The BrainFood Show

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The Bull Moose (Part 1) Jan 05, 2026

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In this episode of The Brain Food Show podcast, we discuss one of the more remarkable individuals in modern history- Theodore Roosevelt. In particular we look at that time he risked life and limb on what amounted to a “principal of the thing” matter, and another time he quite literally shrugged off a bullet to the chest to immediately after give an hour and a half long speech…

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The Many Ways Studios Try to Get You to Watch More Ads Jan 04, 2026

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“Come on, Daddy needs a liveable planet he can rule with an iron fist.” - Sheldon Cooper This is a quote from a season 9 episode of The Big Bang Theory released in 2016 called The Sales Call Sublimation. An episode that is largely noteworthy, at least for the purposes of discussing studios and advertising, for being about 18 minutes long despite being a show that was specifically made to fill a half hour time slot. A timeslot that quite literally had, over the years, slowly become about half ads.

More specifically, The Sales Call Sublimation clocked in at exactly 18 minutes and 34 seconds long. When you take into account the length of the title sequence, about 22 seconds, and also the credits, which tend to be about 30 seconds, the episode actually clocks in at about 17 and a half minutes of actual content, which for an episode of The Big Bang Theory is just enough time to get close to their maximum quota of one joke that vaguely hints at being funny per episode.

For comparison's sake, the first episode of the show clocked in at 21 minutes and 56 seconds long. This means that between 2007 when the show premiered and 2016 when the 9th season was underway, episodes of The Big Bang Theory got about 3-4 minutes shorter. All so that the network could run more ads against it.

Noteworthy in all this, networks ALSO tend to run ads during credits as well as often making use of things like banner ads during content, so calculating the exact amount of time a viewer was having their eyeballs bombarded by advertisements is difficult.

Now, it’s easy to dismiss this because, well, it’s The Big Bang Theory, and who really cares about that show? But this has been an observable trend for decades with basically every major network staple getting ever so slightly shorter with each passing year. For example, newer episodes of The Simpsons are routinely 2-3 minutes shorter than they were back in the 1990’s, meanwhile newer episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, AKA, One Piece for Soccer Moms, similarly run about a minute or two shorter than they did when the show first aired in 2005. Which seems kind of odd given audiences in the 1990s were much more captive to what was currently being shown, and on the whole had longer attention spans than today.

Of course there can be legitimate, creatively justified reasons for an episode to run slightly longer or shorter than its normal average runtime, like ending on a cliffhanger or the like, but as noted this is a readily observed industry wide phenomenon that is generally blamed on advertisements. Not to mention that when shows do run over or under time, it tends to be by a few seconds and in those cases shows have numerous tricks they can use to pad or cut the runtime to reach the required length...

Author: Karl Smallwood and Daven Hiskey

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Host: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Samuel Avila

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Britain's Disastrous WWII Fighter Plane Dec 30, 2025

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What was the worst military aircraft of the Second World War? Given the sheer number of designs fielded by all sides throughout the conflict there is no shortage of candidates - many of which we have already covered on this channel. There was the Messerschmitt Me-163 Komet, a German rocket-powered fighter whose engine had a nasty habit of blowing up or dissolving the pilots alive. And the Messerschmitt Me-132 Gigant, a giant assault glider designed for an abortive German invasion of the British isles but pressed into service as a ponderously slow and horrendously vulnerable cargo transport. On the Allied side there was the Brewster F2A Buffalo and Douglas TBD Devastator, hopelessly outdated U.S. Naval aircraft that were brutally cut down by superior Japanese fighters the moment they first saw combat. And then there was the Fisher P-75 Eagle, a Frankenstein’s monster of a fighter cobbled together from parts of existing aircraft and deliberately designed to save its manufacturer from taking on more wartime production contracts. But when it comes to questionable design concepts, few aircraft can compete with the Boulton-Paul Defiant, a British fighter aircraft that sported a powered, four-gun turret like a bomber but no forward-firing armament. Designed around combat doctrines dating from the First World War, the Defiant enjoyed some early successes before suffering horrendous losses at the hands of more modern German fighters. As a result, it was swiftly withdrawn from day fighter duties, serving with greater success as a night fighter before being relegated to training and rescue duties and quietly retired. Yet while the flawed Defiant never earned the glory of its more illustrious stablemates, the Supermarine Spitfire and Hawker Hurricane, it nonetheless played a small but important role in the war and deserves to be better remembered. This is the story of Britain’s strange and forgotten WWII “turret fighter.” Author: Gilles Messier Host: Simon Whistler Editor: Daven Hiskey

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Accidentally Nuking a Country Dec 28, 2025

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At 10:30 AM on January 17, 1966, an enormous explosion shattered the silence over the small farming village Palomares in Spain. An enormous fireball erupted in the sky overhead, and pieces of flaming debris began raining down over the surrounding countryside. Two U.S. Air Force aircraft had collided during a routine aerial refuelling operation, killing all but four of the eleven men aboard. Within hours, the Spanish province of Almeria was crawling with U.S. military personnel. One of the two aircraft, a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress strategic bomber, had been carrying four hydrogen bombs with a yield of 1.1 million tons of TNT each. One of the bombs landed intact in a riverbed, while the conventional explosives aboard two others detonated on impact, contaminating large areas of Spanish countryside with toxic plutonium. The fourth bomb, however, was nowhere to be found. What followed was one of the largest peacetime naval operations in history as a fleet of U.S. Navy vessels scoured the deep waters of the Mediterranean for the missing bomb. This is the forgotten story of the 1966 Palomares Incident. Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Simon Whistler

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Why Do You Forget Everything When You Enter a New Room? Dec 26, 2025

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There you are. Sitting on your couch, watching a movie, when suddenly you decide you want popcorn. So you get up and cross the room to the kitchen. But the moment you cross the threshold between the two rooms: bam! you suddenly stop in your tracks. You glance about the kitchen in confusion like Gandalf in the Mines of Moria, unable to remember why you came here in the first place. Your mind is blank, wiped clean. You return to the living room, resume your movie, and bam! it all comes back to you as if nothing happened. You get up again, and the whole cycle begins anew. If so, then don’t worry: you aren’t going crazy or suffering from early-onset dementia - or, I mean, if you are. Don’t worry about it. Soon you won’t remember you can’t remember anyway… But what is happening here? What is it about walking through a doorway that prompts our brains to suddenly erase our short-term memory? Well, sit back, keep your grey matter focussed, and let’s dive into the fascinating science behind the Doorway Effect. Author: Gilles Messier Host: Daven Hiskey Editor: Daven Hiskey

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Incredible Engineering- The Man Who Froze Time Dec 24, 2025

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A speeding bullet ripping through an apple, a split second before the fruit disintegrates. A drop of milk splashing off a red plate, forming a perfect miniature coronet. An atomic bomb frozen just after detonation, the fireball like a giant, surreal jellyfish. The movement of a golfer captured at split-second intervals, revealing the practiced elegance of his stroke. You have probably seen these iconic images dozens of times, reproduced on postcards, in coffee table books and science textbooks, and even on art gallery walls. They are perhaps the best-known works of Doctor Harold Edgerton, an American inventor who pioneered ultra-high-speed photography and helped uncover the secret world hidden in the moments too brief for the eye to see. But Edgerton’s work went far beyond just making pretty pictures, his many inventions helping to revolutionize fields as diverse as manufacturing, biology, and ocean exploration. This is the forgotten and incredible story of ‘Doc’ Edgerton - AKA “Papa Flash” - the man who made time stand still. Author: Gilles Messier Editor: Daven Hiskey Host: Simon Whistler

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The Hilarious Christmas Riot Dec 22, 2025

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⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at a Christmas gift that resulted in one of the more celebrated books of all time. Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at a rather humorous Christmas riot at West Point and then another that had nothing to do with Christmas at Oxford. We follow this up with a myriad of rapid fire Christmas Bonus Facts.

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A Perilous Journey- John Adams Goes to France Dec 20, 2025

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In the fall of 1778, things weren’t looking good for the traitors to King and country in the British American colonies. In the early going the American Revolutionary forces under George Washington had suffered defeat after resounding defeat, including Washington very nearly losing around half his army in the first major battle of the war, only saved by a providential fog and General William Howe deciding inexplicably not to press the attack when Washington’s forces were surrounded before this. This event occurred in New York in August of 1776 in what was then the largest known battle ever fought in North America, involving close to 40,000 troops including naval forces. Many losses for the Revolutionary forces later, Howe made a similar blunder in November and December of 1776. After yet another near catastrophic defeat for the rebels, when nearly 3,000 American troops were captured at Fort Washington, General Washington limped the 4,000 or so remnants of his army south to Delaware. Howe and his vastly larger, better equipped, and better trained army were nearby and could have crushed the Continental Army and either captured or killed Washington. But once again, for what reasons aren’t fully clear today, Howe chose not to press on, and instead began the process of setting up a winter camp with no further offensives planned until spring. Something needed to change if the upstart rebels were to succeed in breaking away from Britain. And so it was that Congress turned their sites on Britain’s longtime on and off again enemy in France. At the time it was exceedingly dangerous to transport diplomats from the United States to France given the British more or less completely controlled the sea in between, but Congress nonetheless had previously managed to successfully send Silas Deane, and not long after in December of 1776, Ben Franklin and Arthur Lee, to see about getting desperately needed aid from France. However, while the trio were in France working towards this, Lee accused Deane of financial impropriety, and Deane was recalled to answer the charges. Thus, Congress decided to send the tenacious John Adams to replace Deane and assist Franklin and Lee. Adams’ specific mission- negotiate a treaty with France to hopefully get desperately needed supplies and money to the rebellion, as well as direct naval and army aid against the British. There was an issue, however. It turns out there exists a giant ocean in between the United States and France, and, as alluded to, that ocean at the time was heavily populated in part by British ships with captains who would like nothing better than to arrest and hang for treason one of the principal architects of the revolution in John Adams. Author: Daven Hiskey

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The Crapper, The Poop Log, the Parasitic Poop Twigs, and Much, Much More Dec 18, 2025

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⁠⁠In this episode of The Brain Food Show, we start by looking at a couple rather bizarre Spanish Christmas traditions involving holiday defecating… Moving on to the main content today we’re looking at why we kiss under the mistletoe, the Demon of Christmas, and the constant battle to keep a giant goat from being burned down every year.

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What Really Happened After the Mutiny on the Bounty? Dec 16, 2025

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On November 28, 1787, His Majesty’s Armed Vessel Bounty set sail from England with 46 men aboard, bound for the island of Tahiti in the South Pacific. Commanded by Lieutenant William Bligh, her mission was to collect and deliver breadfruit plants to the West Indies, where they would serve as cheap food for slaves on British plantations. After a long and gruelling journey in which Bligh attempted unsuccessfully to round the storm-lashed Cape Horn at the tip of South America, Bounty finally arrived in Tahiti on 26 October, 1788. But the voyage - and the hedonistic temptations of this tropical paradise - soon began to take their toll, and over the five months Bounty spent in Tahiti morale and discipline among the crew steadily broke down. These tensions finally boiled over on April 28, 1789 when, three weeks after leaving Tahiti, the crew, led by acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, mutinied against Bligh, setting him him and eighteen loyalists adrift in an open boat. The mutiny on the Bounty has since become the stuff of legend, told and retold in dozens of books, plays, and films. It is history’s most famous mutiny, a classic tale of a beleaguered crew rising up against their tyrannical and abusive captain. But as with many such stories, the narrative has become progressively distorted with each retelling, such that the most common versions of the story differ significantly from the actual events. Popular retellings also tend to leave out what happened after the mutiny, which is in many ways an even more fascinating story - and one which had consequences which continue to resonate to the present day. Author: Gilles Messier Host: Simon Whistler

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