Episodios

  • The Most Bizarre Substance Known to Science and What It Can Do

    The Most Bizarre Substance Known to Science and What It Can Do
    Mar 4 2026
    If ever there was a criminally underrated natural resource, it would have to be Helium. Though most commonly associated with party balloons and making one’s voice sound like a cartoon, Helium’s most important application is in cooling the magnets of Magnetic Resonance Imaging or MRI machines. While the finite and ever-dwindling global supply of this vitally important gas is a topic worthy of its own video, perhaps even more fascinating is just how bizarre an element Helium truly is. For if Helium is liquefied and cooled to a low enough temperature, it begins to behave like no other liquid on earth, seemingly violating the laws of gravity, thermodynamics, and even logic itself. This is the story of superfluid Helium II, the weirdest substance known to science. In order for Helium to be liquefied, it must be cooled to a temperature of -268.8 degrees Celsius or 4.2 Kelvin – that is, only 4.2 degrees above Absolute Zero, the coldest temperature theoretically possible. By contrast, Nitrogen liquefies at a relatively balmy 77 Kelvin, Oxygen at 54 Kelvin, and Hydrogen at 33 Kelvin. The reason Helium is so difficult to liquefy lies in its electron orbitals being completely filled, making it – like the other noble gases Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, and Radon – electrically neutral and chemically inert. This means that the only force which can pull Helium atoms together is the so-called Van de Waals Force, which is caused by electrons shifting from one side of an atom to the other and creating a momentary electrostatic charge. This force is incredibly weak, meaning that Helium must be cooled to extremely low temperatures in order for the Van de Waals forces to overcome the energy of the moving atoms and pull them close enough together for the gas to liquefy. Solidifying Helium is even more difficult – so difficult, in fact, that it cannot be done at regular atmospheric pressures. Only at pressures of 25 atmospheres and above can solid Helium be created. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    17 m
  • How the Hell Did Winston Churchill Lose the Election Right After Defeating Germany?

    How the Hell Did Winston Churchill Lose the Election Right After Defeating Germany?
    Mar 3 2026
    Nazi Germany officially surrendered on May 7, 1945. With the war still raging in the Pacific against Japan and sporting a popularity rate at around 83%, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill seemed a shoe-in to maintain his position as Prime Minister of the British Empire. Just before the announcement of the results of the election, Churchill had been at the Potsdam Conference with U.S. President Truman and Joseph Stalin, only intending to travel home briefly to accept his victory, and then back to the conference. Yet a funny thing happened on July 26, 1945, the voting populace of the UK, which had turned out in record numbers of 73%, had decided to collectively say “Thanks for your service, Winston, but we’ve decided to go in a different direction,” in a landslide defeat that shocked the world. While in more modern times you might think some sort of scandalous affair or offensive comment may have whipped up the mob on the interwebs precipitating such a massive electoral fall in the span of just a couple months, there was no such issue here either. So what happened? How did this wildly successful politician, frequently named among the top Prime Ministers ever in the nation, at the height of his popularity no less, and who had just helped successfully guide Britain through one of its most harrowing periods of its storied history, not just lose, but lose in a landslide? And not only this, making the whole thing even more inexplicable, he lost to a man who one of said man’s own party members, Aneurin Bevan, stated “seems determined to make a trumpet sound like a tin whistle.” Or as chairman of the Daily Mirror, Cecil King, would remark in 1940, he was “of very limited intelligence and no personality. If one heard he was getting £6 a week in the service of the East Ham Corporation, one would be surprised he was earning so much.” Or, let’s not stop there, as famed social reformer Beatrice Webb would remark, “He looked and spoke like an insignificant elderly clerk, without distinction in the voice, manner or substance of his discourse. To realize that this little non-entity is… presumably the future Prime Minister, is pitiable.” Or how about as Churchill himself would allegedly quip about his opponent, he is "a modest man, but then, he has so much to be modest about." The demeaning quotes about the man Churchill lost to go on and on and on, and his own party before, during, and after the election likewise tried to oust him as their leader…. Only to see this quiet, oft’ forgotten individual who rapidly rose from a middle class background to the heights of power, defy them all and go on to become one of the greatest Prime Ministers in the history of the nation, often even ranked above Churchill himself, despite only serving in the position for a handful of years. As ever, of course, the devil is in the fascinating details, so let’s dive into it, and what specifically happened to see a titan of history defeated by a man likely no one outside of the UK even knows the name of, yet shaped the Britain we have today arguably more significantly than Churchill ever did. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    25 m
  • The Real Color of the Sun, How Many Nuclear Bomb Powered Rockets It Would Take to Stop the Earth Orbiting the Sun and Much, Much More

    The Real Color of the Sun, How Many Nuclear Bomb Powered Rockets It Would Take to Stop the Earth Orbiting the Sun and Much, Much More
    Mar 2 2026
    ⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we begin by discussing the clandestine way Niel Armstrong managed to get his application to the astronaut program in despite submitting it past the deadline. We then look at why he got to be first to walk on the moon when precedent should have had it been Buzz Aldrin. Next up we look at the oft’ forgotten second thing Armstrong said when stepping out onto the moon. Moving swiftly on we do a rapid fire of a variety of space related bonus facts including, but not limited to, the real color of the Sun, how much energy it would take to cause the Earth to stop orbiting the Sun, how old the Sun is in Sun years, how many Sun rises and sunsets astronauts aboard the International Space Station see every day, etc. And for those curious on Simon and my treatise on the proper order of watching Star Trek series and other such thoughts, ⁠the mentioned forum post is here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h y 4 m
  • The Most Badass U.S. President and His Many Insane Exploits

    The Most Badass U.S. President and His Many Insane Exploits
    Mar 1 2026
    If you've followed this website, our YouTube channel, or BrainFood Show podcast very long, you know one of our favorite historic individuals is Theodore Roosevelt- among countless other reasons to be admired, a man who enjoys a reputation as one of the most terrifyingly badass individuals to ever hold the office of leader of a nation, with countless stories detailing his cartoonishly manly exploits. For just a small sample to start, at one point while he was living as a rancher, some thieves stole his boat in the middle of an ice storm. Given the rather dangerous weather conditions, you might think he'd just let them go. But this was Teddy Roosevelt and it was the principal of the thing. He states, "In any wild country where the power of law is little felt or heeded, and where every one has to rely upon himself for protection, men soon get to feel that it is in the highest degree unwise to submit to any wrong…no matter what cost of risk or trouble. To submit tamely and meekly to theft or to any other injury is to invite almost certain repetition of the offense, in a place where self-reliant hardihood and the ability to hold one’s own under all circumstances rank as the first of virtues." Thus, he spent the next three days building another boat so he could track the thieves down and take his original boat back. Once done, it took him a few days of searching, but using his prodigious skills as a master tracker, he managed to find and capture the men. However, ultimately the river became too frozen over to continue to the nearest town that way, so instead he sent his ranch hand companions home and marched the thieves on foot, alone for 40 hours straight to town. During this trek, he did not bind the thieves' in any way as he felt sure they'd suffer from frostbite if he did so. To keep them from overpowering him while they trudged along through the frozen wasteland, he simply kept a gun trained on them and, while they slept during rest periods, he kept himself awake by reading Tolstoy's then relatively recently published Anna Karenina. It's also noteworthy here that because of the weather conditions, the fact that he was in hostile territory in the middle of nowhere, and escorting a trio of criminals who would have killed him without hesitation if he'd given them the chance, he was within his rights to simply execute them on the spot and go home, something the vast majority of lawmen of his era would have done. Roosevelt, however, felt they deserved a trial... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    19 m
  • WTF is Up with the McDonald's McRib?

    WTF is Up with the McDonald's McRib?
    Feb 28 2026
    The McRib is a food with both a devout following and many detractors. But what is the genesis of the world’s most popular fast food chain’s most mysterious menu item? And why, oh why, is it not available all the time like the majority of the rest of the McDonald’s menu? Cooking ribs in the Americas predates the colonial period. But the earliest records of Europeans cooking foods near what we would call barbeque were in colonial Virginia. Settlers observed a native way to cook meat, and they adapted it to their tastes. Later, as slaves were brought in from Caribbean plantations, the food genre we know as barbeque developed. In fact, the word barbeque is a loan word from the Taino language of the Caribbean. It was originally called barbacoa. It is unclear whether the name comes from the native islander's method of cutting the meat or the wooden frame on which the food was smoked. In any case, after it arrived in the North American colonies, it spread wherever pork was plentiful. Important here to the story of the McRib is that barbeque, in the proper sense, is any meat that is slow-cooked over indirect heat, usually wood, and not merely meat with barbeque sauce on it. It can take up to eighteen hours to turn raw meat into barbeque for it to reach perfection. If brined first, it can take an additional day. That is part of what makes the McRib a surprise. Rib joints usually slow-cook. Many places brine it before smoking. Additionally, cooking with a wood fire is inherently messy. Barbeque meat is also often hand butchered. None of this lends itself to a fast food chain that in 2011 had to abandon the idea of using celery root in one of its food items because to offer the item, McDonald's would have had to buy all of the world’s celery root supply, and there still would not have been enough celery to meet the projected demand. A frequent problem for the restaurant chain that annually serves 1/27th of all restaurant food consumed in the world, and caters to about 1 percent of the world’s population on any given day. Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link ⁠https://incogni.com/brainfood Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    18 m
  • Are the Odds of Successfully Navigating an Asteroid Field Really Approximately 3,720 to 1?

    Are the Odds of Successfully Navigating an Asteroid Field Really Approximately 3,720 to 1?
    Feb 27 2026
    ⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we begin by discussing the real origin of Tang and what that has to do with Pop Rocks and how they work. We then move on to the interesting story behind the invention of Velcro and how it works. Next up we look at whether NASA really spent many millions of dollars developing the famous “space pen” instead of just using a pencil like the Russians. Moving on from there we discuss the fascinating reason why only one side of the moon faces the Earth and how this happened and is still happening, with the Earth itself slowing down such that in theory at some point only one side of it will face the moon. Moving on, we look at what the actual odds of navigating a typical asteroid field in space would be and whether the depictions in movies here are actually accurate. Finally, we respond to some user feedback, including on initial attempts listeners of the female persuasion have made to pee standing up without peeing all over themselves (which sounds even weirder to write, but is in reference to a previous space episode ;-)), and the interesting phenomenon of people using the show to fall asleep every night and whether we should take that as a good thing or a bad thing… Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link ⁠https://incogni.com/brainfood Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 h y 4 m
  • Why Don't Plane Windows and Seats Line Up?

    Why Don't Plane Windows and Seats Line Up?
    Feb 26 2026
    While airplane manufacturers do design the planes with general row positioning and pitch (the measurement from one seat to the same exact point on the seat in front or behind it) in mind, with the windows often lining up with the seats, the designers' exact recommended arrangement is rarely, if ever, followed. You see, the final placement of seats is left up to the individual airlines that purchase the plane. To make the seating arrangement as flexible as possible for airlines, there are multiple tracks on the floors that the seats are mounted on. This allows the seats to easily be moved closer together or farther apart. The airlines can even switch the aisle arrangement via moving a line of seats to a completely different track. For example, on some versions of the Boeing 777, Boeing recommends a layout of 3+3+3 with a 32 inch (81.2 cm) pitch for economy passengers. In this layout, you need a passenger density of 67% before a passenger may be required to sit next to someone else. And if some passengers choose to sit next to one another, the percentage is even higher before other passengers must sit next to someone. Boeing recommends this layout because, in internal studies they've conducted, they claim that one of the biggest factors in passenger perception of comfort on a flight is whether there is someone directly next to them or not. Nevertheless, disregarding the manufacturer recommendation, pitch on a... Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link ⁠https://incogni.com/brainfood Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    19 m
  • What was It Really Like to Be a Gladiator?

    What was It Really Like to Be a Gladiator?
    Feb 25 2026
    Gladiatorial combat may seem outdated and barbaric, but it is, at its heart, a combat sport like mixed martial arts, boxing, and even professional wrestling, with very similar appeal. There were clearly defined rules, a sense of dramatic flair with costumes, and even character archetypes. It was indeed bloody, but not as nearly as fatal as many think today. Not every gladiator died in the arena, and those who made it past their first handful of matches even less so beyond. That isn’t to say that gladiator fights didn’t also come with many deaths. For example, gladiator combat was usually accompanied by other events such as parades, animal hunts, glorified prisoner executions dressed up as combat practice for gladiators, and even occasional audience fatalities. But how did the games get started, what was life actually like for a typical gladiator, and how did these ubiquitous games rather suddenly cease to be a thing after so many centuries of widespread extreme popularity? Sponsor: Incogni - Use code BRAINFOOD and get 60% off an annual plan using the link https://incogni.com/brainfood Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    21 m