MasaC asks: Why do fingernails on a chalkboard make us cringe? Few sounds cause humans to cringe more than nails across a chalkboard, a fork scraped on a plate, or a heavy metal chair dragged across a tiled floor. But what exactly is it about this sort of scraping noise that is so offensive to our brains that many even […]
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L.I.A.L asks: Why do we have moles all over our body and what do they do? Moles, in general, are simply an abnormal grouping of cells called melanocytes. Melanocytes are the cells responsible for giving your skin its pigment. They reside in the basal layer of your skin, and overall, have a surprisingly uniform distribution. Their density will vary depending […]
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Mindy N. asks: After a long run my leg muscles are tired, but my heart is not. Why doesn’t the heart need any rest? An average of around 60 to 100 times every minute of every day of every year of your ultimately meaningless life, your heart beats… until it doesn’t. Not long after it stops, all knowledge of your […]
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In the early 1960s, international communications were limited to transmissions through undersea cables or occasionally unreliable radio signals bounced off of the ionosphere. As you might imagine from this, many in the Western world weren’t too keen on the state of the situation given that were to someone, say, the Soviet Union, cut those cables before launching an attack, international […]
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Hippiekiyay asks: Do pets care if you leave the radio on when you leave? A survey of about 2000 British dog owners conducted in early 2017 found that around 40% of dog owners admitted to leaving the radio on when they left the house so that their dog wouldn’t be lonely, while another 32% admitted that they did the same […]
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Astryx_x asks: Do suppressed memories actually exist? We’ve all seen it in movies- a character will be going along in their lives blissfully unaware of some extremely traumatic event in their long distant past… that is, until a bit of syrup dribbles onto their cheek and they are transported back in their mind to that time they were abducted by […]
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Randrew asks: Why do people say the human soul weighs 21 grams? It’s often said that it’s impossible to put a price on a human life, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t define it by other metrics, something physician Duncan MacDougall tried to do in the early 20th century by setting up an experiment to discern the weight of […]
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Contrary to popular belief, a decent percentage of the human population has known definitely the Earth was roughly spherical for over two thousand years. Hardly impressive, as noted in our BrainFood Show podcast, bees also use this fact in their own absurdly fascinating navigation and in communicating directions to other bees. As for humans, we took a little longer to […]
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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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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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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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Developed over the course of decades, GPS has become far more ubiquitous than most people realize. Not just for navigation, its extreme accuracy in time keeping (+/- 10 billionths of a second) has been used by countless businesses the world over for everything from aiding in power grid management to helping manage stock market and other banking transactions. The GPS […]
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Philip R. asks: Has any scientist ever named a newly discovered creature after someone they dislike out of spite? Naming a newly discovered species is a rather prestigious privilege. As you can probably imagine then, many see the act of choosing a suitable name for a newly discovered creature as a task that requires a great deal of consideration and […]
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Mark B. asks: How do artists making paintings with people that have eyes that follow you around the room? Art as they say, is subjective, what one person considers a priceless masterpiece others might see as nothing more than a giant black square… But there’s one very specific kind of painting that most everyone sees the same way- the kind […]
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In 1968, an expert on animal behaviour and population control called John B. Calhoun built what was essentially a utopia for mice that was purpose built to satisfy their every need. Despite going out of his way to ensure the inhabitants of his perfect mouse society never wanted for anything, within 2 years virtually the entire population was dead. So […]
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Mike L. asks: What is the chemtrail smoke behind airliners? So called “chemtrails,” though more technically known as contrails, first appeared behind planes going all the way back to the earliest days of high altitude flight. One of the earliest known surviving references of such occurred when an American soldier by the name of Captain Ward Wells observed a peculiar […]
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Jeremy A. asks: How many hamsters running on electricity generating wheels would it take to provide enough energy for an average American household? Would this be cheaper than coal electricity? While the question of hamsters powering homes may seem a bit farcical, it should be noted that at one point humans did specifically breed a certain type of dog for […]
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Tyler K. asks: Why does soda taste worse when it’s flat? A notion that will come as a surprise to just about no one is that most people think soda and other carbonated drinks taste significantly better when they still contain a lot of fizz as opposed to being “flat.” It turns out that, contrary to popular belief, this phenomenon […]
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