A Little Bit Of Science

The Seamen Getting Stuck In A Good Book

25 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

19th century industrial revolution times meant brilliant machines, inventions and factories. Workers were leaving rural areas en masse to find work in...

Gloria “Toxic Lady” Ramirez Evacuates Emergency Ward With Odour

18 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

You know how in sci-fi films, there’s always some freak accident in a biotech lab, leaving hundreds of people dead and authorities in a state of pan...

Arctic Cold Case Solved: Who Was First To The North Pole?

11 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We all love a good race. The competition, the rivalry, the winner revelling in their victory at the finish line. But some races don’t have a clear w...

The Sexist Science Behind Animal Testing

04 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In very intelligent and intricate ways, scientists can be a bit dumb sometimes.    Imagine a golden retriever as a stand-in for Brad Pitt. They’re...

Quack Eye Doc "Fixes" Eyeballs With Sun And Magnifying Glass

28 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There are some things we know not to do. Crossing the road without looking, not wearing a seatbelt…and looking at the sun. A fairly intrinsic lesson...

Good and Bad Ways to Find A Lost City

20 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Indiana Jones is a cool guy. An archaeologist, an adventurer who tore shit up, stumbled his way through tunnels and over invisible bridges to uncover ...

The Body Of Christ, Or Rather, Just The Tip: The Tale Of Jesus' Foreskin

13 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For centuries, religious relics have been the only means by which devout followers could interact with the divine. Let us journey into some of the gro...

Everyone Loves A Slinky And Other Accidental Toys

06 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Some of the best things in life were never meant to be. Just think of your favourite food, breed of dog or childhood toy - some of these were the resu...

Smart Toilets, Brain Pics, Corpse Comfort, Nuclear Moon, Space Fashion, and Super Conductivity

30 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

 The whole of science is stuffed full of delicious stories, and we really want to tell you every damn one of them. But we know our little human brai...

The History and Future of the Weekend: Where's My Four-Day Work Week?

23 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It’s simple. We work too much. There’s evidence that shows we work too much and it’s not a fun time for anyone. So what would a world with short...

Ethics, Homophobia and a Happy Ending: Investigating The Tearoom Trade

17 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Let’s go back to the 1960s. A time of Richard Nixon, moon obsession, hippies, the Vietnam war and… no ethics committees.    Born in Oklahoma in ...

New York Pneumatic Subway Brawl: Alfred Beach vs Boss Tweed

10 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Alfred Ely Beach was a good and decent man. Born in 1826 in Springfield Massachusetts, Alfred loved his family, he loved the opera and he loved invent...

The Gastric Digest: Beaumont's Experiments on Alexis Saint Martin

03 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How far would you go to get to the truth, or perhaps more pertinently, to the bottom of things?    William Beaumont was one dedicated scientist. Som...

The Great Stork Derby: Posthumous Trolling from Charles Vance Millar

23 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Charles Vance Millar was the greatest troll ever. Born in Aylmer, Ontario in 1854, Charles was a fan of practical jokes. Some might have described him...

How To Sabotage Your Workplace with OG Spy William Joseph Donovan

17 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Is your workplace overrun with unqualified managers, red tape and bureaucracy?   Are you asked to sit in on arduous meetings with no real consequence...

Recast - Dmitry Belyaev's Secret Quest To Domesticate The Fox

12 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Our soft, human brains have been bested by 2022 so we are taking a quick break over the Christmas period and will be back assaulting your senses in Ja...

Recast - The Sugar Experiments of Vipeholm

05 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We all know that sugar is bad for our teeth.   But... how did we come to know that?   It’s fairly common to see a healthy set of pearly whites now...

Recast - What Happened on Easter Island, and Why it Matters

29 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Our soft, human brains have been bested by 2022 so we are taking a quick break over the Christmas period and will be back assaulting your senses in Ja...

Recast - The People Who Drink Their Own Urine

22 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Our soft, human brains have been bested by 2022 so we are taking a quick break over the Christmas period and will be back assaulting your senses in Ja...

Aliens Told Me Dolphins Can Talk: The John C Lilly Story

01 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Talking with animals and aliens is the stuff of children’s stories and conspiracy theorists. But for John Cunningham Lilly, it was his life's work. ...

The Great Feather Heist

24 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Humans really love a hobby and it seems the more obscure the hobby, the more obsessed we become. But if you’re looking for the gold medal in obscure...

How To Hide A Battleship

18 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Battleships are very large, belch smoke and move pretty slowly. If you were tasked with hiding one out on the open water, how would you go about doing...

The Heroes and Idiots of Scientific Self-Experimentation!

10 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever had a curiosity so strong that you’ve considered staying awake for 180 hours, tapping your spinal column with cocaine, consuming deadl...

The Story Of Viagra - From Side Effect To Fully Erect

03 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Sexual performance, in particular impotence, is something that’s plagued chaps since they first crawled out of the swamp, rose up onto our hind legs...

Mercaptan, My Captain!

31 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A little bonus episode for you today, and we hope you enjoy the shorter format. Let us know in the comments on YouTube or by leaving us a review on Ap...

What The Hell Happened To The Left-Handers?

27 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

If you’re left-handed you're part of a group that makes up about 10% of the population. And this rate of left-handedness has been consistent. Histor...

Desperate For Rain, He Bombed The Sky

20 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

There is no better way to conquer things than with great big explosions. The thing to be conquered in this episode? Rain (humans just love punching on...

The Truth About The Cuyahoga River Fire

13 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The way the story goes, the Summer of 69 was when all hell broke loose in Cleveland.   It was the summer the Cuyahoga River caught on fire. Choked wi...

Bertha Benz Invents The Road Trip!

06 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The car has been around for over a century, which makes it easy to forget that there were real-life humans behind its invention, not to mention a mess...

Why We Forgot The Cure For Scurvy

29 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Scurvy is zero fun. We’re not sure how much you know about this disease but it’s not a walk in the park. Okay, it’s fair to say that not many di...

Philip Nitschke's Quest to Allow Us To Die

22 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

If you were knocking on death’s door and the door wasn’t opening quickly enough, would you want to be able to give it a shove yourself?   To have...

Chinese Restaurant Syndrome or Why We Panicked About MSG

15 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In August 1968, a rather innocuous letter to the editor was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.   Dr Ho Man Kwok had written in specula...

Laszlo Polgar's Quest To Raise A Chess Genius

08 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Our episode today begins in the 1960s with Laszlo Polgar and his hot and saucy epistolary courtship with a foreign language teacher named Klara. Corre...

The Martyrdom of Outspoken Hand Washer Dr Ignaz Semmelweis

01 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Our goal here at The Wholesome Show is to make you feel happy, amused and entertained. But a fair warning that we must sometimes journey through a rat...

Don’t Be Like Larry Lawnchair

25 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Have you ever had a dream that you just had to do no matter how crazy or how dangerous it might sound to anyone else? A dream so core to your being th...

Non Fungible Tulips!

18 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Six friends gather around a patch of dirt in the Netherlands.  Cornelis, Dirk, Symon, Reynier, Other Cornelis and Andries (clearly this is not 2022)....

The Race with No Drivers

11 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this daring episode, Rod and Will take us back to 1894 Paris, when a small newspaper had a brilliant idea to boost circulation.    A wacky endura...

Why Are the Proud Boys So Obsessed With (Not) Wanking?

17 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

There's a whole bunch of reasons to not be fans of the Proud Boys. In the words of the Southern Poverty Law Centre they're a 'general hate' group, the...

The Invention of the Puffer Jacket!

10 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the olden times people used to climb mountains wearing all sorts of odd things - wool, leather, or just in the nude! But George Finch was an ideas ...

What Do We Do With The Immortal Quadrillionaires?

03 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Guess what listener - it's possible that people alive today might live a very long life... like 1200 years maybe.That sounds fun, but maybe it might l...

Le Pétomane!

27 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

At the end of the 19th century in Paris there were a range of weird and wonderful acts - but one stood out...Rod tells Will the story of Le Pétomane!...

Lying with Maps!

20 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Old timey people put a lot of stock in maps, but they didn't always get things exactly right. They joined Tasmania to mainland Australia, got Africa i...

Smell-O-Vision!

13 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We all go to the movies right, we see the sights, we hear the sounds! But what if we could smell the smells?Rod tells Will the history of Smell-O-Visi...

The History and Science of Raw Food!

07 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

People have been cooking food for as long as they've been people - and for almost as long other people have been pushing against it.Will tells Rod the...

The Disappearance of Ettore Majorana!

29 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Ettore Majorana was a physics genius who really could have won the Nobel Prize... but in 1938 he disappeared. The question is, what happened to him? R...

The Soviet Space Tractor!

22 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Ok, the Americans won the race to the moon - but do you know what the Soviets actually did land on the moon? It's something a little bit special.The W...

Ozone Therapy!

14 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

You might not know this but ozone has a bizarrely 'clean' smell - so much so, there's a long history of people using it to 'clean' things that they re...

The Science of Dying on the Job!

08 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We at The Wholesome Show of course want to live forever. But if you have to go, there are a hell of a lot of worse ways than dying in the saddle.Will ...

Who Killed Tycho Brahe?

01 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Tycho Brahe is one of the most important astronomers of all time - but he died under super mysterious circumstances. So who killed him?Rod tells Will ...

The Ethically Dubious Jesus Experiments of Milton Rokeach!

25 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We all have... unique ways of looking at the world. But what if two mutually contradictory views of the world are put in the same room?Rod tells Will ...

Live to be Over 100 Using The Secret of the Blue Zones!

18 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

There are a few places around the world where a large number of people live to over 100 - do you want to know how? Well, Will tells Rod exactly what t...

A Modern Hunt for Bigfoot!

14 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

What evidence would we need to confirm that Bigfoot exists? Photos? Hair sample? A pool of blood?Rod tells Will the story of Melba Ketchum's quest for...

The Epidemic of Total Tooth Removal!

04 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the middle of the 20th century it became totally normal - at a 21st, a wedding or a confirmation - to give people the special present of the total ...

Safety Issues at the Los Alamos Lab!

25 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The early days of nuclear science were very much a... move fast and break things world. And some people? They ended up in some dangerous spots. Rod te...

Rocket Mail! (Or How Stamp Collectors Got Us To The Moon!)

18 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Do you get sick of waiting for your packages from your online retailers of choice? Have you ever wanted to get your mail just that little bit faster? ...

Spelling Reform!

11 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Is English spelling needlessly complicated? Should we fix it?Som pepl say yes!Will tells Rod the story of the Simplified Spelling Board!The Wholesome ...

Muscular Christianity!

04 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Exercise is great. It helps with just about everything! But here's the thing, does it help you... spread the word of God?Rod tells Will the story - an...

Dozenalism!

28 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We love the metric system - you love the metric system! But... what if it wasn't perfect?Will tells Rod the story of dozenalism!The Wholesome Show is ...

Training Rats to Save Lives!

12 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Gambian Pouched Rat - or the African Giant Pouched Rat - can hold heaps of stuff in its awesome face pockets... But it's also very useful in helpi...

Clarence Birdseye Invents An Industry!

17 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Clarence Birdseye Invents An Industry! by The Wholesome ShowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What Actually Happened on Easter Island, And Why It Matters

10 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Over a few hundred years from the year 1200 on, the people of Easter Island / Rapa Nui built an amazing pocket universe - a flourishing civilisation w...

A History and Future of Chatbots!

03 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Chatbots are everywhere these days - your bank, your phone company, your facebook... your therapist? Well actually, they were therapists first... Rod ...

World Ice Theory!

26 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We all know the Nazis embraced a bunch of dumb - awful - ideas. But their ideas about how the universe worked? Well that was sincerely whackadoo...Wil...

The Birth of GWG Ferris's Wheel

19 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We've all ridden in Ferris Wheels - including some that are getting really pretty gigantic. But have you ever wondered where they came from? Rod tells...

The Making of Grey Owl!

12 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Grey Owl had a crucial message for the world - but was he the right person to bring it?The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant and Dr Rod Lamberts, proudl...

A Brief History of Penis Transplants

05 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

You didn't know you needed to know it, but penis prosthetics and penis transplants are both VERY IMPORTANT and VERY SCIENCE. They are! It's true! Rod ...

The Story of the Curta - Curt Herzstark's Pocket Calculator!

29 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Curt Herzstark had an invention ready to go... but he never knew it would save his life.Will tells Rod the story of the Curta pocket calculator!The Wh...

Why We Should Care About Sand Mining!

22 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We use a lot of sand. In fact, it's the number two thing we use as a species after water! But because we use so much, there's some bad things that hap...

Alfred Wegener and the Theory of Continental Drift! With Tanja Pejic!

12 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We all know that even though the ground beneath our feet feels solid, it's actually moving nice and slowly towards somewhere else. But the science und...

Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard and The Origin of Performance Enhancing Drugs!

08 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

People have taken things to enhance their performance for ages - but the things they've taken, that's what's weird...Rod tells Will the story!The Whol...

Why People Worried About Bicycle Face!

01 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Bikes are awesome! But during the biggest bicycle craze of the 19th century, medical opinion on bikes went a little bit weird... Will tells Rod the st...

How To Spot An Art Forgery!

24 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Art forging - and catching art forgers - is a booming business these days. And on both sides, science has a key role to play...Rod tells Will the stor...

Taylorism, or Scientific Management!

17 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We love science here at the Wholesome Show, but what if you used science to make a workplace more efficient? Would you be a good person? Or is that da...

A Short History of Electroconvulsive Therapy!

08 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The treatments we have available for various psychiatric issues aren't either vast... or precise. Which is why electroconvulsive therapy is still a re...

Karl von Frisch and the Waggle Dance!

03 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Symbolic communication is ours! Just for us humans! Or... maybe it's not...Will tells Rod the story of Karl von Frisch and the bee waggle dance!The Wh...

Apotemnophilia!

27 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

So, simple question. If someone says their leg isn't really part of them, how should we help?Rod explains apotemnophilia to Will!The Wholesome Show is...

Bitcoin Is A Doomsday Device!

20 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Doomsday devices suck. Just straight up not great. The Soviets built one at the Cold War, and now we've potentially got another one on our hands.Will ...

Hitler's Seaside Resort!

13 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Would you stay in Hitler's sea side resort? You can if you want, but it's a weird building...The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant, ...

Mad Cow Disease :(

06 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Prions are freaking horrible. Don't eat them if you can utterly avoid it. @willozap explains to @rodl what happens if you do.The Wholesome Show is Dr ...

Karoshi Means Worked To Death (no exclamation mark)

30 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

So this is by far our most communist episode ever - and it's about people being worked to death. Cool cool! Rod tells Will all about karoshi!The Whole...

The Unicorn of Quedlinburg (Or, How We Discovered Extinction)

23 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We're pretty used to the idea of extinction. Species live, species die, it sucks, but... it's kind of a fact of the modern world.But we didn't always ...

Surgeons Behaving Badly!

13 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Hey listener, are you having surgery anytime soon? Hugs if you are, it can be scary! Well, Rod is about to go under the knife... and to calm himself, ...

Gain of Function Research and the Lab Leak Hypothesis!

30 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Ok listener, this is the big question: did the SARS-CoV-2 virus - you know, the goddamn bug that's making Australians wear masks even now - leak from ...

This Is Your Brain, Frozen In Time! (It's About Cryonics)

25 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Ok, this is the question listener: after you die, would you be interested in being frozen for reanimation in the future? Or do you think that sounds l...

The Mad Scientists of Reddit!

19 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

So scientists, what science would you do if ethics were not an issue? We trawl through the mad scientists of Reddit to explore some options!The Wholes...

Unclenching Climate Communication with Randy Olson!

11 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How scientists communicate is... not historically great. And Randy Olson's got opinions. We sit down to explore!The Wholesome Show is Dr Will Grant an...

The Strange Saga of Aerosols vs Droplets

04 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We all know the facts of Covid-19. Wash your hands, wear a mask, stay 1.5m away from the rest of the universe. This is good advice! But the science it...

The Translation of Hieroglyphics!

28 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Rosetta Stone is a byword for an amazing tool able to unlock a world... and it did give the modern world knowledge of hieroglyphics. But the trans...

John Cade's Discovery of Lithium! (Via Urine!)

21 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Lithium is a tiny tiny atom - it's basically the third tiniest! But it also helps enormously with mental health issues. Which is super weird. Even wei...

The Potato Blight (There Is No Such Thing As A Natural Disaster)

14 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the middle of the 19th century, Ireland's population declined by about 2 million people over the course of just a few years. Half of that number fl...

Condoms!

07 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Condoms! What are they? Where did they come from? Where are they going next?Rod tells Will all about it!The Wholesome Show is Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr W...

Making Risky Decisions! (Like Going Over Niagara Falls In A Barrel)

30 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Hey, would you go over Niagara Falls in a barrel? If you're on the fence, what would tip you the other way? Would it be peer pressure?Will tells Rod t...

Bandy Xenobia Lee and the Goldwater Rule

21 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Should psychiatrists be able to contribute to political discussion? To considering who is or isn't fit for office? Should they... diagnose from afar?R...

Understanding Animal Swarms!

02 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

There are times when animals... hit the wrong numbers. Like not just hundreds, not just thousands, but millions or billions or even trillions - and ev...

Ethical Issues In A High Tech Society - with Adam Henschke!

26 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

New technologies have opened up a whole new range of things we can do - monitor each other from afar, trap our genitals in internet enabled chastity b...

The Secret Spy Science of Poo!

19 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Ok listener, this is it - right in the centre of the Venn diagram of Wholesome Show topics. We've got nasty racists, bad accents, the Soviet Union, te...

Barry Marshall Drinks Something Weird!

12 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It's not surprising that an Australian scientist got a Nobel prize for drinking something weird - but how he lined up the ducks to get there, that's t...

The Fraudulent Bird of Washington!

05 Mar 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 19th Century, John James Audubon achieved something truly amazing - but he needed to commit a stupendous fraud to do it...Will tells Rod ...

A Brief History of Medical Leeches!

26 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

People have used leeches in medicine for thousands of years - but the story is not quite what you might think. Will tells Rod all about it!The Wholeso...

The Healing Powers of Rat Poison (In Medically Supervised Doses!)

19 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1930s, a blizzard blew through Wisconsin, and some cattle got sick - what happened then is a story of the development of one of the world's mos...