In this episode of The Brain Food Show, Simon Whistler and Daven Hiskey are looking at the difference between a number of things, kicking it off with the difference between hardwood and softwood.... which you'd think you already know, but we're guessing for most, you don't actually know the difference. :-) Up next we dive into a bunch of "difference betweens" such as the difference between fruits and vegetables, green and black tea, various types of olive oils, brown and white eggs, etc. as well...
Jul 09, 2025•1 hr 12 min
In this episode of The BrainFood Show, Simon Whistler dives into what the Aussie staple of Vegemite actually is, and how it came to be, and become a national treasure in the nation. Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Simon Whistler Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 07, 2025•36 min
In today's episode of the BrainFood Show, Daven Hiskey does a deep dive into the oft' forgotten founding father, without whom there may have been no revolution and whose life was who Paul Revere was trying to save on his famous ride. “The troops of George the third have crossed the Atlantic, not to engage an enemy, but to assist a band of traitors in trampling on the rights and liberties of his most loyal subjects… Some boast of being friends to government; I am a friend to righteous government,...
Jul 04, 2025•2 hr 41 min
On July 20, 1969, the world looked on in awe as 39-year-old astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped off a ladder of the Lunar Module Eagle and onto the surface of the moon, becoming the first human to set foot on a natural celestial object. This moment, watched on television by over 650 million people worldwide, has gone down in history as one of mankind’s greatest triumphs, redefining what humanity is capable of achieving. Over the next three years a total of six Apollo missions and twelve astronauts ...
Jun 30, 2025•41 min
In today's BrainFood Show episode, we are discussing three rather inspirational business tails, starting with the extremely humble origins of the now many billion dollar behemoth in Heinz, then on to Karl's favorite all time script in the story of soft soap and the brilliant business man that gave it to us, and finally how an 8th grade dropout created one of the tastiest empires on Earth. Hosts: Karl Smallwood and Daven Hiskey Authors: Karl Smallwood and Daven Hiskey Producer: Caden Nielsen 0:00...
Jun 26, 2025•1 hr 43 min
On June 28, 1839, a ship departed Havana, Cuba en route to Puerto Principe. Along with a crew of 7, including two slaves serving as a cabin boy and ship’s cook, the vessel was also packed with cargo worth approximately $60,000, or about $1.7 million today. This included items ranging from wine, saddles, iron castings, mill rollers, fabrics, soap, leather goods, over 600 pounds of rice and many other foodstuffs, and, most important to our story today, some 53 slaves. Among those 53 were 49 adults...
Jun 25, 2025•54 min
When Boris Yeltsin resigned as president of the Russian Federation, it was expected, but sudden. He resigned so his Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin could become president on January 1, 2000 – the start of the new millennium. Since then, Putin has been the most powerful man in Russia and one of the most powerful men in the world. Today that power has been felt worldwide as the war in the Ukraine rages, contributing to gas price hikes, food insecurity in many countries, and not exactly helping the ...
Jun 23, 2025•54 min
Thanks to Hollywood, as well as words written on the mangled inked corpses of the leafy fellow occupants of our little planet we’ve successfully subjugated, there are a number of common ideas about how an alien invasion of Earth would go. From clandestine infiltration where our celestial enemies walk among us undetected, to these brothers from another primordial goop mother coming with energy weapons a-blazing. But in real life, what would likely happen if aliens did invade? Are aliens currently...
Jun 18, 2025•51 min
We don’t mean to alarm you, but it turns out, despite how much we all fight it like a toddler who’s just been told it’s bedtime, sleeping is a basic, and critical human need. All animals known to man sleep. Humans, however, are seemingly the only ones who voluntarily forgo it, outside of cases like if an animal is starving or the like… And to our extreme detriment. We’ll dive into all the ways and why shortly, but we’re guessing even the most astute of you who consider sleep important don’t real...
Jun 16, 2025•57 min
For anyone sitting in gridlocked traffic on the way to a soul crushing job surrounded by other humans nattering on all day about their TPS reports as you truly internalize the pointlessness of everything because we’re all going to die and everything we ever said or did will be forgotten someday, you may at some point find yourself daydreaming about the life of a lighthouse keeper- kicking back, enjoying the sounds of the ocean waves, and, similar to with your current job, periodically checking t...
Jun 11, 2025•44 min
On a snowy, blustery morning in March 1968, a two-man MiG-15 UTI jet took off from Chkalov air force base outside Moscow on a routine training flight. Barely ten minutes later, the aircraft’s pilot radioed air traffic control, announcing it was cutting its flight short and requesting permission to land. Then, the transmission went dead. At nearby Kirzhach airfield, a group of cosmonauts undergoing parachute training heard two loud explosions in the distance, and dispatched a flight of six helico...
Jun 09, 2025•58 min
We live in, shall we say, politically divisive times… which, contrary to some’s belief, is no different than really any other point since humans started humaning. From Ancient Rome to relatively more modern times in the likes of Thomas Jefferson secretly bankrolling Scottish scandalmonger James Callender to attack Jefferson’s presidential opponent and former best friend, John Adams. And things haven’t exactly improved since, though also contrary to seemingly popular sentiment, as anyone who stud...
Jun 06, 2025•1 hr 31 min
Ah, McDonald’s French Fries. According to a poll we recently ran here, 48% of about 42,000 of you prefer this restaurant’s slender tan starch sticks to all the other restaurant tuber cutting offerings, with this percentage more than double the next runner up which was a blanket choice of “Other”- i.e. nearly all other restaurant french fries combined. While many view McDonald’s as a hamburger joint, the truth is, beyond in the present day McDonald’s making about 1/3 of their revenue from their f...
Jun 04, 2025•46 min
As humans continue to rapidly accelerate to replacing ourselves with robot overlords or otherwise see if we can’t make Wall-E into a prophetic mocumentary, one group of homosapiens refuses to go quietly into the night. And, while it may come as a surprise to you, this group is seemingly set to inherit the Earth, given their population is exploding, whilst birth rates for the rest of us are declining to an extent that most developed nations are already well past the point where their coming gener...
Jun 03, 2025•1 hr 3 min
In the pantheon of worst humans to ever human you will find no shortage of bastions of awful. Hitler probably has the most collective conscious panache, but at least he had the decency to bravely, and with no regard for his personal safety, infiltrate the Hitler bunker and then put a bullet through the cranium of Hitler. But individuals like Hitler did their killing via proxy. As for those who were a little more hands on, the Hitler of these was arguably a man by the name of Vasili Blokhin who, ...
May 17, 2025•38 min
In this episode of The BrainFood Show, we're looking at that time the British tried to replace parachutes with rockets, that time the United States tried sending U.S. Postal Service mail via missiles, and the origins and interesting stories surrounding NASA's Steely Eyed Missile Man expression, and why the rocket launch countdown is stupid. Corrections- Star Spangled Banner was written during the War of 1812. I knew this. I do not know what I was thinking at the time. :-) Hosts: Karl Smallwood a...
May 16, 2025•1 hr 41 min
If there’s two things the internet knows about Nikola Tesla, it’s that he was a genius scientist vastly ahead of his time, and that thanks to a many decades long feud with Thomas Edison which included Edison stealing some of his work and otherwise keeping his former employee on the black balled list, Tesla died in poverty and was largely forgotten by history until relatively recently… The thing is, other than the part about Tesla being a genius, literally none of the rest of what I just said is ...
May 09, 2025•1 hr 55 min
In this episode, Simon delves into the historical and archaeological records, exploring theories and debates surrounding one of history's most significant religious figures. Author: Daven Hiskey Host: Simon Whistler Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
May 07, 2025•34 min
During the Cold War, the U.S. government was hell-bent on one upping the commies in any way possible. In the process, they came up with a number of outlandish plans, such as that time they proposed literally nuking the moon, interestingly enough a project a young Carl Sagan worked on and broke some laws with. More on this later. While it’s probably for the best that that project didn’t ultimately get carried out, there is another that went into history's dustbin that would have been amazing if i...
May 05, 2025•2 hr 9 min
Ah America, filled with gun toting rednecks wearing their flag as a t-shirt and pondering what Jesus would do while chowing down on Mexican food, greasy burgers, partially hydrogenated corn syrup cubes, and washing it all down with Budweiser, the king of beers… for those who’ve never tasted real beer… And Europe, full of a homogeneous group of people who spend most of their time measuring things in meters instead of Ariana Grandes as every god-fearing individual should, whilst worshiping the Bri...
Apr 29, 2025•3 hr 58 min
In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out with an appetizer looking at how chopsticks came to be and why they became so popular in certain parts of the world vs things like spoons and forks. Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor… Ourselves! Go check out our new-ish channel Highlight History, an upcoming re-launch / re-think of Fact Quickie, a new upcoming one in Ancient Marvels, and Simon’s latest attempt to host all YouTube channels- Side Projects. Next up, in the main...
Dec 01, 2020•1 hr 1 min
In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out with an appetizer looking at whether chastity belts were ever actually a thing in medieval times or if it is just a Hollywood invention. Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor… Ourselves! Go check out our new-ish channel Highlight History, an upcoming re-launch / re-think of Fact Quickie, a new upcoming one in Ancient Marvels, and Simon’s latest attempt to host all YouTube channels- Side Projects. Next up, in the main course, we ...
Nov 25, 2020•1 hr 31 min
In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out with an appetizer looking at the film The Knight’s Tale and the very real historic knight Ulrich von Liechtenstein and what the real guy actually got up to. Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor… Ourselves! Go check out our new-ish channel Highlight History and Simon’s latest attempt to host all YouTube channels- Side Projects. Next up, in the main course, we look at what it was actually like to be a medieval knight and how one ...
Nov 01, 2020•1 hr 15 min
In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out with an appetizer looking at how the slipping on a banana peel comedy gag got started. Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor NordVPN. Get 68% off NordVPN! Only $3.71/mo, plus you get an additional month FREE at https://nordvpn.com/brainfoodshow Or use coupon code: brainfoodshow Next up, we have the main course discussing what it was actually like to be a court jester and some examples of some rather famous ones, as well as what ...
Oct 25, 2020•1 hr 5 min
In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out with an appetizer looking at how soap actually works to get rid of microbes. Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor NordVPN. Get 68% off NordVPN! Only $3.71/mo, plus you get an additional month FREE at https://nordvpn.com/brainfoodshow Or use coupon code: brainfoodshow Next up, we have the main course discussing whether or not Medieval Europeans actually didn’t bathe that much or not. As for the desert for today, we look at wheth...
Oct 20, 2020•57 min
In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out looking at why the toilet is called the “Crapper” and the “John”. Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor Skillshare. For a limited time, use the following link to get a free trial of Skillshare Premium Membership: http://skillshare.com/brainfood Next up, we discuss all about what Medieval Europeans did with all their bodily expulsions and whether they really did just toss it out the window. This all culminates in the Great Stink ...
Sep 30, 2020•54 min
In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out looking at the rather interesting way the couple hundred million dollar Hope Diamond has been transported a couple times. Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor Skillshare for 2 months for free here: http://skillshare.com/brainfood Next up, we discuss how diamonds went from a mostly worthless item throughout the majority of human history to in very recent times the extremely expensive item we have today. We then dive into the ext...
Aug 01, 2020•1 hr 1 min
In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out looking at the rather curious phenomenon of the average of your friends being happier, wealthier, and more successful than you. Next up we have a brief message from our sponsor Backblaze and unlimited automatic backup service for just $6 a month. Try it for free for 15-days! http://backblaze.com/brainfoodshow Next up, we discuss how much caffeine it would take to kill you as well as the general healthy upper limit to intake daily. After th...
Jul 02, 2020•1 hr 22 min
In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are start out looking at whether there is actually any difference between various men’s and women’s bathroom products like shaving cream, razors, etc and why women pay more for basically everything. We also have a brief message from a sponsor, Skillshare. Help support this show and learn a lot of interesting new skills, as well as TWO MONTHS FREE using the following link https://www.skillshare.com/brainfood Next up, we basically rant for a really long t...
May 20, 2020•1 hr 36 min
In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we are looking at the difference between a number of things, kicking it off with the difference between BCE/CE and BC/AD systems of dating and the rather fascinating story of how those systems came to be. We also have a brief message from a sponsor, Skillshare. Help support this show and learn a lot of interesting new skills, as well as TWO MONTHS FREE using the following link https://www.skillshare.com/brainfood Up next we dive into a bunch of “difference...
Mar 24, 2020•1 hr 23 min
