The BrainFood Show

Walk into any hotel room in North America, open the nightstand drawer, and what will you find? More often than not, a copy of the Bible. The same holds true in many other countries. Indeed, the Bible in the nightstand ultimately became a standard and expected part of the hotel experience, along with the temperamental coffee machine, mini fridge full of ludicrously expensive miniature bottles of wine, tiny and eminently steal-able soaps and shampoo bottles in the bathrooms, and the, uh, suspiciously positioned armchair at the foot of the bed. But have you ever stopped to ask yourself: why? About the Bible, I mean, not the armchair because I mean, who hasn’t been there… But after all, hotels welcome all kinds of guests, not all of whom are practicing Christians. And while many nations - the United States particularly - are Christian-centric, are so many hotel owners really so evangelical as to stock their rooms with copies of the Good Book? Author: Gilles Messier Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Caden Nielsen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today's compilation video, we are looking at what happened to the Creators of The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, and Peanuts, and one of the most bizarre coincidences in entertainment history that gave the world two of its most iconic comics. 0:00 What Happened to the Creator of The Far Side? 8:09 What Happened to the Creator of Calvin and Hobbes? 17:13 What Happened to the Creator of Garfield? 31:34 What Happened to the Creator of Peanuts? 49:32 The Most Bizarre Coincidence in Entertainment History That Birthed Two of the World's Most Iconic Comics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start off looking at why superheroes wear their underwear on the outside. Moving on to the main topic, we are looking at the fascinating story of an instance where a major movie studio intentionally made a horrible Fantastic Four movie and a variety of interesting tangents along the way.  In the Bonus Facts, we look at some rather odd characters created by DC Comics and Marvel over the years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, a massive armada of 7,000 ships carrying 1 million troops from Britain, the United States, Canada, and dozens of other nations crossed the English Channel, bound for Normandy on the coast of France. Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Western Europe, had begun. The largest and most complex amphibious assault ever conducted, Overlord depended on thousands of sub-operations conducted in unison, including aerial bombardments and paratrooper drops carried out by an equally massive armada of over 11,000 aircraft, many of which were painted with distinctive black-and-white stripes on their wings and fuselages. But…why? What purpose did these markings - today so intimately associated with the D-Day landings - actually serve? Author: Gilles Messier Editor/Host: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila 0:00 Intro 2:44 The Problem 8:45 The Stripes Solution Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It is the ultimate vision of the end times: a gargantuan, roiling column of orange flame and black smoke towering into the sky, with its top a massive ball, forming something of a mushroom shape. But have you ever wondered why atomic bombs produce such distinctively-shaped explosions, or what a nuclear detonation would look like underwater, underground, or even in outer space or the surface of the moon? It turns out in each environment, the result of the explosion is extremely different, in some surprising ways, especially when it comes to what happens when a nuke explodes in space, with this result being almost certainly not what most think, and definitely not what Hollywood ever depicts. So grab your Geiger counter, radiation suit, and a tasty survival ration, as we dive into the fascinating physics of nuclear explosions, and then use all that knowledge to definitively answer the question- just what would a nuclear blast in space, and on the moon, look like. 0:00 Intro 2:35 What Causes the Mushroom Cloud When on Earth and Other Lesser Known Unique Effects of Nuclear Blasts 10:09 What Happens When you Detonate a Nuke Under Ground or Under Water and the Interesting Differences from Atmospheric Detonations? 17:29 What Happens When You Detonate a Nuke in Space? 23:22 What Would Happen if You Detonated a Nuke on the Moon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Almost everyone has seen depicted the bizarre bachelor party tradition of a scantily-clad woman jumping out of a giant cake. It turns up most often in decades-old films, TV shows, and comics, but it still persists today at lavish Vegas shindigs—though the cakes are now usually made of flimsy cardboard. But how did this tradition actually start? Well, it turns out it was a murder and the "Trial of the Century" that made the practice spread. Here now is the dark story of how it all began. Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila 0:00 Intro 1:28 How the Practice of Putting Living Things in Food Got Started 5:41 The Girl in the Pie Dinner and the Murder That Followed 9:45 The Incredible Tale of the Dwarf Knight and the Duel That Ruined His Life Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hand based games have been around seemingly as long as humans have been humaning. As to the exact genesis of Rock, Paper, Scissors, however, this appears to originate in hand games from China, supposedly going back about two thousand years, though primary documented evidence of this is scant. That said, the trail gets much more clear starting around the 17th century which saw some of these games having migrated over to Japan and explicit references to them in surviving text. One of those games, in turn, spread from Japan throughout the world in surprisingly recent times. We are, of course, referring to Rock, Paper, Scissors. As noted, in the early going, there were a myriad of these hand games using a series of hand gestures, sometimes even using various chants. As for the many three hand gesture variants, these are called sansukumi-ken. As an example of one variant of this, we have the Japanese “mushi-ken” which instead of using Rock, Paper, and Scissors, used hand gestures representing a frog, a slug, and a snake. The specific gestures were the thumb as the frog, which defeats the slug. The slug is represented by the pinky finger and defeats the snake. The snake is represented by the index finger and defeats the frog. If you're now wondering how a snake is beaten by a slug in the Japanese version, it's hypothesized that when the Japanese adopted the game from the Chinese, they simply misinterpreted the character for a certain poisonous centipede used in said Chinese version, with that then representing the slug in Japan because of it. 0:00 Who Invented Rock, Paper, Scissors and What's the Best Way to Win Consistently? 10:27 Who Invented Chewing Gum? 18:22 Who Invented the Food Pyramid and Why You'd Be Crazy to Follow It 27:40 Who Invented the Pencil Sharpener? 33:34 Who Invented the Hot Air Balloon? 44:14 Who Invented the Taser? 50:07 Who Invented Jeans? 58:20 Who Invented Nachos and Why are They Called That? 1:07:36 Who Invented Hawaiian Pizza? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

*Just an addendum to one of the tangents I forgot to mention- pulling up like crazy in a plane while rapidly hurtling towards the ground is a phenomenal way to ensure the wings of the plane cease to remain attached to it. In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start off looking at the little known much more massive big brother to the Roman Colosseum and the astounding number of people it held. Moving on to the main topic, we are looking at how it came to be that some countries have their populaces drive on the left while others choose the keep right model. In the Bonus Facts, we look at some interesting things about the keep left and keep right rules with regards to boats, airplanes and helicopters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conceived in early 1990, the MagiCan campaign was supposed to be the spearhead of a massive summer promotion the cola giant dubbed “Magic Summer ’90”. In a nutshell, the promotion involved hiding cash prizes ranging from $5-$500, as well as some other goodies such as coupons for free Coke, inside of 750,000 of the several hundred million cans of Coke that would be distributed during the summer. As part of the campaign, Coke created (and patented) a unique mechanism that, as soon as the can was opened, would eject the prize inside via a spring loaded mechanism. Coke dubbed the cans “MagiCans”. In order to ensure people didn’t end up with water-logged prizes, the part of the can containing the aforementioned mechanism was sealed off and the reservoir that was left was filled with chlorinated water to make the weight of the can approximately the same as a normal full can of Coca-Cola. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since the early 1970s conspiracy theorists have created ever more elaborate stories about how NASA faked the moon landings, much to the annoyance of the literal hundreds of thousands of people who worked in some capacity to make these missions a reality, and even more so to the men who were brave enough to sit in front of a massive controlled explosion, take a little jaunt through the soul crushing void of space in an extremely complex ship built by the lowest bidder, then get into another spacecraft whose ascent engine had never been test fired before they lit the candle, and all with the goal of exiting said ship with only a special suit between them and oblivion. And don’t even get the astronauts started on the paltry government salary they earned in doing all that and the hilarious lengths they had to go to to provide some semblance of a life insurance policy for their families should the worst happen during the missions. So who first got the idea that the moon landings were faked? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices