Considered to be little more than a historical curio today, the early 18th century Puckle Gun was nonetheless one of the most advanced firearms of its age, capable of firing one shot every 6 seconds in an era when even the most highly skilled soldier equipped with a musket typically topped out at a rate of only about one shot […]
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The favoured instrument of the likes of Lisa Simpsons, former President Bill Clinton, and the co-author of this article and founder of TodayIFoundOut, the saxophone has variously been described as everything from “the most moving and heart-gripping wind instrument” to the “Devil’s horn”. Rather fittingly then the instrument’s inventor, Adolphe Sax, was a similarly polarising figure and led a life […]
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Alex K. asks: Is it true that sommeliers can’t tell the difference between expensive and cheap wines? Having a seasoned tongue that can detect the subtle differences between different kinds of adult grape juice is a sure sign of class. In fact, the go-to Hollywood trope for showing that a character is refined is to give them a penchant for […]
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In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we skip the quick fact because this one took forever to research and put together and I ran out of time. 😉 Instead we jump right into the main topic which is a very real phenomenon that popped up off and on for several hundred years called Dance Mania or St. Vitus’ […]
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Peter E. asks: What could I do during freefall after falling out of a plane to maximize my chances of surviving? According to the Aircraft Crashes Record Office in Geneva, between 1940 and 2008 there were 157 people who fell out of planes without a parachute during a crash and lived to tell about it. A full 42 of those […]
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Humanity has collectively been responsible for a depressingly large amount of animals going extinct in our relatively short time on this Earth. However, perhaps no creature was wiped from the face of the planet for as silly a reason as the great auk. Once endemic to the North Atlantic, the great auk was a flightless seabird not too dissimilar in […]
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In the world of food advertising there’s a concept known as “propping” which is industry jargon for making the food look as good as possible via sometimes rather, shall we say, unusual means. While proper lighting and setting are a given, a good food stylist, which is a thing by the way, will do much more than that. For example, […]
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While getting divorced in modern times in most nations isn’t exactly a walk in the park, options at least do exist in much of the world, even in cases where one spouse would rather stay together. But this is a relatively modern phenomenon. Classically, getting divorced was almost impossible. So much so that at one point about the only way […]
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San dro asks: What happens if you never give your child a name? It turns out there are a shocking number of rules and regulations concerning what parents can name their children, when the naming has to happen by, and even a section of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child that specifically states that all people, […]
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Described variously as everything from “the greatest B-movie ever made” to a masterpiece of horror and suspense, John Carpenter’s The Thing, which debuted on June 25, 1982, is a movie that rightfully stands amongst the likes of Alien and The Terminator as one of the most kick-ass sci-fi movies in history. The thing is, it turns out The Thing was […]
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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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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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Throughout World War 2, Winston Churchill gave a number of speeches that galvanized the British public in the face of extreme hardship and convinced them to keep fighting that good fight against Adolf and his cronies. Perhaps the most famous speech Churchill ever gave was the one he spent the longest time agonising over- This was their finest hour, where […]
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In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at whether or not male humans can get pregnant and carry a baby to full term naturally. (Spoiler- yes and yes. And even breastfeed too! It doesn’t even require fancy science or advanced medical techniques.) Moving on to the meat of today’s episode, we jump into a variety […]
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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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On June 12, 1942, Anne Frank received a diary for her 13th birthday. But you all undoubtedly know a lot about that already. What you might not know is that the popular public version of that diary has been greatly censored because, as young teens are wont to do, Anne talked about her nether regions and sex- a lot. In […]
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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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Sorry for the long gap between episodes. We’ll be getting a bit more regular going forward. Also apologies for my audio quality in this one. Adobe kept crashing on me, so we had to use the audio Simon was receiving which isn’t ideal. Also a bit under the weather and lost my voice before recording, so maybe for the best […]
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