE? How do you scratch that, smarty pants? We explore the weird (horrible) world of intense, intense itchiness! 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...

Numbers, by definition, go on forever. Whatever number you think of, you can always find one bigger - all the way out to infinity. But have you ever stopped to think about what a really big number is actually like? That there are numbers you can't even write out long form inside this universe? This episode we explore the march of big numbers, all the way up to Graham's Number! The Wholesome Show i...

Ok... to people who don't do it, it's weird and gross and wrong. But to people who do do it, it's basically the golden fountain of youth. That's right, it's Urophagia, or the weird gross quack medicine that is drinking your own urine! You may not have ever wanted to know about this practice, but your intrepid explorers at The Wholesome Show have done the hard yards for you today - so sit back, pou...

Bartholomew Chassenée, a distinguished French jurist of the sixteenth century, made his reputation at the bar as counsel for some... rats. That's right, he successfully defended some rats in court. How did he get the rats off? What loophole did he find? These are interesting questions... But perhaps the more interesting question is why were the rats on trial in the first place? We explore the weir...

The past - they say - is a different country. They do things differently there... And the best way to see those differences (and laugh and cry at them) is to flick through old time encyclopaedias. So we sat down with the 1947 Children's New Illustrated Encyclopedia, and explored how the world was explained to children in 1947. Join us to find out! The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will...

The number pi (π) is... rather unwieldy. It starts with a fairly simple '3', but then continues past the decimal place with a collection of basically random digits... Here's the first one hundred or so digits: 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034825342117067 Edward J Goodwin didn't like this messiness, so he had an idea: legislate a much simpler...

It's been the stock of movies for decades - and dreams for centuries - but do truth serums exist? Spoiler alert (you already knew this): they don't. But that's not for the lack of trying! We explore the heroes (or villains) of science trying to bring this mythical chemical into being! The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proudly supported by The Australian National Centre for t...

What 'generation' are you, listener? Too cool Gen X? Permanently bottom of the economic hierarchy Millenial? Or plutocrat Baby Boomer? You may have been born during one of these time periods, but it turns out when you look at any actual science, the idea of 'generations' is pretty damn flimsy. So we explored! The Wholesome Show is normally Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, but in this episode we'...

In recent weeks the popular website Tumblr made radical changes to it's terms of use - basically, banning rude and naughty content! To celebrate / explore / commiserate this milestone, we old science communicators brought in our Senior Generation Z correspondent Sam Vilkins to explain to us what this crazy website is (was) all about... The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, proud...

For a few decades in the middle of the 20th century, an icepick - inserted moderately carefully through the gap between a patient's eye and their skull into their brain (and then jiggled around a little bit) - was the height of psychiatric medicine. Even though it came with a 15% death rate, it was all the rave! We explore the terrible terrible history of the lobotomy! The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod...

In April 2009, the Italian city of L'Aquila was hit by a devastating earthquake. 309 people were killed. More than 1,500 were injured, some 20,000 buildings were destroyed and 65,000 were temporarily displaced. Some estimates put the damage at $16 Billion. Less than a year later, six leading Italian scientists and one government official were charged with manslaughter in connection with the case....

Listener, how do you feel about your co-workers? Do you love them deeply, or would you describe them like this? "I have inevitably come to despise my co-workers with every molecule of my stressed and wretched being." Well... I hope not the latter. But someone out there does feel this way, and they feel this way because of OPEN PLAN OFFICES. This episode we explore the nightmarish hellscape of our...

Every now and then scientists hit on something weird - something in the wide world out there behaving not quite as you'd expect. Astronomer Dr Tabetha S. Boyajian discovered one of these weird things: a star with something strange orbiting it. Could it, just possible, be home to super advanced aliens??? We explore the potential (but, in all fairness, not super likely) alien megastructures surround...