zhiyu89 asks: When I was a kid we used to blow on Nintendo games if they didn’t work and I’ve always wondered if this actually did anything? Once upon a time a seemingly universally known trick to get a Nintendo game cartridge to work was to simply pull it out, blow on it, then re-insert. If this didn’t give the […]
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Mandy R. asks: In movies they always act like it’s important for a person to stay conscious when they’ve been seriously injured. Does that really help someone live? Special thanks to Scott from the Medical Confessions podcast for answering this one for us! We’ve all seen movie scenes where someone is seriously injured and slowly drifting in and out of […]
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MmmJeremy asks: If I’m drunk and can’t drive, could I legally ride my horse home instead? To begin with, in the vast majority of countries on Earth, “driving under the influence” is usually defined as “operating a vehicle after imbibing an alcoholic beverage or drug to the extent that [your] mental faculties are impaired”. So, given nobody in day to […]
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Willow T. asks – Is it true that you soil yourself when you die? Depending on your current religious affiliation, at the moment of death a number of things may happen to your soul, from being judged by Anubis to being conscripted to kick an endless amount of ass for the glory of Odin in Valhalla. The things that happen […]
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Amanda D. asks: I was just wondering what would happen if you attached money instead of a stamp to a letter and tried to mail it? As we’ve covered before in our article on What Happens to Undeliverable Mail with No Return Address? the individuals tasked with processing mail often go above and beyond what is expected of them in their […]
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Luke T. asks: How many times can you shoot a bulletproof vest before it stops working? To begin with, it should probably be noted that the name “bulletproof vest” is a misnomer with “bullet resistant vest” being more apt. Or to quote John Geshay, marketing director for body armor company Safariland, “…nothing can be bulletproof, not even a manhole cover. […]
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Killimimes asks: Why do they have the “speak now or forever hold your peace” part of a wedding and what happens when someone objects? While it may come as a surprise to many, it turns out the whole, “If anyone can show just cause why this couple cannot lawfully be joined together in matrimony, let them speak now or forever […]
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Labyrinth900 asks: Were “Wanted Dead or Alive” bounties a real thing? In other words, if you found someone that is wanted dead, could you legally shoot and kill them and collect a bounty, and not be charged for murder? A classic Hollywood trope is the idea of a poster with the photo of a given criminal along with very large […]
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Finkbonner14 asks: Why doesn’t the United States stop using idiot units and go metric? In 1793, noted French scientist Joseph Dombey departed Le Havre, France bound for Philadelphia. His mission was to meet with Thomas Jefferson and give him two of the rarest items on Earth. Unfortunately for Dombey, fate had other intentions and storms pushed the ship he was […]
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Peter R. Asks: If I had to, what parts of my body are healthiest to eat and offer the most caloric benefit? Essentially, what parts of me should I eat first to maximize my survival chances in some extreme situation? Would eating feces be of any benefit? While of course how long one could survive without food and water varies […]
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Jen K. asks: Odd question, but what does being shot feel like? While there are certainly exceptions, as we’ll get into shortly, according to the majority of firsthand accounts from people who’ve been shot we could find, having a hunk of searing hot metal traveling around Mach 1 tear through part of your body doesn’t really hurt much… at first. […]
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Jeremy A. asks: How did flipping the bird come to mean fu? While some common gestures, such as the high five, have pretty well known and surprisingly modern origins, it turns out one of the most popular of all has been around for well over two thousand years, including having various similar connotations as it has today. Unsurprisingly once you […]
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Michael F. asks: Are executions really held at midnight like shown in the movies? If so, why? By the time Rainey Bethea was executed on August 14, 1936, most of the United States had ceased executing people publicly. However, in Kentucky in 1936 an execution could still be held publicly and, according to the jury at his trial, Bethea deserved […]
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Contrary to popular belief, space isn’t actually “cold” per se, at least not in the way often depicted in movies. Space is just mostly empty and all that nothing doesn’t have a temperature. For example, if you were in space without a space suit, the two ways you’d lose heat are just via evaporation of moisture on your skin, in […]
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William K. asks: What’s it like being an extra in a movie? Becoming a Background Actor, or “extra” as they are more widely known, is a fairly simple process that usually involves little more than responding to an ad. Depending on the scope of the project and the kind of extras needed, this ad could appear anywhere from a dedicated […]
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ScrobTheFancyTurtle asks: Love your video on what happens when people are accidentally declared dead. But it got me wondering, what happens if you make a will, go missing, so your will is executed, then turn up alive later? Do you get your stuff back? As we discussed in our article on what happens to a person who is accidentally declared dead […]
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James H. asks: How realistic is the idea presented in video games of shooting explosives to set them off? Given that their main and really only purposes is violently exploding, you might be surprised to learn that most explosives utilised by the military are shockingly stable. So much so, in fact, that, contrary to what is often depicted in movies […]
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Isaac R. asks: When people buy expensive art worth hundreds of millions of dollars, how do they pay for it? Like could they pay with cash or do they have to have their bank wire the money? Just wondering about the nuts and bolts here. As we’ve discussed before, there are a handful of people walking around right now with […]
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